The only way to get Office on macOS is using their Update app. Plus, if you have it installed on multiple machines and are updating from the same versions, there's a way to search for the install packages while one machine is updating then copy them to a safe place before they get deleted after the install. Then you can put them on a thumb drive or air-drop them onto the next machine and run each package install manually. The only thing I have a problem with Office is while updating the version in my Win10 VM. None of it will update unless I have the 'metered' thing switched off. Dropbox I rarely use, but they can be a hog if they're not set up properly. Anything that streams or uses the cloud will be a hog, just because of the way it's constantly checking to see if anything changed. I also don't like the way Dropbox force software updates once a week to perform when they want and it out of your control, and the updates are typically huge. We've started using WeTransfer, which is a lot quicker for file transfers, even in the afternoons. I don't use Adobe other than the Acrobat Reader DC, so I really can't comment too much on that. The only other thing I'm finding a problem with Catalina, as you mentioned, is finding 64-bit replacements for things that were 32-bit. For example, I have an external USB sound 'card' for piping radio audio in through a line in, and for 5.1 audio out. I used to use a small free app called "LineIn" which did all that. They discontinued that in favor of a not so free 64-bit thing called "Audio Hijack", which is bascially overkill for what I need. I've since found I can use QuickTime to start a paused audio recording, so I built a small automator script to kick it off. There are other things that no longer work properly because of 32 vs 64-bit. I used to have a programmable guitar pedal called "StealthPedal", which was USB/MIDI based. Can't use the wah portion anymore because the control portion was 32-bit and IK Multimedia doesn't support it anymore. The audio feed is MIDI compliant, but I have other things I can use for routing guitar audio. So now it's a fancy looking paperweight. There are other issues with Catalina regarding updating some software that was previously updated under Mojave. To make macOS more secure, you really have two seamlessly overlapping partitions: one that's read-only and contains the core of macOS ('Macintosh HD'), and one that's read-write ('Macintosh HD-Data'). It's supposed to be seamless, until the installer is written to overwrite things in /Applications - then the installer gets totally confused, thinking its overwriting the system volume. I've downloaded Xcode twice now (as sliced and full versions, so really four times) and it will continue to fail until I fully delete the main app first then re-dowload the full 8GB app with a valid Mac App Store 'receipt', but that creates a whole host of additional problems I'd rather not deal with... All said, yeah, Catalina has 99 problems, but I have to say other than disabling some of the additional analytics, FindMy, and Siri things, the internet portion ain't really one of them.
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