One of the most awaited events in the tech fraternity finally kick-started and we had a load of updates from Apple. The Apple Santa brought a variety of gifts for everyone. WWDC started off at San Jose McEnery Convention Centre and the Apple CEO Tim Cook took the centre-stage to announce the next-generation of the software versions for the family of its devices including the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, MacOS, and Apple TV. Let’s focus on the much anticipated MacOS for now.
Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi announced the new version and highlighted a few features of the macOS operating system. Mojave; MacOS 10.14 Mojave. Federighi said, “We’ve been on a “mountain bender” for four years now, so this year’s update will change things up. It’s called macOS Mojave.”
Let’s us help you walk through all the top features that were displayed by the company in the conference.
Contents Table
The Dark Mode
The first feature on display was inspired by the desert: a “night mode” on the Mac for the first time. According to Federighi, it’s not just a personal preference but instead is designed with keeping professionals in mind. He further added that the feature looks good for presentations and photography. Federighi also announced that the feature will be applied to basically all of the Mac’s first-party apps.
Dynamic Desktop
The second new feature is called “dynamic desktop”. This doesn’t seem to be a groundbreaking update but sort of appears to be a UI upgrade. This feature will basically circle and change wallpapers through the time of day as the hour’s tick by. Not something breathtaking but definitely looks cool.
However, there appears to be one useful additional feature. It’s the addition of stacks. This feature which will group all of the contents automatically my kind, date, or tag. It can organize files by file types like documents, presentations, spreadsheets, PDFs, images and so on. The user can access the stack by clicking on it and it opens it. After choosing the desired program it retracts back.
Finder
Finder has got a new view mode in it called the Gallery Mode. This mode previews an enlarged version of the file that you are looking for. It can be an image, PDF, video, document or anything else. There is also a strip at the bottom which lets you slide through your files while you search.
There’s also a new right-side data area that shows all of the metadata for a file.
There’s a new markup mode introduced in the preview mode. This feature can be accessed through the contextual sidebar. This allows a user to easily edit the document without actually opening the file. A user can add signatures, rotate photos, combine multiple items into a PDF.
Upgraded Screenshots
With macOS Mojave, Apple is bringing the dramatically improved screenshot tools from iOS over to the Mac, including support for annotation markup, and even letting you easily take videos of your desktop.
Once you take a screenshot using the built-in hotkeys, you’ll see the thumbnail briefly show up in the lower right-hand corner of your screen, just like it works on your iPhone now. On Clicking it, a new dialogue box opens up with annotation tools that let you mark up your screenshots just like the tools in the Preview app.
If there’s an animation playing on a webpage, for example, you can capture that easily and get the details of the animation instead of a static image.
Continuity Camera
Federighi explained this feature which connects your iOS device to the Mac. The “Continuity Camera” has to option in the Mac right-click area that says “take photo” — once you take it, it shoots it right back to the Mac.
Basically, it’s a wireless remote capture tool for your iPhone. There’s also a document-scanning option that works the same way. It can also be used to scan a document on your phone and pass the scanned document to your Mac.
Apple News
Apple News will come to the Mac for the first time, with the new iPad layout. Stocks and Voice Memos will be on the Mac as well as been seen on the iPad.
Merging macOS and iOS
Federighi explicitly said that Apple is not merging iOS and macOS, highlighting the differences between the hardware in the Mac and on the iPhone and iPad.
Home and HomeKit
Nothing much was revealed about this but The Home app, which controls your smartphone devices, is launching for the Mac as well. The HomeKit peripherals will be able to be added and managed on the Mac.
Upgraded Security
Federighi also addressed everyone’s favourite conversational topic in the world right now; Security. In the new MacOS 10.14 Mojave, the OS will start alerting the user whenever a certain app tries accessing your camera and microphone or starts going through your personal data.
macOS Mojave is also taking security up a notch by making it harder for websites to build a “fingerprint” of your device’s hardware. Basically, it won’t make you appear as a distinct user on the web. It’ll present how you’re viewing a website to that site as a very basic, simplified version of what you see. That means that “your Mac will look more like other Macs” and less like any distinct or unique particular machine.
New Safari Browser
New security features are coming to the Safari browser, as well. Apple is focusing on things like the “like and share” buttons that can be seen almost everywhere on every website possible. If you want to access these comments, the Mac will ask you for access.
App Store
The Mac App Store is also getting a redesign. There is introduction of big app “stories” to help users dig more into what an app does before you download it. There are also tabs with categories of apps like create, work, play and develop. The App store will share Mojave’s dark mode and will have not only video previews but a completely redesigned app page format.
Did we miss out on any feature? Probably we didn’t but in case we did, comment down the feature to know more about it in detail from us. Now, enjoy Mojave!
