Apple will be releasing macOS Mojave later today.  I thought it’d be a good time to go through some of the major changes.  

Dark Mode

What Apple has been advertising as the biggest update to macOS Mojave is Dark Mode.  For some reason, Dark Mode doesn’t really call to me, but I have turned it on for a couple of days.  I ultimately turned it back.  

Dark mode just turns your dock, menu bar, and pretty much any area in an Apple app that has gray (like the top of the screen in safari) to a darker color.  

If you click on the Apple button on your menu bar and going to system preferences it will bring up the settings. From there go to general, and at the top of that screen, you will have two options, light or dark.  

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Once Dark Mode has been enabled, everything that’s been enabled to go into dark mode goes dark.  

I guess I’m so used to the normal mode on my mac, its weird to see something different.  

Another thing I don’t like about dark mode is that while the menus and stuff have gone dark, the screen is still white.  If you are working in an app that has gone completely dark, I can see the desire, especially if you work in a dark room.  As of now though, it’s not my cup of tea, but I know some of you might enjoy it.  

There are also few apps that support the dark mode right now.  As more apps come out, I think this will be a more pleasant feature.  

I also think Apple will advance this feature in the next update.  Right now, you have to manually change from light mode to dark mode and back.  I see Apple making a feature soon that will change the mode with either the time or with a sensor that will detect the light in the room.

Apple has included some dynamic backgrounds that go from light to dark based on time of day.  When I heard about this part, I thought that this would include the change to dark mode, but it does not.  Hopefully, they continue to push forward with this.

Speed

The best thing I’ve noticed about Mojave has been speed.  Mojave has given my 2013 MacBook Pro with Retina a new life.  From the first beta, I could tell that my Mac was running smoother.  I wish they did this with every update, and I can only imagine how fast newer Mac will fly.  

The best thing is, you don’t even have to do anything.  Once Mojave is installed, everything picks up.

I will say, that my system has started to pause a little bit the closer we get to the final build.  It’s nothing giant, and I think its just an app that hasn’t been updated that is dragging my system down a little bit, but it is there now.  I turned off a safari extension as well and the boost was there.  So it might take a little bit to get things up and running for all the apps.  

The App Store

The Mac App Store has received a facelift as well.  It looks completely different and is inheriting things from its younger brother iOS.  There is now an editorial team that will be highlighting apps daily.  

I hope the Mac App store survives.  I know previous versions were starting to die out, but it really is the easiest place to get safe apps.  It also makes setting up new apps a breeze.

I’m scared that Apple is moving everyone towards a subscription system though.  I much prefer the buy once style to the monthly or even yearly system that is starting to take over.  

One thing that I think is good in with App Store is that Apple is trying to make it easier for developers to make apps that span iOS and macOS.  They are already testing the waters with 4 iOS apps that they have ported over: Home, voice memos, News, and Stocks.

If you have a home set up on your iPhone, everything will port over to macOS and using it is pretty much the same.  They have moved a Force Touch or long press to a right click on the Mac, but the apps still all work the same.

I think this could bring an influx of apps to the Mac App Store, but I worry about the quality of apps. For examples, the writing software I use when writing my long pieces, Scrivener is so feature-rich on the Mac and very slimmed down on iOS.  I would hate to see the feature-rich one go away for slimmed down one, unless it makes it better in the long run.  

Wrap up

While there are not too many headline features here, this update is pretty exciting for me.  My system has been running smoother than it has in years and probably means I can hold off updating my mac for a little while longer.  

Dark mode and App Store updates will definitely excite some as well.

Overall, I think this is a great update, and recommend you to update as soon as it drops.  If you have an older mac, do it as fast as you can!