If I upgrade to Catalina and don't like it, is it easy to downgrade to Mojave? If so, how would I do it?
I've hated Mojave since the day I installed it, but at the time, I couldn't find instructions for downgrading to the previous version that were simple enough for a non-techie to try without risking other problems. I'm afraid that by upgrading to Catalina, I may be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.
Thanks.
MacBook
A colleague of mine at Mt Stromlo Observatory, a Mac wizard, upgraded one of his Macbook Pros (he has three) to Catalina. He says it is a splendidly secure OS, but so many things break that we need to use (the IDL programming language, via the IDE interface, for example) that upgrading is a disaster. Downgrading to Mojave a MBP that has the touchbar is phenomenally difficult (it took him three days to do it). Also, our university Cisco VPN is still only 32 bit so it breaks in Catalina, causing major problems. There are many problems (Adobe, Microsoft among others). Our IT section is saying "do NOT upgrade yet to Catalina". So unless you know all your important application software has been shown to work in Catalina, this is probably good advice to follow.
A colleague of mine at Mt Stromlo Observatory, a Mac wizard, upgraded one of his Macbook Pros (he has three) to Catalina. He says it is a splendidly secure OS, but so many things break that we need to use (the IDL programming language, via the IDE interface, for example) that upgrading is a disaster. Downgrading to Mojave a MBP that has the touchbar is phenomenally difficult (it took him three days to do it). Also, our university Cisco VPN is still only 32 bit so it breaks in Catalina, causing major problems. There are many problems (Adobe, Microsoft among others). Our IT section is saying "do NOT upgrade yet to Catalina". So unless you know all your important application software has been shown to work in Catalina, this is probably good advice to follow.
Make a Time Machine backup of your system before you try to upgrade. Then you will be able to restore your system from that Time Machine backup using macOS Recovery. Your system will be restored to the way it was when you made the Time Machine backup.
Time Machine backup is essential, but it doesn't capture everything you need for a restore from Catalina to Mojave, *if* you are using a Macbook Pro with a touch bar. Or so my colleague tells me.
Catalina upgrade?
