Should I upgrade to Catalina?

[Auntie Helen]

Hello YACF experts.

I have a Macbook Air 2017 running Mojave at the moment.

It is able to run (just!) my old version of Adobe Indesign (from CS5.5) and also Illustrator but not Photoshop. I have an alternative to Photoshop (Pixelmator Pro) but nothing for InDesign as mine still works and I don't use it enough anymore.

I'm wondering if InDesign will be killed by an upgrade to Catalina.

It annoys me constantly seeing a request to update to Catalina, and I like to be up to date, but not if it will be terminal to InDesign.

Anyone got any recommendations?

PS since the WatchOS update I can no longer unlock my MacBook with my watch which is annoying as I really liked that feature. I think it's a WatchOS problem rather than Mojave but if that were fixed in Catalina...

[ian]

I doubt old versions would be supported (the requirements can be found here). Adobe have made their versioning too difficult for me to follow. But the current apps generally only support the three most recent versions of MacOS. Something as old as CS5.5 might work on a newer MacOS, but it's hit and miss, Adobe won't be going back to fix it.

You can install the upgrade and roll back to a time machine backup if it doesn't work.

Alternatively, abandon the old Adobe apps. I seem to be doing a one-man advertising campaign for the Affinity apps – Designer, Photo, and Publisher. Affinity Publisher is a very cost-effective and fully capable replacement for InDesign (I prefer it, it's lot less clunky). There's not even much of a learning curve.

Catalina, by the by, is about to be replaced by Big Sur.

No idea about the WatchOS thing, but generally MacOS, iOS, and WatchOS are synched, so support will drop off for older versions. Works fine here, but I have Catalina.

[Jaded]

OK - Catalina will kill. Lots. Anything 32bit.

Several ways of dealing with it:

Create a virtual machine now, using one of the options, VirtualBox, Parallels, another one I forget - I use Parallels So when I want to open Aperture or my Accounting software, I open the Parallels Mohave Virtual Machine. I tried installing Photoshop CS6 in it but it ended in a bucket of pain. Aperture isn't much better.

Make an alternative boot disk so you can boot into Mohave from it.

Dump Adobe and join ian and my campaign for Affinity...

If you use Illustrator then you'll fine Affinity Designer hugely usable by comparison.

Unlock with Watch - for me it is broken since the latest updates to Catalina and WatchOS. It certainly used to work.

[ian]

Adobe CS apps make significant use of the GPU and that's always a flaky thing with virtual machines (in my experience).

Honestly though, give the Affinity apps a try. They're a very reasonable price and make the even the most recent Adobe equivalents look and feel old and tired.

Hmm, I don't have any issues with my watch unlocking my computers – they're both on the latest release (there was a watch update last night, or so it tells me).

[Auntie Helen]

The problem is, I use Indesign for about 15 minutes per month so I really don’t want to buy and learn a new package just for that.

From Jaded’s comments I guess I should just hang on with Mojave.

[ian]

I can't speak for your economics, Publisher is about £50 in the UK, so a modest outlay compared to Adobe. Took me about an hour to learn - the basics are the same as InDesign, so if you're fluent in the language of styles, frames, and page layouts/baseline grids etc. there's nothing challenging other than occasionally google where a feature is. Plus it's a lot more fluid and flexible. Dragging, dropping, snapping to guides is what you expect from a modern Mac, not the crumpy Adobe way. It's so straightforward, I also use it as a word processor, draw a box and type. Add a figure and a text wrap and all those Word frustrations melt away.

[Gattopardo]

No don't do it.

I have and regret it as catalina has wireless issues and doesn't seem to like SSD when waking from sleep.

[andrewc]

OK - Catalina will kill. Lots. Anything 32bit.

Several ways of dealing with it:

Create a virtual machine now, using one of the options, VirtualBox, Parallels, another one I forget - I use Parallels So when I want to open Aperture or my Accounting software, I open the Parallels Mohave Virtual Machine. I tried installing Photoshop CS6 in it but it ended in a bucket of pain. Aperture isn't much better.

There is a thing called Retroactive that is supposed to allow you to use Aperture under Catalina & Big Sur.  https://github.com/cormiertyshawn895/Retroactive/ 


I'm still on El Cap until I decide to shell out for a new Mac.   

[ian]

Never had a single issue with Catalina and wireless/wake-up here. I generally think you should upgrade if you can (just wait a while for the bugs to work out), each release in my experience has been an incremental improvement.

That said, I have an old Macbook Air from 2011 (and Mac Mini from 2009) that don't run the latest MacOS and it still work fine and both pick up security updates.

[Auntie Helen]

Well now I see Big Sur on the horizon.

Having read all your comments, and particularly Ian’s paen of praise for Affinity Publisher, I downloaded same yesterday.  I said to my Mum on the phone, “I’m too old to learn new software!” (She scoffed at this as she first started with iPhones and iPads at 70 years, after my Dad died).

Anyway, Affinity Publisher looks very easy, I had a quick go with it and as I don’t do anything too complex in InDesign it seemed fine.

Other benefit is my Apple ID is registered to the UK App Store so I am buying the software with pounds rather than Euros so saving an exchange rate conversion eventually when I bring the dosh over to continental units (I earn more in pounds than Euros at the moment, but spend in Euros).

Next step is Affinity Photo, and then I can finally retire my 10 year old Adobe CS 5.5 and do the upgrade to Big Sur. Not sure which other apps might be affected, so I will wait a bit to see what the comments are. As I am working from home and have various bits of software on my Mac to access work’s server I don’t want to break them.

Thanks for the recommendations for Affinity, it looks good. I hadn’t realised it was from Serif - decades ago I started with Serif Page Plus!

[Cudzoziemiec]

No recommendations for Cicero?








Yes, that's my hi-viz breathable waterproof racing toga...

[StuAff]

Well now I see Big Sur on the horizon.

Actually available since Thursday. I'll be sticking with Mojave for regular use on my Mac Pro 5,1- pretty much the optimal OS for this machine and my needs, but (using patches and workarounds as this Mac is officially unsupported) I've had Big Sur running since yesterday. Didn't get wi-fi running (there's a patcher for that but the Mac is next to the router anyway) but everything else looks very pretty and works well. Impressed. +1 to Jaded's suggestions about making a Mojave (or earlier) VM and/or a separate boot disk. Pixelmator Pro update for Big Sur (free to existing users) is out this Thursday.

[tonycollinet]

I'll be upgrading to BS on my hack over the next weeks. But on a separate SSD (I still have my old high sierra on the other one from when I went to Catalina - that'll get Big sur on it. Catalina will stay here until I'm confident Big Sur is working OK.

[grams]

Installed Big Sur on my supported Mac (2015 MacBook Air). Apart from some questionably graphic design choices it seems entirely uneventful. I wouldn't hold back if you've already made the (bigger) jump to Catalina.

[Auntie Helen]

Well I haven’t yet made the jump to Catalina, I’m still using Mojave. But my 2017 MacBook Air should be OK with Big Sur, and now I have an alternative to my old Adobe CS 5.5 in Affinity there’s nothing holding me back except ludditism.

The other software I mainly use - Rubitrack and Banktivity - should run ok on Big Sur.

I had a big update of Thunderbird a few days ago and now my main email account doesn’t synchronise. Fortunately everything works ok on Mail on my phone and iPads. Perhaps I’ll go back to Mail on the MacBook.

[citoyen]

The other software I mainly use - Rubitrack and Banktivity - should run ok on Big Sur.

Do check properly before upgrading.

Everything runs fine on my MacBook since upgrading, I just can’t use pre-2021 versions of Indesign. But if you’ve made the switch to Affinity, that won’t be a problem for you, I guess.

[Auntie Helen]

The other software I mainly use - Rubitrack and Banktivity - should run ok on Big Sur.

Do check properly before upgrading.

Everything runs fine on my MacBook since upgrading, I just can’t use pre-2021 versions of Indesign. But if you’ve made the switch to Affinity, that won’t be a problem for you, I guess.

Yes, that was the reason for switching to Affinity - because I knew it would be the end of my Adobe Creative Suite.

Banktivity and Rubitrack SAY they work on Big Sur but I will probably wait several weeks before doing the upgrade just in case...

[Auntie Helen]

Thread necromancy - currently upgrading to Big Sur.

Didn’t have enough space on the Mac so had to shift some programmes and the installer to an external drive.

Here’s hoping... 13 minutes to go.

[citoyen]

I've rolled my MacBook back to Catalina.

It had been playing up in various ways - though not due to Big Sur, I think - so I decided the only option was a total rebuild, and so I took the opportunity to reinstall Catalina, thinking that at least I could then reinstall the same edition of Indesign I use for work.

In order to do this, I actually had to roll back to El Capitan, which is what the MacBook came with originally. That was a bit of a blast from the past, I can tell you. But from there, I could then upgrade to Catalina.

Having gone through all that rigmarole, I then discovered that Adobe no longer support pre-2020 Indesign so it didn't solve that problem. I'm going to stick with Catalina for the time being though - there are a few other apps I use that aren't compatible with Big Sur.

[Auntie Helen]

Big Sur seems to be working OK so far... and I have about another 20gb available on my hard disk now.

It's goodbye to my Adobe Design Collection but I used it for 10 years so cannot complain. Affinity products seem to do all I require although I am rarely using them so there is a bit of a learning curve each time.

[HectoJ]

I have Big Sur on my Mac Mini, running the Affinity Suite (Publisher, Photo & Designer). All are very good solutions, although there are some things that are frustrating to use if you are coming from Adobe CS, and there is a learning curve.

However, the struggle is very well worth it! I can now do a lot more in/with Affinity than I could in Adobe, and the help available on Youtube and in forums will answer just about any question you have: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=affinity+designer+tutorial

Wishing you the best of luck with it!

MfG,
Hector