Mac

In a nutshell, once you have macOS Mojave installed:

• Bring up System Preferences
• Select Desktop & Screen Saver
• Click the Desktop tab
• Find a picture with the dynamic desktop icon (a circle with a parabola in the middle) in the upper left corner. Click to select.

As of beta 2, there is only one dynamic desktop set, the one they demoed in the WWDC keynote. But other people have successfully created their own, and seems likely to me we’ll see more before the final Mojave release.

As always, this is beta software, so backup before you install, then proceed with caution.

Jason Snell:

For a few years now, it’s seemed that any forward movement macOS might make was coming in lockstep with Apple’s other platforms, most notably iOS. What was new to the Mac was generally something that was also new to iOS, or was previously available on iOS.

With macOS Mojave, available today to the general public as a part of a public beta, the story is different. macOS Mojave feels like a macOS update that’s truly about the Mac, extending features that are at the core of the Mac’s identity. At the same time, macOS Mojave represents the end of a long era (of stability or, less charitably, stagnation) and the beginning of a period that could completely redefine what it means to use a Mac.

Is macOS Mojave the latest chapter of an ongoing story, the beginning of a new one, or the end of an old one? It feels very much like the answer is yes and yes and yes.

This is a remarkable walkthrough of the macOS Mojave beta: well written, well organized, and nicely peppered with illustrations and animated GIFs. Terrific job by Jason Snell.

In a nutshell, this article talks you through the process of using Time Machine to fetch an old copy of your history file.

Take a look, file away for that future need. Good stuff.

[VIDEO] Per usual, Jeff Benjamin does a wonderful job walking through macOS Mojave (embedded in the main Loop post). So much new stuff. Love the new screenshot capabilities. Another tick towards iOS with the screenshot hanging around in a floating window for you to edit.

Paul Stamatiou:

Against my better judgement, I decided to give tablets one more chance. On the last day of a vacation that started in Rwanda and ended in the UK, I walked into the Regent Street Apple Store in London and purchased a 12.9″ iPad Pro and Smart Keyboard.

That was a few months ago. A few months in which my 13″ MacBook Pro has not even been powered up once. Any new gadget novelty has long since worn off and I’m still loving and using this iPad Pro daily.

What changed this time around?

Let me be clear about something. Though I often write about why I am still on a MacBook and the things that prevent me from moving full-time to an iPad Pro, I would love to make that move. I would love for an iPad to fill all my needs. I own a number of iPads and use them all the time.

Every time I read one of these stories, I dig down to see if, perhaps, the time has arrived. I do see us getting closer, but there are still a few things that make the MacBook my central computing device.

From Paul:

The viewing angle of the iPad Pro is not adjustable. You just get the two modes and that’s it. It’s okay most of the time but on a few occasions (usually when I’m slouching in a chair…) I have found myself stuffing something behind the iPad Pro to prop it up a bit more.

And:

Rather trivial but it’s hard to use the keyboard in a more relaxed, casual couch setting without placing a hard surface underneath.

The MacBook is its own platform. You could balance it on your lap, a small tray table (think airplane), even on a soft patch of grass. The iPad keyboard combo is not stiff enough to work on non rigid surfaces. Sure, I can use my iPad anywhere, but to type at speed, I need the keyboard, and the iPad keyboard combo requires a rigid surface.

More from Paul:

Repetitively placing a cursor or selecting text is a chore. It’s tedious to constantly move your hand from the keyboard up to the middle of the screen as opposed to a closer adjacent mouse as you have become accustomed to with a computer.

The text editing thing is the one thing I can’t get past. I would love to write a Loop post on my iPad. But typing and editing anything more than a paragraph is a chore on my iPad. I wish I could solve this. I want to believe!

All told, Paul made the transition. Terrific read, lots and lots of interesting detail, all written on the iPad Pro.

Nice job by Bryan M. Wolfe, iDownloadBlog. I came away from this thinking the core, recently rewritten iOS App Store code was repurposed for macOS Mojave. Made me wonder if the iOS to macOS Marzipan framework was at all involved here.

And, no matter, the results are excellent. Take a look.

Read all about it in Apple’s official Mojave press release.

The new Mac App Store is a wonderful redesign, a thoughtful follow-on to the completely redesigned iOS App Store.

Mojave Dark Mode really pops, as does the new Dark Mode version of Xcode. All of this design progress, combined with the announcement of a process for quickly porting iOS apps to the Mac expected for developer release at next year’s WWDC, really makes me hopeful for a rebirth of the Mac.

I look forward to Apple getting out in front of the butterfly keyboard issue, and to the official release of a new generation of MacBooks and MacBooks Pro. Oh yeah, and how about some hints on the functional approach and timing of that new Mac Pro.

Are you still dependent on an older, 32-bit app? If so, the linked how-to from iMore should help. Pretty interesting.

There was a river of stories about the iMac’s 20 year anniversary yesterday. Start off with Jim Dalrymple’s nostalgic look back.

Another piece I really enjoyed was Jason Snell’s The original iMac: 20 years since Apple changed its fate.

It’s hard to believe today that a Steve Jobs product presentation would be met with indifference, but there was a huge amount of skepticism about Apple’s product announcements back in early 1998. Though there were definitely signs that the company was turning it around, I also recall being summoned to Apple product events where nothing much at all was announced. Regardless, only the editor in chief of Macworld, Andy Gore, even bothered to go to the announcement at the Flint Center that day.

As soon as the event ended, I got a phone call—I was working at home that day—and was told to immediately get in to the office, for an all-hands-on-deck meeting, because Apple had announced a new computer that was going to change everything. I have to give Andy credit—the moment he saw the iMac he knew it was going to be huge. We tore up our magazine issue in the matter of about a day in order to get first word about the iMac out to people in the days before instant Apple news was a thing.

And:

Apple’s bold choice to rip out all of the Mac’s traditional ports—Mac serial, Apple Desktop Bus, and SCSI—and replace it with the USB standard that was just starting to emerge in the PC world, was also helpful. It made all of us longtime Mac users cringe—you think the iPhone losing its headphone jack was tough?—but in a stroke it made the iMac compatible with a huge range of peripherals previously only designed to be used on PCs, and it made accessory manufacturers happy because with a low amount of effort the stuff they were making for PCs could now also be sold to new iMac users.

Huge move. Terrific writeup by Jason Snell.

Another great read is 20 Years of iMac: Steve Jobs iconic internet machine that courageously reinvented Apple from Apple Insider’s Daniel Eran Dilger.

Before unveiling the new iMac, Jobs outlined how it would be different. For starters, Apple was using a modern 233MHz G3 processor, the same chip it had used in its entry-level Pro Power Mac G3 just six months prior at a price $300 higher.

That new generation Power PC chip boasted a performance edge “up to twice as fast” as Intel’s Pentium II processors at similar clock speeds, a line promoted by Apple in commercials portraying Intel’s chip as a snail and its chip designers dancing in “toasted” bunny suits.

And:

Jobs at the time noted that about “ten percent of homes in Silicon Valley were already being wired up for Cat 5,” while also poking at consumer PCs, few of which had any provision for networking built in.

Interesting to see how little built-in ethernet matters now. But at the time, the Cat 5 wave was in full force.

I was briefly struck with the sinking feeling that perhaps Apple had done something too risky. A translucent, rounded computer? A one-piece design that included a monitor? Don’t people want to open up the side of their PC and plug-in expansion cards, and won’t they want to replace the PC components faster than their monitor?

This moment of “oh no Apple… this is not conventional thinking” was one of the first times in my life where I had to step out of my comfortable understanding of What Had Always Worked Before and consider that maybe instead of being afraid of this new and different future unfolding in front of me, I could freshly evaluate whether it might actually be a big improvement over the status quo. Maybe the world was indeed ready for iMac’s bright candy-colored translucency that could distinguish Apple from all of the look-alike PCs running Windows.

I love all three of these writeups, from folks who were huge Apple fans at the time, and are still around covering the beat, still passionate all these years later.

One last bit to check out. Jump to this tweet by Horace Dediu, charting “units shipped” of all the major computing devices over the years. Pinch to zoom in on the chart. Lots of interesting data there.

The iMac inflection point is highlighted, but check out the performance of the Windows PC, the overall Mac performance, Android, iPhone, iPad. Fascinating to see this overlaid over time. Nice job, Horace.

Zac Hall, 9to5Mac:

There are a lot of little tweaks in macOS that I rely on to make a Mac feel like my own. Placing frequently accessed folders on the right side of the Dock, turning off auto-correct, and turning up mouse and trackpad tracking speed are all in this category for me.

A rather hidden but critical example is Hot Corners. My Mac just feels broken with Hot Corners disabled, and my workflow is severely slowed. Here’s how it works.

First thing first, I couldn’t agree more. Hot Corners, part of Mission Control, is an incredibly valuable part of the Mac interface. I expect most of the folks reading this are aware of this longstanding Mac feature. But if you have never taken the time to set this up, or if you are critical support for other, less knowledgable or just plain newer Mac folks, jump on over to Zac’s article and pass the knowledge along.

One thing that really appeals to me about Hot Corners is a bit of science, wrapped up under the title Fitts’ Law. From the Fitts’ Law Wikipedia page:

This scientific law predicts that the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the ratio between the distance to the target and the width of the target. Fitts’s law is used to model the act of pointing, either by physically touching an object with a hand or finger, or virtually, by pointing to an object on a computer monitor using a pointing device.

If you have to wheel your mouse all the way across the screen to home in on a link, button, or menu title, Fitt’s law kicks in. But wheeling over to a corner is super easy, requires almost no steering. And that’s why Hot Corners is so powerful. You have four easy to get to places on your screen, each of which can be assigned some specific function.

Read Zac’s piece, set up Hot Corners if you haven’t already. It’s worth it.