Not even Adobe’s uninstaller will work post-Catalina upgrade because that, too, is a 32-bit component. For instance, legacy versions of Adobe products like Photoshop use some 32-bit licensing components and installers, meaning they won’t work after you upgrade. That has resulted in some understandably messy problems. With the launch of Catalina, 32-bit apps no longer function. What exactly might go wrong if you do upgrade? Should you upgrade now, and what should you do before pulling the trigger? Or should you hold off for now, and if so, what’s the best way to do that and also monitor when it might be safe to make the jump? Screenshot by Dieter Bohn / The Verge What’s wrong with Catalina so far?Īpple first announced that it would ultimately wind down support for 32-bit apps more than a year and a half ago, when it began pushing alerts to macOS High Sierra users that 32-bit software was “unsupported.” The apps still worked, but with Catalina’s official unveiling back in June at WWDC, Apple made the eventual discontinuation official. That leads us to a series of important questions for Mac users who may be at risk of having important workflows disrupted by Catalina. There are also a fair number of other issues with Catalina, like Adobe software incompatibility problems and unforeseen hurdles related to the removal of iTunes. Apple’s latest Mac update, macOS Catalina, was released earlier this week, and with it came a flurry of complications both minor and major.įor one, this update is the first for Apple to drop 32-bit application support, which is causing all sorts of headaches for users of smaller apps, plug-ins, and other software that may not be updated for quite some time or may have been created by a company that no longer exists.

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