Day: November 13, 2020

It’s almost intangible, meaning it’s tough to describe with words. But the overall effect is visually, the information on the screen “feels” lighter and more open.

Even on my 10 year old 20″ Samsung display the icons and text are crip and clear. On the Retina display of my laptop itself, things “pop” and the OS appears to be as fast as the previous version. Upgrades always worry me because there comes a time when the OS begins to exceed the hardware capability of the computer. In this case, it looks like the improvements haven’t created any noticeable lags or issues.

That may change as I get further under the covers of the system. I know there will be something I use regularly that will be odd or slow, but I haven’t stumbled upon it yet.

The unwritten law of computers is that the problem will not rear it’s ugly head until you’re in a time crunch.

For reference, I’m running on a late 2019 MacBook Pro 13″. While I am interested in the new M1 apple chip Macs, I’m probably going to stick with Intel for at least a couple more generations of the M series. I don’t have the cash necessary to go buying a new Mac every year. The current machine is a replacement for my 6 or 7 year old MacBook Air (It may be older than 7, I honestly don’t remember.)

For me, that’s the beauty of my Mac. They typically have long lives and provide me with great service over their life spans.

Hmm, I just noticed something very neat. it’s a detail, but a nice one.

My Mac changes the background screen image every hour. I’ve had that setting on, on Mac or Windows systems for years. The transparency and tint of the menu bar changes automatically to ensure best readability of the menu based on the background image.

Unlike Windows 10 where the menu bar at the bottom of the screen changes based on the theme (sometimes with unexpected results), this seems to be based on something other than an arbitrary color pallet selection.

I’m just getting to play with the OS this morning. We had a scheduled power interruption last night and by 10:45 PM I’d shut down all the electronics at their surge bars. It was probably un-necessary but I didn’t want to risk my rotating drives getting partial power then power loss, then partial power, then powering up again.

This morning it was like Christmas with me running round flipping on surge protectors and waiting with anticipation as everything came on. Then finally powering up the Mac to make sure all the drives were happy.

It was only after I’d powered the Mac up, that I remembered I had a new OS too.

The Mac startup “Chime” is back. I was like, “Oh, Hello!”

Neat thing was that all the stuff I needed to get done was normal and the OS wasn’t bugging me about all the new features. I finished what I needed to do and when I paused for a bit there was a nice polite notice asking me if I’d like to review the new stuff.

“Good Minion!” My computer is my minion and there’s nothing worse than a minion that gets in the way while you’re trying to accomplish something.

Apple Mail is completely redesigned. It’s going to take some time to get used to that. It’s not bad, just different and when I opened it, the change was a bit jarring. That’s not a criticism, just an observation that the look is very different. I think everything I’m used to is still there just moved around and I’ll have to take some time to find the new locations.

I’m off to find other new features and then to clean the house a bit.

We have a new arrival due later today. There was a young dog we heard about at a shelter. Went down to meet him yesterday and he’s moving in today. He’s probably not going to be feeling all that well when he gets here but over the next few days I’m sure he’ll be entertaining and entertained. Have no idea what his name is, I guess he’ll tell me in due time.