Catalina Hints

Should I upgrade? Can I wait to upgrade? Will anything break after I upgrade?

The Verge: Why macOS Catalina is breaking so many apps, and what to do about it

MathType Compatibility issues

Wiris: MathType compatibility with macOS Catalina

Catalina uses zsh instead of bash by default.

Catalina keeps bash as the default shell if upgrading from a previous Mac OS X, but on totally new installations (e.g., if you buy a new Mac or if you wipe the OS and install Mac OS X from scratch), you will notice that zsh is the default instead of bash.  bash 3.2 still exists even though the current version of bash is 5.0. If a user prefers to use bash instead of zsh as the default shell on a new Mac, type this in a terminal session:

chsh -s /bin/bash

If you wish to upgrade bash to the latest version follow the instructions on ITNEXT: Upgrading Bash on macOS.

Emacs does not come installed with a new build of Catalina

You can find Emacs downloads at this site:

GNU Emacs: Download and installation

Acrobat compatibility with Catalina

Adobe: Acrobat and macOS 10.15 Catalina compatibility

How to turn off System Integrity Protection (SIP) in Catalina

Apple increased the SIP mechanisms, and will *NOT* allow one to remove/change the extra protection modes on files or directories, even as root! So, the solution is to turn off SIP. Here are the steps:

  1. Click the Apple symbol and select Restart.
  2. Hold down Command-R to boot into Recovery Mode.
  3. Click Utilities and select Terminal.
  4. Enter command 
    csrutil disable
  5. Click the Apple symbol and select Restart.