[TxMt] Re: TextMate with Catalina

[Andrew Hodgkinson]

On 25 Feb 2020, at 10:09, Dr Eberhard W Lisse wrote:

> Generally speaking my experience over the years is that one should
> update as soon as new versions or upgrades come around.

IMPORTANT: All of this is anecdotal - just my experience and opinions.

As a counter-opinion, I've found Catalina to be one of the most 
bug-ridden Mac OS releases since 10.4.3 (Tiger) where I first started my 
Mac "journey". The early OS X Lion releases were bad too, but by about 
".2" these were settling down while Catalina continues to irritate. As a 
developer, it has been something of a nightmare and I only upgraded 
because I was essentially forced into it by the iCloud 
backwards-incompatible data formats Apple foisted upon us in iOS 13 
(Notes, Reminders) coupled with a new machine at work which had Catalina 
preinstalled.

TextMate is generally OK on Catalina these days. I do see problems with 
files not refreshing when changed on disc. I've had some data loss arise 
from that - thank heavens everything is in a Git repo! - but can't 
comment on what part of the software stack is to blame; maybe the same 
thing would have happened on OS X 10.14. I do also see the weird 
fails-to-redraw-on-scroll issues with TextMate 2.0.x which others have 
reported and a few problems with tabs not redrawing or positioning 
properly, but I'm fairly sure I've seen that kind of thing on 
pre-Catalina releases too. Apart from the file refresh trouble, I 
wouldn't say anything too serious has gone wrong. I see the same sort of 
issues on:

* A 2011 MBP hacked up to Catalina via the DosDude 1 patcher.
* A 2014 Retina MBP that was upgraded to Catalina from Mojave.
* A 2020 16" Macbook Pro that shipped with Catalina preinstalled.

...so that's a huge spread of hardware age and capability, pretty much 
ruling out hardware variations and (as much as one can be certain of 
anything of this nature) confirming the issues as software based. I have 
seen similar problems with Catalina especially around sleep->wake 
recognition of attached USB devices like audio adapters, HDMI capability 
detection failures and numerous redraw bugs with:

* A 2012 Mac Mini (the "last known good" model with Firewire) upgraded 
to Catalina from Mojave.

...but don't use TextMate on that machine.

There are few patterns to Catalina's problems. It's just random and 
buggy. External monitors change their left-right order, brightness on 
the laptop is at full on wake from sleep, colour profiles are 
forgotten... All in all, it takes away 32-bit support - a huge loss - 
but gives nothing back in terms of speed or footprint. The iTunes split 
into Music etc. has literally just meant the bug count has tripled, 
across Music, Podcasts and TV, and somehow the Music app at launch takes 
about twice as much RAM to display the same things as iTunes did. Since 
10.15.0, Music app features have been *removed* rather than added (it's 
no longer possible to scrub through a track using trackpad gestures with 
the pointer hovering over the position bar, and Podcasts/TV didn't 
support that from the outset anyway). So it does less, but it's somehow 
more bloated. I'm able to compare the two side by side thanks to 
https://github.com/cormiertyshawn895/Retroactive.

Apple are still providing full security updates to OS X 10.14, so if you 
have no other compelling reason to move, my vote is that I recommend you 
do not upgrade. Catalina gives you nothing of value in return. Perhaps 
wait for 10.16 to see if the debacle and brand damage of 10.15 and iOS 
13 has convinced Apple to review and improve their quality assurance 
processes.

-- 
TTFN, Andrew Hodgkinson
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