MacOS 10.15 Catalina Beta Discussion Thread

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by odamizu

Thanks Kevin. Your 2 cents are always worth more like $2million to me.

If Catalina (and future macOS's) will run unsigned apps without notarization, would you be willing to continue developing Sigil without signing it?




I thought this was a thread to discuss Catalina — not just new features, but capabilities and limitations. I wouldn't be surprised if the developers of Calibre and Alf's Tools are facing similar frustrations. If open source developers like KevinH, KovidGoyal and ApprenticeAlf/Harper walk away from Mac due to Apple's new "security" features, that's critical information for all Mac users.

Calibre works fine with Catalina, so I'm not sure what frustrations they would be experiencing.

One of the problems that non Mac people have with Macs is that on the Mac, as long as you are willing to do things the Mac way, everything works fine. If you try to force things to work some other way, everything becomes very difficult.

So far, I've only run into two programs that don't run correctly on Catalina. I haven't seen any complaints on the developers forums. That implies to me that it's really not a big issue.

As far as I can tell, the issue with deDRM is that it's basically a minimalist port of a tool that's included for those who for some reason, absolutely refuse to use the preferred solution of Calibre plug-ins. (look at the readme file).

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by odamizu

I thought this was a thread to discuss Catalina — not just new features, but capabilities and limitations. I wouldn't be surprised if the developers of Calibre and Alf's Tools are facing similar frustrations. If open source developers like KevinH, KovidGoyal and ApprenticeAlf/Harper walk away from Mac due to Apple's new "security" features, that's critical information for all Mac users.

It is definitely a thread to discuss the Beta releases of Catalina. I totally understand the need to discuss developers stuff related to the Beta releases of Catalina, but detailed discussions of that nature are bit (or a lot) out of the scope of this thread's subject. Most of us are not developers and it would be best to not turn the tread into a developers thread. There are better forum category locations for that, or perhaps you can start a developers thread in this category. Also many of us are not interested in the specific discussions of calibre and Apprentice Alf in this particular context. Again, it would be much more appropriate to move that to the categories where such things are usually discussed.

[odamizu]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Calibre works fine with Catalina, so I'm not sure what frustrations they would be experiencing.

Frustration with the new notarization requirement. Per your spctl results, Calibre is signed but unnotarized.

ETA: See comments from KovidGoyal (Calibre developer) here.

One of the problems that non Mac people have with Macs is that on the Mac, as long as you are willing to do things the Mac way, everything works fine. If you try to force things to work some other way, everything becomes very difficult.

KevinH is the Mac developer for Sigil. He's not a non-Mac person. And I have been a Mac user for nearly 30 years.

What I'm trying to find out is whether Catalina's Gatekeeper can be overridden so as to allow clean installs of unsigned and signed-but-unnotarized apps.

On a related note, I'm wondering if KevinH (Sigil's Mac developer) and KovidGoyal (Calibre developer) are willing to distribute their apps unsigned if notarization proves too problematic. If not, development for Sigil and Calibre (and Alf's Calibre plug-in) for Mac may end.

But it appears I am the only Mac user here concerned about this ...

Originally Posted by OtinG

...many of us are not interested in the specific discussions of calibre and Apprentice Alf ...

... so I will stop now.

P.S. I have moved my question to the Sigil forum: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...10#post3859310

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by odamizu

Frustration with the new notarization requirement. Per your spctl results, Calibre is signed but unnotarized.
...

Right, and Calibre works just fine in the Catalina beta without me having to do anything, which is my point. Apple is well known for floating an idea in beta and then pulling it when they get push back. As I said, I have only run across two apps that don't work with Catalina, and one of those apps works when I use spctl to turn off the check to make sure the app is signed (something that is suppose to be allowable via the security control panel, but that doesn't seem to work quite right in the beta). Unless Apple changes something in a future version of the beta which causes non notarized apps to stop working, then it's really just a tempest in a tea cup right now. Yes, I get that "they" say that an app has to be both signed and notarized, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by OtinG

It is definitely a thread to discuss the Beta releases of Catalina. I totally understand the need to discuss developers stuff related to the Beta releases of Catalina, but detailed discussions of that nature are bit (or a lot) out of the scope of this thread's subject. Most of us are not developers and it would be best to not turn the tread into a developers thread. There are better forum category locations for that, or perhaps you can start a developers thread in this category. Also many of us are not interested in the specific discussions of calibre and Apprentice Alf in this particular context. Again, it would be much more appropriate to move that to the categories where such things are usually discussed.

While perhaps you are disinterested in Calibre and Apprentice Alf, there does appear to be a fair amount of interest in Calibre specifically in this forum and perhaps a little less interest in Apprentice Alf.

When discussing beta's, one of the major points that interests most users is does the beta break any program that I use. From that stand point discussion of Calibre working or not with Catalina, is very much on topic.

[pwalker8]

Hum, interesting. Apple rolled out a new beta a week or so ago and yesterday I got around to playing with Books on Catalina again. I put a couple of audiobooks in a collection on my Mac and they showed up in the collection on my iPhone, which is not running the beta, but rather the current version of iOS. It only seems to work with audiobooks that are manually loaded on both devices, but still it's functionality that I've been hoping for.

I guess I need to start playing around with books in carplay when I get my car back from the shop.

[kyteflyer]

Interesting reading here: https://sixcolors.com/post/2019/06/macos-catalina-pb/

[pwalker8]

Beta 5 rolled out last night/this morning on both the MacOS and iOS. I would guess at this point, Apple is focused on bug fixes and tuning.

A new version of the TV app showed up on my Apple TV yesterday. It looks a lot like the TV app in the beta

[pwalker8]

They rolled out the latest beta for MacOS last night. It seems to be very close to the gold master given that the traditional announcement date is the second week in September. There is a major performance boost from the previous beta.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

They rolled out the latest beta for MacOS last night. It seems to be very close to the gold master given that the traditional announcement date is the second week in September. There is a major performance boost from the previous beta.

A boost is to be expected after you pull out the debugging code from the software.

Dale

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

A boost is to be expected after you pull out the debugging code from the software.

Dale

Of course, it's one of the tale tells that we are close to the gold master, the other being that it's likely to be release in a month.