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The Meaningful Changes in macOS Sierra

Apple is changing its desktop operating system's name from Mac OS X to macOS, but in most respects macOS Sierra is still the same Mac you’ve been using for years. Unlike with watchOS 3 or iOS 10, you won’t miss any huge interface changes or performance improvements if you wait to update. But some new features can make a big difference depending on how you use your Mac and on how many other Apple products you have. Now that we’ve been using Sierra for several months, here are the changes that have actually mattered to us.

All your Apple gear working together

Over the several months we’ve been trying Sierra, the cross-device integrations between Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch have proved the most useful for us, and they will likely be the most meaningful changes for people who are heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem.

Automatically unlocking your Mac with your Apple Watch is as easy and convenient as we hoped it would be. As long as you have your Apple Watch on and unlocked, waking up the computer unlocks it, as well. Typing a password may not take that long, but it’s nice to be able to skip the step without sacrificing security. (One annoying aspect, though, is that you get a notification on the Watch every time you unlock your Mac.)

You also get a universal clipboard: Text copied on one Apple device can be pasted on any other. It’s a seamless experience that just works in the background—although we could see it potentially being problematic if you’re not expecting it.

new apple pay screen on mac
Clicking the Apple Pay button on supported websites (in Safari only) lets you confirm payment and shipping details using your iPhone or Apple Watch. Photo: Rozette Rago

Apple Pay for the Mac lets you use an iPhone or Apple Watch to approve online transactions in a fashion similar to using Apple Pay at a cash register: Clicking the Apple Pay button on a compatible site triggers your Apple Watch or iPhone to display a message asking you to verify the purchase—kind of like two-factor authentication for an online-banking site. However, the feature works only on websites that have specifically adopted Apple Pay (you’ll see an Apple Pay button when you go to check out), and it works only in Safari, making it a nonstarter for Chrome users.

Photos helps you organize

new photos library on mac
The new Photos app can identify and automatically tag photos with locations and categories to make them easily searchable. Photo: Rozette Rago

Though changes to the Photos app may not seem like a big deal, it’s one of the most widely used apps on the Mac—everyone has digital photos, and many people rely on Photos to manage those images because it’s easy to use and included with their computer. So big improvements to Photos can translate to a better experience for lots of people.

The improvements to Photos in Sierra mirror those found in iOS 10: The basic organizational structure isn’t changing, but the app has a lot more automated sorting going on behind the scenes that should make it easier for you to find what you’re looking for. Much as Google Photos does, Photos analyzes your pictures for not only where and when you took them but also what’s in the shot. So you can type in “Vermont 2015” to see pictures from a trip, for example, or “puppies” to see pictures of dogs—that is, dogs that the software itself identified.

The other major new feature, Memories, automatically creates albums based on dates and locations. On our Mac, we saw “Best of the Last 3 Months” in addition to different albums based on trips we’d taken and otherwise important dates. It is a nice way to revisit your photos, and perfect for #tbt.

Siri comes to the Mac

siri app screen on mac

If you like Siri on the iPhone and iPad, you’ll be glad to know it’s now on your Mac, too. It’s the Sierra feature Apple is touting the most, but if you don’t already use Siri regularly on your phone, having it on your Mac probably won’t change much for you. It works much as it does on the iPhone and iPad: Clicking the Siri icon in the Dock or menu bar triggers the familiar tone (there’s no option to use “Hey Siri” to activate it), after which you can ask questions and speak commands. Sierra Siri includes some Mac-specific features, too, such as the ability to find and open files by voice—but you can’t (yet) use some iOS 10 features like calling for an Uber ride or sending money.

If you already have an iPhone or iPad on your desk next to your Mac, having Siri on the Mac isn’t strictly necessary. It does work well, though, and it could offer accessibility benefits beyond the text-reading and voice-typing features found on previous versions of the OS.

Free up space and sync your files

new icloud screen on mac

New storage features can automatically copy your files to iCloud to free up drive space on your Mac, and they can sync your Desktop and Document folders across your devices via iCloud. This change makes paying for additional iCloud capacity a lot more attractive, because if everything goes smoothly, it could make living with a cheaper computer that has less storage a lot easier.

If you open the About This Mac window and click the Storage tab then the Manage button, you get a number of new options for managing space. The bluntest tool is the option to store all your files (more specifically, your Desktop and Documents folders) and your photos and videos in iCloud. This feature allows your Mac to automatically move files back and forth between the cloud and your Mac. When your drive runs low on space, Sierra will delete some local files to make room, while leaving them accessible from the cloud. If you enable these features on multiple Macs, you get the added benefit of having your Desktop and Documents folders synced between Macs (much like a Dropbox folder, but for those two standard folders).

That said, we’re a bit apprehensive about offloading these decisions to macOS—partly because you’re trusting all of your data to iCloud, which can be a headache if server issues crop up or if you run into a problem with your Apple ID, and partly because you might end up in a scenario where you need to access a file that’s only on iCloud but you don’t have Internet access. Regardless of what you choose, you should still back everything up so that you have redundant copies if something goes wrong with your computer or iCloud (or both!).

Other options here let you optimize storage by purging iTunes content that’s available from the cloud (so you can restore it at any time), and getting rid of email attachments you aren’t using. The reduce-clutter option is similar to what you can do with the third-party utilities DaisyDisk and WhatSize, in that it identifies the biggest space hogs on your drive and makes clearing them out easy.

Little things we like

In addition to the major features, Sierra brings a bunch of little improvements across the OS. Here are some of our favorites:

  • Picture in Picture allows video from iTunes and the Web to run in a small window on your screen without needing to keep the whole source window open.
  • Apple and third-party apps can now use tabs just like a Web browser.
  • Apple Music is still part of iTunes—there’s no separate app or web app, as there is for other streaming services—but it has a new look that’s much easier to navigate.
  • Messages gets some of the features that Apple brought to the iOS 10 version. It can’t use the iMessage App Store or send stickers, but it can receive and display them.

When it comes to major upgrades to Apple’s operating system for Macs, we traditionally recommend waiting a week or two just to be sure the new OS doesn’t have any significant issues. But with Apple opening up the past couple of major upgrades to public testing several months before the official release, showstopping issues with the initial release seem to be less common. If the new features seem appealing to you, and if you want to upgrade right away, doing so should be relatively safe. Just be sure to back up first!

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