I ended last years review of macOS High Sierra by lamenting its invisibility but praising the much-needed work it did on the macOS foundation. There werent a lot of ways to tell that a Mac was running High Sierra instead of Low Sierra, but Apple quietly replaced the file system and the systems window server and added (and later finalized) official support for external graphics, among a bunch of other tweaks. The yearly release cycle just kept Apple from actually building a whole lot of new features on top of that foundation.
Mojave, macOS version 10.14, takes the opposite approach. It still does some foundation-laying, especially around iOS apps, and it finishes up a few things that didnt quite get finished in High Sierra. But it also includes the biggest and most consequential changes to the Macs user interface, the desktop, and Finder that weve seen in years; some brand-new apps ported over from iOS; new automation features; an overhauled App Store; and significant improvements to small but frequently-used actions like taking screenshots or using Quick Look.
I recommended against upgrading to High Sierra right away because the operating systems early bugs werent offset by useful new features—Mojave has no such problem. Later betas and the GM build have been solid, and all the new stuff gives the Mac a serious and much-needed makeover. You should probably read the rest of the review before you upgrade, but its been quite a while since I liked a new macOS release this much.
Table of Contents
- System requirements and compatibility
- What should I do with my unsupported Mac?
- Recommended graphics cards for your old Mac Pro
- Branding, installation, and free space
- APFS updates for hard drives and Fusion Drives
- Dark Mode
- Meet Dark Mode
- Where you wont see Dark Mode
- Accent Colors
- Changes to… Light Mode?
- Dark days ahead (which is good)
- Finder, Desktop, and Dock
- Quick Actions
- Quick Look
- Stacks
- The Dock
- Continuity Camera
- Screenshots
- "Marzipan": iOS apps come to the Mac
- Home
- News
- Stocks
- Voice Memos
- On the Mac, but not of the Mac
- Safari 12
- Password reuse auditing
- Intelligent Tracking Prevention 2.0
- Fingerprinting protection
- The end of non-App-Store Safari extensions and plugins
- Safari 12 in Sierra and High Sierra
- Other app changes: The redesigned Mac App Store
- Photos
- Siri tweaks
- Security changes: Gatekeeper and SIP
- SIP-style protections for third-party apps
- Notarized apps
- Automatic Strong Passwords
- Out with the old: Dead (and soon-to-be-dead) macOS features
- The end of the line for 32-bit Mac apps
- 32-bit stuff that wont make the jump
- An orderly transition
- The end of OpenGL and OpenCL on the Mac
- The end of Back To My Mac
- The subtle death of subpixel antialiasing
- Messages becomes iMessage-only
- No more special treatment for third-party social media accounts
- More cuts to macOS Server
- Grab is gone
- Grab bag
- Security code autofill
- New Save/Open boxes
- iCloud tweaks
- Software Update
- New wallpapers and Dynamic Desktop
- Prioritizing external GPUs
- FaceTime
- New login window
- OpenType SVG font support
- More language support
- Dashboard Watch 2018
- Conclusions: The Mac's best update in years
- The good
- The bad
- The ugly
[contf] [contfnew] 
Ars Technica
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