I’ve been using macOS Sierra on a 13-inch MacBook Pro for about a week now, and I’ve been very impressed with the improvements Apple has made to the OS. Instead of giving you a walk through of all of the features in Sierra, I want to focus on Apple’s strategy and attention to detail in the new OS.
As I noted in my WWDC overview, it’s the little things that Apple does that impresses me the most. It’s the things that affect our every day lives where I feel the company excels. When they solve the little frustrating problems, they make a huge difference in the way we interact with their software and hardware. They did that with macOS Sierra.
They not only did it with macOS, but they also tied in some of their other devices and operating systems while improving the Mac experience. This is a brilliant strategy for Apple—allow people to utilize all of their devices for an even richer experience. People are more than willing to pay for that.
My favorite feature using this strategy on macOS is Auto Unlock. Basically, when you walk up to your Mac wearing an authenticated Apple Watch, your Mac will automatically unlock and log into your account.
This is absolutely brilliant. Using one Apple device to authenticate another, saving me the hassle of logging in every time I want to use my computer. To be clear, it’s not a big deal to unlock your computer if you do it once or twice a day, but if you do it over and over again, all day long, like I do, this is a great feature.
It allows me to keep my computer secure when I’m away, but eliminates the tedious chore of typing in the password when I walk back to it. This is one of those small, detail oriented features that I love from Apple.
Another example of a convenient feature is the ability to copy and paste across devices.
During my work day, I will use an iPad, iPhone and Mac. Depending on what I’m doing, where I am, and the time of day, I could be using any of those three.
More often than not, when I want to post a story to The Loop, I’ll use a Mac. It’s just what I feel the most comfortable using for that task. I’ve often recently found something, went to my Mac only to realize I can’t paste the link I just copied. I will use Continuity to open the same app, which is okay, but not as quick as just copying and pasting text or links directly into my Mac.
This is a feature I will definitely use quite a bit.
Siri is a strange feature for me on the Mac. It’s great, but I’m so fast using Spotlight to find files and apps, I haven’t used Siri that much in macOS Sierra.
In a lot of cases, I can type a query faster than Siri can find it for me. There are instances where refining a complex search for a file could be faster with Siri, but that’s something I’ll find out in time.
There are a lot of things you can do with Siri in macOS, including getting info about your Mac, controlling system preferences and doing many of the tasks we’ve become used to doing with Siri in iOS. I’m sure that I’ll use it more in time, but a lot of that will be training myself that Siri is available.
iCloud Desktop and Documents is an interesting feature and one that I’ve been using. Basically, any files on your desktop or documents folders will automatically be uploaded to iCloud, making them available to any other device that has access to your iCloud account.
I could name so many times that I had a file in one of those two places that I wish I had access to while away from my computer. Again, just a great little feature that will help the way we work with the computer.
If you have multiple Macs with the feature turned on, you’ll have the same files on your Desktop and Documents on all of the Macs. That’s a great feature.
One thing to be careful of is your iCloud space. Since the uploads will count against your available iCloud space, you’ll want to keep an eye on that. I have the largest capacity available, so it hasn’t affected me much at all.
Sierra’s space saving features are pretty robust too. There are quite a few options that we’ve heard about like storing photos and documents in the cloud, but there are other options too.
For instance, if you’ve downloaded the same file twice in Safari, Sierra flags the duplicate and automatically deletes it. The OS will proactively remind you to delete an installer when you’ve installed the app on your Mac.
That’s just a smart way to work. It’s like macOS Sierra is working with me to make sure my space is optimized to my liking.
Memories, the new part of photos, is fascinating. Photos gathers together your pictures and puts them into collections that you can look through.
This is great because you get to look back at a lot of photos that you wouldn’t normally get to see, unless you went looking for them. Even then, it’s hard to find pictures if you have a lot of them.
As great as Memories is, it’s Photos ability to identify objects and scenes within images that is very impressive. Even if you haven’t tagged your images, the new Photos app can identify things in your images and will show them in search results.
I searched for “Guitar,” “Beach” and other ordinary terms and results immediately popped up. Some pictures I hadn’t seen in years. I must say, that was very impressive.
Messages received a lot of attention is macOS Sierra, and rightfully so. It’s one of my most used apps, and while some of the feature additions are fun to use, others just make the experience better.
A small thing for a lot of people is the size of emojis. I don’t talk in emojis, but I do send the smiley faces now and then. I actually have a hard time seeing the emojis, even with my glasses on, so this is going to be great for me. Even though the size of the emoji was to increase the impact of what was being said, just being able to see them is a big help for me.
Rich links are a great thing in Messages. Instead of long links that leave you trying to figure out what you’re about to click on, rich links give you a visual preview, right in the Messages window.
I don’t even want to talk about Apple Music/iTunes. It needs work, but I gave my thoughts in the WWDC overview article I wrote.
I’m very impressed with what Apple did with macOS Sierra. It’s not just a bunch of new flashy features to impress us in a keynote demo, it’s features that will help us in our every day lives. Ultimately, those are the features that we will use the most.
Apple had an incredibly successful Worldwide Developers Conference last week, on almost all fronts. From the new keynote venue and Apple Bash, to the reaction of developers, and the software that was announced, Apple did a great job.
What impressed me the most about the updated macOS, tvOS, iOS, and watchOS were all the “little” things. In typical Apple fashion, the company solved real-world problems with a lot of the new features announced during WWDC. The scope of how these features will help us on a daily basis will not be so little, but that’s exactly what makes them so great.
For example, take Single Sign-on which will be part of the new tvOS. This has to be one of the most frustrating experiences with the Apple TV—you have a cable subscription, but you have to authenticate each and every app you download to your Apple TV. That involves going to different web sites, typing in different codes and authenticating every single app.
I’ll be honest, I just gave up. It’s too much of a hassle to be bothered with.
With Single Sign-on, you log-in once to Apple TV and you’re done. The Apple TV will even show you a complete list of all authenticated apps that you can download to your Apple TV. Absolutely brilliant.
Auto Unlock in macOS is another feature that takes away some daily frustration and the tedious entering of the log-in screen password. When you walk up to your computer using your authenticated Apple Watch, you will be automatically logged into your computer. Again, brilliant.
Being able to copy & paste between devices is going to be a huge feature for people like me that use multiple devices throughout the day—iPads, iPhone, and Macs. Continuity is a great for apps, but it’s going to be just as great for features like copy & paste.
Apple Music
The part of the keynote I was looking forward to the most was Apple Music. I was a bit disappointed, to be honest.
What I really wanted from Apple was to have them say they figured out the issues that were causing problems for Apple Music customers. I wanted to know that iTunes Match was fixed and that the promise of Apple Music they gave us last year was finally becoming a reality.
Instead, we got a new interface. One that looks, in places, like a web page loaded without the corresponding CSS. An interface that requires more taps to do simple tasks like “Love” a song or find a genre radio station. For the most part, the interface is more confusing now then it’s ever been.
There is nothing social about the app–they don’t get social at all, and that’s a big problem. There are so many things on the backend and interface that are wrong.
There are some good parts though. Seeing what’s Up Next from the now playing song page is just a quick swipe up–nice change. Apple has made significant improvements in some backend functions, like the curated radio stations, over the past few months, so the Apple Music team deserves a huge amount of credit for that–I’ve really been enjoying Hard Rock radio.
I agree the current interface need some improvements—features like being able to scroll up to see what’s playing next. However, throwing out everything is not the way to go.
Before Apple can fix Apple Music, I think they need to figure out what the hell they want this app to be. I’m convinced they don’t know and that is their biggest problem.
Apple Music clearly isn’t ready to have my full thoughts posted on it yet. I can only think there are many changes coming to Apple Music and it would be unfair of me to say any more until it’s released.
iOS
It’s great that developers can now use Siri to control their apps—that’s long overdue. I do wish we had seen a bit more about what the future holds for Siri, but perhaps another time for that.
News is odd for me. I still don’t get what Apple is trying to do with News. It’s a solution in search of a problem and it doesn’t seem that Apple knows what problem it’s trying to fix.
Apple said they are now offering subscriptions in News, but they tried that with Newsstand and then dumped it. I don’t see how News is any different or how the end result will be any different.
Messages is one of my most used apps on iOS. I use it all day long. I’m not a big emoji talker, but having the option to throw one or two into a conversation will be a fun change. Having the emojis many times their normal size is a great feature for my aging eyes. (I do send smily faces now and then).
Having links show up in Messages as an item instead of a long link is another great addition. It’s just another one of those little things that will make things a lot easier for users. These are the type of features I really like.
For me, one of the most improved apps seems to be Maps. This is a good thing because I use Maps quite a bit. You can now avoid highways and tolls when planning a route, and you can search along a route for points of interest. These are small things, but Maps was lacking without them.
Another great feature in Maps is having developer integration. Being able to book a Lyft or Uber, or book a table at a restaurant from within the app will be big features.
Overall
It was a great week for Apple and developers. Everyone left happy.
The venue for the keynote was great, the sessions seemed to go really well this year, and it was the best Apple bash in recent memory.
Apple’s responsibility at WWDC is to deliver technologies that developers can use to build the next round of great apps. They succeeded in doing that. Apple’s attention on those little features make a huge difference in the way we use the various OS releases. It’s why we continue using Apple products.
I just learned that there is a simplified version of each Wikipedia page. Thought you might find this useful.
In a nutshell, take your existing Wikipedia link and replace the language code with the word “simple”.
As an example, here’s the Wikipedia link for Apple, Inc.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.
Now replace the English language code, “en”, with the word “simple”, and you get this link:
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.
Take a look at both pages. One is a simplified version of the other. When all you want is the basics, the simple Wikipedia page might be the way to go.
