Having run out of big cat species (Lion, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard), Apple has begun naming its Mac operating systems after rock formations in California. There was Yosemite, and then El Capitan—and now Sierra, after the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
MacOS Sierra doesn’t look any different from El Capitan or Yosemite before it. Instead, it’s a representation of all the little nips and tucks that Apple engineers wished they’d had time to put into the last version.
The big-ticket item is Siri. For the first time, you can now control your Mac by voice, just as you can on the iPhone. Ask questions, conduct research, check the weather, open apps, find files, send or read email, consult Twitter, and much more—all by voice. A complete dictionary of commands that Siri understands appears in Chapter 8.
Beyond that—well, this time around, Apple isn’t boasting “over 200 new features”; “over 20 new features” would be more like it. They’re subtle. They’re grace notes. They’re motley. They’ll be welcomed by people already using Macs but won’t do anything to sway someone who loves Windows:
Optimized Storage. Today’s Mac laptops don’t have a ton of storage; their non-hard disks aren’t as big as actual hard drives.
This new feature solves that problem rather neatly. The idea: As your Mac begins to run out of space, your oldest files are quietly and automatically stored online, leaving cloud-badged icons in their places on your Mac, so that you can retrieve them if you need them.
Other disk-space reclaiming features: A new Optimize button deletes iTunes movies and TV shows that you’ve already watched. (You’re always free to re-download them at no charge.) Erase Trash Automatically auto-deletes a file after it’s been rotting in your Trash for 30 days. And Reduce Clutter looks over your downloads, cache files, and mail attachments—things you can always re-download from your IMAP mail account—and offers to delete them. This feature can reclaim a lot of space.
Touch Bar and Touch ID. The late-2016 MacBook Pro models introduce the Touch Bar—a glowing, multitouch, customizable strip of screen that lies where the F-keys once were. Because it puts the commands you might need right on the keyboard, it’s a real work accelerator. At the right end: the Touch ID fingerprint reader, so you can log in without having to type a password.
Desktop and Documents Folders on iCloud. Sierra introduces a new, optional feature of iCloud Drive (Apple’s version of Dropbox): Everything on your desktop and in your Documents folder can be accessible everywhere—on every Mac you own, every iOS device, every Windows PC, and even online, at iCloud.com. That makes it very likely that when you need a file you don’t have with you, you’ll be able to grab it from wherever you are.
Of course, you get only 5 gigabytes of iCloud Drive storage, which is shared by all of iCloud’s components—so to use this feature, you’ll almost certainly have to pay for additional storage.
Copy/Paste Between Devices. Here’s a feature nobody’s ever seen before: If you copy something—text or pictures—on your iPhone and then switch to your Mac, the Paste command pastes whatever you just copied on the phone! There’s no learning involved, no special command; it’s automatic. You can even paste into Microsoft Word.
(And if you don’t paste within 2 minutes of copying, then macOS restores whatever was already on the Mac’s Clipboard, so you don’t get confused later.)
Similarly, you can copy from the Mac and paste on the phone, or copy/paste from one Mac to another, or indeed any combination of iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, or Mac.
Auto-Unlock with the Apple Watch. You don’t need a password to unlock your Mac anymore—as long as you’re wearing an Apple Watch. It acts as a wireless master key. (For security, it has a very short range—about 10 feet.)
Apple Pay on the Web. At the checkout screens of some online stores, you see an Apple Pay button. Click it to open a box showing the info you have on your Apple phone or watch, including your shipping info, already filled out. Click the credit card you want to pay with, and—here’s the ingenious part—authenticate with your phone, using its fingerprint reader. (Or double-press the Apple Watch’s side button.) You’ve eliminated all the data entry.
This process is entirely secure; neither the merchant nor Apple ever sees your credit card number. (Instead, a special, one-time code is sent directly to your bank, which does the payment.)
Window tabs. Sierra brings tabbed windows (just like in a web browser) to many document-based apps. In practice, this feature works only in Apple’s own programs: Mail, Maps, TextEdit, Keynote, Numbers, and Pages, for example.
Picture-in-picture. When you’re in the Safari browser and you’re watching a video, you can click a picture-in-picture icon to detach it into a small, floating, movable, resizable window, so that you can keep watching as you do other work or even switch Spaces (virtual desktops).
Messages upgrades. Apple’s Messages app gains a few new features when you’re texting with another Apple fan (that is, someone with an iCloud account)—although not nearly as many as iOS 10 now offers.
If you paste in a link you’re sending to someone, you get a thumbnail of that web page; if you paste a video, it plays right in the Messages window. If you insert an emoji symbol or two as the sole entry in a text, it appears at three times normal size. (If it accompanies typed text, the emoji still appears at normal size.)
Messages on the Mac can also receive some of the new features of Messages on iOS, like handwritten scribbles and “invisible ink” (which reveals what’s been typed only when you drag your mouse across it).
Photos. Just as in iOS 10, Photos on the Mac gains face and object recognition, so it can group your shots by person, group of people, place, time period, or thing. It auto-generates albums; each includes a map, representative photos (eliminating very similar shots), headshots of the people in the pictures, and even a music-backed slideshow movie.
So the changes in Sierra are, as you’re figuring out, pretty subtle. This new OS won’t throw anyone for a loop. But it’s a big speed-up with a lot of touch-ups—for free.
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