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Thursday, November 7, 2019

64-bit Mac OS Catalina migration?


Notwithstanding having begun my day gig work using microcomputers in the mid-1980's in the 10-bit DOS (2.1), Intel world in a lab in Oak Ridge (where I also installed and admin'd an Intel based Unix server/thin client "dumb terminals" network to run an Oracle platform LIMS), it has long been total Mac Snobbery in our house.
I came to Macs in 1991 upon joining a West Knoxville digital industrial diagnostics startup firm as their Technical Editor. Our department was basically an in-house digital ad agency running then- state of the art Macs doing publication-quality 4-color pre-press on platforms such as QuarkExpress and Photoshop. We even did our own Mac-based video production. It was a great fun time.
I compose this blog stuff on either my 13" Mac Air or 27" iMac desktop. My wife uses a 13" Mac Air. We both have iPads, iPhones and Apple watches, and our creaking 2003 21" iMac still works (running in a corner just off the kitchen), as does our old Mac PowerBook. We run a Mac Time Capsule Wifi router with Time Machine always-on silent backup. I'm currently running OS Mojave on both my iMac and Mac Air.


Now comes Mac OS Catalina. Apple keeps badgering me to upgrade, every time I get an "upgrades available" notice for other routine stuff.


2^64 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616

Mac OS Catalina, 64-bit addressing. 2 raised to the 64th power. What's not to love? Lotta app power potential there.

This:
Apple has been working with developers to transition their apps, and in 2018 Apple informed them that macOS Mojave would be the last version of macOS to run 32-bit apps. Apple's transition to 64-bit technology is now complete. Starting with macOS Catalina, 32-bit apps are no longer compatible with macOS
Will my current MS Office Suite no longer run? My Adobe Creative Suite? My Logic Pro X audio recording platform? My Finale music notation platform? My open-source Filezilla FTP app? My open-source Thunderbird email client? My Audio Hijack app? etc?

What will all of this cost me? Netted out against the improved OS functionality? (My prior OS migration to OS Mojave has proved to be a mixed blessing; they "fixed" a lot of stuff that "wasn't broke.") Don't know yet. Probably just gonna hang with Mojave a while longer (in part to let other early adopters serve as bug testers).

ERRATUM
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More to come...

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