Question about Desktop Pictures in Catalina

Mac
#1

I’ve just updated my Parents Macbook Air 13.3" Early 2015 from High Sierra to Catalina and I’ve noticed that in ‘Desktop Pictures’ in ‘System Preferences’ there are duplicates of ‘Mojave Day’ and ‘Mojave Night’. These appear at the very end i.e. after ‘Abstract Shapes Neutral’. Obviously the ones that are numbers 10 & 11 are the correct ones. I’ve also noticed the duplicates are framed slightly differently in that they show slightly less to the left, but slightly more to the right. Does anyone know how to get rid of these duplicates?

Here’s are two screenshots - the first showing the correct 'Mojave Day & Mojave Night, the second showing the duplicates:

Desktop%20Pictures%20%231
Desktop%20Pictures%20%231668×562 138 KB

Desktop%20Pictures%20%232
Desktop%20Pictures%20%232668×562 134 KB

Another thing I noticed about the Desktop Pictures is that if I do a count I get 77, yet if I go to the ‘Desktop Pictures’ folder in the System Library and I do a count I only get 33! So where are the other 44?

#2

Have you open Terminal application and gone to the directory where these are stored to determine what can be found/seen when you run ls -la in the directory - might help to pin point.

#3

No I haven’t as I don’t know how to use Terminal to go to the directory where these are stored. I also don’t know what ‘ls -la’ is? Can you give me step by step instructions?

All I know is the Desktop Pictures folder (/Library/Desktop Pictures) should obviously contain the same images as what appears in the System Preferences for Desktop (Desktop & Screen Saver). So both should contain the same 77 images so it’s very strange 44 aren’t showing up in the Desktop Pictures folder. They’re obviously not missing altogether otherwise they’d be missing in the System Preferences as well. So something’s gone slightly wrong during the OS upgrade - and of course the two duplicate images that shouldn’t be there.

#4

Not on topic, but I have a 2015 MBA and have been holding off upgrading beyond High Sierra because of previous traumatic experiences with upgrades. Apart from the issue you mention how is the MBA performing with Catalina? Mine has a Core i5 processor with 8 GB RAM. 256 GB SSD.
I would hate to end up with a slug by taking it too far up the upgrade path. I welcome your comments.

#5

The MBA is my parents and they really only use it for email and web surfing and apart from a couple of minor issues (the other being a slightly annoying problem with ‘Mail’ in that the message pane won’t reposition!) it seems to be running fine in ‘Catalina’ Version 10.15.6.

Two things to be aware of if thinking of upgrading beyond ‘High Sierra’ is that 32-bit applications will no longer run and Apple dropped ‘Sub-Pixel Font Rendering’ in favour of ‘Anti-Aliasing’ so characters on non-‘Retina’ display’s now look slightly blurry!

Given your MBA has 8GB RAM you could always configure it for dual-boot so you can run two different versions of MacOS. You could then choose to boot either into ‘High Sierra’ or ‘Catalina’/‘Big Sur’ (See ‘How to dual-boot a Mac: Run two versions of MacOS on a Mac’ at https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-software/dual-boot-mac-3659676/

With my Macbook Pro Mid 2012, I’m still running ‘Mavericks’ Version 10.9.5 as I just never had the inclination to upgrade - I’m comfortable with Mavericks! However I’m finding Safari has increasing issues with opening a lot of websites!

I could update to at least ‘El Capitan’ (when did Apple update the ‘Color Picker’ - was that with ‘Sierra’?). I probably wouldn’t go beyond ‘High Sierra’ simply because a few of my applications are 32-bit (and the 64-bit versions are not a free download!) plus I prefer the sharper text sub-pixel font rendering gives since I too only have a non-Retina display. If I upgrade the RAM to 8GB or even the max 16GB I could always configure for dual boot so I could have both El-Capitan (or High Sierra) on one volume and Catalina (or Big Sur) on another.

#6

Actually 10.14 Mojave is the end of the line for 32 bit apps. I’ve got it running on some pretty old hardware - a couple of different 2012 Mac Minis - and it’s totally fine on both. One of them is my main work machine and I wouldn’t be happy if it was slow. Both machines have SSDs though.

#7

I’d say it should be fine to go to 10.14, but the easiest way to find out is to make sure you have a known good recent backup and then install it. You can always roll it back if it’s crap.

#8

I had made a backup prior to my previous disastrous upgrade but foolishly overwrote it before the damage was evident. I may try an upgrade, but with two backups, just to be sure. Thanks for the reminder.

#9

The information you mention is just the sort of detail that is important to me and is not mentioned by Apple when urging everyone to upgrade. My eyesight is not the best so I need sharp fonts. Dual-booting sounds interesting, I will look into this. Or another suggestion was to have a pre-update backup so I can revert to High Sierra. I had done this before my previous upgrade disaster but foolishly overwrote it too soon before the damage was fully evident.

Most of my applications are now 64 bit, and we plan to replace our ageing iMac (Snow Leopard, great machine) later this year so we will have Big Sur in the house. It’s good to have both networked computers on the same OS.