Things Will Be Different
Next Week

On Tuesday, Apple holds their annual dog-and-pony show to announce new stuff. (It’s entertaining, if you’re interested). In past years, we sent you the highlights shortly afterward, with a reminder not to rush into updates, to back up first, etc. . . . just in case. But—

This year will be differentfor two important reasons:

Apple is killing off old software
(Zap! Pow!)

You may have seen popup windows that say “[Some app] is not optimized for your Mac,” without much explanation. That’s because those older (“32-bit”) apps slow down your computer. (In-depth articlehere).

Apple’s been warning about this for quite a while, and the new Mac operating system,Catalina, will kill off those apps completely—not just Apple’s own apps, but the 2011 versions of Word, Excel, etc., some older Adobe apps, even some printer and scanner apps.

Let me repeat, to be crystal clear:Catalina may disable apps and devices that you use every day, so it’s essential to check and see what may affected BEFORE you do any updating. Here’s how.

Automatic Updates Might Be On

With Mojave, the operating system (the software that runs the whole computer) that came out last year, Apple changed the way updates happen on Macs; updates to Apps stayed in the App Store, but updates to the operating system itself got their own separate controls.

Those updates may be set to happen automatically. While it’s unlikely that your Mac will update from Mojave (the 2018 system) to Catalina (2019) without asking you,BE SAFE: turn off automatic updates, just for a couple weeks or so, until the bugs are worked out of Catalina and you have a chance to make sure you won’t lose any essential apps (see #1!). Here’s how.

And >>>set a reminder on your calendar to turn them back on,because you don’t want to avoid updates forever! While they may occasionally cause some disruption, updates overall make you safer and bring fun new features. The one I’m most looking forward to is the ability to use an iPad as a secondary monitor for your Mac; that’s a HUGE help, especially if your primary computer has a cute little screen.