Snippet: Remove the macOS Catalina Guilt Trip from macOS Mojave ☇

Rob Griffiths:

I have no plans to move my main iMac to macOS Catalina, at least for the forseeable future. There are two key apps I use—Fujitsu’s ScanSnap scanner software and the Many Tricks’ accounting app—that are both 32-bit. In addition, there are changes in Catalina relative to permissions that make it somewhat Vista like and slow down my interaction with the system. (My MacBook Air is my “production” Catalina Mac, and I have an older retina MacBook Pro that I use for Catalina betas.) […]

And while that’s [a System Preference upgrade message] annoying, it’s not nearly as annoying as the red “1” dot they stick on System Preferences, which will stare at you forever. I complained about this on Twitter, and as is often the case, some very bright people had solutions to the problem.

There are two things that I wanted to get rid of on my iMac: The notice about Catalina, and the infuriating red dot. At its simplest level, this appears to require just two Terminal commands…

I think it’s rather telling that many die-hard Mac users are skipping macOS Catalina for now. Inevitably, new machines will come with it and force it among users, but for now a lot are staying away, due to stability, annoyances, or 32-bit software. The fact that a major macOS release isn’t even generating much excitement amongst people like me should concern Apple and maybe cause them to rethink their every-year strategy for Mac updates.

The install-on-day-one-bugs-be-damned attitude still lives with iOS, but mostly because the new features are worth the trouble. For the Mac, I think we’d much prefer stability and simple iterations, something expected from a very mature platform.