Stacks do what they promised to do, though they won't stack folders.Quick Actions and the new Quick Look are genuinely useful and extend the Finder's functionality in unique ways.Dark Mode looks rad, and Accent Colors inject some much-needed personality into the Mac interface.

Hopefully Apple can continue adding iOS features to macOS without losing what makes a Mac feel like a Mac. But between iOS apps coming to the Mac App Store next year, new security models and pending requirements for apps from outside the Mac App Store for third parties, and new restrictions on what can be downloaded and run using the Mac’s default security settings, it’s clear that macOS is still heading in iOS’ direction. Mojave continues to strike that careful balance, and the company truly does seem committed to keeping its two platforms distinct.

So far, Apple has done a good job of adding iOS-inspired features to the Mac without fundamentally changing what the Mac is or what it can do. And even though I, personally, do not find any of the proof-of-concept iOS apps in Mojave to be particularly useful or compelling in and of themselves, that will almost certainly change if iOS developers are enthusiastic about porting their apps over next year. Many, many features have either been removed already or will be removed within the next release or two-32-bit support, OpenGL and OpenCL, Back To My Mac, independently distributed browser extensions, third-party client support in Messages, subpixel antialiasing, and a bunch of other things that have been a part of the Mac for years if not decades. I’d have a hard time losing the new interface for screenshots now that I’m used to it the password reuse auditing and Automatic Strong Passwords features are good, usable solutions to real everyday problems and I’m generally a fan of Stacks and the new tweaks to the Dock.īut Mojave also continues High Sierra’s foundational work on the operating system, and macOS’ next phase looms larger than ever. I do wish it synced more easily between Macs, but it’s the best kind of power user feature-put a little time into it, and you can get a lot out of it. Quick Actions will be a huge deal for heavy Automator users, and they’ll probably make Automator users out of quite a few people who have mostly ignored it. It’s a big visual shakeup, and for better or worse it’s easier to believe that something is different when it looks different (see also: iOS 7).īut even without Dark Mode, there are some serious productivity improvements here, probably the biggest since El Capitan reworked the operating system’s window management. Dark Mode is the most readily apparent evidence of this, even though it changes nothing about the way the operating system actually works.

Mojave feels, if not totally transformative, at least more consequential than the last few macOS releases have felt. Conclusions: The Mac's best update in years I’m just reporting the facts as I see them over here. The verdict? The Dashboard is still here. The feature that did make it into the release version of Mojave is “answer with audio,” which lets you answer incoming FaceTime video calls in audio-only mode, perfect for when you want to take the call but don’t want people to see what you look like and/or where you are at the moment. Apple says it will be out “later this fall,” and it has been reinstated in the iOS 12.1 betas, so we’ll presumably be able to make 32-person FaceTime calls in the next month or so. FaceTimeĮvery year it feels like there’s a feature or two that gets announced at WWDC but dropped from the initial releases, and this year Group Facetime was the feature that didn’t make the cut. Right-click any app (or highlight it in the Finder and press Control-I) to open the Get Info screen, then check the “prefer external GPU” box. Macs with Thunderbolt 3-connected external GPUs can now tell specific apps to use that GPU, even when the apps are running on the computer’s internal display or an external display connected to the computer and not the eGPU. Further Reading Are external GPUs for Macs viable in macOS 10.13.4? We tested to find out

Macos mojave 10.14.6 review