#Review: #macOS #Catalina #Beta from @Apple the new good looking and fast OS, but is it the best?

Apple announced the beta release of their new macOS Catalina, iPadOS 13, tvOS 13 and iOS 13 at WWDC. They are quite a buzz in the tech market now, as everything should be from Apple Inc. What’s interesting about these beta releases are they are integrating features to each other so well, that every Apple user will like and newbies would love to get on-board with these.

macOS Catalina is quite a biggie in the game as we’re seeing an era ending, which is iTunes (I’ll miss you a lot my musical partner in crime), and get to see new key additions like iPad apps can live on Mac very soon, enhanced security with if your Mac has T2 chip and many more. Still there are many flaws that Apple need to fix ASAP.

Will deep dive into macOS Catalina to understand how good it is and what Apple need to fix before launching the real release.

The good ones:

• Speed and Performance:

There is no doubt Apple has levelled up the in terms of performance and speed with macOS Catalina. Existing MacBook Pro feels like having lesser load, giving better graphical outputs, and smoothens the daily tasks. Finder, iMovie, Pages, Music and other apps were loading faster and didn’t show any problem while working. So the bottom line is, good for all the Mac users as they will feel quick responses and better improvements on OS level performance ergonomics.

• Reminders and System Preferences new look:

Reminders app and System Preferences has a new UI that is quite simple and unique in its own way. Now things are easy to do than ever. With this new UI enhancements seems like Apple is trying to standardise UI across devices which is really a nice move for Apple environment over all. As all options will be placed at the same places whether its on any Apple device. Impressive changes are seriously on Reminders app which is very user friendly.

Also System Preferences new look is good and matches the iPad like view where you can see you Apple ID details in the first page of System Preferences. Rest remains almost the same.

• Sidecar:

Sidecar is something that actually make Catalina stand out from any other Operating System. Now your iPad is your second screen to your Mac. This functionality is super easy to catch by any newbie also, as you just need to connect your iPad with your Mac and select your iPad device name in Sidecar.

Sidecar gives you option to share screen as Mirror and Extended  both. With sidebar and bottom bar to enable desktop like options and TouchBar functionalities on iPad to get your work done at its best. Also you can use your iPad Pencil to do some more designing on your Adobe tools. To SideCar need to work you should upgrade your iPad to iPadOS 13 beta and all the iPads from 5th Generation or above will support iPadOS 13 beta. This is really a magical option I have seen on Catalina so far.

In the picture above iPad is connected via its lighting cable to Mac whereas there is option to connect via Bluetooth also. For which will publish and create a video soon. Also posted the above demo pic on my Instagram, please like and follow me there too 🙂

• Screentime:

So now you can check which type of apps you’re working the most and which app is most useful to you. This ScreenTime has a lot of options to check your computing consumption for the whole day. Data collection and checking according to each app is really superb. There are still some more enhancements required in this, but overall ScreenTime is one of the best option that can be utilised to check user consumptions. You can check your consumption according to category and also according to which app you using the most.

The bad ones:

• Apps not supported:

This new upgrade may facilitate with utter good options but some of your daily apps may not work, for example WhatsApp for Mac, uTorrent, BitTorrent, GeekBench 4 and so many other apps stops working after upgrading to Catalina. It always show that app from an unidentified developer will not work whereas these apps are of daily use and from big developers especially which won’t even open. Even though in settings option is listed to Open Anyway but after doing that still nothing happens to the app and they remain dead.

Most surprising was GeekBench app as I wanted to show the earlier performance report and after updating to Catalina. But that will not gonna happen now. So Apple please work on at least on our daily apps, that should run without any issues.

• Safari is slow:

Image Source: Just UI (IconFinder.com)

Apple always ensure to have enhanced the king browser ‘Safari’. Whereas as comparing to the demo showed at WWDC Safari is working way too much slower than ever. Even though loading of content is fine, fonts are really good as always. But while opening any side including Apple’s product pages or something like Twitter, the app itself is getting hanged a lot. For which you need to kill the app every time.

Bye Bye iTunes!

Agreeing on the part that iTunes is ended for Mac whereas iTunes app is still there for Windows users to sync their iPod, iPhone and iPad. Now your iDevices will connect with Finder to sync. What’s more interesting now is getting separate Music app, Apple TV app and Podcast app. Which pretty much sums up the iTunes itself, now you will get dedicatedly music, videos and podcasts on their respective apps.

This is the end of an era, will miss you iTunes. Hope to see you back in future updates of macOS soon.

These are merits and demerits of this OS, but does it make Catalina the best OS far or best macOS so far. Well there is no straight answer, as there are offerings which are unique its own way whereas some things are not right which should fixed ASAP. 

Let’s wait for the future to see the final launch. Till then thanks to Apple for creating best products for consumers.