macOS Sonoma is the next release of macOS, coming this fall
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I sincerely hope that they put a little more polish on it than they did with Ventura.
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Nada, nothing. Zero mention of any UI improvements anywhere in macOS.
However, the smaller or less-developer-centric features often end up in the longer, text-only release notes.
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The only modern macOS feature I use all the time (and is restricted to Apple silicon for some reason) is being able to select and copy/translate text in photos and videos system-wide, like pause a YouTube video and translate text or something. I am always missing that feature when on Windows.
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I had an audible guffaw when I saw this image posted to the live blog. That screenshot looks practically identical to what was shown for Active Desktop in the Windows 98 and XP era. I'm sure this implementation is better, more reliable, etc. but just the media beauty shots are hilariously similar.
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Sonoma County is the location of the iconic Windows XP bliss wallpaper, and it bears quite a resemblance to the cover picture here. Here's hoping we get some new default wallpapers (they're not desktop backgrounds since Ventura!) with big green hypersaturated hills 
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OS widgets seem to be a traffic circle that American companies get stuck on.
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After killing off interactive widgets on the desktop (dashboard) a few years ago, Apple just invented them again. (I did a literal face palm when I saw this).
I loved the feature, I was super annoyed when they got rid of it. All that's left is to let me put it in a sperate space, and have hotkey for it.
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As a Mac Admin i sure hope apple still wont let us force install updates. Its been so much fun since they screwed us on that feature.
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Very glad this seems like a light update to Ventura. As a Mac admin, I still have PTSD from all changes I had to deal with in Big Sur.
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I’m looking forward to more details about Safari’s websites-as-apps feature. It sounds a lot like Chrome’s implementation of Progressive Web Apps—which would be fine by me! I use it heavily and have long hoped to see wider support among desktop browsers.
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Yeah, that was my thought. Apple has a lot of work to do for PWA support, notifications on iOS Safari being the biggest gap in support.
Edit: looks like I missed the memo. iOS Safari supports push notifications since version 16.4. So today's macOS update sounds more like bringing the desktop up to par with mobile. Good job Apple!
iOS 16.4 will let web apps on your homescreen send push notifications
Finally, I guess.
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I guess we will have to wait till Platform State of the Union to know
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Intel-based Macs from 2018 and newer and the iMac Pro from 2017 will be supported.
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As a recent new Mac user, from Windows, one thing I want to see is actual window management. One thing Microsoft has gotten right is the ability to manage window placement with a click, instead of drag and drop virtually unchanged from 40 years ago. (And, yes, I use Macs back in the 1990s.)
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I appreciate I'm in a tiny minority, but I my main hope is that they bring back a custom timing interface for the display subsystem. My 8K (DisplayPort) monitor has been a paperweight since I switched to Apple silicon, and it appears the hardware is perfectly capable of driving it if only SwitchResX could get at the configuration like it could on Intel.
I'd also quite like them to provide an interface so resolution-aware apps (which, given that almost everything can zoom these days, ought to be a lot) could render at 1:1 to the screen while still using Apple's display scaling for the UI elements so they don't have to be enormous - I'm imagining a compositor layer. Then my displays would be a bit less fuzzy and I wouldn't keep having to deal with difficulties trying to be pixel perfect. Or Apple might have worked out what keeps causing the system compositor to saturate a CPU if anything, anywhere, is trying to update an offscreen window. (I hope that doesn't happen on the Vision Pro or, if I can eventually afford one, I'll have a toasty nose.)
Or maybe there could be a mode where clicking on a window selected the window, not a completely random unrelated window in the same application two screens away. Or cmd-tab to toggle between applications could toggle between the same window of the application each time. Rather than working out where the one-of-fifty Chrome windows I had open has just gone. I've no idea how that behaviour managed to get broken. (Yes, I have multiple workspaces. No, it doesn't do anything logical or consistent based on which workspace it's using, except for making me swear.)
I kind of expect those might have been a major enough thing to get a mention given how long was spent talking about stickers, though. (Don't use iOS, completely lost on what they might be useful for.) And given how many windows I normally have open, I very rarely see my desktop, so while I'm sure someone loved spending time animating the backdrops, I kind of wish the effort was going elsewhere.
Still, lots of things clearly going on. Nice to see progress.
I'd also quite like them to provide an interface so resolution-aware apps (which, given that almost everything can zoom these days, ought to be a lot) could render at 1:1 to the screen while still using Apple's display scaling for the UI elements so they don't have to be enormous - I'm imagining a compositor layer. Then my displays would be a bit less fuzzy and I wouldn't keep having to deal with difficulties trying to be pixel perfect. Or Apple might have worked out what keeps causing the system compositor to saturate a CPU if anything, anywhere, is trying to update an offscreen window. (I hope that doesn't happen on the Vision Pro or, if I can eventually afford one, I'll have a toasty nose.)
Or maybe there could be a mode where clicking on a window selected the window, not a completely random unrelated window in the same application two screens away. Or cmd-tab to toggle between applications could toggle between the same window of the application each time. Rather than working out where the one-of-fifty Chrome windows I had open has just gone. I've no idea how that behaviour managed to get broken. (Yes, I have multiple workspaces. No, it doesn't do anything logical or consistent based on which workspace it's using, except for making me swear.)
I kind of expect those might have been a major enough thing to get a mention given how long was spent talking about stickers, though. (Don't use iOS, completely lost on what they might be useful for.) And given how many windows I normally have open, I very rarely see my desktop, so while I'm sure someone loved spending time animating the backdrops, I kind of wish the effort was going elsewhere.
Still, lots of things clearly going on. Nice to see progress.
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"A new macOS version is available. Do you want to install it now, or ask you tomorrow?" I'm in the middle of something, ask me tomorrow.
Next day: Why did my Mac reboot? So much for the stuff I had open. (So pleased that Chrome retains its feature from Android that "incognito mode" not only means "don't share my details", but also means "lose all the pages I might have had open the next time Chrome spontaneously restarts", because for some reason the developers don't understand that the latter is completely orthogonal and this is incredibly annoying. And yes, I know, other browsers exist... Oh, and all my ssh terminals got reset as well. Thanks, Apple.)
I've just turned off auto updates solely because of that, so it reduces my system security marginally. It's amazing how many times OS vendors are dropping the ball on the basics recently. (Don't get me started on the Android clock app or why, for some reason, I can't bulk block all the 0843 numbers that are trying to scam me without having to trust a third party dialler.)
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As a Youtube Music user, I'm really looking forward to webapps in the dock, which is more than I can say for most features added to MacOS in the past few years. I currently use an Electron app for YTM but it's got a couple of bugs.
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Safari 16.4 included a bunch of PWA-related changes that were less obvious: Web Push, Web Codecs, Screen Wake Lock, User Activation, and some not entirely working Screen Rotation support. Seems like some developer decided to actually finish implementing PWA now that there's actual PWAs around and obviously there's the whole "privacy" angle.
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I am using a fork of ytmusic.app, basically from version 1.0/2018 where I forked it because I wanted minimal functionality. What's this Electron app called?
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So Apple have reinvented Active Desktop. I just hope the widgets are better than they currently are (glorified shortcuts to launch an app). Widgets don't belong on the desktop, but I guess some users will like the option. It's a shame they've not taken the opportunity to polish macOS. It's full of annoying little bugs/glitches that have been around for years.
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If my memory recalls it correctly, that leaves maybe only a single line of Intel releases after 2018? Maybe two tops?
I believe this marks the end of macOS and x86. Support will go for the macOS cycle as usual with 14, marking 2025 as the EoS for macOS14/x86, and they'd be able to say that they kept their word for supporting Intel's for 5+ years.
I think that's fair, and this is coming from a hackintosh user
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Just installed the dev preview.
So far it feels rock solid. A few nice improvements to things like Safari and a nice new wallpaper, but otherwise it feels basically identical to Ventura.
In my view that's a good thing. We don't need huge lists of new features every year. I'd much rather see refinement to what's already there.
So far it feels rock solid. A few nice improvements to things like Safari and a nice new wallpaper, but otherwise it feels basically identical to Ventura.
In my view that's a good thing. We don't need huge lists of new features every year. I'd much rather see refinement to what's already there.
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I’m getting some pretty strong Windows XP Bliss wallpaper vibes from that background…
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I only want one feature — a fix for the constant audio dropouts when CPU/memory pressure is high — and I'm afraid I'm never going to get it.
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