Apple announced today that the next version of macOS (10.15) will be known as Catalina. The company’s head of software Craig Federighi showed off the new name and look for macOS during the keynote, confirming that this version will kill off iTunes in lieu of new apps for Apple Music, Apple Podcasts and Apple TV. Each of these new macOS versions of the apps gain enhanced features that aren’t available in the existing versions running on other devices.
The TV app will also finally bring support for 4K HDR video to Macs, something that was only possible with the Apple TV 4K until now.
MacOS Catalina will be able to use iPads as secondary displays with “Sidecar.” That works both wired and wirelessly, and it allows you to use the tablet as a touchscreen controller for the Mac, as well. Additionally, Voice Control will let you control the operating system entirely with spoken words. And you can breathe a side of relief if you’re worried about privacy, as Apple says all of the voice processing happens on your device, instead of on the cloud.
macOS Catalina will release “this fall,” as Apple promised on stage at WWDC 2019. For those folks not on the northern hemisphere, that means some time in Q3 2019, likely late September based upon previous macOS releases.
However, Apple will be issuing a public beta of the OS later this month, which will be available for anyone to try out at this link. If you’re feeling particularly adventurous and have 100 bucks or quid to blow, you can try out the special developer preview beta right now.
The ability to extend your Mac’s display to a nearby iPad wired or wirelessly. Since a fair amount of MacBook users are likely iPad owners, this means that a sizable amount of mobile workers just received a secondary display.
It’s currently unknown which iPad models will work with Macs using the Sidecar feature, but it’s likely that those models will have to run the new iPadOS releasing later this year.
Apple’s master plan for bringing more apps from the iPhone and iPad to the Mac, is now known as Project Catalyst. For developers, it all seems to start with simply checking off a box within the Xcode app in macOS Catalina.
Once that is done, a series of new features and protocols become available to the app in the development phase, from which the developer can choose to add to their apps – presumably with additional coding. However, it appears to be rather seamless and speedy, with even Twitter using the tool to quickly bring its native app back to macOS from iOS.
