MacOS Catalina 10.15

Wow things move quickly from year to year. No surprise here. MacOS Catalina brings a whole new level of cool back to the Mac in my honest opinion. I am so happy that Apple has decided to break out iTunes into multiple apps. iTunes back in the day was so awesome, easy to use and simplistic. Now it tends to be a power hungry and semi confusing app to use as its the defacto app for everything. How about that annoying feature that automatically launched iTunes when your phone was connected? Problem no more!

Enter the Podcast app, Apple TV app and Apple Music app. Each doing what they are meant to do with simple elegance. Having an Apple TV app on the Mac is also a welcome feature. The TV app will also finally bring support for 4K HDR video to Macs, something that was only possible with the Apple TV 4K until now. So overall very excited about just these three minor feature tweaks.

Can I use that old iMac as a second monitor?

I get that question more often than you know. While turning an aging computer into a monitor isn’t a reality natively Apple is announcing native support for the use of an iPad as a second display for MacOS Catalina. This is something we have often had to rely on the third party community for and now its built right into the core of the OS, nice!

Apple is also launching a new app called ‘Find My’ which combines Find My iPhone with Find my Friends. It also converts all your Apple devices into Bluetooth beacons. This means it is now possible to find offline devices based on proximity from anyone in the world.

Cross Platform Development

While this has been a rumor and a top secret project at Apple for years its slowly becoming a tangible reality for developers and I think its awesome. I remember the days when you were the lone Mac developer in an all Windows or Java development field so this is great we can now see some of those amazing iPad only apps being ported to Mac to further enhance the experience.

So what about 10.14?

We are pleased to announce that Grove Technologies will formally approve and help clients migrate to 10.14. Our firm stance for business grade computers has always been to wait until the 10.14.5 or 10.14.6 releases *(which historically are stable releases) and with the latest news of MacOS Catalina we look forward to making sure computers in offices we manage are up to par with 10.14 and are moved over to ensure overall security and stability standards are met.