MacOS 10.13, thoroughly reviewed

> "I just wish ... what’s here felt even half as adventurous as what’s happening on the iPad."

I don't.

I don't want my desktop to feel adventurous, not even half-adventurous. I want it to be an efficient tool for getting the job done.

Please, desktop OS-manufacturers, resist the lure of adventuring new bells and whistles, and invest that time optimising, smoothing corners and making everything more efficient.

> Changing filesystems, adding external graphics support, adding support for new image compression formats, and updating the graphics API to support VR are all important, and none of them are small tasks. But the UI doesn’t change, apps get only minor updates

I disagree. Recently, I formatted my macbook pro and decided maybe I don't need all these "new features" in Sierra and would be fine with Mavericks.

Turned out it is more complicated than that.

- The external screen renders better under Sierra than Mavericks. I didn't notice the change since it happened gradually and I don't know which version triggered it. But it was annoying enough to notice.

- The battery life under Sierra is much better. I noticed a 10-20% extended lifetime.

- Some apps would not work.

- I missed the Sync between my iDevices. I didn't know that it didn't exist in Mavericks.

- Finder is more responsive in Sierra than Mavericks

I really came to appreciate Sierra after that reset to Mavericks. In fact, I couldn't work with it and decided to upgrade. What High Sierra brings to the table is "unnoticeable" UI wise but makes your workflow easier.

These small improvements performance wise makes your work easier and better. On the longterm they accumulate and are making macOs still the best OS I have ever interacted with.

I still miss John Siracusa's annual Mac OS Ars Technica reviews, which were the go-to destination to understand the nitty gritty details of every new release. The last one he did was for 10.10 (Yosemite) in 2014. But to his credit Andrew Cunningham has done a great job picking up the reins.

> For “Continuity” features like AirDrop and Handoff, you’ll need a Mac with both Bluetooth 4.0 and a 5GHz 802.11n or 802.11ac Wi-Fi adapter:

  -MacBook (Early 2015 and later)
  -iMac (Late 2012 and later)
  -MacBook Air (Mid 2012 and later)
  -MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 and later)
  -Mac Mini (Late 2012 and later)
  -Mac Pro (Late 2013)

> And Apple Watch unlocking requires 802.11ac because of the way the software determines the distance between your watch and your Mac. This narrows the support list further:

  -MacBook (Early 2015 and later)
  -iMac (Late 2012 and later)
  -MacBook Air (Mid 2012 and later)
  -MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 and later)
  -Mac Mini (Late 2012 and later)
  -Mac Pro (Late 2013)

> Finally, support for Metal and Metal 2 requires a relatively modern GPU. These Macs all include integrated or dedicated GPUs that support the API, though some earlier Mac Pros can also support it with an upgrade to a more modern GPU:

  -MacBook (Early 2015 or newer)
  -MacBook Pro (2012 or newer)
  -MacBook Air (2012 or newer)
  -Mac Mini (2012 or newer)
  -iMac (2012 or newer)
  -Mac Pro (Late 2013)

I appreciate the attempt at a specific list of models compatible with each feature. But this appears to be the exact same list twice, followed by a less-specific version of the same list a third time.

I was disappointed that I had to search for how to enable the caching services. That's done via the "Sharing" part of system preferences.

This is one of the features that was only in the Server option but is now available for free. We have a Mac Mini that's an iTunes server and always on. So I expect it will work great going forward for caching apps, music and photos.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/set-up-content-cach...

Anecdotally, after updating from 10.12.6 to 10.13 on my maxed-out 2017 15” MBP, transitioning between spaces and apps remains silky smooth, even when under heavy CPU load, which wasn’t really the case previously.

With the news of major windowserver glitches causing crazy flickering in Finder, as well as kernel panics for macs with nvidia cards, I think I'll wait this one out.