It’s been 1 week since Apple announced the latest operating systems for all of their devices,
and in this video, I thought I’d look at some of what I think are the most
useful updates and improvements that have been made to their Mac operating system,
Mac OS Sonoma. Stick with me until the end of this video if you’re a Mac user, whilst this isn’t the
most significant Mac OS update we’ve ever seen, there are some really interesting features here,
and I’ve tried to handpick the ones that I think are going to be most useful to the typical Mac
user. Oh and also just a reminder, I’m running the developer beta of Mac OS Sonoma here, the public
release won’t come out until most likely September 2023, this is just a preview of what’s to come.
OK, let’s get into it.
**Compatibility Check**
We obviously have to do this every year and this year is no exception, in fact it’s probably even
more relevant this year, we need to check to ensure that your Mac can run the latest
operating system, and increasingly it would seem that Apple are pushing closer and closer toward
you needing a Mac with Apple silicon in order to get all of the features here, so what you might
find is that on the older Macs on this list, you may be able to get some of the features,
but not all of them. I won’t read out each Mac here, you can see the list on-screen,
if your computer is here, it means you can definitely upgrade in some way, shape or form,
and if you’re running a Mac with Apple silicon, then my understanding is that
not only can you upgrade, but every feature should be available to you.
**Lock Screen - Major Overhaul**
By far, the most significant change is one that you'll notice the moment that you turn your Mac
computer on. The lock screen in macOS Sonoma is completely different to the one in Ventura,
and it's actually now much more in line with the lock screen on your iPhone or iPad. You get the
same style date and time showing up at the top of the screen, and you'll also notice these brand-new
video wallpapers. If you've ever used an Apple TV 4K, you might recognise these from there,
and they look pretty spectacular, especially if you've got your Mac connected to a decent
external display. The videos play along in the background while you’re on your lock screen and
as soon as you unlock your Mac using your password or touch ID, the video comes to a smooth stop and
everything kind of nicely animates in. There are a number to choose from, including landscapes,
cityscapes, underwater and earth, and I'm guessing that Apple will add to these in future updates.
**Desktop Widgets**
Following on from the visual changes to the lock screen, you'll now notice that you can add widgets
to your desktop on Mac. These widgets, just like on your iPhone and iPad are also fully interactive
which is of course a useful feature that probably should've already been there for awhile now,
but I'm still glad that we’ve finally got it. Not only can you add the usual first party widgets
that have actually been available on Mac for sometime now, just hidden away in this sidebar,
you'll also be able to add third-party widgets as developers make them available and from day one,
you'll be able to add iPhone widgets from your iPhone to your desktop Mac.
**Video Conferencing Improvements**
Video conferencing or really anything that involves you using your Mac’s WebCam has seen
a significant improvement in macOS Sonoma. If I demo this by opening up QuickTime and accessing
my MacBook pros WebCam, you can see that we have a number of new features to choose from. Portrait
mode where your computer blurs your background is still here as it was in macOS Ventura but in
addition to that is a new studio lighting mode which actually looks pretty good from what I've
seen so far. You also now have reactions which you can make appear on the screen,
things like love hearts, balloons, fireworks, thumbs up, I don’t know if you want to be the guy
throwing out love hearts on a Zoom call but hey, whatever floats your boat. You can access these
by pressing the individual buttons in the menu option, or you can use your hands to create the
gestures and your computer will recognise them and create the effects for you. We'll have to
wait-and-see if this is anything more than a bit of a gimmick that you use once and never again.
Perhaps a more practical improvement here is what Apple are calling presenter overlay. In
an app like zoom for example, you can have the pitch deck that you're presenting in your
meeting in the background and an overlay of you that can be positioned anywhere on the screen,
you can also change the size of this from small to large. If you’re making use of continuity
camera, where you use your iPhone as a webcam, you can now choose between a wide and an ultra-wide
image here, and I do believe that these features are only available on Macs with Apple silicon.
**PDF Shoutout**
By the way, there is an accompanying PDF for this video,
complete with all the text from this video plus screenshots, and you can access it,
along with all PDFs moving forward, and the growing library of old ones,
for just $5 a month. Click the link in the description of this video that says ‘get the PDF’.
**Web Apps in the Dock**
If you use web apps on your Mac, a nice new feature in macOS Sonoma is the ability to
create dock icons for those apps. So here, for example, with YouTube open in Safari,
I can go to the file menu and choose ‘Add to Dock’. Your Mac will create a dock icon
complete with the YouTube logo, and clicking on that icon will immediately take you to YouTube.
I guess it’s much the same as the feature we’ve had on iPhone and iPad for a while now,
where you can create Home Screen tiles for web apps, but if you’re someone who uses a
specific web tool all the time, this is a pretty nice feature to have access to.
**Reminders Overhaul**
Reminders has had a major overhaul across the entire Apple ecosystem,
and this is probably most apparent here on MacOS. First up, if you use Reminders
for the creation of shopping lists, you can specify that a list is a shopping list or a
grocery list if you’re watching this video from across the pond, when you create it.
Armed with that knowledge, your device will treat the list differently to regular lists,
separating out the individual items that you add in, and putting them into categories,
which then makes it easier to move around the store when you get there. As someone who swears by
having a shared shopping list with my wife, this is going to be huge when we both start using this.
Also, you can now create Sections, to better categorise your reminders,
and it’s really easy to move specific reminders into those sections once you’ve created them.
Also, if you go to View, you can now view your Reminders in either list view,
or column view, which is great if you’re someone who uses Reminders in a kind of
project-management style, there’s now a clear way of operating in more of a project pattern,
ticking items off in a methodical order as you move along the project.
**Safari Profiles**
This is another feature that’s come to all Apple devices,
but again I think it’s going to have a major impact here on the Mac. In Mac OS Sonoma,
you’ll be able to create Safari Profiles. You can manage each profile however you like,
but the logical approach here I think, is to perhaps have one for personal browsing,
one for work, one for school etc. Everything that you do and utilise online can then be
separated off to those separate profiles. Separate browsing history, separate Safari extensions,
separate tab groups, separate bookmarks, even separate cookies which is really quite impressive.
You can have multiple profiles open and running at the same time, and even jump between them at
the touch of a button. If you’re someone who uses your Mac for all of your different online needs,
this is going to be a great way to segment and declutter your online experience.
**Locked Private Browsing**
Private browsing is more private across the entire range of Apple devices in this year’s updates,
with Apple claiming that improvements have been made in areas like reducing
the ability for websites to track you across other sites and devices,
which is all good. But in terms of an actual visual indication as to what’s going on,
you’ve got one when you open a private browser tab on your Mac in Sonoma. Or more specifically,
you’ve got one when you open a private browser tab, and then lock your computer,
and then unlock your computer, your private browsing will remain locked until you unlock it.
**The Proper Weekly**
By the way, if you’re enjoying the content here, why not consider signing up to my newsletter,
the proper weekly. I include some tech news from the week, a behind the scenes of what’s happening
here on the channel, as well as a tip for an item in the Apple ecosystem. The newsletter goes out
each Friday, it’s free to join, and I’ll include a signup link in the description of this video.
**Shared family passwords**
Another feature that’s coming to all major Apple devices is the ability
to share passwords with your family group, but I think it’s probably going
to be used the most here on the Mac. Head into Settings, choose Passwords,
and follow the steps in Family Passwords. You can create a group of trusted contacts with
whom to share a specific set of passwords and passkeys which you choose, which is
obviously useful if you’ve got say a portal that everyone in the family has access to for example.
**Autocorrect Improvements**
This is kind of a ‘you’ll have to trust me on this one’ improvement, but autocorrect,
in fact typing in general on MacOS Sonoma is significantly better than it was in Ventura,
with autocorrections seeming to happen much more frequently, more intuitively and in a
much smoother manner. I’m assuming that this is an update that is going to be system-wide
and something that developers can add into their own software, as I’ve noticed so far that it’s
great in first party apps, but not always there in third party apps. You’ll also notice that your Mac
will often try and finish your sentences for you, in a good way, where it will try and predict what
the end of your word or sentence is going to be, and tapping the space bar will finish it for you.
**Game Mode**
Not one that I’ve been able to experience, but if you’re someone who’s into gaming, Apple claim
to have made some significant changes that will improve your experience in Mac OS Sonoma, and
the feedback that I’m seeing online from people who have tried this is that they’ve really hit a
home run here. Game Mode is designed to focus CPU and GPU performance to the game, reducing
it’s usage on background tasks, and ensuring that if you’ve purchased a computer with Mac Silicon,
you can really make use of all those spangly GPU cores. Apple also claim that stability for things
like Bluetooth controllers has been improved, so if you’re like me and you’ve got a PS4 controller
lying around doing nothing, now could be a really good time to get into some Mac gaming.
**Notes**
Notes, like Reminders, is another app that’s actually seen quite a few changes in Sonoma.
Firstly, you can add what Apple are calling monostyled text, and block quotes, both of which
you can see on the screen now, and you can combine them both if you wish. We’re still a long way off
of the kind of flexibility you get with a tool like Notion, but it’s an improvement. Even more
useful in my opinion, is the ability to add links to other notes. It’s not massively obvious how you
do this, you right-click in a Note, choose Add Link and where you would usually paste in a URL,
you simply type the name of a note title, and then choose it from a list. You can see here how
the link is created, and tapping on that link will bounce you right over to that note. Also,
PDF management has been totally overhauled in Sonoma, with your Mac now able to identify and
autofill forms with your personal information for you, even on forms that aren’t natively editable,
or ones that you’ve scanned in on your phone. Bad news if you’re one of the countless companies
out there offering PDF editing software, come September, Mac users aren’t going to need it.
**Screen Sharing**
Screen sharing has been on the Mac for a little while now, but it looks like it’s had not just a
lick of paint, but also a bit of an engine tweak, promising huge performance improvements for the
feature. Essentially, this allows you to connect to another Mac, either your own computer remotely,
or someone else’s, and operate it like you’re sitting there. If you’re the family tech support
guy like me, this tool is invaluable. I’ll save full judgement until someone in my family asks me
why something isn’t working on their Mac, and let you know how the remote fix goes.
**Hearing Devices can now connect to Mac**
Again, this isn’t a feature that I’ve been able to personally test,
but I do know a couple of people who use hearing aids that they connect directly
to their iPhones via Bluetooth, and I know that the ability to have this feature come to Mac is
going to be a really big deal for them when it arrives with Sonoma later on this year.
**Personal Voice**
Another accessibility feature that promises to be huge is Personal Voice. Here,
your Mac will guide you though the process of recording around 150 phrases in your own voice,
that will then be used to create a synthetic version of your voice. Aimed at people who
are losing their voice, or are at a high risk of losing their voice in the future,
this feature then allows you to type our phrases while you’re in other apps, like
FaceTime for example, giving a realistic sounding voice to people who might otherwise not have one.
**Better Dictation**
Another ‘you’ll have to trust me feature’, is that dictation has seen yet another improvement this
year, after already seeing major improvements in last year’s OS updates, and it’s very,
very good now. In fact, everything that you’re seeing onscreen now is a result of me saying it,
rather than typing it on the keyboard. Dictation for me has a reached a point where I actually use
it about 25% of the time when I’m writing scripts for the videos here on YouTube,
and that percentage is going up all the time as I get more used to,
and more comfortable with dictation, it’s significantly quicker than typing,
and I’m pretty quick at typing. A great addition to the update when it launches later this year.
**End**
So there you go, I think that was 15 changes that I think are most relevant, coming to Mac
OS Sonoma in a few month’s time. There will be other changes that we’ll find I’m sure,
I can’t wait to start making proper tips and tricks content for you guys, closer to the
operating system’s release dates. What do you think, anything else you would have liked to
see Apple add? Oh and also, I’ll have iPad and Watch OS videos coming over the next few days.
And as ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving me a like,
and subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future.
See you on the next video.