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Are there any major glitches when upgrading a late 2014 iMac to Catalina?


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I bought my current iMac almost 5 years ago and it works well with Mojave (10.14.6). My question is whether there are software/hardware problems for an older iMac getting upgraded to 10.15 (Catalina). I ask since my last iMac worked really well until I upgraded the operating system and then Photoshop and most other things slowed to a crawl. I'd like to get a few more years out of this iMac, so I don't want to trash it with an upgrade that I basically don't need right now. I didn't upgrade my last laptop and it finally got so out of date that I couldn't use dropbox anymore, something I would like to avoid with this computer. Any thoughts or personal experiences?

Thanks in advance.

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Catalina went to 64 bit, rendering a lot of older scanners and printers obsolete. For instance, I had a Canon feed scanner that I bought about 5 years ago for $450 and it won't work with Catalina, and Canon considers it obsolete and won't provide updated software (but will be glad to sell me a new scanner). The built in scanner software for a Mac won't run it either. In other words, research every peripheral device you need to continue using before upgrading.
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Installers too. For example, Lightroom 5 and 6 run fine under Catalina but the installers are 32-bit. You'd have to boot into an older OS to install them but then, you could boot back into Catalina to actually run those products.

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management" (pluralsight.com)

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I would avoid an upgrade to Catalina. For most of us, there is really is no 'must do' reason for it.

 

As mentioned above, Canon is one of the worst for not porting their drivers to newer Apple OSs. If you have an older Wacom tablet, look out. That's just the hardware side of it.

 

You can download and install Catalina on a portable (or external) hard drive (preferably SSD) and try to get all your stuff to work from it. In essence, you will have a clean install to play with. It means having to install your software and hardware to that new drive. It will be slower if you are using a mechanical hard drive, not so much for an SSD, but it will allow you to verify whether your peripherals and software will continue to work. There are lots of tutorials on how to do this.

 

The other bit of advice, Apple's Migration Assistant is a load of crap. Restore from a Time Machine backup if you need to so make a very current TM backup before you start playing.

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Perhaps as important as the obsolescence of 32 bit installers is that of legacy UNINSTALLERS. When you upgrade to Catalina, you are warned of certain incompatible products on your computer. If you wish to completely uninstall those products to clear up space, now is the time to do it.

 

I'm at an impasse. I use Adobe Encore to author DVDs and BDs, but it has not been updated to 64-bit (and never will be). Encore is a thoroughly professional product, and I've not found a comparable replacement.

 

So far I've upgraded two MacBookPro computers without incident. They're used for AV production ranging from DAW service to video switching, encoding and broadcasting. None of the MBP software triggered any alarms. My main iMac workstation remains unimproved, for reasons cited above.

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with an upgrade that I basically don't need right now

 

There's your answer. Unless there is some new feature you can't live without, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"

 

Lots of older software stops working well, or doesn't work at all with newer systems.

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What about missed security updates?

 

I go as far as I can. Many of the security updates do NOT require the newer systems. On my biggest system I am still running High Sierra and just did a new security update this AM.

Herd immunity takes care of the rest, so to speak.

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AJG, i recently installed Catalina in my late 2013 iMac. I had to upgrade my system software so that I could upgrade my photo editing software because the old software couldn't open the NEF files from my new Nikon Z50. After installation everything ran okay until it all bogged down. I ran Activity Monitor and discovered that something called "nsurlsessiond" (and also "trustd") were hogging CPU usage. I Googled it and found other users of Catalina with the same problem. Apparently these functions are used to download files from the Cloud, hogging bandwidth. as well as CPU capacity. I don't have any active cloud accounts but nsurlsessiond still attempts to connect. It comes on at random and there is not way to stop it. There is a remedy - it requires entering a script in Terminal. It stops nsurlsessiond from doing its thing until the next time you start or restart your computer. When my new external SSD arrives I will instal OS Mojave on it and run it as my primary OS. Edited by Greg Fight
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