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MacOS 10.15.5 Features and Specs

MacOS is an operating system series for Apple laptops that are designed and marketed by Apple Inc. and it was a pleasant and welcome surprise when they released their seventieth version. So what type of features got the developers so excited that they could not wait for the upcoming Apple’s Worldwide Developer virtual Conference?

Can I update my PC to the MacOS 10.15.5?

It would be a shame if you fall in love with all the features of macOS Catalina 10.15.5 then got to find out it was not compatible with your machine. So, before we proceed, who can update to macOS Catalina 10.15.5? Check out the list below to find out if your laptop is compatible.

  • If you own a MacBook Pro then from all mid-2012 models and onwards are compatible.
  • If you own an iMac Pro then you are good to go.
  • If you own an iMac then all late-2012 models and onwards are compatible.
  • If you own a MacBook then all early-2015 models and onwards are compatible.
  • If you own a Mac Pro then late-2013 models and onwards are compatible
  • If you own a Mac Mini then late-2012 models and onwards are compatible
  • If you own a MacBook Air the from mid-2012 models and onwards are compatible.

The latest macOS software upgrades run on all machines that support macOS 10.14 and above. If your device requires a GPU upgrade then this update will not work for you.

So, what’s New?

One of the most pronounced features of  MacOS 10.15.5 is the updated battery management situation. In this update, macOS Battery Health Management software has become accessible to all macOS users. The result is that the battery health management prolongs your battery life by maximizing the charge. This feature also makes the battery cells age very slowly which means the risk of your battery spoiling or wearing out is very low. If you are not comfortable with this feature then there is an option to disable battery health management.

But that is not all, along with a longer battery there is also the introduction of FaceTime Prominence Preference. This feature turns off the automatic video call resize option and controls Group FaceTime calls such that video size does not change during a call.

There is also Calibration Fine-Tuning for Pro Display XDR Controls that controls colors to produce amazing color calibration. It tweaks with the white point and luminance and creates a match for your desired display-calibration.

We cannot forget about the iCloud Drive folder sharing that now allows users to share folders with other users from the iCloud Drive. These features enable users to grant access to a select few people by inviting them or creating a sharing a link to your folder. They may or may not be able to make changes to your content depending on your restriction setting.

macOS 10.15.5 was first released on the 26th of May 2020, which was quickly met with a bug identified by the team behind Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC).  They caught this bug very early on since it affected software like theirs. This bug prevents bootable backups of the OS from being created. It is not just the CC Cloner, but all other third-party applications. Quoting their Founder, Mike Bombich about the bug:

“Early last week we discovered an APFS file system bug in a beta of macOS 10.15.5. …we’re no longer able to use our file copier to establish an initial bootable backup of a macOS Catalina System volume. To be very clear – existing backups are unaffected, and this does not affect CCC’s ability to preserve your data, nor any effect on the integrity of the file systems on your startup disk or your backup disk.”

Apple released a second update on the 2nd of June fixing this bug. That is not all the bugs they fixed though. macOS 10.15.5 also came with the following bug fixes and improvements.

Other Bug Fixes and Improvements

The following improvements were made:

The performance of some mac PCs was improved when GPU-intensive apps were enabled. This means that when using hardware accelerating apps like video games or video conferencing, the risk of your computer heating was lowered.

Previous releases of macOS were hidden when the software update (8) command with the —ignore flag. Subsequent ones will no longer be hidden and when specified in a PAC file via the Proxies payload, Apple Push Notification Service traffic now uses a web proxy

Some of the issues fixed were:

This update fixed the recurring reminder issue where notifications were not working properly and also looked at the issue that may make password entry on the login screen difficult.

After using a video app for a conference call, the issues that were sometimes encountered while trying to use the in-built camera were fixed along with a situation where a notification badge in System Preferences kept displaying after updating that app.

There was an issue with Mac while uploading and downloading media files from the iCloud Photo Library when the PC was asleep that made the network unstable. This was fixed along with Apple T2 Security Chip. The internal speakers sometimes used to difficult to detect in sound preference under sound input. This was also addressed.

The Reduced Motion Accessibility option is meant to reduce the speed of animations in a Group FaceTime call. There were several occasions where this option failed to that. Also, when sending a significant amount of data content to RAID volumes, the network became very slow. Both issues were fixed.

When using Conditional Access during setup, most users were unable to sign in to Microsoft Exchange accounts. This was also fixed.

It is however very important to note that some features may not be available for all regions, or on all Apple devices and another question on most user’s minds is if this would be the last of the MacOS Catalina series. What other cool features could the macOS possess? It goes without saying that the battery improvement feature, trumps almost everything else.

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