Mac Support at CLASSE
This page contains links to information specific to Mac users.
A Macintosh computer with an Intel processor is required to run a supported version of the Macintosh operating system, now known as
macOS, formally
MacOS X.
CLASSE is currently supporting macOS v10.13.x, macOS v10.14.x. and macOS v10.15.x.
Apple is now shipping Mac systems ("M1 Macs") based on their in-house developed ARM processor technology, known as
Apple Silicon. CLASSE-IT has not yet procured an
Apple Silicon system for testing, thus devices based on
Apple Silicon cannot be recommended at this time.
Why updating to macOS 11.0 (Big Sur) is not yet recommended at CLASSE
Early reports on the web about
Big Sur are promising,
BUT in addition to the Catalina list below, there are some addtional issues with upgrading to
Big Sur at this time:
Notes and possible issues when updating to macOS 10.15.x (Catalina)
- Catalina might break some CLASSE-supported software (Spirion was just updated to work under Catalina).
- 32bit apps will NOT run in Catalina. You can check for 32bit apps on your Mac by running "Go64" which is in your /Applications folder
(hint: click on the "Last used" column heading once or twice to see the last time you used a particular 32 bit app).
- Some warnings attributed to Randy B. Singer, Co-author of The Macintosh Bible 4th, 5th, and 6th editions:
- APFS - the native disk format under Catalina, not optimized for spinning/mechanical hardrives, thus "it will become a bit of a dog" on non-SSD systems.
- Apple has broken the ability to reliably create a bootable clone backup, see:Shirt Pocket Watch https://shirt-pocket.com/blog/
- "I don't see any advantage to Catalina for hardly anyone, unless they have to run an app that absolutely requires Catalina. Otherwise, I feel that Catalina is best avoided"."Note that Big Sur 11.0, is just around the corner".
- Apple Mail bug warnings attributed to the "Michael Tsai Blog"
Cornell University Computer Recommendations detailed here:
http://www.it.cornell.edu/services/guides/computer/
macOS Specific Links
Smart Quotes
For compatibility with applications that require plain-text, you must update your system preferences using the following procedure. Please not that it is not sufficient to just tell Mail to compose in Plain Text.
- Open "System Preferences"
- Select "Keyboard"
- Select "Text" tab
- Un-check "Use smart quotes and dashes"
Show Macintosh recovery partition in Startup Manager
Run these 2 commands in a terminal.
-
diskutil cs list
-
diskutil coreStorage revert lvUUID
(where lvUUID is the last lvUUID reported by the previous Terminal command)
Then restart for everything to get back to normal after you have run these commands in Terminal, and the recovery partition will show up again in the startup manager when you boot up with the option key.