Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

macOS Sonoma Launching This Week With These New Features

For the first time ever, I won't be upgrading on release day. Ventura has been pretty stable for me on my work machine and the upgrade to Sonoma doesn't really bring anything to the table and sounds rather bloated. I did upgrade my phone to iOS17 and to be honest, I haven't noticed much of a difference from iOS16 - but maybe that's just the way I use my phone.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
  • Love
Reactions: parameter, Stormshadow, xodh and 1 other person
PhoenixAnhart said:
Yawn. I'll upgrade in exactly 12 months and not a second earlier. I NEED my Macs to be stable, (reasonably) bug free, and functional. It's the functional part that is even more critical than the bugs. I'm sick of all the issues I've had in the past from this – even waiting 6 months isn't enough for them to patch the most glaring issues anymore.

If Apple switched to releasing new versions of macOS to every two years, no one would care. No one is clamouring for these new features, tbh. Nothing is stopping them from updating FaceTime, for example, as independent apps; they already do it for Safari even.

These new versions of macOS every single year is just a marketing exercise for new Macs, and to make us used to free updates to gradually bring obsolescence to older hardware.
Click to expand...
Same here. I just updated to Ventura. A year-old and stable OS.
 
  • Like
Reactions: parameter
I've enjoyed the public betas and small tweaks. One thing I don't like is when I'm using desktop widgets, if you have an external monitor, it seems to save files to the desktop on the monitor to the right of the main desktop instead of under the widgets. So it constantly pushes files under the apps I have on my right monitor.

In case you're wondering, I only ever save files to the desktop, not the downloads folder.
 
  • Like
Reactions: parameter and Pinkyyy 💜🍎
BellSystem said:
There were already useful third party widgets at the time and a whole dev kit for them. The AppStore is irrelevant. Widgets were not an idea of Tim Cook’s leadership….they were a Jobs thing. Either Apple failed to market them, or they were a stupid idea for a desktop OS. Widgets were essentially the visual model for the first iPhone apps. I think they were useful in prepping people for the iPhone app experience. Today it just seems stupid and out of place. I bet today they are being used in the opposite way. A tool to get people used to the next wave of either a more dumbed down macOS interface they want to push later….or for the headset UI. There is a reason and it’s not because Tim made them better.
Click to expand...
I hardly think those horrible widgets (they were advertised extensively at times and formed notable portions of some keynotes by Jobs) were prepping people for iPhones. Love to hear your version of a useful widget on the previous system.

The App Store, and particularly, it’s developers, provide a far more useful means to provide live updates in our most used apps, unlike the Apple widgets of yesteryear. The previous widgets were pretty pathetic and good riddance to them In comparison to the latest launch.

They failed previously and have only been introduced, in a similar fashion to the iOS versions just now because they have evolved and gotten way better under recent changes to the OS.

As far as dumbing down MacOS… You don’t have to use them if you think your nexus to iPhones makes them dumb.
 
  • Disagree
Reactions: BellSystem
Y'all,

It's heart-warming reading the "gloom and doom from the tomb" on MR this rainy Monday morning! 😂

My advice: Cheer up. Sonoma's fine, I've been running the betas since day 1. There have been some issues along the way obviously and they have been fixed. I prefer the current release candidate to Ventura and welcome having it on both my macs.
 
  • Like
  • Haha
  • Love
Reactions: CalMin, Pinkyyy 💜🍎, montuori and 1 other person
On-screen widgets is the feature that I want most, mostly for the weather widget. I have an iPhone 7+ next to one of my monitors and it is on all the time displaying the weather widget. Having the weather widget on one of my monitors would mean retiring the iPhone 7+ from my desk.
 
  • Like
Reactions: orbital~debris
Doesn't seem like much of a update. Even the "the little things" thread is thin on updates. Out of the top ten things they list are screen savers??? really. And widgets which everyone will play with for a week and then turn off.

Maybe Apple is holding back for when they chop off the intel support.
 
I severely regret upgrading to Ventura recently, Apple has consistently broken basic stuff with every major OS update... I have to do stupid **** like closing the lid on the Macbook after unplugging the external display, otherwise the laptop screen only shows a third of anything and there's no other way to force refresh displays after switching user accounts.
 
  • Like
Reactions: parameter and Pinkyyy 💜🍎
DMG35 said:
I really wish Apple would stop with the yearly OSX releases. Its exhausting wondering if your apps are all going to be compatible and in the end I just end up waiting several months until I know everything works and there won't be an app I need that hasn't been updated or crashes regularly.

Just refine what we have and go on a two year cycle of upgrades. Then they will seem more significant.
Click to expand...
This makes a lot of sense and it is also what would be better in the long run. It would be time to think more about degrowth and slowing down unnecessary yearly innovations. We are at a point that we don't need new tech all the time. Big breakthrough don't come out that often.
 
  • Love
  • Like
Reactions: Imperial926 and Pinkyyy 💜🍎
BellSystem said:
There were already useful third party widgets at the time and a whole dev kit for them. The AppStore is irrelevant. Widgets were not an idea of Tim Cook’s leadership….they were a Jobs thing. Either Apple failed to market them, or they were a stupid idea for a desktop OS. Widgets were essentially the visual model for the first iPhone apps. I think they were useful in prepping people for the iPhone app experience. Today it just seems stupid and out of place.
Click to expand...

Widgets arguably date back to desk accessories from the very early Mac OS days. Back then, they were partially a necessity because there wasn't proper multitasking, and that sort of applies to iOS/iPadOS as well, where only one app can fully be interacted with at a time. But the other reason to have widgets is… practicality? You don't always want to run a full-blown app. Much like you sometimes want your stuff just running as a status item / menu extra in the menu bar, not in the Dock.

I don't think it has a lot to do with Cook or Jobs, though I suppose it's possible Jobs liked Konfabulator and/or Dashboard.

As for actual usage, I find it funny how both Apple and Microsoft struggle to find the right interaction model. Windows had a sidebar in Vista, then 7 has them on the entire desktop, then 8 has them on the start screen, and 10 and 11 have them in the start menu. macOS 10.4 had a desktop overlay, then later on they made it an option to make that a separate space, then they moved it to a sidebar, and now we're back to having them on the desktop. Wild.
 
  • Like
Reactions: MacHeritage, Pinkyyy 💜🍎 and steve09090
BellSystem said:
There were already useful third party widgets at the time and a whole dev kit for them. The AppStore is irrelevant. Widgets were not an idea of Tim Cook’s leadership….they were a Jobs thing. Either Apple failed to market them, or they were a stupid idea for a desktop OS. Widgets were essentially the visual model for the first iPhone apps. I think they were useful in prepping people for the iPhone app experience. Today it just seems stupid and out of place. I bet today they are being used in the opposite way. A tool to get people used to the next wave of either a more dumbed down macOS interface they want to push later….or for the headset UI. There is a reason and it’s not because Tim made them better.
Click to expand...
Widgets we’re a Konfabulator thing, buying Konfabulator was a Jobs thing.
 
  • Like
Reactions: chucker23n1
Super disappointed with the Lock Screen, the whole point of it is to LOG IN. The user selection and password entry field are so small and to the far edge of the screen, terrible decision.
 
  • Like
Reactions: parameter and tomekwsrod
Tonight I'll be doing a Time Machine backup on my M1 MacBook Air in anticipation of upgrading it tomorrow evening. But I may not bother doing an OCLP install of it on my 2015 Retina 15" MacBook Pro; let it still use Ventura.
 
chucker23n1 said:
Jobs didn't buy it. Yahoo! did, and renamed it Yahoo! Widgets. (Then, at some point, both Google and Yahoo! stopped making desktop apps.)
Click to expand...
That’s a good point but Dashboard was functionally and visually so similar to Konfabulator that it’s hard to say that it was a Jobs creation. And they’re both an evolution of the DeskAccessory concept.
 
  • Like
Reactions: orbital~debris, Pinkyyy 💜🍎 and chucker23n1
darngooddesign said:
That’s a good point but Dashboard was functionally and visually so similar to Konfabulator that it’s hard to say that it was a Jobs creation. And they’re both an evolution of the DeskAccessory concept.
Click to expand...

Yeah, agreed. Given how Dashboard shipped a few years after Konfabulator, it seemed to ride on the coattails of a widgets hype that Apple didn't start. (Then again… Windows Longhorn builds from 2002 already had the sidebar with gadgets. Hmm.)

And yes, you can ultimately trace it back to thinks like desk accessories.

I don't even know whether Jobs had any particular feelings on the feature. Maybe he didn't even like it, but didn't hate it enough to argue for it to be left out.
 
  • Like
Reactions: orbital~debris, Pinkyyy 💜🍎 and darngooddesign
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back