Recently, Apple released their new version of macOS called Majave (named after a desert in California/ Nevada).
This time Apple has concentrated on improving performance and improving the existing applications so that they work faster, more reliably and with fewer bugs.
Only a few new features have been added including Dark Mode, Stacks, view file metadata in Finder, quick actions, the Gallery, Screenshot utility and many more.
I use an Intel i7 16 GB, late 2012, iMac which has macOS High Sierra installed. It also has Office 2016, Adobe Creative Cloud, Dreamweaver CC, Skype for Business, Gimp, Firefox, Chime, VLC player, Text Editor, Tinker tool, MS Remote Desktop, Filezilla etc.
Before doing the upgrade, I opened App Store and checked for any updates and applied them before starting. I then switch to the Store, selected the large icon for macOS Mojave and clicked on 'Get' button to start the download. The download took about 10 minutes on our high-speed network. It is 6.03 GB, so it will take longer on ADSL connections.
Once the download is complete, it will add a new entry to the Applications folder called 'Install macOS Mojave'.
Ideally, at this point, you should make a copy of this file and put it in your Downloads folder. If you have a spare 8GB USB stick you can create an offline bootable version in case things go wrong. You can use the built-in media creation tool with the package to create the bootable USB drive. There are plenty of articles available that show to do this. Also, check that you have plenty of free disk space e.g. 10GB or more before beginning.
Log in with a local user with administrator rights before installing. Also, make sure your Apple ID is accessible as you may be asked to log in with that.
Double click on the Install macOS Mojave application to begin the installation, accept the license and choose which disk to install Mojave on. This will take approximately 2 hours to complete, depending on the speed of your machine.
After the long install process, your iMac will reboot and then login again to complete the setup. After a few initial setup steps and introduction, your Mac is now ready. I then started testing my applications, made sure that the application itself loaded up and that you can open documents or data with it
Good news is that the vast majority of applications work. Adobe Creative Cloud did get stuck in a loop, closing it down and reloading and logging in again seems to fix that. My version of Tinker tools needed updating to version 7 to work with Mojave, and Microsoft Remote Desktop tool was upgraded from version 8 to version 10. All the usual apps were there.
Dark mode can be accessed via Preferences, General, and change the Appearance setting from Light to Dark.
If you have pictures in your folder, select the Pictures folder, and the in the View menu in Finder, select 'As Gallery' and the pictures can be shown as a gallery with information about the current picture on the right.
I also tested Wireless access, in High Sierra, it was slow and intermittent connecting to the Wifi network, now it is much faster, almost instant. So that is a big improvement!
The App Store has been redesigned with a list of categories on the left side with the Search box and the relevant apps shown on the right. Very nice and simple.
Hopefully, over the next few weeks, I will get to play with more features and improvements.
Overall, I would recommend upgrading as soon as possible.
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