Changes in Mojave

If you’re using 10.13 High Sierra or earlier, you should be aware of what changed in 10.14 Mojave.

Mojave introduced dark mode and an optional dynamic desktop picture. The Finder can automatically sort items on your desktop using the Stacks feature, and Gallery view replaces Cover Flow. Quick Look gains the capability of editing, annotating, and sharing documents without opening them. There are also now new and easier-to-use tools for making screenshots. Continuity Camera lets you take live pictures with your iPhone and insert them into a document on your Mac, and multi-user FaceTime lets audio and video calls include up to 32 participants. The Home, News, Stocks, and Voice Memos apps were ported from iOS to macOS, the Mac App Store was redesigned, and Mojave added a number of privacy and security features—including special changes to Mail, Messages, and Safari—that make it harder for the bad guys to get at your personal information.

Apple also removed a few other items from Mojave, including iCloud’s Back to My Mac feature; subpixel antialiasing; stationery in Mail; and system-wide support for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Vimeo, and Flickr.

Changes in High Sierra

If you’re running macOS 10.12 Sierra or earlier, here’s what you need to know about the changes in macOS 10.13 High Sierra.

High Sierra was a fairly minor release in terms of new features, and many of the changes were architectural improvements rather than changes to the user interface. One big change was expanded support for APFS (Apple File System), which replaced the decades-old Mac OS Extended (or HFS Plus) file system on SSD-based Macs to improve security, performance, and reliability. (See Learn About APFS.) High Sierra also added support for HEVC, or High Efficiency Video Coding, and Metal 2—a significantly improved version of Apple’s graphics API (application programming interface).

Changes that were more visible to users included new tools in Safari to block advertisers from tracking you, stop videos from autoplaying when you load a page, show articles in Safari Reader by default, and customize your browsing experience in other ways. Siri also gained a more human-sounding voice, the option to type (rather than speak) your questions, and more extensive integration with Apple Music. And the Photos app saw improved organizational features, an expanded sidebar, new filters and editing tools, a looping effect for Live Photos, better integration with third-party apps, and more.

Changes in Sierra

If you’re running OS X 10.11 El Capitan or earlier, here’s what you need to know about the changes in macOS 10.12 Sierra (apart from the fact that Apple rebranded the operating system from “OS X” to “macOS”).

Sierra finally brought Siri to the Mac. It also added Apple Pay (in Safari); Auto Unlock with Apple Watch; Universal Clipboard (so you can copy something on one of your Apple devices and paste it on another); iCloud Drive sync for your Desktop and Documents folders; optimized storage (the option to delete local copies of files stored in iCloud Drive if you run low on disk space); tabs in almost every app; a picture-in-picture view for videos; and various improvements to Photos, Messages, Mail, and iTunes.

Unfortunately, fax and modem support was largely discontinued starting in Sierra. If you previously used an Apple USB Modem with your Mac—either for dial-up internet access or to send and receive faxes—you should know that Catalina, like Sierra, no longer supports your modem. Some third-party USB modems and multifunction (printer, fax, scanner, copier) devices that include their own driver software may still work with Catalina for both internet access and faxing, as long as the drivers support a 64-bit kernel. In particular, I’ve read (although I haven’t tested them myself) that the USRobotics USR5637 and Zoom 3095 modems should be compatible, but I can’t guarantee it.

If you need to send or receive faxes in Catalina, there are a few alternatives (such as running a virtual machine, using an internet fax service, and copying the old drivers from El Capitan). Adam Engst lays out the options in his TidBITS article Lost in Sierra: Five Missing Features.

Changes in El Capitan

If you’re still using OS X 10.10 Yosemite or earlier, you’ll want to know what changed in OS X 10.11 El Capitan. El Capitan added Split View (like Full Screen, but for two apps at a time); major improvements to Spotlight, Notes, Safari, Maps, and Photos; new system fonts; improved performance; and a security feature called System Integrity Protection (SIP), about which you can read in Glenn Fleishman’s Macworld article Private I: El Capitan’s System Integrity Protection will shift utilities’ functions.

Changes in Yosemite

Still running OS X 10.9 Mavericks or earlier? In OS X 10.10 Yosemite, Apple added Continuity features that enable Macs and iOS devices to work together more seamlessly, a significantly redesigned Spotlight, iCloud Drive, an expanded Notification Center, and several improvements to Mail.

Yosemite also changed how the Mac handles Java. Java is a popular cross-platform programming language, which once enjoyed full support on the Mac. But largely due to security concerns, Apple stopped bundling the Java runtime (the software that enables Java code to run) with the Mac operating system. In Catalina (as in Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra, El Capitan, and Yosemite), a prompt still appears when you try to run Java software, directing you to download the Java runtime from Oracle and install it manually.

Changes in Mavericks

In OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Apple switched from using big cats to California landmarks in the names of its Mac operating systems. 10.9 Mavericks also improved support for multiple displays, introduced both tags and tabs in the Finder, added the iBooks and Maps apps, and introduced interactive notifications, all while improving performance on several fronts.

Changes in Mountain Lion

In OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Apple switched from calling the Mac operating system “Mac OS X” to just “OS X.” Mountain Lion introduced Messages, Notification Center, Dictation, and Power Nap (among many other features). iCal was renamed Calendar, and Address Book was renamed Contacts. In addition, Apple added the Reminders app to replace the Reminders feature in iCal, as well as a new Notes app to replace the Notes feature previously in Mail.

Mountain Lion also dropped Web Sharing controls in System Preferences and support for RSS feeds in Apple Mail and Safari.

Last but not least, with Mountain Lion, Apple began distributing upgrades to the Mac operating system by download only. The Catalina installer is about 8.1 GB—a problem for people without broadband internet connections, or with restrictions on the quantity of data they can download. I offer some ways to deal with that problem later, in Obtain the Installer.

App Incompatibility

Every time a new version of macOS comes out, some older apps turn out to be incompatible. I’ve talked about the importance of updating all your apps in many previous iterations of my Upgrading books. But this time is different, because Apple has finally dropped support for all 32-bit apps, including all apps based on Apple’s much older Carbon framework. (I discuss this at length in Check for 32-Bit Apps, later.) It turns out that some of the apps I rely on to create our Take Control ebooks are 32-bit apps (or at least have 32-bit components) for which there’s no good path to upgrade to 64-bit versions. I’ll manage to work around this, but it’s a real hassle.

In version 1.0 of this book, I said that third-party kernel extensions (or KEXTs) are also verboten under Catalina. I was mistaken about that. In fact, although some KEXTs that worked under Mojave won’t run under Catalina, KEXTs are generally allowed, but deprecated. If you upgrade to Catalina using Plan B: Clean Install, you may have to approve every existing third-party KEXT, even those you previously approved. Regardless of your upgrade method, you’ll have to approve any new KEXTs you install, and even those won’t work under future versions of macOS, so they’ll produce yet another warning (see System Extension Blocking). The fact that most KEXTs will continue to work for now is good news, but when macOS 10.16 rolls around, they’ll be out the door in much the same way as 32-bit apps are now. That said, there may still be some KEXTs that worked under Mojave but are incompatible with Catalina; in most cases, the Catalina installer should identify these and move them aside.

Endless Security Alerts

You will be unsurprised, I’m sure, to learn that Catalina has even more security alerts than Mojave did. That’s the way things have been going for a while. But the frequency of these alerts has increased in Catalina to the point that even long-time Mac fans and apologists have been publicly questioning whether they’re willing to upgrade if this is what they’re going to have to contend with. (For a selection of comments on these alerts by well-known Mac personalities, see this post on developer Michael J. Tsai’s blog.)

I’m as concerned about security as the next person. In fact, probably a lot more concerned. I’ve written several books about computer security and privacy. I get it: a lot is at stake, the bad guys are getting smarter, and given the complexity of today’s technology, it’s incredibly difficult even to imagine, much less to take action against, every potential avenue of attack. It’s even harder to keep users safe while also limiting aggravation and annoyance. To some extent, there will always be trade-offs between security and convenience. Even so, I find the proliferation of alerts troubling.

For years now, Apple has been gradually hardening macOS against a wide variety of security threats. The positive take on this is that Apple cares. They’re trying to keep you, your devices, and your data safe. They want to thwart malware in its many forms (viruses, Trojan horses, worms, adware, ransomware, and so on). They want to prevent attackers from taking control of your Mac remotely. They want to ensure that you don’t accidentally install software that will compromise your privacy—for example, by reading files that should be secret, by activating your Mac’s camera or microphone, or by surreptitiously capturing images of what’s on your screen.

The problem is that in many cases, Apple can’t tell whether a certain activity is legitimate or malicious, so out of an abundance of caution, macOS displays an alert asking you to approve of (or deny) something an app is trying to do. (In some cases, you have to do much more than click a button—maybe you have to open System Preferences, enter your password, go to a particular pane, and add an app to a list, for example.) The thinking is that these alerts will force you to consider whether the thing the app is trying to do is OK, and if it’s not, you’ll be able to stop it before the bad thing happens.

On the surface, that seems reasonable enough, but there are problems:

• In my experience, approximately 99.999% of all such alerts simply tell me about ordinary activities that are expected and proper. Indeed, I can’t think of a single time in the past few years I’ve personally encountered a Mac app trying to do something I considered to be improper from a security perspective. (I have, of course, said no to a lot of websites asking if they can display notifications, and other alerts to actions that would have been annoying—but that’s not to say the behavior was dangerous.)

• The endless barrage of alerts makes it seem as though the most innocent app trying to perform the most basic tasks is suspicious. For someone less familiar than I with the inner workings of operating systems, I can imagine it producing feelings of anxiety and even paranoia.

• Because I’ve now been trained simply to click OK (or whichever button means “leave me alone and let the app do what it wants to do”) in order to dismiss the alert and get on with my work, I don’t always pay careful attention to the wording of these alerts. So it’s possible something could slip by me simply because I’ve been forced into the habit of ignoring these alerts. (This is not unlike the license agreements, terms and conditions, and similar legal documents which, of course, we all read every word of before clicking “I have read and agree with these terms.”)

• Were an alert to appear that I was pretty sure signaled malicious behavior, would I know what to do about it beyond clicking Deny? How could I confirm that it’s a real problem and not just a common action that I’ve misunderstood? Should I uninstall the software? Run an anti-malware app? Take my Mac to an Apple Store or an authorized repair center for a checkup? Do something else? Apple’s alerts don’t give me the slightest clue about any of this.

Anyway, as I said, there are quite a few more of these alerts in Catalina (see Annoying New Alerts in Catalina for details), which means more frequent interruptions, more pointless busy work dismissing the dialogs, the potential for more anxiety, and still no clear answer to what you should do if one of these appears to indicate an actual threat.

Now, it may be that these alerts will bother you less than they bother me, or that over time they will become less frequent or less obtrusive. I’m just saying: forewarned is forearmed.

Buggy Betas

Beta versions of software are expected to have bugs, of course. But the beta versions of Catalina had some especially bad ones, as well as what appeared to be a general lack of polish, far later in the process than in previous years. Although later betas were, on the whole, better than earlier ones, I still saw some significant issues fairly late in the process. That made me feel as though Catalina was rushed out without adequate testing.