At its 2019 Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple announced its next desktop operating system: macOS Catalina.
For the record, it's macOS 10.15, and it's going to be available to Mac machines released in 2012 or later. That's a good thing too since it's bringing a lot of useful features, such as Sidecar that turns iPads into secondary displays and Voice Control.
macOS Catalina Compatibility
According to Apple's page for macOS Catalina, pretty much every Mac that supported macOS Mojave will be able to run the new desktop OS. The only one that's not getting it is the Mac Pro released in mid-2010.
For the sake of convenience, here's a breakdown of the compatible Macs:
• MacBook - 2015 and later
• MacBook Air - 2012 and later
• MacBook Pro - 2012 and later
• Mac mini - 2012 and later
• iMac - 2012 and later
• iMac Pro - 2017 and later
• Mac Pro - 2013 and later
3 Noteworthy Features
As noted, macOS Catalina is coming with a ton of features that users can look forward to, and the biggest ones are arguably Sidecar, Voice Control, and the functionality of iTunes being spread out into a trio of apps.
• iTunes
Rumors of Apple killing iTunes have been making the rounds online, just days ahead of WWDC 2019. It's not exactly shutting down the service. Rather, its core functions are just being distributed to three new apps called Music, TV, and Podcasts.
Sure, that doesn't seem to be a huge improvement in itself, but the TV app will let Mac users watch 4K HDR videos. On top of that, the Podcasts app seems to be capable of providing better suggestions for other podcasts or episodes based on the users' interest, as it's backed by machine learning.
• Sidecar
This feature is pretty straightforward. Thanks to this, Mac users can use their iPads as secondary displays or as an input device for sketching and such — or in other words, a fancy drawing tablet. Best part is, the connection can either be wired or wireless, which means more flexibility.
• Voice Control
Using a Mac and its entirety with only voice commands is now possible because of the new Voice Control feature. Needless to say, this is especially useful for accessibility users.
It's worth mentioning that privacy won't be an issue here. According to Apple, the audio processing doesn't happen on the cloud but rather on the device itself.
The Cupertino brand has already made the developer preview of macOS Catalina available to members of the Apple Developer Program, and it's set to expand its availability to public testers in July. It's expected to launch a stable version of the OS sometime in fall.
