back to article Apple's dark-horse macOS Mojave is out (and it's already pwned)

Apple has posted the annual full overhaul of the Mac operating system, this time focusing on a redesign of the look and feel of the interface. The 10.14 incarnation of macOS, known as Mojave, has been released into general availability. It includes new features, interface updates, and security patches – though at least one …

  1. Joe W Silver badge

    Lame name :(

    I liked it better when they named the releases after big cats!

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge
      1. David Austin

        Re: Lame name :(

        I had the exact same problem;

        I used to do tech for a legal firm where all the computers were named after cats (Lion, Jaguar, etc.) It was fine when they were in a single office, but by the time I left, there were in three buildings, and putting a new system on the network normally involved a frantic trawl through Wikipedia (Caracal, Toyger...) or IMDB (TopCat, SnagglePuss...).

        That was before going to the user, and making sure the name didn't upset them (The new HR Hire was *Not* happy getting Bigglesworth...)

      2. gnasher729 Silver badge

        Re: Lame name :(

        "They ran out of names."

        I would have liked Smilodon.

    2. 45RPM Silver badge

      Re: Lame name :(

      I still have a soft spot for Mac OS “Harmony”. Happy days.

      And while we’re talking code names, I still run Hulk Hogan on my Green Jade and Speedbump 650 computers. Harmony runs on Vail.

    3. Tigra 07

      Re: Lame name :(

      I quite like the sound of Mac OS Bobcat, or Tabby...

  2. Empire of the Pussycat

    they peaked at snow leopard

    some text

    1. Hans 1

      Re: they peaked at snow leopard

      They peaked at Mountain Lion, obviously ...

      1. Bibbit

        Re: they peaked at snow leopard

        That is because it was the mane distribution.

    2. Korev Silver badge

      Re: they peaked at snow leopard

      "they peaked at snow leopard"

      You're Lion, the best was "Jagwire"*

      *Bringing back an old El Reg joke

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Re: they peaked at snow leopard

      > they peaked at snow leopard

      Plenty of names left...

      El Capitan -> El general de brigada -> El Presidente

  3. Bibbit

    Dare I dream?

    Could it be that my MBP's bluetooth will connect to my headphones with this update? I have been waiting since 2012. I like to hope it was what Steve was working on before he passed on. Never lose faith.

    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: Dare I dream?

      IIRC Bluetooth was broken in Lion and the fix was only available in Mountain Lion. That fixed the problems I had with Lion but I've never found Bluetooth on MacOS to be particularly reliable. For example, music playback will stop unexpectedly after a couple of hours. Basically, Apple expects you only to use it for its keyboard and mouse and to buy expensive "Air" branded accessories for anything else.

  4. Herby

    Wasn't there a "Windows Mojave"?

    It was an ad ploy that was actually Vista, and all those who tried it "liked" it.

    Explanation link here.

    Of course, at least they are doing releases that actually work, something the boys in Redmond have difficulties at times.

  5. Jerome

    The pretend hack is fake

    He's just running an app called 'BreakMojave" that he created.

    If he had previously authorized the app to access the Contacts data, it is very normal that it can!

    Launching the app from the Terminal is just a diversion and does not change a thing.

    1. ThomH

      Re: The pretend hack is fake

      Have you any evidence for that assertion?

      I'll probably update my machine to Mojave within the next week or so, but not because I imagine it to be the new pinnacle of computer security.

  6. Charlie Clark Silver badge

    No rush

    As with most operating system updates it's never advisable to install them until at least the first set of fixes is available and MacOS is no exception. Invariably something is broken and "security" has changed.

    Mojave looks singularly uninspiring, which is why the "dark theme" gets so much attention. Wonder if it's heralding some MacBooks with OLED screens? Not that the annual updates should be featured packed: slow and steady is fine with me.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: No rush

      I installed it on my laptop for shits and giggles. Hard pressed to find anything new apart from dark mode, ported iOS apps, and my spinning rust drive changed to the new file system.

      Dark mode and the desert background looks decidedly Ubuntu... perhaps Apple can make brown the colour of success?

      1. TRT Silver badge

        Re: No rush

        I installed it in Beta out of desperation. It fixed an issue I had with overheating and repeated kernel panics. All told, it's OK. Quite like Home as an app.

    2. RPF

      Re: No rush

      Good advice.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: No rush

      Already we have fools, sorry, delightful colleagues, moaning about their "need" to upgrade to the latest point-zero new and shiny (and probably slippery), despite the fact that, every year, we tell them that probably a fair chunk of their actually necessary programs that they use to do their actual work will probably feature "interesting" compatibility bugs and will break in unexpected ways until the program developers get around to releasing updates, and, furthermore, that if they go ahead, and break it, we reserve the right to say "told you so" and shrug from a safe distance.

      (Apparently the future of scientific research clearly depends on having this latest point-zero new and shiny right here and right now. Gives you faith in their research outcomes, doesn't it?)

    4. N2

      Re: No rush

      slow and steady is fine with me

      Me too, not long upgraded my early 2011 MBP to El Cap & alls well.

  7. Arthur the cat Silver badge
    WTF?

    A Mojave new feature

    On Apple's web site:

    Work on a file without even opening it.

    As various text adventure programs would say "you must tell me how to do that".

    1. Steve K

      Re: A Mojave new feature

      Probably just means deleting it....

    2. katrinab Silver badge

      Re: A Mojave new feature

      I presume it means something along the lines of:

      Someone emails you a spreadsheet. You can make some changes to it directly from your email program without saving the attachment, opening up a spreadsheet program, saving the file, and attaching it to another email.

      I don't know if you can do this, but an idea of what "working on a file without opening it" might look like.

      1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

        Re: A Mojave new feature

        You can make some changes to it directly from your email program without saving the attachment

        Taligent and the much underused "Services" menu rebadged as QuickLook. Apple have definitely put a lot of work into QuickLook over the last few years. Of course, if you can work with the builtin tools then there's even less reason for you to access the file system and, say, put files where you want them. This is still fine on MacOS, but a mate of mine with an I-Phone and an I-Pad is preparing to go Android.

    3. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: A Mojave new feature

      You can do simple things with files in Quick Look and the Finder pane (e.g. rotate, crop, shrink, generate PDF).

      1. Arthur the cat Silver badge

        Re: A Mojave new feature

        You can do simple things with files in Quick Look and the Finder pane (e.g. rotate, crop, shrink, generate PDF).

        Sure. But my point was that you can't modify a file (*) without opening it, even if that opening is behind the scenes rather than firing up the usual app. The claim you can is yet more dumbing down for morons "creatives".

        (*) Except for totally deleting it.

        1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

          Re: A Mojave new feature

          But my point was that you can't modify a file (*) without opening it

          Of course, you're completely right and it's poorly worded. It should say something like change something in a DOCX file directly in Finder or an e-mail* without have to start Word.

          * Not sure about the practicability of this, to be honest. Perhaps when you forward something and want to remove pages… Just being able to print files would be nice: I note that I can "share" my log files but have to choose an app to open them in order to be able to print them.

        2. Dan 55 Silver badge

          Re: A Mojave new feature

          If you remember when Quick Look first came out, they said you could view files without opening them... and all the nerds (myself included) gnashed and wailed then as well.

          1. TRT Silver badge

            Re: Work on a file without even opening it.

            A bit like dry humping then.

  8. niksgarage

    Tried dark mode, didn't like it

    It's horrible. I don't really know why it is so difficult for Mac to be properly skinnable like Gnome.

    1. Dave559 Silver badge

      Re: Tried dark mode, didn't like it

      I don't know how to vote on your post…

      I do like dark modes in OSes and programs (he says, writing from a Linux desktop with rather too many grey on black terminals open (and even more browser windows with many annoyingly so-retro searing paper-white pages open))…

      …but at the same time, it really does frustrate me that MacOS is so very minimally uncustomisable (it's supposed to be for creative people after all, isn't it?).

      At the very least, Apple, please let me pick more interesting System/Menu, Finder, and program interface fonts (or even Chicago/Charcoal, for some retro amusement)!

  9. Tenkaykev

    My iMac is too old

    I have a mid 2010 27" iMac.

    Intel Core i7 2.93 GHz

    16 GB 1333 MHz DDR 3 RAM

    ATI Radeon 5750 Graphics card with 1024 MB RAM

    512GB SSD + 1TB HDD

    This specification isn't enough to allow Mojave to be installed.

    Not sure what the bottleneck is that prevents Mojave working satisfactorily. I'll stick with High Sierra until this machine bites the dust*

    *That could be a long time, my 2006 iMac that I sold to a friend is still chugging along happily

    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: My iMac is too old

      Not sure what the bottleneck is that prevents Mojave working satisfactorily.

      Usually Apple being arsed to recompile the (video) drivers. Mavericks contained the major API changes to make it easier to develop for both IOS and MacOS with the same base.

    2. Dan 55 Silver badge
    3. MrNed

      Re: My iMac is too old

      "Not sure what the bottleneck is that prevents Mojave working satisfactorily."

      It's unlikely to be a bottleneck, and very likely to be an artifical line in the sand drawn by Apple. They'll have deemed that an 8-year-old machine is now vintage and so won't be supported in future OS upgrades. They want you to buy a new-shiny, with the implied threat of being pwned if you don't keep up-to-date with their relentless and tedious os updates.

      Proof of the artificialness of the os-support cutoff? The last generation of 'proper' Mac Pros - you know, the ones in a proper case that could be upgraded and expanded... I.E. the ones that were a "pro" computer rather than a glorified dustbin - was the 5,1. It was still supported in 10.13 (not sure about this latest 10.14 - haven't tried). However the 5,1's predecessor, the 4,1, wasn't supported beyond 10.9 (or perhpas 10.10 - again, I haven't tried). But here's the rub: there was no difference betweent the 4,1 and the 5,1 beyond a firmware upgrade that changed the reported model number and enabled 6-core CPU support - this was demonstrated when that firmware upgrade escaped into the wild, and people patched their older 4,1s with it, thereby giving their mac pros (so far) an extra 4-5 years of supported life.

      So, even if there exists a genuine reason why Mojave won't run on your 2010 iMac, it's unlikely to be anything that couldn't be addressed with a firmware patch. Not that Apple will release such a patch, of course - your new Mac awaits (not that they're got anything worth buying at the moment, IMO).

    4. Niag

      Re: My iMac is too old

      I wouldn't bother. With the removal of subpixel antialiasing, on any device without a retina display text rendering will look awful. I installed Mojave this morning onto a supported MacBook Air (like the ones their still selling) and text looks blurry and difficult to read. Various fixes have been posted but these only change the display font smoothing settings and don't produce any meaningful results. Another case of Apples policy of enforced planed obsolescence. We've made your perfectly adequate device display s**t so you'll need to buy a new one!

      1. ThomH

        Re: My iMac is too old

        I think it's more like subpixel antialiasing being a special case when compositing — i.e. it needs to be disregarded if any sort of transform is applied, or I guess you could give up on GPU composition and re-render the whole thing but that sounds unlikely — and Apple no longer being willing to expend the effort. iOS has never had subpixel rendering.

        Excuses being made, those of us that long ago used OS X on a non-LCD screen, also with no subpixel antialiasing, will probably feel nostalgic if presented with a non-retina LCD for the vague sense that somebody has snuck in and applied Vaseline to the screen.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: My iMac is too old

      mid 2010 you say? In the words of Weird Al Yankovic "Throw that junk away, man, it's an antique!"

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Does anyone really care any more, is Apple still a thing (in the UK at least)?

    1. Cavehomme_

      Care anymore?

      We professionals no longer care since Ms Burberry and Sir Ivefeckedupapple turned the Apple Pro range, and beyond, into products to appeal to fashion victim consumers and those keeping up with the fickle nouveau riche friends, colleagues and family.

  11. OffBeatMammal

    I'm torn!

    I want the shiny new (because feedback from beta testers pointer to perf improvements on the Air, and anything that stops the fan sounding like a demented F-15 these days will be welcome), but the sub-pixel rendering changes will be annoying if they make the screen any less usable.

    Sure, Apple think I should upgrade my out-dated mid-2012 Air for something new and shiny, but the Macbook Pro that I'd like (because of the jump in specs) is still an unknown when it comes to the keyboard and other reliability and, compared to a lot of the Windows machines on offer, horribly over-priced. But I hate the idea of going back to Windows.

    1. eionmac

      Buy Windows machine, wipe OS, install Linux distro of your choice!

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So when is El Reg going to have a 'dark mode'. This 'light' thing is so 2017...

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