Catalina

Installing a new MacOS is a fairly low-key affair. The installation takes about 25 minutes and everything just works. The user interface is generally unaffected and often a few things run subjectively faster.

That's what happened with the latest update to 10.15/Catalina a few days ago. It all works, although there was something of a pause before the mail system had re-indexed itself with a new database.

There's a few subtleties under the hood with the new release, although the much vaunted Sidecar won't work with my particular combination of kit. They've built the iPad/iMac integration for post 2016 machines apparently because the HEVC compressed video stream came along in a later intel chipset than my venerable iMac.

<gossip>Is it a taster of what will happen when, in 3 years, Apple ditch intel quad for ARM 10-way processors or go fusion?

</gossip>

The whole operating system is now 64 bit too, which means a few ancient Apps have had to be pensioned off. Farewell TextWrangler, you served me well, but now I'll have to use your replacement BBEdit.

And Scrivener, although V3 from the App Store doesn't work with Catalina, but the version from Literature and Latte works fine. Thank you, Apple, for providing me with the refund.

Then there's a few new security alerts. Grant the relevant permissions or see the application stumble.

Aside from that, there's very little downside to report, although I suppose I keep my system fairly up-to-date. And I've just had the SpamSieve and Chronosync 'free' updates come through, so it's slick, speedy 64 bits all the way.