Before I start this, I think a brief recap is in order. 

In recent years, I’ve become increasingly wary about installing a new Mac OS release right away. Persistent bugs, new features that haven’t been particularly compelling to convince me to leave behind what is not broken, things that used to ‘just work’ becoming more like ‘it should work, hopefully’ have all contributed to significantly cool my enthusiasm when it comes to Mac OS. 

After many years with a 2009 15-inch MacBook Pro as my main machine, running all supported Mac OS versions from 10.6 Snow Leopard to 10.11 El Capitan without issues (I skipped 10.10 Yosemite entirely, however), now my two main Macs are a 2017 21.5‑inch 4K retina iMac and a 2013 11-inch MacBook Air. The iMac was purchased new, the Air second-hand. I got both Macs in 2018, and they’ve been running Mac OS 10.13 High Sierra without a problem.

When Mac OS 10.14 Mojave was released in September 2018, I honestly didn’t find anything in it that was worth leaving the stable environment of High Sierra behind. Also my iMac, unfortunately, still has a traditional hard drive, and Mojave would have upgraded the filesystem to APFS — and this, in turn, would have meant a noticeable performance loss, as APFS notoriously works much better with SSDs. So I stayed on High Sierra.

Then came Mac OS 10.15 Catalina, and after learning about the level of bugs and disruption it would bring to my workflow, I was even less eager to upgrade. I heavily rely on Mail. I have email archives that go back 20 years which I was able to preserve Mac after Mac, and Mac OS X version after Mac OS X version. Believe it or not, I haven’t had an issue with Apple’s Mail app since I started using it in Mac OS X 10.1. After hearing about Catalina’s Mail-related bugs, I didn’t want to take the risk. Also, I still use some 32-bit apps and games, and Catalina dropped support for 32-bit apps completely. So nah, Catalina was more trouble than it’s worth, and I was not alone in thinking that. 

But still I was in a bit of a predicament. A part of me would just curmudgeonly be happy to stay on High Sierra, or maybe update the 11-inch MacBook Air to Mojave at least, and that would be that. End of the story of Mac OS for me. But what if one day some specialised application I use for work updates and starts requiring Catalina? What if some Mac app I need to test or localise has Catalina as minimum requirement?

I don’t believe in upgrading your devices for the sake of upgrading, but I believe that in this day and age one has to be technologically flexible. So I started to consider the idea of acquiring a used Mac that is recent enough to run Catalina but at the same time doesn’t break the bank. An ideal candidate could be a 2014 Mac mini, a model that on the used market is less sought-after than the 2012 models due to its limited upgradability and more intricate disassembly. I could perform a clean install of Catalina on it, and use such a machine as guinea pig, for app testing purposes, and the like.

With the help of a couple of splendid fellows, I was able to acquire a much better candidate — a 2015 13-inch retina MacBook Pro — for probably less money than a 2014 Mac mini. Having a newer machine is always a plus, and a laptop is overall much better because it’s more manageable. You don’t have to hook it to an external display, keyboard and mouse every time you need to use it.

So I installed Catalina on it, had my share of issues (though somewhat fewer than expected), and at this point — I thought — why not wait for the public beta of Mac OS Big Sur, install it, and share my notes as I go along? (Where possible, of course.)

Here we are, then. Over the next days I plan to do just that in the form of short-to-medium ‘logbook entries’, just as I did with Snow Leopard eleven years ago. This is Entry Zero because I needed an introduction, and because for now I still haven’t installed the Big Sur beta. My plan was slightly delayed by the temporary unavailability of this and another website of mine. The hosting company apparently did a server migration and there were some DNS issues along the way. As I was waiting for the records to update and propagate, whenever I loaded my website another one appeared. This went on for about 24 hours and gave me a bit of a scare. My mind was elsewhere as I waited for things to get back to normal. 

First step: enroll my Mac in the Apple Beta Software Program

That went rather smoothly: you basically do it using your Apple ID and accepting Apple’s Terms and Conditions. During the Sign-up process, though, I was forced to enable two-factor authentication, and I just don’t like it. I know, two-factor authentication is an added layer of security, how can I not like it? Oh, I don’t have an entirely rational explanation. Some friends of mine ran into issues and were locked out of their accounts after enabling Apple’s 2FA, so there’s that. But mostly it’s just that I don’t entirely trust the method, preferring to rely on stupidly strong passwords, and I don’t like giving my phone number to tech companies. 

I also don’t like to be forced into doing something without having a choice. Another example: I can’t access the iCloud Web interface anymore because Apple thinks my password is not strong enough and doesn’t fit their password criteria, so if I want to access my iCloud account from a browser, I must update my Apple ID password. I have that password stored on so many devices that it would be a huge hassle to update it everywhere; but more importantly, I just don’t like Apple’s patronising attitude here. So I won’t budge. 

Anyway, tomorrow I’m downloading the Big Sur beta on the MacBook Pro — let’s see how it goes.