- Apple rolled out new MacOS Catalina 10.15 Version on its laptops and desktops.
- MacOS Catalina brings better privacy settings and screen time features to Macs.
Apple has released macOS Catalina. It is the sixteenth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. It is the successor to the 2018's macOS Mojave, and was announced at WWDC 2019 on June 3, 2019 and released to the public on October 7, 2019.
According to Apple, new macOS Catalina comes with the following features
Apple Arcade
With macOS Catalina, users are able to enjoy Apple Arcade, a groundbreaking new game subscription service featuring new, exclusive games from some of the world’s most creative developers. A new feature called Sidecar extends Mac desktops with iPad as a second display, or tablet input device using Apple Pencil with Mac apps.Voice Control, a transformative accessibility feature, allows Mac to be controlled entirely by voice. With Mac Catalyst, a new technology in Catalina that makes it easy for third-party developers to bring iPad apps to Mac, users will begin to see their favorite iPad apps in Mac versions, including Twitter, TripIt, Post-It, GoodNotes and Jira, with more to come.
And for the first time, Screen Time comes to Mac, giving users insight into how they spend time in apps and on websites, and the ability to decide how to spend their time.
New Entertainment Apps: Apple Music, Apple Podcasts and Apple TV
Three all-new apps Apple Music, Apple Podcasts and Apple TV replace iTunes and make it easy and fun to discover and enjoy music, TV shows, movies and podcasts on Mac. The new Music app is fast and features over 50 million songs, playlists and music videos. Users will have access to their entire music library and new music can still be purchased from the iTunes Store.Apple Podcasts offers more than 700,000 shows in its catalog and the option to automatically be notified of new episodes as soon as they become available. The app also features new show categories, curated collections and advanced search tools to allow users to search episodes by current events, people and even phrases.
The Apple TV app brings together different ways to find and watch movies and TV shows into one powerful app, and features Apple TV channels, personalized recommendations and over 100,000 iTunes movies and TV shows to browse.
Sidecar
With Sidecar, you can use an iPad display for tablet input to draw, sketch or write with Apple Pencil in any Apple or third-party Mac app that supports stylus input. Sidecar runs on a wired connection so users can charge their iPad as they work, or on a wireless connection for greater mobility, using everything from illustration apps and video editing apps to 3D apps, like Photoshop, Illustrator and ZBrush.
Accessibility
macOS Catalina introduces transformative accessibility features to enable users with disabilities to get the most out of their devices. Voice Control is a whole new way for users to control Mac and iOS devices entirely with their voice.It uses the latest version of Siri speech recognition technology to transcribe spoken text and enable editing text via voice.
For users with impaired vision, Hover Text displays high-resolution text in a dedicated window when hovering over text and UI elements, and Zoom Display keeps one monitor tightly zoomed in while another at the standard resolution.
Mac Catalyst
Mac Catalyst, a new technology that lets app developers easily build Mac versions of their shipping iPad apps.The iPad ecosystem comprises over a million iPad apps, and now users will see more of their favorite titles come to Mac than ever before, including apps like Twitter, GoodNotes, TripIt from SAP, Post-it, Morpholio Board, Rosetta Stone, Jira, Proloquo2Go and others.
Screen Time
Screen Time feature provide insight into how users are spending time with apps and websites. Downtime lets users schedule time away from their Mac, and App Limits allow control over how much time users spend with specific apps, websites and categories of apps.With iCloud, Screen Time combines all usage and syncs Downtime settings and App Limits across devices.
Security and Privacy
Now, macOS Catalina runs on a dedicated, read-only system volume, which means it's completely separate from all other data, and nothing can accidentally overwrite critical operating system files.Gatekeeper, Apple’s technology to ensure only trusted software runs on a Mac, now checks all apps for known security issues, while new data protections require all apps to get permission before accessing user documents.
Every Mac with the Apple-designed T2 Security Chip now supports Activation Lock so if a Mac is ever misplaced or stolen, only the owner can erase and reactivate it.
Some Additional Features in macOS Catalina
- Photos features a beautiful new browsing experience that intelligently showcases the user’s best pictures.
- Safari has an updated start page that uses Siri Suggestions to elevate frequently visited sites, bookmarks, iCloud tabs, Reading List selections and links sent in Messages.
- Mail in macOS Catalina adds the ability to block email from a specified sender, mute an overly active thread and unsubscribe from commercial mailing lists.
- Notes now has a brand new Gallery View, more powerful search tools and additional collaboration options.
- Reminders has been redesigned with an all-new user interface that makes it easier to create, organize and track reminders.
- The new Find My app combines Find My iPhone and Find My Friends into a single, easy-to-use app on Mac, iPad and iPhone.