New Apple OS Catalina

System

You are also locking yourself even further into the apple ecosystem. What happens when you pages documents only open in the pay version of pages that comes with next year's update? That's the sort of scummy trick apple does, it's all about forced customer retention.

datostar

zagubov wrote: »

Why bother updating the OS? With Apple's lack of back-compatibility, you may have to buy updates for loads more of your software.

What improvement are you expecting that's worth all this hassle?

It's not as if you can easily revert to the old OS if it knocks out too much of your older software.

My late-2012 iMac was originally supplied with OS Mountain Lion. It now runs Mojave and will shortly be updated to Catalina. On checking yesterday there were only 2 apps not yet updated to 64 bit. One is an obscure freebie Midi Player and the other is irrelevant and clunky software for a flatbed scanner. The OS itself can handle everything needed in that quarter. I have deleted the 2 apps. Over all those OS updates I have NEVER had to buy software updates for compatibility reasons. If Microsoft are not prepared to update obsolete Office applications, that's hardly an Apple problem.
Reverting to the old OS is easily done by cloning the boot drive before updating then cloning it back if you don't like the update.

Morbier

Vim_Fuego wrote: »

You are also locking yourself even further into the apple ecosystem. What happens when you pages documents only open in the pay version of pages that comes with next year's update? That's the sort of scummy trick apple does, it's all about forced customer retention.

Is this true about Pages etc not being free next year? Or is this just another Microsoft user having a dig at Apple? (Anyway, you could reverse the 'forced customer retention' to apply to Microsoft - they both want to keep the customers they've already got. ). I have three Apple devices - why should I be bothered about 'locking myself' into their system. Again, the same applies to Microsoft users.

I don't really want to get into a discussion about the pros and cons of either system, I just asked two questions in my first post which no-one has answered yet. I'm perfectly happy with my Apple set-up, be it as a very basic user. I think my main worry (endorsed by Zagubov's comment in his/her last post) is that if I don't convert my Word files before I update, then I'll be left with files I can't open at all.

Hence my original two questions: is there a way of doing a batch conversion of my Word files into Pages files? and.... do I have to do this before I update the OS?

mksysb

Morbier wrote: »

Is this true about Pages etc not being free next year? Or is this just another Microsoft user having a dig at Apple? (Anyway, you could reverse the 'forced customer retention' to apply to Microsoft - they both want to keep the customers they've already got. ). I have three Apple devices - why should I be bothered about 'locking myself' into their system. Again, the same applies to Microsoft users.

I don't really want to get into a discussion about the pros and cons of either system, I just asked two questions in my first post which no-one has answered yet. I'm perfectly happy with my Apple set-up, be it as a very basic user. I think my main worry (endorsed by Zagubov's comment in his/her last post) is that if I don't convert my Word files before I update, then I'll be left with files I can't open at all.

Hence my original two questions: is there a way of doing a batch conversion of my Word files into Pages files? and.... do I have to do this before I update the OS?

Much less risk leaving them as .doc or docx format. If all else fails you can open them on mac linux or windows using libreoffice. I'd have thought converting them to a format only available on macs and with the possibility of it not being able to be read after future upgrades would be more of a problem.

Morbier

mksysb wrote: »

Much less risk leaving them as .doc or docx format. If all else fails you can open them on mac linux or windows using libreoffice. I'd have thought converting them to a format only available on macs and with the possibility of it not being able to be read after future upgrades would be more of a problem.

Yes, you're correct. It might be a risk if I left the files in .docx format. However, it might not!

That's why I asked my 2 questions!