wwdc macOS 2020 feat

WWDC 2020 MacOS – What is Good and New about the new MacOS?

Hello Readers! Hope you are doing well. Today we are gonna talk one of the most trending and exciting tech news nowadays- The macOS Update. As we all know, in the midst of the worldwide lockdown, Apple managed to bring WWDC(Worldwide Developer Conference) 2020 on time, putting all the guessings aside.

The WWDC 2020, has so much to avail about the Apple Operating Systems as this time Apple has brought so many changes in its OS, keeping all the requirements and issues in priority. While almost every Apple  Operating Systems has got updated, there comes one of the most famous Apple OS, about which we are gonna talk today-The the macOS. The new release in the Mac OS came as Mac OS BIG SUR. 

Before coming to know about the different updates in macOS Big Sur, I would try to give you some glimpse of how its previous versions were working and what were the features, so that you could easily relate with the changes, so if you are not aware of the features or about the macOS, don’t worry! we have covered you all.

Apple had decided to bring much more clarity to the software designs in order to give a better experience to its customers. To make it possible they made some simple yet important changes that will take the user experience to a new level, that too they did without harming Mac’s powerful capability and ease of use. Here are those simple changes mainly related to the looks of applications.

Minor Updates in macOS in WWDC-

Changes in the Looks

  • They worked upon the refinements of the different buttons and control available on the Mac.
  • Apple has brought the unified language of symbols that is more consistent and easy to recognize.
  •  They have used rich materials like Metal & added vibrant colors to their components.
  • They have also taken care of the depth, shading, and translucency present in the component’s look.
  • Along with this, now you also have the option to choose Light or Dark Mode to work according to your choice.
  • They have tried to show the elements in a very optimizable way. Now the elements in the Mac will be only visible if we hover over them, otherwise, they recede.
  • As I have mentioned, this time they have paid attention to the looks, now every app has its own key color and that same color is used all over the app especially in the row selection style, sidebars, etc.
  • The Search Bar gets expanded while clicking over it.
  • The Menu bar is translucent now and takes the color of the desktop picture. They have also updated the layout of the menu bar.

Customized Specific Spaces

  • This time Apple has decided to use every part of the screen very wisely and systematically. They have introduced a new way to access the system controls. They have specified a unified space for the different widgets and notifications on the screen.
  • Introduced a place where every control can be accessed from-know as Control Center. The menu bar can be customized using this control center. New controls can be added by just clicking on the control and dragging them to the menu bar.
  • Similarly, they have designed a Notification Center where all the notifications and widgets appear in a single view. This notification center is accessible by clicking on Time, in the upper right corner of the screen. Again this Notification Center is customizable.

Photos & Sound

  • Coming to photos- they have added some amazing features like super-smooth scrolling, transitioning, zooming in or out, and other animations. Also, all the media types and albums are accessible from the sidebar itself.
  • Updated the podcast and music system with a more refined and remastered suit including a new “Listen Now” pane.

Messages

  • Apple has introduced so many powerful tools in order to manage the conversation related features like now SMS and iMessage conversations are in sync with all the apple devices. 
  • A new powerful search option has been added to it to find any particular message easily.
  • Memoji stickers are added to the Mac conversation this time, which can be created or edited and can be used in the messages.
  • Some other message effects are added like pinned messages. All these features are synced across all the devices.

Maps

  • Really interesting features have been added to the Maps this time. Now you can mark your favorite places like office, home, school, etc and save them.
  • A new feature called Indoor Maps has been added, through which you can track the in-detailed view of your location.
  • Look Around feature is another one added and can be used to explore cities and different areas and hence now people can create their own guide to visit any place.

Updates In Mac Catalyst

  • Mac catalyst is used by the developers for creating Mac apps. This time they have provided the facility to fully utilize the native resolution of mac screen by providing full control over every pixel.
  • Developers are also given many new capabilities like powerful Menu and Keyboard APIs, updated controls like the checkboxes and date pickers.
  • Not only that, but this time catalyst can also use the new version of the Maps with its full-fledged features.

Updates In the browser- Safari

As we all know, Safari has been the world’s fastest desktop browser, they have tried to incorporate some more amazing features in it to increase its efficiency. For that, they have worked on this-

  • Speedy Performance- They have worked upon providing more browsing speed to it and now Safari is 50 % faster than chrome.
  • Power efficiency- Not only the speed but they have taken care of efficient power consumption by the browser and hence it has come with better battery life.
  • Privacy protection- As Safari is also famous for the privacy-related features(private browsing, cookie blocking, etc), they have introduced an Intelligent Tracking Prevention feature which gives the users much more visibility over the known trackers and its full privacy report.  Safari lets the user know how the site is treating with their privacy and also lets them monitor and control their movements.
  • New Extension- Apple has added a WebExtensions API for developers enabling them to bring over the extensions built for other browsers. These extensions also enable the users to give access to the sites to the specified time period and to a specified extent.
  • Browsing experience- Safari has now a more clean and fresh look with a customizable start page, a built-in translation that can automatically detect the primary language and gives the option to convert any page to that language.

With all these features, Safari is a huge release this time.

Major updates in macOS-

The Mac has gone three major transitions to date that includes- Transition to power PC, Transition to Mac OS X, and Move to intel. Now this year, Apple brought the next big transition in Mac and that’s why Mac OS Big Sur is considered a huge release.

This great transition of Mac is to its own Apple Silicon. 

Apple Silicon

As integrating hardware and the software is the soul part of every product at Apple, having their own silicon will prove to be a big game-changer for them. For creating their own world-class energy-efficient chip- Apple Silicon, they have worked upon it for decades. The Apple Silicom has a scalable architecture that includes many custom technologies that will help Mac in the long run. 

The Apple Silicon will help in many aspects like-

  • Power Management-  It will help maximize the battery life and the performance more than ever before.
  • Security- The new Apple Silicon will provide better security
  • High Performance – Now with this integration, Apple GPU will have the highest performance with improved graphics and hence really great for the Games.
  • Incorporating Neural Engine- The Apple chip is integrated with the neural engines that will make the Machine learning easy to integrate on it.
  • Some other features like video display, image processing engines, etc are going to make Mac better.

Above all these features, since Apple has designed a family of SoCs, the question arises, how easily can one do this transition. So to answer this, Mac OS Big Sur has all the technologies for making the transition to the Apple Silicon smoother and seamless for the users and developers.

To make the best use of the Apple Silicon, every app in Mac OS Big Sur has been built as a native app. To get the transition to the Apple Silicon, developers just have to open their app projects and recompile them. And that’s it, the apps will be up and running in just a few days. To make it possible, they have created Universal 2.

Universal 2

It is a new kind of Universal Binary that supports both Intel-based Mac as well as Mac with Apple silicon. So now the developers can use the native power and performance of the new Mac with Silicon and at the same time, they can also support Intel-based Macs, with just a single binary for all of their users. 

Many apps are already up and running great with this feature. For instance, if we talk about third-party apps like Adobe, everything is working suer smooth, super responsive, and actually great. We will talk in detail about the Microsoft Office how it is working- 

MS Excel-  The complex sheet in excel and the elements are getting updated instantly.

Powerpoint– Animations has become super smooth because of using Metal for rendering, even all the layers of 3D slides can be seen now. 

Lightroom– Since due to using the features with Adobe to bring the creative cloud to the Mac, Lightroom is running natively on Apple silicon. Navigation is super fast to different images, every editing controls are available there as well. The created edits can be saved and applied to other images in just a single step.

Photoshop– Many features have been included to it too as super smooth zoom in and out, easy layer adding, etc making its experience even better.

Final Cut Pro– One of the most sophisticated apps is running super smooth on Apple silicon. For the first time, the playback is running amazingly. Using the advantages of the capabilities of the neural engines used in the Apple Engines analyzes the videos and crops the most important part of it. A lot of filters can be applied in real-time ranging from correcting colors to adding animation titles and lens flare.

Advantages of Apple Silicon-

  • Improved CPU and Graphics performance
  • Unified Memory Architecture
  • Neural Engines helping in machine learning tasks
  • Great for developers
  • A new version of Rosetta- Rosetta 2 has been launched by Big Sur, which will automatically translate the existing Mac apps. The Rosetta 2 translates the apps automatically when installed on the new Mac.

Wrapping up

Mac OS has been updated with its new release – Mac OS Bis SUR, the biggest design since the original introduction of Mac OS X. This release is huge and many significant updates have been done in this like in the Messages, Maps and the biggest update to browser Safari.

With all these updates, the Mac OS Big Sur is considered to be a huge update because of its transitioning to its own world-class Apple Silicon chip. Now Apple is using its own chip and hence it’s going to be a big game-changer for them. With Apple Silicon came some of the applications to support the transitions like- Rosetta 2 and Universal 2, etc.

There is much more to this update including many advantages of using Apple Silicon-

  • Improved CPU and Graphics performance
  • Unified Memory Architecture
  • Neural Engines helping in machine learning tasks
  • Great for developers
  • A new version of Rosetta- Rosetta 2 has been launched by Big Sur

To read much about the WWDC 2020 updates special in iOS 14, you can refer to the article on New Updates on iOS 14 here at SocialMirror.in.

  

 

Hey, I'm Neha Raj - a Software Developer by profession and a writer by passion. I write about different kinda stuffs from technologies to Reviews to Updates. I'm currently pursuing MCA from SASTRA University and in some free time, I write blogs. You can find me on different social media platforms mentioned here. :)
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