Hands-On With macOS 10.14 Mojave: Dark Mode, Revamped Mac App Store, Desktop Stacks and More

[mixel]

Why is everyone so interested in dark mode? It looks strange, the ergonomics are broken.
It might be useful if you work in total darkness, but the clever solution is to work in a well lit room, which I sure hope most people do.
I tested it in the beta and found it stupid and immediately turned it off. It has zero use for 99% of the users, unless they want to look "cool". If you really need it now, just use "invert colors", available right now. That one even works better since webpages becomes dark too. Using dark mode mostly for web pages is horrible, a bright white page with menus and controls darkened so your eyes have to strain to see them. Not good at all.

It has nothing to do with looking “cool” and everything to do with practicality. Your 99% is bogus. I can think many reasons why dark mode is more useful for all sorts of task. To the extent that I’ll use it over light mode. Even my elderly relatives are most excited about dark mode as they work with photos. Inverting colours is no use because nobody wants the colours themselves inverted.

Photos - white space around everything in photos has always been terrible and distracting, and blows out your perception of colours, the same applies to other creative apps and the finder itself when viewing thumbnails etc. There’s a reason every single DAM other than Photos is framed black and gray.

Bright webpages don’t look that strange surrounded by dark windows.

 

[Brian Y]

To everyone hating on metal, from a developer's point of view - it's fantastic.

It's easy to work with (MUCH easier than OpenCL - which has always been horrible to work with), and much faster in practice. As an example, when I ported my matrix multiplication code from OpenCL to MPS, the speed boost was around 25% on the same hardware - that's a considerable improvement.

 

[Substance90]

So... it appears that Apple is likely dumping OpenGL and OpenCL with Mojave, or shortly thereafter..... anyone else think this is a huge mistake?

Well, their OpenGL version has been outdated forever but I do think it's a mistake. It's gonna annihilate the supply of Mac games, which is not big to begin with. A side effect will be less games ported to Linux as developers mostly do the OpenGL port for macOS support. Adopting Vulkan would have been the right decision but I guess Apple doesn't like admitting to being wrong.

To everyone hating on metal, from a developer's point of view - it's fantastic.

To a developer who actually wants to make money, it's terrible. You miss out on the biggest market for games - Windows - or you have to make two versions of your game which too hurts the bottom line.

To everyone hating on metal, from a developer's point of view - it's fantastic.

It's easy to work with (MUCH easier than OpenCL - which has always been horrible to work with), and much faster in practice. As an example, when I ported my matrix multiplication code from OpenCL to MPS, the speed boost was around 25% on the same hardware - that's a considerable improvement.

Why is everyone so interested in dark mode? It looks strange, the ergonomics are broken.

It has zero use for 99% of the users, unless they want to look "cool".

I'm pretty sure all the programmers and creatives make more than 1% of Apple's user base. Virtually all design programs and code editors (except XCode without a plugin) are dark anyway.

 

[Glideslope]

"macOS Mojave is Apple's first deviation from mountain-based naming in four years"

No, since Mavericks the names have all come from California landmarks. Not mountains.

Technically none of them are 'mountain' names. Yosemite is a National Park, El Captain is a granite dome (it just feels like a mountain when you are hiking/climbing up it ), Sierra is a range of mountains, High Sierra is just higher on that mountain range.

I guess the last 4 macOS names have come from mountain areas, but Apple has since Mavericks always said they were using California inspired names.


Personally, I was hoping for Shasta, Tahoe, or Whitney for the next macOS.

I was hoping for Mac OS Steve.

 

[joediianni]

"inspired" by the demands of the people.

Right. Maybe people want a little refresh? Or the ability to customize their OS look and feel just a smidge haha.

 

[Sunshoopa]

Well, good bye updates. 2011 MBA is the latest Mac device in the house.

 

[WatchFromAfar]

There was a discussion of this on the most recent MacBreak Weekly podcast/YouTube, and I think that sounds like the direction it is going if I recall the discussion correctly.

It was mentioned on AppleInsider:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/1...mp-up-security-privacy-in-ios-12-macos-mojave

"Developers are also warned that future versions of macOS will require Developer ID apps to be notarized before they can be installed. "

So in the future you won't be able to install an app that Apple hasn't given the say so to. Of course "future versions" may be ten years away or maybe next year, who knows.

 

[cocky jeremy]

I tried dark mode... I don't get the love for it. If I wanted a dreary ass screen, I'd just turn my brightness down to 1.

 

[Ries]

I think it's because iOS is Metal based and Apple just wants to consolidate. What worries me isn't games so much, as if a game dev is serious about the Mac they will use whatever gives the best results. What is more troubling is all the 3D/CAD, etc. apps out there that quite possibly won't make the jump. (Think stuff like: Maya, Houdini, Modo, SketchUp, Blender, AutoCAD, Vectorworks, etc. and scientific computing software, utilities, etc.)

1. Get rid of professional tools
2. Make flappy bird run on the Mac
3. ???
4. Walled garden arm laptop appstore profit

 

[djeeyore25]

I'm curious how Dark Mode works in Safari. Is it pretty intelligent about adjusting the styling of webpages? Or does it even attempt it?

I don't think that Safari does anything different, but rather the dark background makes everything look sharper. I actually checked the display settings to see if the resolution of my monitor had changed because it looked so much different.

 

[Konigi]

I'd like to see the new Mac App Store *not* in Dark Mode. Like in Normal Mode. Does someone have a picture or video?

 

[bluecoast]

They should've at least announced their intentions back when Metal was first introduced. That would've given devs ample time to figure out what they would do instead of doing this so abruptly.

In all fairness for Apple, I guess this release has to give the message very clearly to devs that they need to develop against certain frameworks and APIs as big big changes are coming (ie ARM Macs and Apple is going to bring forward its supported frameworks to ARM).

Regarding pure functionality - we all like new toys but if you just need high sierra to be a platform for running your apps:

• Mojave is not adding anything radically new
• I suspect that high Sierra will still be pretty widespread and supported by apps for the next few years.
• Just to have a computer that’s 7-9 years old still supported is pretty amazing. That absolutely wouldn’t have happened ten years ago
• I’m about to sell my late 2009 iMac and I was very surprised that high Sierra even supported it - 8 years of OS updates isn’t bad.

 

[adrianlondon]

Did anybody try to run a 32bit app? Did they finally made it totally impossible to run 32bit apps?

It runs, after telling you that it might not do so in future. It's already been said that Mojave is the last macOS to support 32-bit apps I believe.

What actually happens when you click on a desktop Stack?

The contents show as icons on the desktop.

 

[bollman]

It has nothing to do with looking “cool” and everything to do with practicality. Your 99% is bogus. I can think many reasons why dark mode is more useful for all sorts of task. To the extent that I’ll use it over light mode. Even my elderly relatives are most excited about dark mode as they work with photos. Inverting colours is no use because nobody wants the colours themselves inverted.

Photos - white space around everything in photos has always been terrible and distracting, and blows out your perception of colours, the same applies to other creative apps and the finder itself when viewing thumbnails etc. There’s a reason every single DAM other than Photos is framed black and gray.

Bright webpages don’t look that strange surrounded by dark windows.

Use a photo application that uses a dark backdrop then, I can agree that it's stupid that Apple doesn't give us the option in Photos.app.
Have you even tried Mojave dark mode? Menus blend into backgrounds and it's really difficult to distinguish buttons and menus.
Also, most of the time, people work in a well lit environment. The use of dark mode in a well lit room will seriously fatigue your eyes, it's downright uncomfortable to look at.
A bright webpage in the middle of a lot of darkness makes it really, really difficult to make out the UI since your eyes will be blinded by the bright white from the webpage, especially in a dark surronding. I tested dark mode for like 10 minutes and my eyes screamed in agony and I turned it off.

As someone noted before: We rejoiced when the "bright text on black background" finally was replaced with black on white, now everyone wants to go back to that discarded tech?

 

[mixel]

Use a photo application that uses a dark backdrop then, I can agree that it's stupid that Apple doesn't give us the option in Photos.app.
Have you even tried Mojave dark mode? Menus blend into backgrounds and it's really difficult to distinguish buttons and menus.
Also, most of the time, people work in a well lit environment. The use of dark mode in a well lit room will seriously fatigue your eyes, it's downright uncomfortable to look at.
A bright webpage in the middle of a lot of darkness makes it really, really difficult to make out the UI since your eyes will be blinded by the bright white from the webpage, especially in a dark surronding. I tested dark mode for like 10 minutes and my eyes screamed in agony and I turned it off.

As someone noted before: We rejoiced when the "bright text on black background" finally was replaced with black on white, now everyone wants to go back to that discarded tech?

You're talking about a lot of subjective stuff as if it's factual when applied to the majority. Light on dark is easy on the eyes for a lot of us. Its totally fine. A lot of developers and folk who use the terminal a lot prefer light text on black.

"Use an app with a dark background".. No? I appreciate Apple's ecosystem, and this is literally the only way to have a black bg and use icloud Photos. They discontinued Aperture (which was dark - like all their pro apps) but I also appreciate the finder being dark now, as most of my file management involves pictures, and they look nicest/clearest when surrounded by darkness.

I'm running dark mode right now. I Just have some things to test to see if i have to revert to High Sierra for a bit.

 

[iReality85]

I wonder if the presence of Dark Mode suggests Apple is getting ready to implement OLED screens in MBPs.

 

[T Coma]

According to Apple, macOS Mojave's new dark mode was inspired by the desert at night.

In other words, when it's dark.

 

[pppx3]

Sign of the times indeed. What I loved about the original Mac (and it's predecessor Lisa) was the black text on white background. This was a time of WYSIWYG.

I guess printing, like many other physical forms of media, are dead and buried.

Not sure if dark mode is good for the eyes though? I often see a lot of "coders" doing the multi-coloured text on black. That can NOT be good for the eyes, surely?

The cosmetic changes don't interest me that much, to be honest.

Bring on the new hardware. PLEASE. Mac Mini and Pro... hurry up already!

 

[gsmornot]

I wonder if Mojave uses APFS also for the Time Machine backup now, in High Sierra the TM backup is stored on a HFS+ partition. I hoped they would start to store snapshots of the file system, like Local Time Machine does now. Just on an external drive or an SMB share.

I have not read every post in detail so maybe you have an answer already. My Fusion machine is now APFS but Time Machine is still HFS+ and I see no way to change that. I have to assume Time Machine will remain HFS+. I read something someplace about it a while back, I know that is a general statement but whatever it was I read I recall some named reasons for keeping HFS+ and I think it has to do with the typical backup being a spinning drive and APFS being no real help for that.

 

[eulslix]

I'm so sick of Apple. Buying the 2017 MBP was the biggest mistake. I was so stupid, should've listened to all the critical voices. This recent developments are just a huge disappointment, a series of bad decision making, starting with the Touch Bar, the constantly breaking keyboard up to the countless bugs which probably won't be fixed in the new MacOS either.

I guess my only hope left is to get a good price for my MBP and get a proper Windows Notebook. I hate Windows, but at least the ambition to improve is there.

 

[Greymacuser]

Goodness. Some people just cannot be pleased. Did you want it to make you a cup of tea?

I wanted it to be at least as innovative as other manufactures. The stubborn resistance to touch screen technology for desktops is a caveman-ish obstinance that illustrates Apple's inability to make anything stunning and new.
I've used macs my whole professional career. Switched from windows to mac in the early 90s. So it really breaks my heart to see a once great company go from leading the cutting edge of computing to simply a phone and toy store.
[doublepost=1528380903][/doublepost]

I don't see how having the first point is relevant, unless you use Macs from the 90's. I want that dark mode on my current Macs. And also, you're ignoring the part where it just looks ****ing beautiful.

As for the App Store, you're looking at it completely wrong. Developers have been asking for Mac App Store improvements ever since.... Mac App Store. The App Store is a way to get your app discovered, a way to distribute your app and a way for you to earn money as a developer - so that you actually get to make more apps. Want good apps on the Mac? This is one of the ways to do it. Not to mention they allow apps to access more of your Mac in a secure way, which is what brought BBEdit back. It's big. Finally, you missed the whole UIKit on Mac thing, which also has the potential to be huge.

As for the rest - talk about negativity. These are some genuine nice things. Nothing groundbreaking, but nice.

You should've summed your whole post into: I didn't like it.

The first one is relevant (as were the others) in that Apple is just re-inventing what they already had.
No new ideas. Now stunning innovations. Just a re-tredding of pre-existing functions that we already had.
The only "newish" thing they have is the dark mode gimmick. Which is in itself a bringing back of a capability we all had back in the 90's but was taken away.
So its like having a sun roof on your Civic in 1990, then now seeing that Honda will make cars with partially opening sun roof. Nothing new, but less than what we already had in the past.
Where are the amazing innovations that drew us all to Mac OS back in the day?

 

[iFanaddic]

In the video there was a preview of the dynamic wallpaper with a slider changing between day to night - anyone know where I find that preview capability?

apple.com

 

[blodyholy]

There are ways around that!

Unfortunately, the obvious one (replacing the machine) isn't in the budget. Oh well, like it or lump it I guess.

 

[aevan]

The first one is relevant (as were the others) in that Apple is just re-inventing what they already had.
No new ideas. Now stunning innovations. Just a re-tredding of pre-existing functions that we already had.
The only "newish" thing they have is the dark mode gimmick. Which is in itself a bringing back of a capability we all had back in the 90's but was taken away.
So its like having a sun roof on your Civic in 1990, then now seeing that Honda will make cars with partially opening sun roof. Nothing new, but less than what we already had in the past.
Where are the amazing innovations that drew us all to Mac OS back in the day?

I don't think we'll see "amazing innovations" in the world of desktop computing any more. And we don't need to. I want my computers to be reliable, polished experiences. What did you expect? Even phones are improving predictably. Next amazing innovation will be something that's not a PC or a phone. Also, honestly - I think people are throwing that word around too much and they often confuse it with "flashy".

As for Dark mode, it is a new coat of paint put on a modern design. I think macOS never looked as good. The fact that it's called "dark mode" and you're saying we already had that is like commenting a new artwork from a painter and saying "we already had paintings before. Nothing new here". It looks great. It gives a new look to a design set by OS X Yosemite. I don't want the dark mode we had back in the 90's, because that whole look is outdated. I want dark mode for this look. And that's what we got.

I want macOS to bring nice, quality of life improvements. And that's what Mojave brings. People are saying that it's one of the most stable Developer Previews they've seen. This is a really good sign. I want my Macs to work fast and reliable. And it adds some really useful functionality to the Mac. What did the last major Windows 10 update bring? Just one new big feature - Timeline. And it sucks, in my opinion.

Also, you're missing the fact that they are working on a way to make it easier for developers to make cross-platform apps. This is huge. Non-sandboxed apps in MAS? FaceTime for 32 people? New security features? These are all important things.


Mojave is fine. Sure, it's not groundbreaking - but, honestly, it seems to be quite a nice update.

 

[Greg3523]

How about the QUALITY of Spotlight results? Probably 50% of the time, I can type in something like "word" and it fails to show Microsoft Word as a result. Other times, it returns nothing at all. Mind baffling how inconsistent the results are with this critical search function.