MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS

  1. Updating the Environment: I am not sure what to call this, but I have noticed in Catalina that when something changes, a shared volume/file name on a server, Launchpad when an app is deleted, etc. that change is not reflected in Catalina until I log out of my account and back on again. Whether this is a permanent change of behavior or just a bug in the 2nd public/3rd Developer beta I don't know. Hopefully it is the latter. 🤞
  2. Time Machine: Not sure what is going on here, but the first Time Machine backup of the Catalina drive has been stuck at "Preparing Backup" for two days now. 🤷‍♂️
  3. iCloud Drive similarly uploading to the iCloud Drive remains hung. I suspect this may be related to the Apple ID password issue although the password works to logon to iCloud through Safari and I can access iCloud through the Finder. 🤬😡
  4. In the meantime something is accessing the drive that I was previously using for Time Machine backups — a LOT. Is this another case of not recognizing changes? ❓
  5. DEVONThink under Catalina is a curiously mixed bag…
    1. DEVONThink Pro Office 2.11 works well in Catalina and as far as I can tell is fully functional 👌
    2. DEVONThink 3 beta (functionally and visually a huge improvement over DEVONThink Pro Office 2.11) works flawlessly in Mojave but display issues make it essentially unusable in Catalina 🤬
  6. Drive Renaming: I was finally successful in changing the boot drive name from Macintosh SSD to Catalina by making the changes while booted into Mojave. To make it stick I had to change two names Macintosh SSD and Macintosh SSD - Data. Both of those names appear in Disk Utility or while booted from another drive (🤦🏻‍♂️), but if that is the boot drive only Catalina (nee. Macintosh SSD) appears in Finder 🤷‍♂️
  7. COMMENT I have participated in a lot of Public Beta tests going all the way back to the OS X 10.0 pre-release. The first two or three beta releases typically have some significant functional problem(s), but Catalina seems to have more issues than most. Certainly it has presented me with more challenges that either High Sierra or Mojave‼️ At the WWDC the keynote focused on Catalina's new features and there are a bunch of them. I suspect had I attended some of the Developer sessions I would have discovered those new features are merely the tip of the iceberg and there are a number of perhaps more significant changes "under the hood". Suffice it to say I bought a high speed Thunderbolt 3 external drive so I can easily switch back and forth between Catalina and Mojave without sacrificing performance. This is the first time since the OS X 10.0 beta I have had the need to do that.


AFTERNOON FOLLOW UP

The App Store and iCloud issues are fixed thanks to a hint gleaned from the Release Notes. 👏 The solution was to log completely out of the App Store account and my Apple account then log back in to both.

The GOTCHA' In both cased typing in the password refused to work and it had to be pasted in from 1Password 🤦🏻‍♂️ (It is more convenient than Keychain Access). That same password can be typed in successfully in Mojave, it is only the Apple ID password in System Preferences > Apple ID and App Store > Account > Sign In that it doesn't work❓ Weird 🤷‍♂️‼️

NOTE: Although App Store downloads are working they are for whatever reason painfully slow and I am on a really fast (400 Mbps+) network connection. 🙄

NOTE 2: After reformatting the Time Machine target drive one more time now Time Machine is in the process of completing its first backup. 👏

EVENING EDITI0N

Vuescan released a Catalina approved version yesterday, July 4. Just in time because buy Fujitsu ScanSnap software cannot "see" the scanner but Vuescan can.

Last edited by joemikeb; 07/06/19 12:12 AM. Reason: evening edition
If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein