Apple unveils macOS Catalina (10.15)

[Arthur]

More info: www.apple.com/macos/catalina-preview & www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/06/apple-previews-macos-catalina

 

Source: The Verge

 

The next version of macOS will be called Catalina. Apple officially unveiled the new update onstage at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) today. Apple is introducing new Apple Music, Podcasts, and Apple TV apps in macOS Catalina, replacing the aging iTunes app. These apps work mostly as you’d expect. Podcasts gains local indexing support, and Apple Music looks a lot like iTunes without all the extra features. The Apple TV app has no sidebar, and it supports 4K HDR playback with HDR 10, Dolby Vision, and Dolby Atmos.

 

The biggest new feature for macOS 10.15 is the addition of iPad app support. The project was previously codenamed “Marzipan,” but it’s now called Catalyst. It’s a new way for developers to port their iPad apps over to the Mac. Developers will be able to use Xcode to target their iPad apps at macOS Catalina.

 

Twitter is planning to bring its iOS Twitter app to the Mac, and Atlassian is also bringing its Jira iPad app to macOS Catalina. It’s not clear how many developers will support this app porting initially, but Apple is certainly encouraging developers to bring their iPad apps to the Mac.

 

Apple is also introducing a new Sidebar feature that lets you use your iPad as a second display for Mac. Popular third-party options like Luna or Duet Display have long supported this on macOS, but Apple is introducing this natively now.

 

Catalina also introduces a new way to control a Mac entirely with your voice. It’s designed as an accessibility feature, but you can use it to control macOS by just sitting back and speaking.

 

Alongside these bigger features, Apple is also combining its Find My Friends and Find My iPhone apps into a single “Find My” app on iOS and macOS. An activation lock is also coming to Macs, so if your laptop gets stolen it’s useless. Even Photos is getting updated with a new browsing view, and Notes has a new gallery view. Reminders is also being improved with some design tweaks and updates.

 

This new 10.15 update comes a year after Apple unveiled macOS 10.14 Mojave with a new dark mode, Apple News, and a redesigned App Store. macOS Catalina certainly has a lot more refinement, especially on the app side. If developers use Apple’s new Catalyst support to bring iPad apps to macOS Catalina, then this will be one of the most important macOS updates ever released.

 

 

https://youtu.be/aqoXFCCTfm4

Edited June 3, 2019 by Arthur

[Arthur]

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT208050

 

Starting with the macOS Catalina beta, your Mac uses zsh as the default login shell and interactive shell. You can make zsh the default in earlier versions of macOS as well.

 

By default, your Mac uses either zsh or bash as the command-line interpreter for the login shell and interactive shell:

 

• zsh (Z shell) is the default shell for all newly created user accounts, starting with the macOS Catalina beta, currently available only to members of the Apple Developer Program.
  
• bash is the default shell in macOS Mojave and earlier.
  

zsh is highly compatible with the Bourne shell (sh) and mostly compatible with bash, with some differences. For more about zsh and its comprehensive command-line completion system, enter man zsh in Terminal.

[Arthur]

New MDM Features Coming in iOS 13 & macOS Catalina 10.15

 

With the advent of the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), Apple has made public the changes coming in both the latest release of iOS 13 and macOS 10.15 (named “Catalina”). As information is still incomplete and, at times, unspecific, we will be updating this page as we learn more.

 

An additional note: Though Apple has branched iPadOS off of iOS, for brevity this document uses “iOS” as the OS for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

[Arthur]

macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl (via HN)

 

Deprecations

Scripting language runtimes such as Python, Ruby, and Perl are included in macOS for compatibility with legacy software. Future versions of macOS won’t include scripting language runtimes by default, and might require you to install additional packages. If your software depends on scripting languages, it’s recommended that you bundle the runtime within the app. (49764202)

 

Use of Python 2.7 isn’t recommended as this version is included in macOS for compatibility with legacy software. Future versions of macOS won’t include Python 2.7. Instead, it’s recommended that you run python3 from within Terminal. (51097165)

[Arthur]

[sgonsor]

This blog post does a decent job of covering all of the new functionality that is coming out as it applies to business and mobile device management...

https://simplemdm.com/mdm-ios-13-macos-10-15-catalina/ and

https://simplemdm.com/apple-user-enrollment/

 

There are also some very detailed (maybe too detailed than some of us care for, but anyways) notes in the Apple developer forums...

https://forums.developer.apple.com/message/362911

[Arthur]

[Arthur]

Click the link for the full list.

 

Significant Changes in macOS 10.15 Catalina of Interest to Mac Admins

 

• Similar to how iOS is configured, macOS is now on a separate partition from user data, which acts as if it is read-only (but in beta 1, it’s merely SIP-protected). In the beta, you’ll see “Macintosh HD” and “Macintosh HD — Data”. Data is a separate volume mounted in /System/Volumes. OS-installed applications live in /System/Applications, but the Finder presents them in /Applications as well. Apple calls the technology “firmlinking”. Beta 2 will be fully read-only by default.
   
   
  
• Activation Lock has been added to T2-equipped Macs. MDM's will need to be able to escrow Activation Lock Bypass Codes. You’ll want to make sure your institution is using Apple Business Manager/Apple School Manager to handle Device Enrollment. Otherwise, it would be possible for a user to sign into iCloud and lock an institutionally-owned T2-based Mac, unless iCloud sign-in was blocked.
   
   
  
• TCC has been expanded to the Documents, Desktop, and Download folders, Trash, iCloud Drive/other cloud storage providers, as well as external, removable, and network drives. Apps must also request your permission to perform key logging, or to capture still or video images from your system.
   
   
  
• DriverKit and user space system extensions — previously, many hardware peripherals and security tools needed to run their code directly within macOS using kernel extensions, or KEXTs. Now, these programs run separately from the operating system, just like any other app, so they can’t affect the OS if something goes wrong. Also, installing third party kernel extensions now requires that you restart your Mac before they’re permitted to load.
   
   
  
• Gatekeeper has been improved to ensure that all new apps you install — from the App Store or the internet — have been checked for known security issues by Apple before you run them the first time and periodically thereafter. This extends the protection from the app’s source to include automated checks for what’s in the app. Confirmed, during Platforms State
  of the Union, that Apple is requiring Notarization of all apps on macOS. https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=06032019i
   
   
  
• “In a future version of macOS, unsigned code will not run by default”
   
   
  
• As expected and previously announced, support for 32-bit processes/i386 architectures has been removed.
   
   
  
• Improvements in the APFS snapshot functionality, which allow you to boot into Recovery and restore from a previous snapshot. asr has also been modified to handle decrypting encrypted-at-rest volumes (i.e. T2-based Macs), allowing you to create block-copy images of a system.
   
   
  
• “lpadmin: Printer drivers are deprecated and will stop working in a future version of CUPS”. man lpadmin on a macOS Catalina system for more details. It seems that Apple wants admins to move from lpd/smb/socket (JetDirect) to AirPrint.
  

[Arthur]

macOS Catalina is now available to download.

 

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/macos-catalina/id1466841314?mt=12

[Arthur]

macOS 10.15 Catalina: The Ars Technica review