Jun 03, 2019 So for our next major release of Mac OS we are moving out of the desert and to the beautiful water of the California coast. Place for sailing, diving and so much more it's Mac OS Catalina. Presenting Apple Music on Mac. The new Apple Music app is the ultimate music streaming experience on Mac. 1 Explore a library of 60 million songs, discover new artists and tracks, find the perfect playlist, download and listen offline, or enjoy all the music you’ve collected over the years. And find it all in your music library on all your devices.
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In case you’re not yet aware, there are going to be a whole lot of Mac apps that will stop working if you upgrade to macOS Catalina later this year. Now it appears that Apple has actually included a specific list of a whole bunch of them in the betas for its new operating system.
As reported on his blog, The Tape Drive, iOS developer Steve Moser recently discovered a hidden file in the latest macOS Catalina beta called IncompatibleAppsList.bundle that explicitly lists 235 apps that are incompatible with Catalina, along with text describing why they’re incompatible and in some cases offering recommendations.
As Moser notes, the list is designed to be used by the Catalina installation process so that apps with known incompatibilities can be flagged during an upgrade from a previous version of macOS. Many of the apps are actually just older versions that have long since been updated — and in some cases really old versions. For example, 1Password 2.12.2 is on the list, which is a far cry from the currently shipping version, 1Password 7.3.1.
The bundle also includes strings that are intended to advise users of the incompatibility, likely being presented during the upgrade process if any of the offending apps are detected on a user’s system. Many simply say something like ”this version of (app) is not compatible with this version of macOS” while others direct users to a different app. For example, if TextWrangler is detected, macOS will tell the user that it has been “end of lifed” and recommend they update to the company’s replacement app, BBEdit.
Why Is This Happening?
Apple has been working for several years on transitioning entirely to 64-bit apps, since these are not only more efficient for modern Macs, but by eliminating support for 32-bit apps, Apple can also clean up and simplify a lot of the code under the hood in macOS.
The writing has been on the wall for most developers for at least a couple of years, especially after Apple made the first such move with iOS when it dropped support for 32-bit apps in iOS 11 back in 2017. Of course, since it wouldn’t be as obvious to end users, with the release of macOS Mojave last year, Apple began notifying users that their apps would be incompatible with “future versions of macOS” and encouraging them to update their apps or seek replacements.
What Should I Do About It?
We provided some instructions and advice last month for how to find out if your apps will still work in macOS Catalina, which offers a way to ferret out every app that’s already on your system that won’t be compatible with the new operating system.
In addition, Moser has also helpfully shared the IncompatibleAppsList file on GIST, and while it’s in its original PLIST format, you can still open it in a text editor and scan or search through it to see if any of your favourite apps are on the list.
In either case, if you discover an app that’s not going to be compatible with macOS Catalina, you’ll basically have three options:
Mac Catalina Apps
- Check to see if a free 64-bit update is available. This is obviously the best and most seamless option, and if the app offers its own software update process, or if it came from the Mac App Store, you should probably get any necessary updates automatically just by checking for them.
- Check with the developer to see if a newer paid version of the app includes 64-bit support. If the app has had a major update within the past couple of years, there’s a good chance that the developer won’t offer 64-bit support in the older versions of their app, which have been effectively discontinued. The downside is that this means you’ll have to pay for an update if you want to keep using that app and want to run macOS Catalina.
- Check with — or petition — the developer to see if they have any plans to add 64-bit support to the version of the app that you are using. Some developers may be willing to release small updates to older versions of their apps purely as a goodwill gesture to their customers.
- Find an alternative app that will work for you. If you’re running an older app that’s no longer in active development, chances are that you won’t find a 64-bit update for it. While a transition to a new app may be difficult, there are lots of other advantages to switching to an app that’s being actively maintained by its developer rather than continuing to run one that’s been effectively abandoned.
- Don’t upgrade to macOS Catalina. While this isn’t a long-term solution, if you have apps that are critical to your workflow that aren’t 64-bit and can’t find viable alternatives, you can always stay on macOS Mojave. There’s most likely nothing forcing you to upgrade to the latest version of macOS.
- Run Mojave in a virtual machine. If you have an app that’s not 64-bit, won’t be 64-bit, and you absolutely can’t live without it, but you still really want to upgrade to macOS Catalina, then using a virtualization app like VMWare Fusion or Parallels will give you the best of both worlds. You’ll need extra disk space and maybe a bit more RAM than usual to support a second virtual machine, but doing so will let you run an entirely separate macOS Mojave system within macOS Catalina, although of course you’ll want to make sure that VMWare and Parallels themselves are updated to support Catalina too.
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Attempting to download macOS Catalina from the Mac App Store you may find that a small version of the “Install macOS Catalina.app” file downloads to the “Applications” folder, rather than the complete 8.1 GB installer file.
The tiny (just tens of megabytes) incomplete installer requires an internet connection during usage to download the rest of the Catalina update files. Additionally, it does not allow to create a macOS Catalina USB installer drive for use on multiple computers.
In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to download the complete “Install macOS Catalina.app” file from Apple server using the “macOS Catalina Patcher” app instead of via the Mac App Store. Bootloader for el capitan.
A similar mini-installer issue occurred previously with some users getting a tiny incomplete macOS High Sierra installer and macOS Mojave installer too and I covered a similar workaround here and here to download the complete installer file from Apple server.
About the app
In this workaround, we’re going to use the macOS Catalina Patcher app from the dosdude1.com. This app is intended for those with unsupported Macs and Hackintosh users, but any Mac user can use the app to be able to download the complete macOS Catalina installer file from Apple server. For our purposes in this particular walkthrough, we will use the app only to download the complete installer file.
Note! This method relies on a third party app from an unverified third party source. If you are not comfortable with using unvetted and unverified software, do not follow this process.
Let’s begin
Downloading the complete “Install macOS Catalina.app” file from Apple server using the “macOS Catalina Patcher” app is a really easy process. Now, step by step guide.
Go to the official website of the “macOS Catalina Patcher” app here and download the app.
The download link is labeled as “Download Latest Version” on that page.
Launch the “macOS Catalina Patcher” app.
Note! By default, macOS preventing apps from unidentified developers or sources from being launched. So you most likely will get an alert message that says: “macOS Catalina Patcher.app can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer”. To allow just one specific app to run do the following:
- Hold down the
Control
key and click the app icon. From the contextual menu chooseOpen
. - A popup will appear asking you to confirm this action. Click the
Open
button.
Click the “Continue” button, and then select “Download a Copy”.
Confirm that you want to download the “Install macOS Catalina.app” app to start the download to your hard drive.
Close the “macOS Catalina Patcher” app when the download is complete and locate the “Install macOS Catalina.app” file you downloaded.
Note! The download will be completed when you are prompted to choose an installation method. See the screenshot below.
Conclusion
That’s it, you’re done. Now you have the complete “Install macOS Catalina.app” file downloaded. So simple isn’t it?
You can confirm that you have the complete “Install macOS Catalina.app” file by getting info on the file. For this simply select the file and click the
Spacebar
key (or right-click on the file and choose “Get Info”). The complete installer should be around 8.1 GB rather than the tiny (just tens of megabytes) incomplete installer that requires additional downloads.
Note! Remember, the “Install macOS Catalina.app” file deletes itself automatically after macOS Catalina has successfully installed. Therefore, you may want to make a backup by having previously copied it to external storage.
Let me know in the comments section if you know another way to download the complete “Install macOS Catalina.app” file rather than the tiny incomplete installer.
I hope this article has helped you learn how to downloaded the complete “Install macOS Catalina.app” file from Apple server. If this article helped you then please leave a comment
Thanks for reading!
Arthur is a designer and full stack software engineer. He is the founder of Space X-Chimp and the blog My Cyber Universe. His personal website can be found at arthurgareginyan.com.
Simple Budget App For Mac Catalina Download
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