Apple - Catalina compatibility

[Dave2002]

I sympathise. Tonight I was faced with a problem which might have me going back to Snow Leopard to solve. Sometimes newer stuff really is worse than that which preceded it.

Mmmmm. I was given a mail merge problem. Couldn't solve it at all using any macos version of Word and Excel which we have, and we tried to follow the instructions off several "helpful" web sites. None worked.

Eventually, after a quite lengthy process, I succeeded in getting a mail merge done, so now I have a procedure which works - though it needs some care. To do this I had to open up Snow Leopard and use AppleWorks. I did convert the "database" (actually an Excel spreadsheet file) - data source - to AppleWorks, using a process with output using Tab delimiters. After quite a number of false starts I generated an AppleWorks text file with the data merged, and from there it can be sent back to Word, or even to PDF.

After all this I wondered if Apple had actually created a similar method which might work with Pages and a data source - such as Numbers. While it seems that they might have done, I tested the method mentioned in this article, and it does not work - https://help.protracker.com/hc/en-us...-Pages-for-Mac

So, as I hinted in the previous post, there are some things which work better (though not perfectly) with older software than newer software which doesn't function at all.

[Dave2002]

I didn't know that...it's irritating because we primarily use ATV so that we can listen to internet radio and play in through the Home Pod, which resides in the kitchen. Now the Tune In app stops playing after 5 minutes, ever since the update.

Not immediately relevant to Catalina which runs on real machines, but I just updated the system on my iPad Pro to the new iOS version. For once I actually read most of the EULA, which included a section informing me that I would have to allow Apple to update the device from time to time automatically, but it did mention that this feature could be turned off.

Does anyone else ever read those things?

[Stunsworth]

I actually read most of the EULA, which included a section informing me that I would have to allow Apple to update the device from time to time automatically, but it did mention that this feature could be turned off.

Does anyone else ever read those things?

It's to do with high priority security updates - the kind of thing you wouldn't want to ignore.

[Dave2002]

It's to do with high priority security updates - the kind of thing you wouldn't want to ignore.

Possibly, but the EULA does not state that.

There are features in modern computers, cameras, microphones etc. which can be used for privacy invasion, either by Apple or by unknown (or known...) third parties.

Even if Apple declares that privacy is such a major concern, so that - for example - these will not be switched on during updates, in the limit the only way to be sure is not to use devices such as these. I believe also that Apple uses Amazon servers.

I am sceptical about believing any of these privacy claims, even though there is some evidence that so far Apple has followed its own guidelines and "principles". I am less sure about Amazon - but many of us are prepared to accept some of the potential (hypothetical) risks in favour of convenience.

[richardfinegold]

Update on ATV. In the settings there is a sleep option. It was set at 15 minutes, possibly by the latest update. Changing it to a longer interval solved the Internet Radio cutting out issue. Why this setting didn’t affect the other apps, such as Netflix or iTunes, is beyond me