We are a few Betas into the summer Apple beta summer cycle and I wanted to report with what I’ve experienced so far with iPadOS and macOS Catalina.
Before I get going, I want to express that these are definitely still betas! I know there are kinks and issues with them. That why I have warned everyone that they probably shouldn’t be messing around with them.
My Systems
I also haven’t installed betas on my main drivers – my iPhone XS Max and my 2019 iMac.
I have installed iPadOS on my 2018 11-inch iPad Pro and my 2013 MacBook Pro. While I usually do most of my work on my iPad Pro, I have been able to write more from home this summer and I haven’t relied on it. Same with my MacBook Pro.
iPadOS Beta
The first beta I actually installed this summer was on my iPad. I hadn’t been planning to do it really, not this early at least. In early June, I was on vacation with my wife in Portland. The only devices I brought with me on the trip were my iPhone and my iPad. My wife would be attending a conference and I thought I would have plenty of time to write.
Then I got there and I needed to do some web stuff on the back end of the site that I couldn’t do on the mobile version of Safari. So, since it doesn’t really take much to get me to change my mind, I thought “Hey, I could probably do this on
Installation
Installation was as smooth as ever. I’m glad since I only had the iCloud backup with me since I hadn’t brought my MacBook. Still, I figured if it was horrible, I could just wipe it out and start over. It would be annoying to have to redownload all my apps, but all of my data and passwords have been saved to the cloud.
The Good
Desktop-class safari is much better than it has been, but I feel like it still has a ways before it is perfect. Good thing Apple has until this fall to continue to work on it.
Really though, Safari has been pretty awesome. I haven’t done much (as I’ll get into later) but what I have done has been much more capable than it was before. WordPress and Google Docs were much more usable in their web form than before.
Apple had me excited when they announced the changes they had planned for Slide-Over. When I am working on my iPad I love being about to hide a window away or bring it out when I need it. With iPadOS you can shuffle through those Slide-Over windows. It’s like having an iPhone tucked away on your phone. But in the first couple of beta’s you couldn’t get rid of the Slide-Over window unless you closed them all. There was no swipe that would get them off the screen. It took a couple of updated builds to be able to actually swipe the screen away. It seems to work now though, at least most of the time.
I also love that the iPad is finally getting Haptic Touch and long presses like on the iPhone XR. While it isn’t 3D touch, I just think that being able to get things like quick actions on the Home Screen will allow the iPad to be more versatile.
The Issues
So far, everything has been a step forward with a couple of little errors here or there.
But this summer, I have been working on the first draft of a novel everyday. I had started this novel last fall and I’m still working on it in Scrivener. I’m very reluctant to leave Scrivener because I’ve created a workflow that really works for me.
I also double checked to make sure that the iOS version of Scrivener was working with iPadOS before I updated.
The app works just like it did before (despite all the bugs it had before since it hasn’t been updated in a year) however, when I was typing in it with the Smart Keyboard, I would run into an annoying error that I couldn’t get past. Whenever I would use a contraction, Scrivener would try to capitalize the first letter after the apostrophe. If I held down shift to cancel the capitalization, the first letter after the contraction would be capitalized. It was maddening.
I’m not blaming Apple nor Literature & Latte for the error. It is beta software, there are going to be kinks. But it has really driven me to the desktop or laptop versions of Scrivener for now. The weird thing about the bug is that it only happened with the Magic Keyboard and it didn’t happen like that before the Beta.
Of course, there are still issues with the home screen as well. If you had the widget column to your iPad, there’s a 25% chance it will show up like it is supposed to. Most of the time it wouldn’t show up at all unless I scrolled through it like it was there.
Other Stuff in iPadOS beta
Quick Fire stuff here:
- Multiple Windows will be great once the apps are updated to support it.
- Taking Screen Shots is so easy with the Apple Pencil. I like the new screenshot interface to make it an option to get the entire webpage and stuff.
- It threw me off the first time I saw the home screen. The app icons are tiny!
- Dark mode looks good. I especially like that there is a setting that will change it for you based on time of day.
- The beta is mostly usable, but there are hiccups.
iPadOS outlook
I’m super excited for the betas to get better as the summer goes on. This update excites me the most out of all that Apple plans to launch soon. I’m surprised with how little I’ve been using my iPad though just because of a bug in one app.
Catalina
So far, Catalina is very underwhelming.
That’s not a bad necessarily a bad thing though. The major announcements for macOS 10.15 Catalina were the breaking up of iTunes and iPad Apps coming to the Mac.
I wasn’t really in a rush to install Catalina, but since I had my iMac as a fall back, I thought I’d see what it was all about.
The installation of the first public beta went off without a hitch.
The Good
There are a bunch of little things in this update. One of the things I was most excited about was the ability to automate Light and Dark mode. Just like on iOS 13 and iPadOS, you’ll be able to set a schedule if you’d like for light mode and dark mode.
So far, the Music App is a work in progress and it seems to be getting better with each iteration. But that first public beta, it was rough. It took me deleting my library off the system and then redownloading it back through iCloud Music Library. When it works, it works like a simple version of iTunes and that’s not bad. That’s what I want.
Everything else seems the same as before. I don’t think things will really start getting good until the apps start getting released for the update.
Those Apps
Apple has said that the four iOS apps that it brought over to the Mac last year will be fixed. So far, there hasn’t been much change that I’ve noticed. I don’t really ever use those apps though.
Still, I’m really waiting for Apple to fix up those first four apps (Home, Stocks, News, and Voice Memos) to show others how they can be a “great Mac App.” If Apple doesn’t do it themselves, how can they expect others to really put the work in.
Still, I think that’s where we will really remember Catalina in the grand scheme of things. It could be the OS that brought in a rush of great apps, or it could be the OS that brought the crappy iOS apps. Time will tell.
Frustration Point
When the latest Beta was released, I quickly jumped in to update. There is something about an update that I love. It makes me excited to see what’s new and all.
Well, I started the update and everything was going normally. The Mac rebooted and went to the Apple logo screen. But then the indicator stopped moving.
I waited for 30 minutes or more for it to start moving again, but nothing happened. I restarted the system and the installation started over. But it got stuck in the same spot again.
I waited longer this time, thinking that it had to be working. 45 minutes later, it still hadn’t moved.
Clean Install
“Well that’s the risk with betas,” I thought to myself as I tried to enter recovery mode to get things back to normal. Only, recover mode opened up to the Mojave version.
In the past three years of using a beta on my Mac, I’ve never needed to go into the recovery mode, so this could have been normal, I’m not sure.
Anyway, I select to reinstall MacOS and it starts. When it asks me where to install it though, I see that my SDD has been partitioned into 2 drives. Catalina does this and shelters off the OS part of your drive for security. I select the drive I want and it is password protected, so I type in my password and it unlocks. It continues to install the OS and restarts my computer like normal.
When it reboots and continues to try and install the OS it once again asks for the password for the hard drive, but now the password doesn’t work.
I start over but ran into the same problem. Turns out, I needed to use disk utility to wipe the drive clean and start all the way over. I went into Mojave and had to get all my apps and data back. It took a couple of hours.
I love the ease of use of the Mac App store and wish I had gotten all my apps there, but the lack of updates offered doesn’t make it the cheapest way to get apps. Also, Dropbox, an app that I have used on all my computers for years, has become a pain in the ass with their limit of 3 devices on the free account. I get that they need to make money, and if they offered a cheap plan I might jump in, but they don’t. I don’t need to pay for another cloud storage option. So when I got my MacBook back in working order, it counted the laptop as a new device and I couldn’t sync my data to it anymore.
Wrap Up
Everything is back where it needs to be for the moment. I’m still excited about what’s coming from the company and from all the app developers once they get their apps up-to-date.
Would I recommend people put the betas on their main device? Probably not yet. I might wait a few more betas before you really jump in. If you do, make sure that you have a solid backup plan in place.
I have been filing feedback reports with apple for all of these. Remember that if you are beta testing, they are wanting your feedback! They want to know where things are going wrong so that they can fix time.
