A First Look At Apple's macOS Sierra
by Brandon Chester on July 13, 2016 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
- Apple
- Operating Systems
- macOS
Final Words
By this point I've covered many of the tentpole features of macOS Sierra. Right now it's a bit difficult to test some of the other features announced at WWDC that relate to continuity between macOS, iOS, and watchOS due to the fact that all these platforms are in beta and, in the case of watchOS, a beta that you can't return from. Unfortunately, I feel that those features end up being the most interesting ones, because they're only made possible by Apple controlling the software and hardware stack across all their devices.
macOS Sierra has several tentpole features, with some being more subtle than others. Siri is the big feature for this release, but in my experience so far it certainly hasn't been the best. As the beta cycle moves onward it will be interesting to see how Siri improves. The improvements to Photos and iMessage are also significant, and for Photos it brings the service closer to parity with Google Photos. I think Apple could have tried harder with Messages, as you basically can't use any of the new features and just have support for receiving them.
The features that I actually found most useful in Sierra are the subtle ones that improve existing functionality or add new features that work on their own in the background. Leveraging iCloud to provide local desktop and document syncing is exactly the kind of feature Apple should be building now that they have a usable cloud service and millions of users using millions of devices. Providing a way to have the system handle the transfer of older and lesser used files to iCloud will do a lot to alleviate storage pressure on Macs with 128GB and 256GB SSDs as well, which I would wager makes up a significant portion of Macs out there given what the starting storage tiers are.
I think Apple choosing the name Sierra says a lot about this release. While OS X has been rebranded as macOS, Sierra is still an evolution of El Capitan, which was an evolution of the much larger overhaul that came with OS X Yosemite. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I do wonder why certain parts of macOS like Finder and iTunes remain mostly unchanged with each release. It's possible that Apple doesn't feel there's anything that needs to be fixed there, and it's also possible that it's simply a large undertaking that just isn't ready. In any case, the trend is clearly toward making refinements to the existing system through new features like tab support in all multi-window apps, along with continuity features like Apple Pay and Auto Unlock on macOS that leverage the ability of Apple's many products to work together.
In the end, macOS Sierra seems to be a good improvement on OS X El Capitan. Users will feel right at home after they upgrade, and they'll be greeted with new features and small tweaks throughout the system that help make the experience better. If you've bought into Apple's device ecosystem you also get some features that don't really have any equivalent within Microsoft's or Google's device ecosystem, but that also means if you aren't fully within Apple's ecosystem you're missing out on a good chunk of Sierra's features. Sierra itself is fairly rough around the edges at this point, but it's available now as an open beta for users who want to want to install it and check out the new features for themselves.
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Wheaties88 - Wednesday, July 13, 2016 - link
Any chance of being able to just clone a copy of macOS Sierra onto the drive of a non-supported Mac and getting it to boot?DPUser - Wednesday, July 13, 2016 - link
http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-pro-3-1-in...Wheaties88 - Wednesday, July 13, 2016 - link
Thanks. I might have to try that on an older MacBook I have.casperes1996 - Thursday, July 14, 2016 - link
So, just to clarify something.The PiP window doesn't have to snap to the corners of the screen. It's just the default behaviour. If you drag it around while holding command, the floating window can be placed anywhere.
Furthermore, there's also a new, unmentioned window management feature; Snapping. It's not like the Aeuro snap thing on Windows, but moving a window to the edge of another, or resizing it or something, will result in the window, sort of magnetically sticking slightly when it reaches the edge of the other window, or the boundary of the screen. It can still be stretched beyond that point, but it's faster and easier to line things up exactly edge to edge.
Alexey291 - Thursday, July 14, 2016 - link
Oh look more clickbait. Quelle surpriseApePriori - Thursday, July 14, 2016 - link
Thanks for the article, I've been coming here everyday for many years to see what's up. I find no desire to whine about the 95% non-apple content. In fact, I read it happily, because reading is fun and you learn something new every day. Sometimes it takes a day or two before a new article is up. I don't care. Anand took a job at Apple. So what? Good for him, he's a smart guy and why shouldn't he move on? If anything the Apple content has been less since Anand left, since clearly he was excited by the technology and the company. His Apple AX CPU dives were excellent reading, whatever your platform of choice. No matter, Ryan and company have done an excellent job since Anand left, the overall character and content of the site has remained the same.Sadly, one of the things that has never changed are all the pointless complaints that have nothing to do with the content of Apple related articles in particular. It's just a constant barrage of platform identity complex and content entitlement syndrome on full display. It's incredibly tiresome and brings down the quality of an otherwise excellent site. Whining about platforms, disparagement of the editors, fomenting about the ratio of x content to y content, blah blah blah... boring.
Right now there are three articles about apple stuff on the entire home-page scroll of about 45 articles, strangely the apple articles all share an identical flood of complaints about publishing the article while the non-apple articles are followed by relatively sober discussions about the content of the article. Ironically all of this complaining and platform trolling in Apple articles only proves that Anandtech has not changed much at all over time, contrary to what these commenters want to believe. This is still largely a Win/PC and Android focused site with a side of Apple product, pretending otherwise is childish.
Anyway, sincere thanks to all the editors and writers for all of the articles covering all of the platforms over the years here on Anandtech. Don't let the cesspool of the comments get to you, you're doing a great job.
Dennis Travis - Friday, July 15, 2016 - link
Well said.Oxford Guy - Friday, July 15, 2016 - link
Anti-Apple sentiment is a very old thing in the tech world. You haven't gotten use to it by now?ApePriori - Friday, July 15, 2016 - link
Yes, being a mac user since 1988 I am all to familiar with it. Believe me, I ignore it by default and do not generally waste time worrying about it. On the other hand it's 2016, the horse has been flogged into a bloody mist, and the overwhelming stupidity of it all can inspire a rare comment from me regarding same, if you don't mind.ex2bot - Friday, July 15, 2016 - link
Thanks for the article! I appreciate the Apple content, and, as I'm capable of using multiple computing platforms, I appreciate the non-Apple content, too.The comment in the article about iOS having no accessible file system is incorrect. iOS has had accessible files since 2007 when the first iOS device came out.
I know the author actually meant an "open" file system in the sense that files saved by one app are accessible to others, iOS has that, too, since iOS 8. It's called iCloud Drive. The files do exist on Apple's remote servers, but they (can) also exist on the device and they are accessible from other apps. For example, I can access iCloud Drive files saved by various apps in Mail app to attach to email messages.