A first look at Mojave

ByDon

I swore I was going to wait for the third developer beta to upgrade my Mac to Mojave but I could not resist. After carefully making sure I had back-ups, I downloaded Mojave. I have just started to play with it but I do want to caution you that, unlike me, you should NOT be playing with live ammunition. It is buggy and not yet ready for serious production work. It will get there but things like all the buttons in our accounting system have no labels, all my 32bit applications like 2011 MS Office, 4D and several others all bring up warnings that they will soon not work.

I think you will find Mojave to be a big improvement in the Mac OS. There are many features that I am discovering that know I will be using regularly. Here’s just a sampling of the new features.

Dark Mode

After the installation Mojave defaulted to Dark Mode and while it was unique and different, it was not for me and I changed pretty quickly back to Light Mode. Dark Mode puts the focus on your work while toolbars, menus, and controls recede into the background. It’s integrated throughout macOS so it works with built-in apps—and third-party apps can adopt it too. The desktop picture even changes to match the time of day wherever you are. You can toggle between light and dark modes in the General System Preference.

Screenshots

You only have to remember one key command for your screenshots. Taking, annotating, sending, and saving screenshots is easier than ever. Just press Shift-Command-5 to bring up new onscreen controls, including video-recording tools.

Stacks

With Stacks, your Mac automatically arranges all the files scattered on your desktop into neat groups based on file type, date, or tag so you can get organized and easily find what you need. My desktop is usually a LOT messier than this example but I think you get the idea. You can toggle Stacks on or off at Finder->View->Use Stacks.

Finder Enhancements

You can now browse files at a glance with the large previews in Gallery View, view full file metadata, and perform Quick Actions like rotate or markup. This is very cool and I have just scratched the surface but the Finder window is much more powerful now. To markup pics for this article, I am able to do it now in Finder.

Quicklook is part of the new Finder, too. Clicking on the Quicklook eye icon will allow you to mark up and sign PDFs, rotate and crop images, and even trim audio and video files right in Quick Look—without launching an app.

Continuity Camera

This another really handy enhancement in Mojave. With Continuity Camera you can open your iOS device’s camera from your Mac, then immediately transfer the photo you took over to a document that you’re working on. For example, if you are working on a Pages document, and you need a photo of your dog, you can activate Continuity Camera, take the photo with your iPhone, then immediately see that photo pop up in the document on your Mac. Magic, right? Here’s how you do it for a photo, using a scanner is the same:

Open an editable document in an app like Pages or Keynote

Control-click, right-click, or two-finger-click on a space within the document where you want your phone to be located

Click Take Photo under the name of the iOS device you’ll use to take that photo

Take the pup’s photo using your iPhone or iPad

Tap Use Photo. Your photo will now appear in your document where you clicked.

Group FaceTime

With Group FaceTime, you can chat with up to 32 people simultaneously—more than ever before. New participants can be added at any time, and a call can include both audio and video callers. And users can join from any Apple device—iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch. I haven’t given this a try yet but sounds pretty handy.

News, Home, Voice Memos and Stocks

iOS apps on the Mac! Oh no! I use all of these except Voice Memos daily on my iPhone or iPad. I especially like Apple News as it is a great way to catch up on what is important to me. Aside from the normal world and national news my news feed is full of Celtics and Cubs news.

We use our iPhones and iPads to turn on and off our lights, adjust our thermostat and lock the doors. It has always been a bit weird that you couldn’t do that from the Mac – well, now you can and it works great!

This is just the start of iOS apps that may find their way onto the Mac and I think that is a good thing.

We will cover more of the new features in Mac OS 10.14 Mojave as we discover them! The public beta is out now but as I said it is not for the squeamish – some things may not work the way you want them to, some things will not work at all and even though you might like being a pioneer you might also regret heading down that path before all the bugs are squashed.

Similar Posts

  • A Swinging Hot Spot in Paradise

    You are visiting Key West, accompanied by your trusty iPhone and MacBook Air. Suddenly there’s an emergency at work, and you need to get online with your Mac. You can pick up a cell signal with the iPhone, but there’s no Wi-Fi that isn’t locked up. Well, my first thought might be “oh well, I’m on vacation!” but you are dedicated and need to be online.

    Don’t worry! You can use your iPhone’s cellular data plan to create a personal Wi-Fi hotspot that lets your Mac access the Internet through your iPhone. Also called “tethering,” it’s fast, easy, and can be a life-saver when you just have to get online with a Mac or your Wi-Fi-only iPad. It supports up to 5 users, too, which means you can get your team online, too!

    Before we explain how to do set up a personal hotspot, note that most but not all cellular carriers allow tethering on existing plans. For some, you might have to pay more for tethering. Keep in mind that any data consumed by your Mac while tethered will count against your data allowance and may generate overage fees. Carriers with “unlimited” data, like T-Mobile and Sprint, generally throttle your bandwidth to slower speeds if you use too much data.

    Along those lines, if you use a file sharing service like Dropbox or Google Drive, or an Internet backup service like CrashPlan or Backblaze, turn them off before connecting. Particularly if they haven’t connected in a while, those services can transfer a lot of data quickly, which could result in a hefty overage charge or awkward data throttling for the rest of the month.

    With those warnings out of the way, follow these steps in iOS 9 to turn on Personal Hotspot:

    1. On your iPhone, if you’ve never enabled the feature before, go to Settings > Cellular > Personal Hotspot. Once you’ve turned Personal Hotspot on once, it moves up a level, so you can access it from Settings > Personal Hotspot.
    1. Tap on Wi-Fi Password and enter a password that’s at least 8 characters long and easy to type. It doesn’t need to be super secure because you can keep Personal Hotspot turned off unless you’re using it. But you do want a password so random people nearby can’t connect and use your data.
    1. Once you’ve entered a password, slide the Personal Hotspot switch.

    That’s it! The Personal Hotspot screen provides basic instructions for connecting to the iPhone via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and USB. Stick with Wi-Fi, since it’s the easiest and most reliable in most cases.

    • To connect to your new Personal Hot Spot on your Mac, click the Wi-Fi icon in the menu bar and choose your iPhone’s name.
    • On your iPad, go to Settings > Wi-Fi and choose your iPhone.
    • Enter your password when prompted, making sure to select Remember This Network. That way, you won’t even have to enter your password the next time.
    • The Mac or iPad then connects to your iPhone, showing a hotspot icon instead of the usual wave icon for the Wi-Fi menu.

    Could it get any simpler? When you’re done, the safest thing to do, to ensure you don’t accidentally end up using too much of your data allowance, is to turn off the Personal Hotspot switch in Settings > Personal Hotspot. Your Mac or iPad will automatically disconnect.

    Actually, it CAN be simpler! Your Mac can automatically use the personal hotspot on your iPhone to connect to the Internet when they’re within range of each other.

    Use Instant Hotspot on your iPhone (with iOS 8 or later) to provide internet access to your Mac computers and other iOS devices (with OS X Yosemite or iOS 8) that are in range and signed into iCloud using the same Apple ID. Instant Hotspot uses your iPhone — you don’t have to enter a password or even turn on Personal Hotspot.

    Make sure your iOS device and your Mac are signed into iCloud with the same Apple ID.

    On your Mac, click the Wi-Fi status icon in the menu bar, then choose your iPhone or iPad.

    After you connect to the iPhone or iPad Personal Hotspot, you can check the cellular signal strength and the battery status of the iPhone or iPad in the Wi-Fi status menu.

    When you’re not using using the hotspot, your devices automatically disconnect to save battery life.

    One more big advantage of Personal Hot Spots. When you are shopping for that new iPad, perhaps you don’t need the cellular model if you nearly always have your iPhone handy. That’s what I do. If I need internet access on my Wi-Fi iPad, I simply connect to my Hot Spot! Saves me the added cost of a cellular-enabled iPad and the monthly fees from the cell carrier!