macOS Sierra 10.12.2 released

Apple on Tuesday released a significant update for macOS Sierra, fixing a number of issues users had with the Mac operating system.

One concern for all users of portable computers is battery life. Some users have reported problems with battery life, but Apple told me that after a lot of testing they stand behind the 10 hour battery life with the new MacBook Pro.

However, to help users better determine the battery life, Apple has removed the “time remaining” indicator from the battery icon in the menu bar with the latest update. You can still see the image on the top of the screen, and you can see the percentage, but you will no longer be able to see how much time is remaining before your battery dies.

The reason for removing it is very simple: it wasn’t accurate.

Apple said the percentage is accurate, but because of the dynamic ways we use the computer, the time remaining indicator couldn’t accurately keep up with what users were doing. Everything we do on the MacBook affects battery life in different ways and not having an accurate indicator is confusing.

Besides the apps we are working on all the time, there are a lot of things that are happening in the background that users may not be aware of that affects battery life. For instance, when setting up a new Mac, syncing iCloud photo libraries can take quite a bit of time. Add facial recognition to that, and battery life is affected even more. Many times, because it’s happening in the background, users may not be aware of what’s draining their battery.

Other tasks like Spotlight indexing can also affect battery life with its background work. If you add a large number of files, indexing can sometimes take days to complete.

There are other changes in the latest update too.

One of the things users love about Apple is their ability to implement cool features into its operating systems, and integrate those features with its other products. One example is Auto-Unlock, which allows users to automatically unlock their Mac using an authenticated Apple Watch. Some users found the process of setting up that feature a bit time consuming, and maybe even confusing. The new version of macOS Sierra cleans up that process and makes the setup easier than it was before.

Apple also made the alerts and instructions for iCloud storage and Optimized storage easier—the language for setting up and using these features is now more helpful.

While I didn’t have any graphics issues with the Touch Bar on my Mac, some users reported issues with the new feature. Apple said those have been fixed with the latest update.

Users can also now add a Chinese Trackpad Handwriting button to the Touch Bar Control Strip.

The update also improves audio quality when using Siri and FaceTime with Bluetooth headphones, and an issue where incoming Mail messages did not appear when using a Microsoft Exchange account has been fixed.

There are a number of other changes in the macOS Sierra 10.12.2 update, as well. If you have macOS Sierra installed, you can open App Store and click on the Updates tab to download the latest version.