
MacOS 10.14 Mojave Reviewed - feross
https://arstechnica.com/?p=1334615
======
tom_
Obviously too late for this article, but here's a general tip: if you're going
to show a bunch of comparison screen grabs, or before/after screen shots, and
the like - e.g.,
[https://arstechnica.com/features/2018/09/macos-10-14-mojave-...](https://arstechnica.com/features/2018/09/macos-10-14-mojave-
the-ars-technica-review/12/#h3) \- don't put a scroll effect in. Don't put a
fade down then fade up effect in. It makes it too hard to see the difference.
Just flick instantly between one and the next.

(Possibly related: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2012/02/15/why-does-
adobe...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2012/02/15/why-does-adobe-
photoshop-differentiate-between-undo-and-step-backwards/))

~~~
Stratoscope
That reminds me of something that happened when I was working at Adobe around
2002. A coworker saw me using PaintShop Pro to sort through a few photos, and
he said, "But... What? You work for Adobe!"

I explained, "I'd love to use Photoshop, but it fails to do the very first
thing I need when I look at a batch of photos I shot in burst mode: flip back
and forth between them to see which is best."

PSP let me flip between two photos instantly so I could see which I liked;
Photoshop couldn't do that. Every time I used Ctrl+Tab to switch photos, it
first drew a placeholder checkerboard across the entire screen, and then it
slowly pulled in the new photo block by block.

Of course, there was probably some good technical reason for this: maybe some
legacy Photoshop code designed for even older computers with little memory.
But that didn't help me.

The funny thing about your (valid!) complaint is that browsers are perfectly
capable of doing the right thing for you when you replace one image with
another - an instant visual swap. But instead, people add scrolling and fading
and other effects just to show off how "designy" their site is.

~~~
Amygaz
If you want a webby award, that’s what is needed.

------
xoa
Like iOS 12 very promising overall from the sound of it, and a genuine step
forward from previous years in the fundamentals of speed and stability just as
they promised to work towards. One continuing (though not new at all to the
release) disappointment I have with Apple though:

> _The end of OpenGL and OpenCL on the Mac_

A solid summary of the situation, but to me where Apple really deserves blame
there is not having MoltenGL and MoltenVK (and perhaps some theoretical
MoltenCL too) as 1st party projects. I completely understand them wanting
their own directly writable and controlled low level graphics language and
having that be the interface layer. They are pretty vertically integrated and
are now even doing their own GPUs, but even before that on the Mac they have
long built the OS very strongly around GPU capabilities (for better and for
worse, basic VM experience is very mediocre if you don't have a hardware GPU
to passthrough). If anything I'm mildly surprised in retrospect Metal wasn't
done earlier, OpenGL wasn't working for them and it's that big a deal.
Microsoft invested in their own graphics layer for Windows ages earlier.

But controlling their own low level layer doesn't mean that higher level non-
proprietary interfaces shouldn't still be supported on top. Part of the point
should be to enable abstraction there. Apple is a big enough player and
platform that this shouldn't be a zero-sum game, and their perfectly
understandable strategic concerns addressed by Metal don't preclude OpenGL
continuing to be officially supported as a layer on top of Metal. Apple could
have even done it as another open source project of which they were the
primary sponsor even if they wanted to manage it that way.

This may be just another symptom of their unusual startup-type culture which
lets them hyperfocus on specific products but reduces their corporate ability
to multitask, but it's still a shame. It could have been just about supporting
newer and better stuff going forward, not taking something away. Even if
MolenVK/MoltenGL ultimately fill some of that void I don't think that should
have been relegated to 3rd party only.

~~~
monocasa
I don't blame them for this. They want to get out of OpenGL because how much
of a maintenance nightmare it has become due to non technical concerns. To
ship top end OpenGL (and DirectX) drivers these days, it's more or less
required that you write tons of code that recognizes the application that's
calling your driver and fixes bugs in their code. Nvidia starting doing this,
and now all end users see is that programs work on Nvidia and not AMD (or
Apple as they write their own drivers), and blame everyone other than Nvidia.
The switch to these new Mantle derived APIs is as much if not more about
resetting those expectations of responsibilities than the technical benefits
that these APIs provide (which AZDO 80/20 ruled most of the way to anyway).

Supporting a MoltenGL as a first class item defeats the whole purpose of
moving away from OpenGL to begin with from their perspective. OpenCL never got
the critical mass in their eyes, and someone else is already taking on
MoltenVK.

~~~
ancarda
Wait a sec... My gaming PC (2x AMD R9 290X, 8 GB video memory) is absolutely
awful with a lot of (esp. Ubisoft) games like Assassins Creed or Watch_Dogs. I
just assumed the games weren't optimized for AMD hardware. That is based
partly off the Nvidia logos that are shown during startup and in the graphical
settings menu.

There's also graphical issues at high resolutions. I've been planning on
buying an Nvidia GPU so I can actually play games at a decent frame rate.

Are you telling me part (or all?) of the problem is bad drivers? I got the
drivers from Windows Update rather than from AMD so they would just update
themselves and be the correct ones.

~~~
monocasa
In my mind, the problem is bad code from developers like Ubisoft, and the
willingness of Nvidia to expend tons of engineering effort to hack around them
on a case by case basis. It's not really fair to call standards compliant
drivers "bad" in my mind.

AMD pushed Vulkan (and Mantle previously) hard because it lets them break the
cycle due to the layering concept in the driver stack. Intrinsic in how those
drivers work is allowing end users to stick API verification layers in at load
time. This will allow AMD to go to the press and say "see, it's not us, it's
the application developer that wrote terrible code" without leaking any
internal IP of those other shops.

~~~
ksec
That is one of the reason why I think Metal is the right way to go. I can't
understand how we will be able to sustain the current development of GPU, when
more than half of the cost are in software drivers development and cost % is
constantly moving up. Another reason why the Desktop GPU market is so hard to
break in, as have we seen times and times again, from 3Dfx with poor Direct X
Drivers, S3, 3D Labs, Matrox, PowerVR etc. But I tried making this point with
an Intel GPU engineers and he said my point is moot. May be he knows something
I don't.

------
pippy
>ending support for 32 bit apps >deprecating openGL

My opinion on APIs have gone from new and bleeding edge to 'support it till
the sun burns out'. Computers and meant to work. on linux or mac, no
executable over 5 years old seems to work. But if download a .exe from the
early 90's on a PC, it often just works.

In 100 years, the windows API and .exe are going to be the lingua franca of
programs. there are many indications this is happening, valve baking WINE into
steam, the fragmented package managers on linux, and no common runtime
environment taking off.

~~~
mr_toad
Windows is a desktop OS, and the desktop is dying. In 100 years I’d say the
chance of anything running Windows would be about the same as the likelihood
of it running VMS.

~~~
pjmlp
Laptops and 2-1 are the new desktop, and the large majority runs Windows.

~~~
jsgo
I love my MacBook Pro. Really, I do. And chances are, I'll probably use some
iteration of a PC (in this case, I use an eGPU so I could replace my desktop
entirely) until I, well, stop using hardware. I also use macOS and Windows on
it.

That being said, I will eventually die. Now, the question becomes what are the
people that follow after me going to be using. I have kids in school: both use
Chromebooks for school work, in one case a PS4 for gaming, and hand-me-down
iPhones/iPhone SEs for social, gaming, and the like. Could they eventually
need a PC? Possibly, depending on their career path/interests and the level of
support for iPads, Chromebooks, etc. at the time. But they don't need it now.
And I know people who are my age and older who limit themselves to
iPhones/iPads for technology beyond the TV. None of these things are running
Windows.

~~~
pjmlp
Chromebooks are an US school phenomenon, hardly spotted anywhere else.

~~~
jsgo
I can only speak for the US market I guess, but they haven't found a real need
for a PC/Mac outside of what a Chromebook can do, so at the end of the day, I
don't feel it bodes well for PC/Mac long term.

I'm a developer at work for internal applications (and some external). All of
my non-server running things are web applications. They could be accessed by
Chromebooks instead of the hp Windows 7 laptops we use now. I doubt we'd
switch off PCs due to familiarity at the very least, but we don't _need_ them.

------
noncoml
Dark mode is really refreshing for the eyes.

Tab completion now shows dot files as well; ".DS_Store" is there everywhere. I
wonder if they have a plan to do away with the .DS_Store anytime soon.

~~~
neilsimp1
I've never owned an Apple anything and yet I swear I still find .DS_Store
files on my Windows/Linux machines from time to time.

~~~
bobwaycott
Assuming you deal with software, I'd guess that's because someone has
committed them to a repo. It's one of the reasons Mac-based devs should always
have a global .gitignore file.

------
kccqzy
> But Core Storage, the technology responsible for keeping the most frequently
> accessed files on the SSD, can only see data on your drive at the block
> level, not the file level. It can’t tell the difference between an app that
> needs to be launched quickly or a document that doesn’t need a lot of extra
> speed; all it can see is how frequently blocks are accessed. APFS changes
> that. Fusion Drives can now move files to the SSD based not just on how
> frequently they’re accessed, but also based on how much the type of file
> will benefit from an SSD. APFS will store all file metadata on your SSD,
> too, speeding up Spotlight searches and metadata lookups in the Get Info
> window.

Can someone more knowledgeable than me explain how in the world this is an
improvement? The old Core Storage model perfectly makes sense to me: it
strictly operates beneath the level of a file system, combining multiple
physical volumes into a logical volume family which contains a logical volume.
It moves blocks between SSD and HDD using frequency of access. Now, why should
we suddenly need to look at the type of file to determine which block device
to store the data? Even if it's an application, but if it's not frequently
used, why should we keep it on SSD?

And filesystem metadata should be even more obvious. Since basically all file
operations need the directory entries and the inode information, the old Core
Storage-based system will automatically move them to the SSD. Why do we need
to explicitly tell the filesystem to do this?

Overall this feels like a step backward to me. I like systems that are dynamic
and self-adjusting, not those with hard-coded rules and heuristics.

Also I'm a bit disappointed as the author, while producing a fine review to
read, didn't quite do the deep-dive I had expected for a system that's
arguably the most important in an OS—a system in charge of storing user data.

~~~
coldtea
> _Now, why should we suddenly need to look at the type of file to determine
> which block device to store the data?_

We don't "need" to, it's an extra optimization.

> _Even if it 's an application, but if it's not frequently used, why should
> we keep it on SSD?_

Because if we have the space to spare on the SSD, we'd appreciate the faster
launch when we do try to use that app. And for other types of files it can now
decide to move them or not move them based on the benefit from the faster
load, not just the frequency of access (and thus optimize the SSD use).

------
kccqzy
> Let’s talk Gatekeeper first. In High Sierra, Gatekeeper controls access to
> Location Services, Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, and Photos—any app that
> wants access to any of that data needs to ask for it and be granted
> permission first, and the app should fail over gracefully (i.e. not crash)
> when that permission is denied.

This is just wrong. Gatekeeper is not the iOS-like privacy controls. It's
about enforcing apps to be from the MAS or identified developers.
[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202491](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT202491)

~~~
chrisfinazzo
Technically, Andrew's still in the clear as Gatekeeper is a system facility
for controlling what can be installed and run on your machine. Permissions for
access to system services and app databases is the only thing that's changed.

------
maxxxxx
Is the reworked App Store faster? I always wonder how they could make it so
slow without any feedback while it navigates between pages.

~~~
Androider
It's faster, but still incredulously slow. For example, when you launch it
it's just a black rectangle for 3-5 seconds (2018 Macbook Pro). And the UX is
all over the place, with 3-4 different ways to go back/close whatever you're
looking at. The way you navigate reviews with side-swipes might sense on a
phone but makes no sense whatsoever on the Mac.

You can tell it's made to spec and with zero developer love softening the
rough corners, because no developer who cares would make a full-screen
screenshot view mode you cannot exit with Esc.

~~~
kkarakk
>The way you navigate reviews with side-swipes might sense on a phone but
makes no sense whatsoever on the Mac.

it makes complete sense, I switched over to mac in 2017 and as I got used to
the gestures I tried them everywhere. if i'd found one place where they didn't
work I would have abandoned them. the side swipes also work in Netflix on
chrome on Mac. I really LOVE this aspect of the mac. gestures are functionally
useless on windows coz of the uber patchy support for them....

------
makecheck
The pop-up permission boxes don’t make a great first impression since I saw at
least 5 of them within 2 minutes and they tended to have really obscure
descriptions like access to “System Events”.

While probably technically much more difficult, maybe they could have the
first Mojave launch of every app occur in a separate and invisible “everything
allowed” area, where the system just pretends to allow things and tracks
everything that the app did on launch that would require permission. And then,
it can display _one_ box with a summary of features that seem to be required
for that app, relaunching the app in the real system sandbox if approved.

~~~
saagarjha
How would the system simulate user interaction required to get to a point
where the popup would be necessary?

~~~
rbanffy
An application could access the protected APIs it needs during a first run in
order to force the authorization dialogs. If I were designing an API for that,
I'd allow a single call to declare as many permissions as needed, so all
authorization dialogs would be triggered at once.

~~~
saagarjha
But then you just have a model where an app asks for a dozen permissions
upfront, which may not even make sense in context. For example, should your
bank's app (assuming it had one) get camera access? On the surface this seems
a bit strange, until you realize that it has check scanning functionality.

~~~
jedieaston
You could pop up a box that says "Bank of America is asking for access to the
following parts of your Mac:"

Followed by a table with the function (I.e Camera, mic), a description from
the developer about why, and a checkbox to accept or deny.

~~~
tinus_hn
You are more likely to understand the reason an app wants a permission if it
is requested the moment it tries to use it.

The behavior you describe is the old Android take it or leave it approach. It
doesn’t work because then all apps refuse to work if they don’t get ridiculous
permissions.

------
qwerty456127
What are the pros and cons of upgrading to Mojave for a hacker using a
Mid-2013 MacBook Air?

Is that true that Mojave looks ugly on non-retina displays, won't allow your
scripts to access some stuff previous versions allowed, integrates with
Apple's internet services and DRMs more tightly and can have problems with
playing old Windows games like Fallout 3 with Wine?

~~~
Eric_WVGG
You can preview "ugly" by turning off "Use LCD font smoothing where available"
and restarting any app to check it out. It's subjective, lots of folks
complained about subpixel being ugly when it was first introduced.

The Apple iCloud stuff is still optional. A "hacker" should have no trouble
with the Terminal commands necessary to disable SIP.

Dunno about Fallout but Boot Camp and VMWare are still around.

~~~
qwerty456127
Thanks.

> Boot Camp and VMWare are still around

At least it's too space-consuming to maintain a separate Windows system on a
128 GiB SSD, Wine/CrossOver feels a better solution in the cases where it can
manage.

~~~
poyu
Better yet, use SteamPlay

[https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/)

------
whalesalad
Direct download link: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/macos-
mojave/id1398502828?mt...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/macos-
mojave/id1398502828?mt=12)

------
noja
2FA with SMS was a standout weird choice from Apple. I hope they discourage
that quickly with a better alternative.

~~~
xoa
Yeah, maybe it's just a bow to practicality but if anything mildly surprised
regardless because they've gotten quite serious about their own HSM
implementation which is slowly starting to spread to more and more new Macs,
and it's effectively universal under iOS. I sort of expected given initial
thrusts like Apple Pay that they'd push hardware token usage way harder, with
either direct support for Macs with T-series chips already or else some tie-in
to iDevices. Ideally NitroStick/Yubikey/etc would come along for the ride and
Apple would work towards a framework that could be used with other HSMs beyond
their own, but at this point I'd take any major platform trying to move crypto
auth forward over passwords/sms/anything else at all.

~~~
chrisfinazzo
I think your first instinct is correct, here. While they probably would feel
safer if everybody was using Google Auth, Authy, or a physical device, it gets
around people having to explicitly copy tokens around which, IIRC has been
abused a fair bit in order to steal credentials.

------
butz
Still using El Capitan on my iMac. Should I upgrade directly to Mojave, or
wait a bit?

~~~
dexterbt1
Same boat. I'm still on Sierra and still have concerns as a colleague on High
Sierra almost hosed his system with APFS. Any stability issues on the new file
system?

~~~
chrisfinazzo
It's been mostly fine on High Sierra, but I did have one instance where my
inodes went wonky. Had to restore from backups as Disk Utility couldn't do
anything with it.

HFS+ was terrible, but at least I knew most of the ways in which it was
terrible.

~~~
dreamcompiler
People bitch and moan about HFS+ but I've never found anything particularly
objectionable about it, even after writing several filesystem utilities on top
of it.

I've always found Spotlight to be utter garbage, but that's not the fault of
HFS+.

~~~
chrisfinazzo
OK, so you're not just spewing nonsense, but it bears repeating that the
internals of HFS+ were horribly dated towards the end of its life. This
prevented them from adding features or fixing bugs in a way that would be
forward looking.

The system requirements for HFS and HFS+ reflected this and partially explain
why there was little progress for literally years at a time.

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/07/mac-
os-x-10-7/12/#hf...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/07/mac-
os-x-10-7/12/#hfs-problems)

Eventually, you have to start over.

~~~
dreamcompiler
Fair enough; thanks for educating me.

------
zbentley
This is a very good review, but it still makes me miss the ones John Siracusa
wrote.

He was(is!) a great writer, programmer, and colleague (separately, of course).
Hope he's up to something fun!

~~~
unspecified
If you're into podcasting, give ATP[1] a shot: John is one of the three hosts.
The other hosts are Casey Liss and Marco Arment (developer of Overcast).

John also has some other podcasts like Robot or Not[2] and Reconcilable
Differences[3], but ATP is by far my personal favorite.

[1] [http://atp.fm/](http://atp.fm/) [2]
[https://www.theincomparable.com/robot/](https://www.theincomparable.com/robot/)
[3] [https://www.relay.fm/rd](https://www.relay.fm/rd)

------
throwanem
Does it fix the hard crash/freeze issues around hibernation and FileVault?
That's pretty much all I care about; I _really do not like_ having to choose
between running a laptop without FDE and having to spend ten minutes going
from zero to usable every time I stick the stupid thing in my backpack for
more than fifteen minutes.

~~~
Spartan-S63
I run with full disk encryption and have never had this issue. I've never
heard of this issue either.

So, it just happens when your laptop goes into hibernation with FileVault
enabled?

~~~
throwanem
Yeah. Two laptops, actually, one whose FileVault activation preceded the
upgrade, one whose did not. Doesn’t matter which hibernation mode I use, 3 or
25 - either way, it reliably fails to either sleep or awaken cleanly; not sure
which, but the wake is a cold boot with no state restoration.

~~~
m_eiman
I had something similar, and IIRC it was fixed by reformatting the drive.
Tedious, but Time Machine helps.

------
saagarjha
> I wish the easy-to-use app icon wasn’t tucked away in the Utilities folder,
> but it does do a considerably better job of exposing screenshot and screen
> recording options that have been a part of the Mac for years.

Command+Shift+5?

> The way the Kids These Days are customizing their email is with emoji

Kids These Days don't use email. Or at least, often, that is.

------
bradgessler
The screenshot annotation UI is an abomination. It’s some weird mish-mash of
buttons that feels like a word processor instead of a really simple tool
that’s just an arrow + text with a white outline (like Skitch). I really hope
this gets fixed.

------
super_mario
Anyone else find dark mode stark? It was a bit shocking to see it and very
jarring after almost 2 decades of looking at various shades of sliver/gray
menubar and dock.

I now kind of miss the ability to have only dock, menubar, notifications side
bar, spotlight and HUD for brightness, volume be black.

This mode offered a great balance between classic window chrome and the too
much brightness you now get in "light" appearance mode.

I find I can't work in dark mode during daytime. Way too many reflections and
reading mail and PDFs in preview are too jarring. Black, beside white makes
each other stand out so much.

I think macOS is now least polished it has ever been.

------
Apocryphon
Is this the new El Capitan, which was the new Snow Leopard?

~~~
saagarjha
It’s very stable, if that’s what you’re asking.

------
yborg
Is it possible to upgrade without upgrading the boot filesystem to APFS? I
have a Fusion Drive, and don't have high confidence Apple got this right.

~~~
LeoPanthera
> don't have high confidence Apple got this right

I'd love to know why. The transition to APFS for all other devices has been
utterly seamless. Apple probably has a whole filesystem team. I wonder if you
have any special qualifications to justify why you think you know better?

~~~
yborg
>for all other devices

Yes, the solid state storage for which it is designed. The Fusion Drive by
definition includes rotating media and compounds this problem by involving 2
devices in a common logical storage device.

The APFS support for Fusion Drives was pulled from High Sierra for reasons
that were never explained so there were apparently issues, and without knowing
what those were it is impossible to evaluate how likely it is that these were
all resolved now.

~~~
mr_toad
They could have pulled it from Mojave too if they felt there were still
issues.

------
protomyth
If you use AppleScript to automate your finder, then I would wait a bit until
you have a really good idea how much work it is going to be to change things
to meet the new security changes. It is a non-trivial operation. Also, I
should probably give up any hope of Apple fixing any scripting errors in the
Finder since its still broken since Mavericks.

------
dirtylowprofile
On my MBP 2012 on every boot up the screen will flicker and I guess this is
just old age and normal? I guess this is the last update on 2012 model.

Also noticed the resolution is a little bit brighter and nicer for an old MBP.

------
cptnapalm
Having an older Mac Pro, I saw that it Mojave will do a firmware upgrade. I
won't be using MacOs, but will be running the installer for that. Thank you
Apple!

------
chooseaname
How's battery life on Mojave? My 2014 MBPro is still on El Capitan and doing
well, so not sure I'd upgrade if there's a battery hit.

~~~
robin_reala
I haven’t noticed any with the betas, nor seen anyone talking about it, but my
battery isn’t especially happy anyway on my 2012 Macbook Air so I’m used to
not expecting much.

------
mrcnkoba
I'm surprised that MacOS 10.14 release came almost unnoticed on HN.

------
plussed_reader
Does APFS still run like dog feces on a spinning platter drive in 10.13?

I have a bunch of older iMacs I have stuck at 10.12 for this reason.

~~~
close04
There's no reason to stay on 10.12 to avoid APFS. I tried a fresh install of
10.13 with APFS on a hard drive. I wasn't happy at all with the performance
especially at boot (for some reason). So I started over and went with HFS+.

I have no idea if APFS on Mojave behaves better but if it doesn't force the
file system upgrade (didn't check this yet) I see no reason to avoid Mojave.
APFS would make a lot more sense on an SSD but even with 0 improvement
(excluding visible performance drops here) at storage level the other features
alone should make the upgrade worth it.

