I completely realize and wholeheartedly own-up to the fact that I'm a geek and a Mac power user above and beyond what normal muggles will ever experience, nonetheless, this is the first-run experience I was greeted to this afternoon after upgrading to Catalina.

Another update...

It's now 48 hours later. Ignore my original update below. Go read this instead.

Update four hours later...

Well, that escalated quickly.

I've been on Twitter for twelve years, and OF COURSE my two biggest tweets would be me making a dumb joke and dunking on Apple.

Anyway, the screenshot above deserves a full explanation.

First of all, it's about 95% accurate.

I took it after upgrading an existing Mojave system to Catalina this afternoon. Once the installer finished and I worked my way through the usual post-installation prompts/windows/whatever, I left and took my son to go get a flu shot. (Glamorous life of a father and all that.)

When I came back about forty minutes later, that's basically how the screen looked. I thought it was mildly funny and began arranging all of the permission dialogs so they didn't overlap.

And that's when all the "XXXX would like to show notifications" prompts appeared. So I took another screenshot.

Soon after that, I realized that - like with nearly every macOS update - I had been logged out of iCloud, which meant time for a screenshot yet again.

I only spent about ten minutes on that system today. But it was enough time to capture all of these papercuts and combine them into one truly-awful über screenshot.

I want to make clear that I'm not blaming the talented Apple engineers who obviously worked their butts off on Catalina just like they do every release.

My side-eye is squarely directed at the managers and Marketers who push for such an insane release cycle. And also at the executives who - shiny new Mac Pro and XDR display be damned - obviously don't see the Mac as a priority any longer.

From laptop keyboards to the Mac App Store to the insane new focus on Services, it's clear the higher-ups at our favorite fruit company just don't give a shit any longer.

And I'm not angry.

I'm just sad.