hoakley June 12, 2021 Macs, Technology

What isn’t changing in macOS Monterey

Apple’s annual WWDC drew to a close yesterday, and as expected brought the announcement of the next major version of macOS, numbered 12 in sequence with macOS 11 Big Sur. Over the last few years, major versions of macOS have brought huge changes which many users are still wrestling with: a brand new file system (APFS in 10.13), privacy controls (10.14 onwards), loss of support for 32-bit code (10.15), notarization (10.15), startup volume groups (10.15), and sealed system volumes (11), for example. This year there don’t appear to have been any such shocks coming in the new.

Apple has confirmed that basic security and volume architecture aren’t changing in macOS 12. Intel Macs will continue to run completely unsigned code, and Apple Silicon Macs still require all executable code to be signed, but don’t require any Apple certificate to be used. Developers choose between delivering their software through the App Store, or notarizing it for independent supply. There is a significant improvement for those developers using notarization, with the introduction of a better command tool replacing the current altool.

Monterey’s bootable disk layout apparently remains essentially the same as that in Big Sur, with a paired volume group consisting of a protected System volume and a user-writeable Data volume. The System volume remains sealed, and accessed as a mounted snapshot. There has been speculation that macOS updaters will be streamlined to reduce the size of updates, particularly for M1 Macs, but Apple hasn’t detailed any changes to come in Monterey’s updating processes.

Most noticeable changes coming in Monterey don’t appear to have significant impact on what we’ve been adjusting to in Big Sur. Although I’m sure that you’ll have your own favourites, two of the most impressive new features for me will be Shortcuts and Universal Control.

Shortcuts is an automation system, which has already been part of iOS and iPadOS where it has proved valuable and popular, comparable to that provided in Automator. Apple intends that it will ultimately replace Automator over the course of a multi-year transition. Users can opt to use both AppleScript and shell scripts within it, and it can also import existing Automator workflows. Provided that Apple maintains AppleScript, I can’t see any downsides to this.

Universal Control was one of the great sleights of Mac displayed in the Keynote. It takes the idea behind AirDrop and Sidecar, already invaluable features which saved me the cost of a Wacom Cintiq and any pain from its drivers, and both extends and simplifies them so there’s no setup required. All you do is bring your iPad close to your Mac, and from the Mac’s screen drag the pointer offscreen so it appears on the iPad. You can then not only control the iPad from your Mac’s trackpad or mouse, but can drag and drop files between the two.

The snag with Universal Control is that support is by no means universal, but is confined to a shortlist of models among those which can be upgraded to Monterey, specifically:

iMac 2017 onwards, and 5K Retina 27-inch Late 2015,
iMac Pro,
MacBook Early 2016 onwards,
MacBook Air 2018 onwards,
MacBook Pro 2016 onwards,
Mac mini 2018 onwards,
Mac Pro 2019.

Monterey continues to pursue more rigorous privacy for users, but unlike some of the more intrusive changes that came with Mojave and Catalina, it doesn’t appear to get in the way any more with legitimate access, and may actually smooth some of the rougher edges remaining in Big Sur. Apple has also announced that it’s starting to move away from passwords, although that’s going to be a gradual transition starting mainly with external authentication.

For those managing more Macs, particularly in corporate and institutional settings, Monterey brings more major changes. If you already use MDM or could have used it, I strongly recommend that you watch each of the sessions devoted to the changes coming later this year.

For Mac users, Monterey promises consolidation and improvement, and perhaps some truth and reconciliation at last. If you’re considering taking part in the developer or public beta-testing programmes, provided that you keep it well away from production systems, I don’t think that you’ll be disappointed.

11Comments

Add yours

1

Colstan on June 12, 2021 at 12:33 pm

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like Monterey is a refinement release, rather than a major overhaul. Essentially, it brings a measure of feature parity with iOS and hopefully smoothes out some of Big Sur’s rough edges. I’m hopeful for that, because once security updates end, I’m going to make the jump from Mojave directly to Monterey. So, that’s a substantial change for me.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 2
  
  hoakley on June 12, 2021 at 5:37 pm
  
  Thank you: I think that’s absolutely right. Yes, there are some exciting new features for some more recent models, but the emphasis is on making macOS better. I think it should be a good upgrade.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
3

Michael Tsai - Blog - macOS 12 Monterey Announced on June 13, 2021 at 10:18 pm

[…] Howard Oakley: […]

LikeLike
4

Kevin on June 14, 2021 at 8:49 am

As macOS goes more and more towards feature parity with iOS, it would be very helpful to monitor its syncing abilities.

For example, can one boot a new Mac connect it to internet and sync one’s prefs (not data, like Documents folder or app data.) So, are your prefs e.g., Accessibility settings like Zoom, your personal appearance and keyboard shortcuts for Mission Control, Logic Pro settings (Library/Preferences folder) etc. synced as it is on iOS. Do you get the same environment replicated on your new device?

Can you put this topic and its development on your watchlist, please?

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 5
  
  hoakley on June 14, 2021 at 5:22 pm
  
  Thank you.
  macOS syncing is defined by the items listed in the iCloud section of the Apple ID pane. They don’t include preferences, although individual apps may do that by putting a common Property List in their iCloud storage. Because of the great complexity of macOS preferences, and their management by cfprefsd, I can’t see Apple making them more generally shared for the foreseeable future. The way to replicate them on a new device is by migration, which is designed to transfer them in one direction only.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
6

2J on June 14, 2021 at 7:56 pm

Howard, forgive me if you’ve already commented on this elsewhere, but are you aware of any changes/improvements to Time Machine in macOS 12 / Monterey?

Obviously TM wasn’t mentioned in the keynote last week or even the platforms state of the union. There’s also no mention of TM on Apple’s listing of macOS 12 enhancements @ https://www.apple.com/macos/monterey-preview/features/ .

Notably, this was largely the case last year, when Apple made huge changes to TM. So I’m hoping that, perhaps under-the-radar, Monterey might be coming along with at least some refinements to TM, despite the conspicuous absence of any publicity. Have you heard or seen anything that might suggest this?

On a separate, non-technical though related note, I’ve been wondering why it might be that Apple has, for the past several years, been so reticent to talk about Time Machine. In its annual listing of OS enhancements, Apple often discusses even the most minor of changes, including those to under-the-hood functionality that most end users would never have any awareness of and probably don’t care much about. And yet last year’s listing of macOS 11 / Big Sur’s enhancements conspicuously omitted *any* mention of Time Machine, despite the major transition to APFS and the substantial efficiency benefits that brought. It’s simply bizarre that Apple’s marketing people — usually keen to seize upon any actual or perceived advantages — would not at least mention this significant development.

Given all that, do you have any information or speculation as to what might account for this behavior on Apple’s part? Personally I suspect it might be related to the broader issue of iCloud and geopolitics (given that a logical next step for macOS TM is backing up to iCloud — functionality which remains unavailable despite Apple’s obvious financial incentive to implement it), but for the time being this is pure speculation.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 7
  
  hoakley on June 14, 2021 at 10:57 pm
  
  Thank you.
  Apple hasn’t included any reference to Time Machine in the list of features for Monterey. You are correct in that it doesn’t for Big Sur either.
  TM isn’t really a feature which Apple considers concerns developers, so it very seldom even gets mentioned in passing in WWDC.
  I’ve not heard any speculation as to whether there are any changes intended in TM in macOS 12, and I very much doubt that there would be any at this stage, as TM is one of the less-used features in betas.
  That said, I’d be very surprised if it hasn’t been further improved. But I can’t see it backing up to iCloud, and if it did, I would definitely expect that to be listed as a new feature. I don’t see that as any next step for TM, either.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
  - 8
    
    2J on June 16, 2021 at 1:49 am
    
    Thanks Howard for your response. Though Apple hasn’t talked about Time Machine in the past few WWDC’s, it hasn’t completely neglected it from a developer perspective. For example, at WWDC-2017 Apple had a session devoted to APFS [ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/715/ ] in which Time Machine and snapshots were discussed at some length. So I don’t think it’s the case that Apple considers TM totally irrelevant to developers, at least in relatively recent memory.
    
    As for iCloud — I don’t use it myself but my understanding is that iOS has an option to backup an entire device (or at least most of it, sans system + apps) to iCloud. That backup feature is implemented quite differently relative to Time Machine. But at least broadly speaking, Apple has a (I believe quite popular) cloud backup feature on iOS, and does *not* have one on macOS. The disparity is increasingly conspicuous. Given the trends of increasing bandwidth and decreasing cost (at least from the provider’s perspective) of cloud storage, I can’t think of any technical or business reason why Apple couldn’t offer an iCloud-enabled Time Machine, or something similar.
    
    On a related side note, I think that after the AirPort Time Capsule was discontinued in 2016-2018, many people expected an iCloud-based successor solution — but that has yet to come. As we’ve seen recently from some internal Apple documents that have come to light in pending judicial proceedings, Apple rarely likes to “leave money on the table”, so why it appears to be doing so in this instance is perplexing.
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
    - 9
      
      hoakley on June 16, 2021 at 6:48 am
      
      Thank you.
      Yes, I’m very familiar with that session from WWDC2017. The information given about Time Machine was relevant to APFS, but otherwise very limited. Since then, TM has changed hugely, in particular with the advent of TM backing up to APFS, which uses mechanisms which weren’t even mentioned at that time (and I don’t think were even technically possible with APFS then). Apple has said absolutely nothing about the technical side of these changes, and even the user-facing documentation is minimal. So what TMA does now is a huge gap in documentation.
      As for iOS devices backing up to iCloud, that’s been available for some years. There’s a huge difference in scale and complexity though. Those commenting here have often told me that macOS backups to iCloud are coming. I suppose ultimately they are coming at some time, but there’s no indication in TM that they’re coming for some time yet. Even backing up to a NAS can currently take many hours (sometimes days), so how that’s going to work with iCloud I don’t know.
      Howard.
      
      LikeLike
10

Marty on July 4, 2021 at 4:10 am

Hopefully with things remaining about the same, both Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper! can continue to make bootable backups. That would be ideal.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 11
  
  hoakley on July 4, 2021 at 11:58 am
  
  Thank you.
  We don’t know that yet, although I see no reason for that changing. However, I’m puzzled that you’d still want to make bootable backups in Big Sur or Monterey. What value do you think the System volume has in your backup?
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike

·Comments are closed.

Share this:

Like this:

Related