Take In the Scenic View
Since you’ve bought this book, I assume you’ve already decided to upgrade to Mojave and don’t need convincing that it’s worth your time and effort. However, I would like to call attention to some of the biggest changes in Mojave that you can look forward to.
In addition, if you’re upgrading from an operating system older than macOS 10.13 High Sierra, you may be interested to know what other features were added along the way—as well as some that were removed.
Find Out What’s New in Mojave
Apple has a list of new Mojave features on this webpage. I won’t catalog them all here, but I’d like to list some of the most notable changes and improvements since 10.13 High Sierra:
Dark mode: If you prefer light text on a dark background to the more traditional dark text on a white background, Mojave’s user interface may be easier on your eyes. With the optional Dynamic Desktop, your desktop picture can even change throughout the day to reflect the current position of the sun.
Stacks: Some people—many people—have gotten into the habit of dumping anything and everything on the desktop, making it difficult to find things amidst the clutter. If you enable Stacks in Mojave’s Finder, documents automatically “pile up” by type or tag.
Gallery view: The Finder’s new Gallery view lets you see a selected file’s preview and metadata, and perform common actions (such as rotating or annotating a graphic) with just a click.
Quick Look enhancements: Now, not only can you preview a selected graphic or other document in the Finder by pressing the Space bar, you can also make various edits and annotations, or share it with someone else, without opening any app at all.
Screenshot improvements: Mojave makes it easier to capture both static images and movies of your screen—again, without leaving the Finder.
Continuity Camera: You can use your iPhone to take a picture that you then instantly insert in a document on your Mac.
Multi-user FaceTime: Apple announced that FaceTime audio and video calls in Mojave would support up to 32 participants, instead of just you and a friend. However, this feature has been delayed until a Mojave update later in 2018.
Ported iOS apps: Apple has brought four of its iOS apps—Home, News, Stocks, and Voice Memos—to macOS too.
Mac App Store redesign: The Mac App Store in Mojave is easier to use and contains more useful information to help you find and obtain the best apps for your Mac.
Privacy and security: Mojave adds 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. (I say more about these changes in Respond to Immediate Questions and Deal with Other Surprises.)
Apple also removed a few items—ones I’ve noticed so far include Cover Flow view in the Finder; iCloud’s Back to My Mac feature; subpixel antialiasing; stationery in Mail; and system-wide support for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Vimeo, and Flickr.
If you’re already running High Sierra, that’s all you need to know for now—skip ahead to Learn About APFS (even if you’re already using APFS—there’s new information to be aware of). But if your Mac is still using an older operating system, read on to learn about some changes in the past few releases that you may not be fully prepared for.
Catch Up with macOS Changes
The older the operating system you’re upgrading from, the more changes you’ll notice in Mojave—and the greater the likelihood that you’ll encounter compatibility problems with old hardware and software. You’ll find great new features, but you may also have to abandon software you’ve used for many years, adopt new habits, or reorient your thinking about how a Mac works. Before you jump in, you should understand what awaits you.
Read the topics below covering any operating systems you’ve never installed on your Mac.
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 Mojave 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 Mojave 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 Mojave, 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 Mojave (as in 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 Mojave installer is about 5.7 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.
Changes in Lion
I’m guessing that very few readers are still using Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and upgrading all the way to Mojave. But if you are, you may be interested to know that Mac OS X 10.7 Lion added features such as iCloud support, Versions and Auto Save, FileVault 2, Launchpad, Mission Control, full-screen apps, and multi-touch gestures.
More significant, however, for people still running 10.6 Snow Leopard, are the following features that disappeared in Lion (and are still gone):
Rosetta: Rosetta was the software that enabled PowerPC apps to run on Intel-based Macs. Upgrading to Mojave entails living without software that requires Rosetta.
To learn how to find installed apps that still rely on Rosetta, see Matt Neuburg’s TidBITS article Preparing for Lion: Find Your PowerPC Applications. If you discover any such apps, you must upgrade them to Intel-native (or Universal) versions, migrate to alternative apps, or find a way to continue running Snow Leopard (for example, by keeping it on a separate Mac, drive, or partition; or running Snow Leopard Server in a virtual machine using Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion).
Flash: Adobe’s Flash Player, which enables dynamic web content such as video, games, and interactive navigation, was bundled with previous versions of the Mac operating system but was removed from Lion and remains missing from Mojave. If you need Flash, you can download Flash Player for free from Adobe. However, you may have good reasons for wanting to avoid Flash, and to encourage the use of more modern standards such as HTML5.
Learn About APFS
If you’ve ever erased or partitioned a disk in Disk Utility, you’ve probably seen the term “Mac OS Extended”—it’s one of several file systems you can choose from to format a Mac volume, and except for situations in which a disk must be usable on non-Mac computers, it was the default format from the very beginning of Mac OS X up through Sierra.
A file system, in case you’re wondering, is a mechanism for storing files on a disk or SSD—it’s the technology that enables your computer to figure out where all the individual pieces of each file are stored, what the files and folders are called, what their other metadata are, and so on. In other words, it’s just plumbing—you, as a user, never interact directly with the file system, but instead you use a high-level app like the Finder to do things like move, copy, rename, and delete files. All the gory details of the filing system are handled behind the scenes.
Mac OS Extended is nearly two decades old, and let’s just say that it hasn’t aged especially well. Since this file system was introduced, computers and their storage devices have gotten way faster, storage capacities have increased dramatically, SSDs have become much more popular and far less expensive, and security concerns have become a vastly bigger deal. The Mac had been needing a better and more modern file system for a long time, and Apple finally provided it, starting with High Sierra, in the form of Apple File System, or APFS (for more on the name, see the sidebar Why APFS and Not AFS?).
“That’s nifty,” you may say, “but if it is just plumbing, why should I care?” Well, imagine that your house has rusted pipes, clogged drains, and leaky faucets, and then someone comes in and replaces all that. Now the dripping faucet doesn’t keep you awake all night, the tub drains quickly, and—oh!—that water pressure in the kitchen is something else! That’s what APFS does for your Mac.
For example, duplicating even a multi-gigabyte file is essentially instantaneous in APFS. Using the Finder’s File > Get Info command to check a folder’s size is also quite fast. (That’s something I’ve frequently had to wait many minutes for, and it always drove me crazy!) Many day-to-day activities like that are much faster under APFS. And, if you have a Mac laptop that uses Time Machine, the temporary backups it makes while you’re disconnected from your Time Machine backup disk will go much faster and take up far less space; for details, see Mobile Time Machine and its transformation in High Sierra.
APFS is also far more resistant to data loss or corruption due to crashes, and it natively supports advanced backup and encryption capabilities that will help keep your data more secure. (And, in case you’re wondering, FileVault still exists and still works just fine with APFS—even though the underlying encryption mechanism will change during the upgrade process, it will look and act the same as it always has.)
APFS can be used on devices of any size (including an Apple Watch). In addition, APFS was explicitly designed to work well with fast SSDs, and to scale gracefully to storage devices with capacities that are unheard of today, but may be commonplace before long.
The iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch have been using APFS since iOS 10.3, and in High Sierra Apple converted all internal SSDs to APFS automatically. But in High Sierra, mechanical hard drives, Fusion drives (which combine a mechanical hard drive with flash storage), and external SSDs were not converted to APFS, because support for those devices wasn’t quite ready.
Well, Mojave changes all that. When you install Mojave—whether you do so on an SSD, a Fusion drive, or a spinning hard drive; whether that drive is internal or external; and whether you do a clean install or an upgrade, the installer automatically converts your Mojave startup volume to APFS. You aren’t given a choice in the matter. (The Mojave installer does not convert any other internal or external volumes, besides the one on which you’re installing Mojave, to APFS.)
To summarize thus far:
Mojave, like High Sierra, gives you the benefits of the new APFS “plumbing,” and that will make you happy.
Whereas the High Sierra installer converted only internal SSDs to APFS, the Mojave installer converts any startup volume you select to APFS.
If you’re moving to Mojave from a Mac that’s not already running High Sierra and formatted using APFS, the conversion process will be effectively seamless, and the only thing you’re likely to notice is that installing Mojave takes a bit longer than you expected.
But…
Well, there’s always a “but,” isn’t there? Despite the great progress Apple has made with APFS, there are a few “gotchas” to be aware of:
The Mojave version of Disk Utility, like the High Sierra version (and that includes the copy available when running in macOS Recovery), can convert volumes from Mac OS Extended to APFS, without losing data (choose Edit > Convert to APFS). But it can’t reverse the process and convert an APFS volume back to Mac OS Extended without erasing it completely. Should you need to do this, you’ll have to download the free APFS to HFS+ Converter by Paragon Software.
Even in Mojave, a Time Machine disk cannot be formatted as APFS. The only format that can be used for a Time Machine backup is Mac OS Extended. (Time Machine works just fine backing up your APFS-formatted drive to a Mac OS Extended destination; there’s no issue with the file systems not matching.) Therefore, let me spell this out explicitly:
Although you can convert other backup drives (such as the one you use for a bootable duplicate) to APFS, you don’t have to—it’s not a problem to clone an APFS volume onto a Mac OS Extended volume, and you can still boot from a copy of Mojave that’s made in that way. For the time being, I think the safest course is to leave all your backup drives formatted as they were.
In my experience—and I’ve read numerous reports from others that say the same thing—running Mojave from a mechanical hard drive that has been converted to APFS (especially if that drive is external) is sloooooooooooow. In fact, I could probably add quite a few more o’s to that. In one case, after the Mojave installation was complete, it took around two hours for the initial startup process to finish (including all my login items launching and so forth). Even then, my Mac was far from zippy. Subsequent restarts were somewhat faster, but still painfully slow compared to using an SSD. This may, of course, change in a future update to Mojave, but for now, brace yourself for sluggish performance.
Macs running El Capitan or earlier can’t mount or read volumes formatted with APFS. (If a Mac can run High Sierra or Mojave, it can boot from an APFS-formatted volume, even if the normal boot volume uses El Capitan or earlier. But while booted from El Capitan or earlier, it can’t read an APFS volume.)
Third-party disk utilities must be updated to work with APFS, but even as of October 2018—nearly a year after the release of High Sierra—most of these tools can’t repair APFS volumes. DiskWarrior version 5.1 can read, but not rebuild, APFS volumes; Drive Genius 5 can repair APFS volumes but not defragment, partition, or rebuild them. As far as I’m aware, only TechTool Pro 10 has no APFS-specific limitations. In any case, be sure you’re using an APFS-compatible version of a disk utility before you run it under Mojave, or bad things can happen.
Having said all that—and based on my experiences with APFS in High Sierra over the past year—I think that the potential problems with APFS will affect only a tiny fraction of a percent of Mojave users, and that the benefits will outweigh the difficulties.