But it seems to have downloaded the latest OS in the background, despite my best efforts and now it says it will install it next time I reboot.
Is there some way to delete the installed package so it doesn’t update? And ideally prevent it from taking this update altogether? I have a lot of old stuff, some of which is likely to break on a new system.
I would steer clear of Catalina until you are sure you are not dependent on old, 320-bit apps for your workflow. I have so many irreplaceable 32-bit apps that I am going to have to run a virtual machine for them if I ever decide to upgrade.
Do major OS upgrades auto-download like that? I have “Automatically keep my Mac up to date” checked in the Software Update menu, but to install Catalina, it looks like I have to hit the “Upgrade Now” button. I had an auto-update a few days ago, but that turned out to be a Mojave update to 10.14.6 (I guess I just hadn’t reset my computer since September, as that’s when the update came up.) I actually did kind of get nervous for a second, wondering if I accidentally told the computer to install Catalina, but, well, once the update started, there was no going back. Half hour later or so, I was relieved to find it was just a Mojave OS update. So I guess there’s a difference between “update” and “upgrade.” I don’t think the latter happens automatically.
I will cast my vote as “displeased” with Apple regarding the way the have handled this.
Somehow they have managed to bring us to a moment in time where the OS is constantly telling us “Upgrade!!! There’s an Upgrade!!! Install it now !!one1!”
Meanwhile, half of my apps still say “This application has not been optimized for MacOS…blah.blah”
So there is no way I can upgrade, since many key apps don’t have Catalina-ready versions. I’m not even talking about one-off’s “Joe’s cool app” either: Finale, an expensive musical score editing application that I use, says right on their site that “it might work, but don’t risk it”.
This is good to know in case my Mac pulls something similar. Apparently I am now two OSs behind.
The only time it did that was on previous involuntary “upgrades” to iTunes, which only succeeded in making the software more difficult/annoying to use.
In most cases you can upgrade to Mojave with no problems. If you don’t want the “nag screen” or auto updates, just turn that off in System Preferences>Software Update>Advanced, and clear the checkbox “Check for Update”.
Apple has been directing app developers to move to 64 bits for years. In 2017 at the WWDC keynote they told developers High Sierra would be the last version running 32 bit apps without any compromise.
Lots of small one-person development companies have already managed to do this. They had plenty of advance warning.
The Finale app runs fine on Mojave, and they are working on a Catalina version. There is no current urgent need to upgrade to Catalina. However there IS an urgent need to upgrade from old macOS versions to at Mojave, for security reasons.
There was a recent severe Google Chrome bug which corrupted the hard disks of Macs running older versions of MacOS or which had System Integrity Protection disabled. The users/admins of those probably thought they were being “safe” by avoiding “risky” new OS versions, and this resulted in corrupted, non-bootable systems and lost work. This included various major TV productions: Faulty Google Chrome update makes Mac Pros in Hollywood grind to a halt | TechRadar
So while there is some risk and effort to upgrade, there can also be risk in not doing that.
In general the risk and effort to upgrade to Mojave seems limited. The issue is Catalina since that’s the final jettisoning of 32-bit app support.
I myself have not upgraded my machines to Catalina yet because of a couple of 32-bit apps (e.g, Beyond Compare utility), but all those developers are hard at work on new 64-bit versions which will be available soon.
This is pretty Mac-like. It’s the sometimes customer-hostile push into the future side of Apple, like when they get rid of common ports and disk drives a year or two before everyone else does.
Still happily using 10.11 (El Capitan), although if my software would run on it I’d backtrack to 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard).
Whatever you run, use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a fully bootable clone of your startup hard drive and then you can revert back to it any time an upgrade (or anything else for that matter) hoses your main environment drive.
Well, I can’t find Install MacOS Catalina, and it says it’s ready to install a couple of less frightening updates (although I’m not keen on changing iTunes yet again, I had enough trouble finding stuff last time it was updated.)
But… My time machine is acting up. So I think I will try doing a complete carbon copy clone and then reboot the damn thing and hope I can clear up the time machine issue.
Meanwhile, Crashplan stopped working a couple of weeks ago, because they pushed a newer version to me that doesn’t support High Sierra. They realized that was a problem, and sent me instructions to downgrade to a prior version, but of course they recommend I upgrade my system to at least Mohave. And it sounds like that won’t break too much, so I suppose I ought to. But at least I now have Crashplan up and running again. Unless the laptop crashes and burns, first, I will wait for that to backup the last month before I do anything else.