At WWDC 2023, Apple announced the next version of macOS. And with it, came a new name based on a location in California. In my prediction post, I had hoped that Apple would go with macOS Sonoma. And in a surprising turn of events, I was spot on! Here is a preview of macOS 14 Sonoma. What changes are being made, what devices will support the update, and what things can Apple do to continue to make macOS even better?

This preview is based on my usage of macOS 14 Sonoma developer betas 1 and 2 using an 14” M1 Pro MacBook Pro. This is beta software and features are subject to change.

So what has changed? Not nearly as much as any other Apple OS. Which makes sense, macOS has been around for decades and the personal computer is a very, very mature platform. The room for changes and improvements just isn’t as big as most other platforms Apple maintains. But there a few changes I do want to talk about. 

The first has to do with widgets. This year, Apple is returning the ability for users to interact with widgets directly. In 2020, with macOS Big Sur, Apple completely revamped widgets on their platforms and as part of that overhaul, widgets could only display content from its associated app. Clicking on it would only open the app itself. Now, in a move to undo that overhaul to widgets, you can now interact directly with widgets. The most common use for this right now is with Reminders. You can pull up Notification Center and scroll down to your Reminders widget and mark a task as complete. It is nice, but does make me wonder why Apple removed the ability to interact with widgets in the first place. 

Widgets can also now be placed on your desktop! This was another feature I wanted back in my predictions post and it is certainly nice to have. I can see some users placing a ton of widgets on the Desktop and using it as its own workspace. Personally, I keep a Photos widgets to add a touch of personal flair to my Desktop as I only use the built in wallpapers. 

The final change to widgets is really, really cool. You can now add widgets to the Desktop or to the Notification Center that originate from an app on your iPhone. The Crumbl Cookie app for example, has a widget on iPhone that lets you see this weeks selection of cookies and tapping it lets you place an order. I can add that Crumbl widget to my Mac to see that menu right on my desktop. No app required on the Mac. It is a great evolution of the Continuity features Apple has been introducing over the past nine years. While this is the only use of this iPhone-to-Mac extension technology, I am excited to see how it evolves next year. Maybe we can finally get iMessage Apps on the Mac. 

The next big area to focus on is video conferencing improvements. While I will be using FaceTime as the frame of reference for these features, they will work with any video app like Zoom, Webex, or even OBS without any work by the developers of those apps. All these features are built into the way Apple passes camera data from the OS level to an individual app. One of these is Reactions. You know those iMessage effects like balloons or fireworks? Those are coming to video calls! You can activate them with hand gestures. If you give a thumbs up in a video call, it’ll add a big blue thumbs up to your background. Or if you give two thumbs up for a second or two, it’ll trigger a fireworks effect in the background of your call. It’s really fun and will certainly make your video conferences much more enjoyable!

There’s also some changes with how displaying content works. You can share your screen like normal, or you can put yourself into a little bubble that just floats on top of the screen you are sharing so everyone can see what you are sharing, but not lose track of you. Or, even better yet, you can use a new Presenter Overlay to share your screen and put yourself on top of it so you can point to it like a whiteboard all while staying in frame. It’s really, really nice. 

Finally, web apps are getting some improvements on Mac this year. I did not see Apple ever embracing web apps, in fact I foresaw them going to war with them, but here we are. On most any website, Twitter for example, you can go to the File option and hit “Add to Dock” and it’ll reformat the website as a web app and save that website as an app icon in your Dock. It’ll even open it up just like an app and allow that website to send you notifications. It’s really impressive. 

There are several more changes than what I’ve covered here as well. Many of these changes are not macOS exclusive however and make more sense to put into different previews. Apple has improved the way users can work with PDFs in the Notes app, for example. Which is nice, but I really just want Apple to create their own version of Adobe Acrobat. Maybe even build that into Preview. There are many gaming related projects that Apple is launching with Sonoma, but I am not able to test those yet as the technology has only been available to developers for a few weeks now. But the early reports from other journalists and developers make it sound promising. 

Overall, I like these changes. I don’t think macOS Sonoma will go down as one of the best or biggest updates the Mac has ever gotten, but I think people will appreciate the work Apple is putting into the usability and quality of life improvements of the software. If you are like me and your job is spent in meetings all day, a lot of the video conferencing changes are quite nice to have. And Apple is keeping the Mac an open system by allowing you to install and use any software you’d like- weather it be a modern fully optimized Apple Silicon app or one running through emulation in Rosetta 2 from the Intel days. Is there an app that you enjoy on iPad and iPhone that you like to have on your Mac? It’s available in the App Store. Even if you need a web app, Apple is now making that experience even better in Sonoma. Combine all of this with the amazing Apple Silicon chips Apple has in their machines and I can confusedly say that the Mac really is the best productivity machine you can buy. 

There are some caveats to macOS Sonoma however. It will only run on a handful of Mac models. In general, you need a Mac from 2018 or later. Apple is clearly working to drop their lineup of Intel Macs as quickly as possible. And a lot of the video conferencing features specifically, though there are more, will not be coming to the Intel Macs in the first place. Meaning fi you do have an Intel Mac, this update may just not be worth it to you which is a shame. 

There is plenty of room for improvement in future versions of macOS. The big one is the growing number of missing apps compared to the iPhone and iPad. Great examples include the Translate app, the Health app (which is only this year coming to iPad), the Fitness app, and even Tips and Wallet are all missing. There are still a lot of missing widgets as well. For example, Books and Music are missing. You can’t even add the iOS version of these widgets to you Mac either. It makes switching between all your Apple devices just a little bit harder and a little bit more annoying. I hope in future versions of macOS Apple does work to make switching between the different platforms that much easier.