[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by Turkish Pickle

Don't mind me asking but what do you do that are 32-bit only and can't be replaced? I think since 10.7 days they didn't support 32 bit, only 64 bits since then (which would put it into 2012-2013 territory. you haven't been upgrading since?)

Apple changed OS-X to 64-bit back then, but it supported both 32-bit and 64-bit apps. Catalina dropped the 32-bit app support. This MBP is a late 2017 model, and was current on the latest Mojave 10.14.6 before yesterday's Catalina 10.15.4 update.

Among my side hobbies are weather stations, designing 3D printers, Arduino projects, and amateur radio. Finding MacOS apps to program an eclectic collection of radios and controllers is difficult enough, and most of the ones out there are not maintained. Even my Amcrest NVR's MacOS security camera viewer app hasn't been updated to 64-bit, and they are still selling them. Add onto that the hardware piracy in China, where most of these devices were manufactured with knock-off USB-to-serial chips. The chip manufacturer provided new anti-piracy serial drivers to Microsoft and Apple that won't even connect to the knock-off chips, so the only way to program the devices that I have is to install older versions of these drivers...which happen to be 32-bit.

It takes a hundred times longer to collect and configure the software tool chain to program a new device than it actually takes to do the programming.

Oh one more thing to add, the Touchbar. Holy shit why can't we just keep it disabled till we double tap it or something; I lock my screen when I'm getting up so I added that to the bar. Whenever I'm typing (almost every time) I either lock the screen, unmute/mute my sound, etc it's getting really annoying and the most I can do in terms of customizing it is move around what goes where.

Been there and done that already with this 13" MBP. The default bar had a browser back button on the right side, and I can't tell you how many posts and emails I lost reaching for the delete key and hitting that Touchbar button! My fix was to remove everything but relatively harmless volume/brightness settings from the Touchbar, and I did even consider just locking it with the fixed F1-F12 key option. This machine also has a Touchbar ESC key and power switch/fingerprint scanner, and let me tell you the 16" MBP upgrade sells itself just to get the separate ESC key and power/fingerprint reader. I have it set so that pushing the FN key brings up the F1-F12 keys, and am wondering if there is an app out here somewhere that can disable the Touchbar completely until you push FN?

I discovered this last night myself - if you have a suitable iPad, sidecar is pretty useful as a smaller second screen! I have dual screens on my work desktop and personal desktop, definitely with you on that.

Never owned or needed an iPad. For that matter, I just received my weekly screen time report from my iPhone and it says that my average use was three whole minutes per day last week. Other than for Pandora on my commute and keeping my Apple Watches configured, I rarely even use that.

The one new Catalina feature that I'm finding really useful is how they integrate with Apple Watches for authentication functions. In many places where they would ask you to type your password or swipe a finger for things like changing settings or buying apps, Catalina will also prompt you on the Watch to double-tap the side button to approve.....