macOS Sonoma hands on first look - what's new

**Apple's WWDC 2023: A Look at Mac OS Sonoma**

At this year's WWDC, Apple unveiled its latest operating system for Mac computers, Mac OS Sonoma. The new OS promises to deliver several exciting features that will enhance the overall user experience.

One of the most significant improvements is the simplified process of sharing screens on FaceTime calls. If you're on a FaceTime call and hover over the green button on your window, you'll see an option to share that screen. This simplifies the process of sharing windows, making it more intuitive for users. Additionally, Apple has improved the process of picking which window to share, making it easier to select the desired screen.

Another notable feature is the inline typing prediction feature in Siri. This machine learning-based feature provides suggestions as you type, allowing you to complete words or phrases with ease. However, the feature was somewhat underwhelming in my testing, and I could only manage to get a few letters correct before it faltered. Apple claims that over time, your device will learn common phrases used by users, potentially improving the feature.

Safari has also received several updates, including a new profile feature. When you start typing search terms like "sports results" into the bar, Safari will provide more intelligent results at the top of the page. This feature relies on data from sources like NBA or ESPN for sports-related searches and Wikipedia for general information. However, I found this feature to be somewhat hit-or-miss in my testing, and it didn't seem to do much beyond providing basic search results.

In terms of Safari's new features, Apple has introduced profiles that allow users to create different bookmarks depending on their mode. This feature is intended to help users switch between work and personal modes seamlessly. However, I found the implementation to be somewhat confusing and frustrating in my testing. When trying to switch out of a profile, it brought up tab groups instead of switching modes as expected.

One feature that did impress me was Safari's new web app features. The new "web" app allows you to add websites to your dock and open them like standalone applications. This feature is simple yet convenient, providing users with more flexibility when working on multiple websites simultaneously. When clicking the file menu and adding a website to the dock, Apple automatically generates an icon based on the website's metadata.

Several new features are shared across Apple's platforms, including iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS. One notable example is iMessage, which has been improved with new search functions and stickers that can be used in various contexts. The app drawer at the bottom of messages has also been rearranged to provide a more streamlined experience.

In addition to these updates, Apple has introduced a game mode feature for Mac computers. This feature prioritizes CPU and GPU usage to minimize background tasks and optimize performance for gaming. Moreover, it actively decreases latency on Bluetooth devices like AirPods or controllers by increasing the sample rate. While I haven't had a chance to test this feature personally, I believe it's a thoughtful touch that could enhance the overall gaming experience on Mac computers.

The latest news suggests that popular games like Death Stranding and Stray are being ported to Mac computers, potentially ushering in a new era of gaming on the platform. While Apple didn't provide much information about these titles at WWDC, it's clear that they're making strides to improve the gaming experience on Mac.

**Conclusion**

As with any major software update, there are bound to be both exciting and underwhelming features. While some updates, like the simplified screen sharing feature in FaceTime and the new web app functionality in Safari, show a lot of promise, others, like the confusing profile feature in iMessage, leave much to be desired.

Overall, Mac OS Sonoma seems to be an evolution rather than a revolution, building upon existing features while introducing some exciting new ones. As with any Apple software update, there's always room for improvement, but it's clear that they're committed to delivering a solid user experience across their platforms.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enApple's latest version of Mac OS called Sonoma was just unveiled yesterday at WWDC 2023 and today I want to go through a Hands-On demonstration of some of the key new features this year I was actually pleasantly surprised by the amount of features that came to the Mac now these aren't groundbreaking things like the redesign and Mac OS Big Sur but they are some nice Creature Comforts and some new additions to spice up your Mac just a little bit and right off the bat the place to start is the lock screen because the Mac lock screen has been redesigned to look more like the iPhone and the iPad we have a translucent font up at the top with a touch ID or enter password field being moved all the way to the bottom personally I'm not the biggest fan of having your icon all the way down at the bottom of the screen I think it looks a little bit unbalanced but let's go ahead and unlock and get started with today's video sponsor today's video is sponsored by clearvpn the VPN that I love to use clearvpn comes from macpaw the creators of clean my Mac X who have been a long time supporter of the channel they've reworked clearvpn for a streamlined user-friendly experience that emphasizes the most important features it uses top tier encryption and employs a strict no log policy so no online activity or personal info is collected or stored see clearvpn believes that your data is private so they offer a secure browsing module for free to all users clearvpn is the VPN that you can trust and you'll love using so whether you want to secure your browsing experience change your location or access streaming services from anywhere in the world clearvpn has painless setup in seconds it is so simple to use it is really really fast and with plans starting at just 3.50 it's affordable as well and you can use promo code El miani with the link in the description section below to save even more 30 days free then six months for twenty two dollars so why wait check out clearvpn today I'm pretty proud of that that was a smooth transition almost as smooth as Apple's new transition wallpapers that's right those fun slow motion drone shot screensavers that have been on the Apple TV for a little while are now on the Mac as well but with a fun twist when you have these set as your screen saver your lock screen will slowly animate as the Drone shot plays through and when you unlock your Mac it'll slowly come to a halt and become your desktop wallpaper if you go to the wallpaper settings there's a bunch of these available by default there's landscape categories there's cityscape there's underwater Earth and you can actually Shuffle between them and that gives it a little bit more of an Apple TV feeling because on the Apple TV it rotates between all of these but do be aware that these are fairly large downloads if I go over here and try to download one of these you'll notice that it's gonna take a couple of minutes to download this high resolution video I mean it's going to be a pretty big file size if it's high resolution enough to be your desktop wallpaper on retina displays so that's definitely a fun feature but it doesn't add a ton of functionality to the Mac this year apple is going all in on widgets that's their big thing across iPad OS and Mac OS they're more widgets and they're more useful I've got a couple of default widgets set up here as well as this memory manager from istatistica which allows me to see where memory is being used but if you want to add more just open up notification center scroll down to the bottom and hit edit widgets from here we are presented with quite a number of default widgets in different size and all you have to do is grab them and drag them onto the desktop you'll see we have these guidelines if you want to snap them in near other widgets I could also just put it randomly in the middle if I felt like it but it intelligently will snap into a grid pattern when you're near other widgets which I think is a nice touch and if you're wondering whether you can fill an entire desktop with widgets yes you can absolutely go for it I don't know why you would want to but you can but one of the features that works really well straight out of the gate are the updates to FaceTime FaceTime has a ton of potential but it has been really buggy for the past few years so it's pretty bold of Apple to start introducing some very powerful new features but they seem to have pulled it off to be honest first up are FaceTime reactions this is a fun way to add some emotion to your FaceTime call or your FaceTime meeting and there are a number of different reactions that you can do that are all blended into your environment it is very slick but they're also automatic if you do two thumbs up it will automatically give you a little fireworks show now I did notice some of the occlusion on my thumbs was a bit off but very cool that it's a able to recognize and work pretty much every time one of the more powerful features though is presenter overlay this is activated when you start screen sharing and what it will do is separate you from the background and put your screen in the middle of it and off to the side this is a super cool effect and it condenses the amount of screen real estate taken up in presentations and it also means that you can interact with and point to things on your presentation very cool idea and honestly has been executed really really well even picking the windows to share is simplified dramatically now if you're on a FaceTime call and you hover over the green button on your window you'll see an option to share that screen that is super useful and it removes an unnecessary step that was there previously if you wanted to start screen sharing a window now one area that Apple was a little disappointing at WWDC this year was with Siri and artificial intelligence obviously with chat GPT taking over the world it seems like you would think that Apple would focus on some improvements to Siri but they basically did no such thing and instead what we got was this inline typing prediction feature which is a machine learning on device thing as is pretty much everything it's like their favorite word nowadays but the idea is that as you're typing you will see suggestions in line and you can press the space bar or the tab key as I found out to complete that prediction it's very similar to what's been in Gmail for a while now with one key exception and that's that it doesn't really do very much in my testing I could only really get it to complete a couple of letters at the end of a word or maybe a connecting word if I was lucky now Apple claims that over time your devices will learn the common phrases you use so maybe it will improve but for now it was kind of mid in a similar vein there's new Safari features if you start typing like sports results into the search bar you'll get a more intelligent result right at the top here now it seems like Apple's going to be pulling from like NBA or ESPN for sports and in Wikipedia for most other things it didn't seem to do a ton in my experience but again this is just initial testing but Safari itself does have a number of updates and the big one that Apple talked about is profiles go to Safari preferences you can click new profile and choose from a number of symbols and colors the idea here is that you could sort of switch modes and have different bookmarks depending on what you're doing in your day and it's definitely a cool idea however in my testing it was weird and it didn't really work right it showed up just fine in the top left corner of the screen but when I tried to switch out of the work profile it was just bringing up my tab groups so I was like wait a minute is this a profile or is this a tab group and I tried a bunch of different things configuring it around it is it's it's very weirdly implemented right now I don't know if I'm doing something wrong I might be doing something wrong but it is very confusing what's not confusing is Safari's new web the app features this one is super simple when you're on a website you can go into the file menu and you can add it to the dock you can choose the name of course but the icon is chosen for you from the website's metadata and then you've got a website that just lives down there like an application when you click it and open it there's no Safari toolbar it is just a standalone application now a lot of the new features for Mac OS are shared amongst all of Apple's platforms so for example iMessage you've probably seen a million iOS videos talking about that it basically works exactly the same on the Mac there's new search functions there's stickers that you can put pretty much everywhere and they kind of rearranged the app drawer at the bottom of messages so there are some features like that that are shared across devices but the Mac does get a new game mode feature which is intended I guess for like apple arcade games this one I'm very interested in because it seems minor at face value it gives your games priority use of the CPU and G CPU and tries to minimize background tasks but what I find quite interesting is that it actively decreases the latency on your airpods or a Bluetooth game controller by dramatically increasing the Bluetooth sample rate that I think is a really cool feature I haven't had a chance to test it out because I don't have a game controller with me but I do think that's a really nice bit of attention to detail and it seems like apple might be focusing a little bit more on gaming on the Mac after all they did have hideo Kojima come on WWDC and talk about the new death stranding Port we've also heard news that the very popular game stray is coming to the Mac it's possible that Mac OS Sonoma is ushering in a new era of increased Mac gaming and I am here for it but unfortunately what I'm also here for is the end of this video thank you guys so much for watching I'm definitely curious to know what you guys think the coolest new feature or the worst new feature of Mac OS Sonoma is let me know all of that in the comments down below and I will see you guys very soon thank you thank youApple's latest version of Mac OS called Sonoma was just unveiled yesterday at WWDC 2023 and today I want to go through a Hands-On demonstration of some of the key new features this year I was actually pleasantly surprised by the amount of features that came to the Mac now these aren't groundbreaking things like the redesign and Mac OS Big Sur but they are some nice Creature Comforts and some new additions to spice up your Mac just a little bit and right off the bat the place to start is the lock screen because the Mac lock screen has been redesigned to look more like the iPhone and the iPad we have a translucent font up at the top with a touch ID or enter password field being moved all the way to the bottom personally I'm not the biggest fan of having your icon all the way down at the bottom of the screen I think it looks a little bit unbalanced but let's go ahead and unlock and get started with today's video sponsor today's video is sponsored by clearvpn the VPN that I love to use clearvpn comes from macpaw the creators of clean my Mac X who have been a long time supporter of the channel they've reworked clearvpn for a streamlined user-friendly experience that emphasizes the most important features it uses top tier encryption and employs a strict no log policy so no online activity or personal info is collected or stored see clearvpn believes that your data is private so they offer a secure browsing module for free to all users clearvpn is the VPN that you can trust and you'll love using so whether you want to secure your browsing experience change your location or access streaming services from anywhere in the world clearvpn has painless setup in seconds it is so simple to use it is really really fast and with plans starting at just 3.50 it's affordable as well and you can use promo code El miani with the link in the description section below to save even more 30 days free then six months for twenty two dollars so why wait check out clearvpn today I'm pretty proud of that that was a smooth transition almost as smooth as Apple's new transition wallpapers that's right those fun slow motion drone shot screensavers that have been on the Apple TV for a little while are now on the Mac as well but with a fun twist when you have these set as your screen saver your lock screen will slowly animate as the Drone shot plays through and when you unlock your Mac it'll slowly come to a halt and become your desktop wallpaper if you go to the wallpaper settings there's a bunch of these available by default there's landscape categories there's cityscape there's underwater Earth and you can actually Shuffle between them and that gives it a little bit more of an Apple TV feeling because on the Apple TV it rotates between all of these but do be aware that these are fairly large downloads if I go over here and try to download one of these you'll notice that it's gonna take a couple of minutes to download this high resolution video I mean it's going to be a pretty big file size if it's high resolution enough to be your desktop wallpaper on retina displays so that's definitely a fun feature but it doesn't add a ton of functionality to the Mac this year apple is going all in on widgets that's their big thing across iPad OS and Mac OS they're more widgets and they're more useful I've got a couple of default widgets set up here as well as this memory manager from istatistica which allows me to see where memory is being used but if you want to add more just open up notification center scroll down to the bottom and hit edit widgets from here we are presented with quite a number of default widgets in different size and all you have to do is grab them and drag them onto the desktop you'll see we have these guidelines if you want to snap them in near other widgets I could also just put it randomly in the middle if I felt like it but it intelligently will snap into a grid pattern when you're near other widgets which I think is a nice touch and if you're wondering whether you can fill an entire desktop with widgets yes you can absolutely go for it I don't know why you would want to but you can but one of the features that works really well straight out of the gate are the updates to FaceTime FaceTime has a ton of potential but it has been really buggy for the past few years so it's pretty bold of Apple to start introducing some very powerful new features but they seem to have pulled it off to be honest first up are FaceTime reactions this is a fun way to add some emotion to your FaceTime call or your FaceTime meeting and there are a number of different reactions that you can do that are all blended into your environment it is very slick but they're also automatic if you do two thumbs up it will automatically give you a little fireworks show now I did notice some of the occlusion on my thumbs was a bit off but very cool that it's a able to recognize and work pretty much every time one of the more powerful features though is presenter overlay this is activated when you start screen sharing and what it will do is separate you from the background and put your screen in the middle of it and off to the side this is a super cool effect and it condenses the amount of screen real estate taken up in presentations and it also means that you can interact with and point to things on your presentation very cool idea and honestly has been executed really really well even picking the windows to share is simplified dramatically now if you're on a FaceTime call and you hover over the green button on your window you'll see an option to share that screen that is super useful and it removes an unnecessary step that was there previously if you wanted to start screen sharing a window now one area that Apple was a little disappointing at WWDC this year was with Siri and artificial intelligence obviously with chat GPT taking over the world it seems like you would think that Apple would focus on some improvements to Siri but they basically did no such thing and instead what we got was this inline typing prediction feature which is a machine learning on device thing as is pretty much everything it's like their favorite word nowadays but the idea is that as you're typing you will see suggestions in line and you can press the space bar or the tab key as I found out to complete that prediction it's very similar to what's been in Gmail for a while now with one key exception and that's that it doesn't really do very much in my testing I could only really get it to complete a couple of letters at the end of a word or maybe a connecting word if I was lucky now Apple claims that over time your devices will learn the common phrases you use so maybe it will improve but for now it was kind of mid in a similar vein there's new Safari features if you start typing like sports results into the search bar you'll get a more intelligent result right at the top here now it seems like Apple's going to be pulling from like NBA or ESPN for sports and in Wikipedia for most other things it didn't seem to do a ton in my experience but again this is just initial testing but Safari itself does have a number of updates and the big one that Apple talked about is profiles go to Safari preferences you can click new profile and choose from a number of symbols and colors the idea here is that you could sort of switch modes and have different bookmarks depending on what you're doing in your day and it's definitely a cool idea however in my testing it was weird and it didn't really work right it showed up just fine in the top left corner of the screen but when I tried to switch out of the work profile it was just bringing up my tab groups so I was like wait a minute is this a profile or is this a tab group and I tried a bunch of different things configuring it around it is it's it's very weirdly implemented right now I don't know if I'm doing something wrong I might be doing something wrong but it is very confusing what's not confusing is Safari's new web the app features this one is super simple when you're on a website you can go into the file menu and you can add it to the dock you can choose the name of course but the icon is chosen for you from the website's metadata and then you've got a website that just lives down there like an application when you click it and open it there's no Safari toolbar it is just a standalone application now a lot of the new features for Mac OS are shared amongst all of Apple's platforms so for example iMessage you've probably seen a million iOS videos talking about that it basically works exactly the same on the Mac there's new search functions there's stickers that you can put pretty much everywhere and they kind of rearranged the app drawer at the bottom of messages so there are some features like that that are shared across devices but the Mac does get a new game mode feature which is intended I guess for like apple arcade games this one I'm very interested in because it seems minor at face value it gives your games priority use of the CPU and G CPU and tries to minimize background tasks but what I find quite interesting is that it actively decreases the latency on your airpods or a Bluetooth game controller by dramatically increasing the Bluetooth sample rate that I think is a really cool feature I haven't had a chance to test it out because I don't have a game controller with me but I do think that's a really nice bit of attention to detail and it seems like apple might be focusing a little bit more on gaming on the Mac after all they did have hideo Kojima come on WWDC and talk about the new death stranding Port we've also heard news that the very popular game stray is coming to the Mac it's possible that Mac OS Sonoma is ushering in a new era of increased Mac gaming and I am here for it but unfortunately what I'm also here for is the end of this video thank you guys so much for watching I'm definitely curious to know what you guys think the coolest new feature or the worst new feature of Mac OS Sonoma is let me know all of that in the comments down below and I will see you guys very soon thank you thank you\n"