MacVoices #24226: Joe Kissell Takes Control of Sequoia (1)

Joe Kissel takes control of Sequoia.

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Welcome to MacVoices.

This is the talk of the Apple community, and I'm Chuck Joyner.

Folks, it's that time of year, it's fall,

which means we are on the cusp, as we record this,

of getting a new version of macOS, along with all the other OSs.

But we're going to talk about the macOS version today

by talking to Mr. Joe Kissel.

Joe Kissel, he is the author of the very brand new

Take Control of Sequoia.

Joe, it's great to have you back, as always.

It's that time of year.

It is that time of year, and, you know,

summers are weird, right?

So summer has just ended,

and everybody seems to look forward to summer like,

oh, I get two or three months off.

And I'm like,

oh, summer is the worst time of year.

I hate summer because the kids are off school,

and so I have that much less time and attention available

to do my work stuff.

And also, at the beginning of summer

is when Apple announces all the new operating systems.

And so I'm like, okay, well, this book has to be updated,

and this has to be updated,

and we need a new one of these and a new one of those.

And then authors start, you know,

sending me macOS,

manuscripts for editing all over the place.

And so I'm, you know,

at the time of year that I most need sort of time and brain space,

I am also most overwhelmed.

So, boy, you know,

school has just started again,

and I couldn't be happier.

I love my kids.

And also, absence makes the heart grow fonder.

So I did manage to get this new book written over the summer,

and we have,

we have a whole bunch of others coming real soon now,

as is often the case in, you know,

September, October, November.

We'll be talking again a few times.

But, yeah, today, let's talk about Sequoia.

Well, let's talk about Sequoia.

But before we do,

I want to make sure folks understand that we don't know exactly when Sequoia is out.

So you've been working off betas and that kind of thing.

But once Sequoia is actually out,

you will be updating the book automatically

with any last-minute changes or updates that have occurred.

Yes, although, since you brought it up,

the situation is extra complicated this year.

So our pattern for many, many years has been

we write a book about the new operating system.

I write my book.

Josh writes his book about the new operating system.

While they're in beta.

And we release version 1.0 of our books sometime in late August, early September.

And then a month or however long after that,

sometimes it's two months after that,

when the public release of the operating systems occurs,

then we update our books to version 1.1

to cover whatever has changed in the meantime.

So, yeah, we do plan to do that this time.

But Apple has made it,

because at the same time that everyone was beta testing Sequoia 15.0 and iOS 18.0,

Apple was also beta testing 15.1 and 18.1,

which include a lot of these Apple intelligence features,

which we'll discuss.

And so Josh and I have both been trying to juggle like,

well, we want to write about what's going to happen,

what's going to happen first,

but also since we already can see all this other stuff

and people will be wondering about it,

we want to cover that too.

But even once we've updated our books to version 1.2

or whatever it turns out to be,

because 15.1 has been released and we don't know when,

maybe October, just to guess.

Even then, Apple has said that over the rest of the,

like, you know, until I guess,

you know,

spring of next year,

more and more updates are going to come out with more and more features.

So a lot of things that were previewed at WWDC,

not only won't appear in 15.0 when it comes out,

we're guessing maybe mid-September or something.

And another block of those features will come out a little bit later,

and then more of them will trickle out over time.

And we have no idea what Apple's,

schedule is,

but we're going to have to do more than the usual number of updates to our books this year.

And it has made the testing and the writing a little awkward.

So thank you for clarifying that,

because I hadn't even thought about that part of it,

you know, that it was an extra layer of,

I guess, an extra layer of updates or anticipated features.

So let's use that as a way in.

Yeah.

And start talking about the first part first,

and that is Sequoia minus Apple Intelligence.

Okay.

What do we need to know?

What should we be afraid of?

From a certain point of view,

Sequoia follows in the long tradition of,

well, it's just another macOS update, right?

So some things were fixed,

right?

Right.

were broken.

There are some new things,

nothing really earth shattering.

And if you happen to still be using an Intel-based Mac,

you will notice even fewer changes because a lot of the new stuff,

and in particular,

all of the later stuff involving Apple Intelligence requires an M-series

processor,

Apple Silicon.

So the look and feel is,

is not very much different.

There are of course some new things.

And there are some things that I have personally found annoying.

A few things that I've found modestly helpful.

Honestly,

at this point,

the annoying is outweighing the helpful.

You know,

it's fine.

I can get my stuff done.

But it's not a,

it's not a,

it's not a scary update.

So I'll say that it's not something that you should be worried about.

It's also,

probably not going to change your life,

even though it has that,

you know,

AI thing in it.

It's,

it's better in some ways,

but not,

not going to change your life.

So I'll,

I'm just going to tell you that one of the,

one of the,

there were several kind of marquee features and one of them that I noticed the

very first thing I noticed when I install a beta of Sequoia and I start

playing around.

So I'm just,

I'm just moving a window around.

Like,

I do a hundred times a day.

Just,

I just wanted to drag a window to another part of the screen and the window

that I tried to drag didn't stay where I put it.

It kind of zoomed up and filled up half the screen.

And I'm like,

well,

but I,

but I put it where I wanted it.

I didn't,

I didn't want it to be that size or that shape or that location.

And I,

I kept moving it around and it kept sort of sticking,

sticking to different parts of the screen and,

and,

you know,

getting different shapes and sizes.

Well,

this is,

this is a feature.

This is the new window tiling feature.

So if,

if the need for order and tidiness supersedes everything else and you want

all your windows to be rectangular,

well,

of course they're all going to be,

they're all going to be rectangular,

but I mean,

if you want them to be a symmetrical,

okay.

So if you want a window to take up exactly the left half,

or the right half of your screen or the top half of the

bottom half,

if you want those sort of neat segments of your screen,

and there are other arrangements,

but if you,

if you have to have your windows that way,

then this sort of snap to a location and zoom out to

fill it feature is nice.

I guess I could not wait to figure out how to

turn that feature off personally,

because like if I,

if I decide I want to,

to have my windows in that configuration,

it's,

it's fine if I can trigger that effect manually and you can,

you can,

you can make it do the tiling thing only when you hold

down certain keys or whatever.

And that's,

and there's like,

there are other ways to get at it and it's,

it's fine if I'm doing it intentionally,

but when it's just deciding to do that as the default setup

and not what I want or X or expect,

then,

and that's just irritating.

So that's,

that's an example of,

of a sort of thing where it's a little bit annoying.

It can be useful if you,

if you learn how to turn off the annoying part and then

deliberately use the useful part.

So I,

I think there are kind of a lot of things in that

category.

Some people probably are going to love that because I can

think of at least two windowing utilities that are available right now that

let you do that,

that,

you know,

you can,

if you drag something to this edge or that edge,

it suddenly re morphs into,

you know,

what you've set it for.

And I've tried those.

And part of the time I find them useful,

but,

but yeah,

it's,

it's something you need to figure out for yourself.

If,

if,

well,

I've tried,

I've tried some of them too.

And my,

my take is that,

yeah,

cause everybody,

everybody was talking about not just with this feature,

but with some others.

Oh,

is Apple Sherlocking this utility and Sherlocking that app,

which,

which for the uninitiated is basically defining a third party app out of

existence by incorporating those features into Mac OS itself.

And my,

my feeling having now tried both third party versions of this and Apple's

version is that Apple's version is a pale shadow of,

of what you can get with third party options.

There will be some people that are,

that are just like,

okay,

yeah,

this is,

this is all I need.

This is close enough.

I'm not going to buy a thing anymore,

but it could also have the opposite effect.

Like once you see what this is like,

you might start thinking,

if only I could do this too,

or if only I could only had this option or that option.

And then once you figure that out,

there are,

there are apps you can get.

We'll do those things.

We'll do those things for you.

Yeah.

And look,

it's,

it's a choice.

Joe though,

correct me if I'm wrong.

Isn't this,

isn't that a feature that is prevalent on the window side?

Uh,

probably I,

I use windows only as much as I have to,

to,

uh,

to,

you know,

right,

right about cross platform apps and stuff.

I,

I could not say with conviction,

what the,

what the tiling situation is on windows,

but I,

I have the impression that there is more of it there.

Yeah.

I,

and,

and you know,

here we go again,

it pick a feature and somebody is going to love it and somebody is going to

hate it.

So yeah,

as long as,

as long as you can turn it on and off,

I'm good.

So I'll,

I'll just run down a few more.

There's the iPhone mirroring app.

And basically you have an iPhone it's in your pocket or it's over there.

Some place.

And it's turned on,

but,

uh,

you want to see what's on your iPhone and you don't want to have to reach

all the way into your pocket and pull it out or go all the way over to that

table where it's sitting.

So yeah,

you open an app and there is,

there's your iPhone screen right on your Mac screen.

And you can open apps and you can play videos and you can,

you know,

do all pretty much everything you can do on your iPad.

Yeah.

your iPhone by clicking on icons on your on your Mac screen now you can't do

everything everything like you can't like on on your actual iPhone you can

touch and hold an icon and they kind of go into jiggle mode you know and you can

rearrange things and add stuff you can't do those kinds of things in the app so

there are some limitations and like I've tried this a few times and it's not just

that you can see the screen but like notifications from your iPhone will show

up in your Mac to things like that and I mean there are times when if I need to

take a screenshot of something on my iPhone that I'm going to then use on my

Mac it's it is actually way more convenient to just take the screenshot

on my Mac screenshot of what's on my virtual iPhone screen so okay there's

there's that use case but other than that I don't really think I would ever

use this feature

and these these couple of examples that I'm starting with are things that Apple

just seems to think are the best thing ever even though I didn't see this

groundswell of people saying oh please Apple give me this feature it's just

like okay well I it's that's cool technologically that you can do that but

boy I could give you a list of a hundred bugs that have been around for years and years and years ago to take a screenshot of something that is really valuable to do it's just much easier to take a screenshot of that and keep up with it and keep it to know and keep the updates, right?

I think if you've been around for a long time and you know I appreciate that and I think

I think Apple or Apple or Apple are a little bit more experienced but if

you've been around for a long time you're starting to realize like these things are

actually big and they're so much more important than Apple and obviously Apple know how to do this beyond this

around for years and years and years that i really just wish you'd fix instead how about fixing some

bugs so you know apple this is this is what apple does though they they want to uh entice you with

the new shiny stuff and uh bugs that are old aren't interesting so uh you know i'm just i

want to see if there's anything else oh well well before you before you jump on whatever

i do i do want to ask about the the iphone part um question can can it be flipped portrait to

uh horizontal or landscape or are you just going to always see the phone

in a landscape excuse me in a portrait orientation so it will go into landscape mode

if the thing that you're doing on the iphone requires it for example if you open

up the iphone and you open up the iphone and you open up the iphone and you open up the

garage band on your iphone it or like many games or certain video apps like they can only function

in landscape mode so if you're doing something that requires landscape mode on your iphone it

will the display will switch around on your mac however what you cannot do on your mac is say okay

but i i just i just want to there's there's you can't at least not not currently uh we'll see how

things you know end up later on but uh you you can't just say go into landscape mode or go into

portrait mode deliberately so the answer is kind of sort of okay just just curious it makes sense

for those apps that would require landscape mode to function um but for the ones that are optional

i guess not

you were about to you were about to um uh i'm gonna i have there a few things that i'm going

to rant about because that's what i do so uh it seems like maybe once or twice in the past you and

i probably talked about the topic of passwords have a vague recollection that that there might

have been just 15 or 20 interviews on that subject and last year

so

you know yes passwords are are a topic of great interest to me i've written a few books on that

so of course i was very very interested to uh hear about apple's new passwords app which exists

uh in in sequoia as well as ios and ipad os 18 and the press was was all like oh look at that

apple has sherlocked all of your password managers you won't need one password manager

anymore you won't need whatever it is bitwarden or dash lane or whatever the whatever the password

manager is you don't need that anymore because because look see apple has an app now called

passwords and so this new passwords manager is is now apple's built-in solution to the password

management problem and and i've i read all these articles and i and even before i tried it out

myself i'm like did you actually watch the keynote?

because i don't think you did i think you i think you might have latched on to some marketing points

but i i formed an opinion of of what the password app was likely to be like and then i tried it

myself and my opinion was about you know 92 confirmed so it's like this

your mac has has passwords stored on it and as we all know they they're stored in your keychain

and you if you're using safari to browse websites and you have all the default things enabled

then a website asks you for a password and safari is like oh hey how about this one you

want to use this one you're like yeah cool let's use that one and then you uh you click the thing

and it's stored automatically in keychain

keychain. Next time you go back to that site in Safari, Safari is like, hey, this is the one you

want, right? Let me just fill that in for you. That's great. And those passwords sync among your

devices. Use the same one on iOS and so forth. This has been the case for years and years and

years. None of that is new. If you're using Sonoma or Ventura, or I forget how far back it goes,

but you can go into various places that are not keychain access, by the way, which is

hideous app. And the less said about that, the better. But you could go in recent versions,

you'd go into Safari's settings, or before that, you could go into, you can also go into system

settings or system preferences, as it was called. And there is a passwords pane there, where you can

see all those passwords that are available for auto-filling in Safari. So,

all Apple has basically done is taken what was in that settings pane, both in system settings and

in Safari, and moved it into its own app. That's it. I mean, I'm oversimplifying slightly. There

is 8% of it that's new. But basically, that's it. It is a new interface to the same stuff that you

had that exists in a standalone app, rather than in a more hidden place. It's pretty. Okay, it's a

lot easier to work with than those old interfaces. But it isn't a new password manager. It's a new

coat of paint on the old password manager. And it might be all that many people need. But if you use

an Android app, it's a new code of paint on the old password manager. And it's a new code of paint

on the old password manager. And it might be all that many people need. But if you use an Android

phone, for example, your passwords are not going to be available there. Things work really great in

Safari, not necessarily so much in other browsers. So, there are the same limitations that you had

before. There is a way to get at your iCloud passwords in Chrome or in some other browsers

before. But it's a little awkward. So, Apple has made it look as though they have a new all-powerful

password manager. But they really don't. Which is not to say it's fine. And it might be all you need

if you live in an entirely Apple ecosystem and you mainly use Safari. It's fine. It might be all you need.

And it does the two-factor codes and all that stuff. But I strongly disagree with the characterization

that it replaces all third-party password managers because it doesn't do that any more or less

than it did last year.

From what I've read, my impression of it, and you've spent more time with it, obviously,

than I have, is it's like the Calendar app. It's like iMovie. It's like a number of different

examples where...

There is a basic, maybe not entry-level, but an adequate version of this particular utility.

If you want the advanced features and all, you step outside of Apple and you buy from someone

who actually adds features and does those kind of things. Is that a fair assessment with the

password manager?

Yeah, I think that's fair.

I think...

The key thing for me is that if you are already using some other third-party password manager,

the changes in Sequoia will not tempt you to get rid of it. If you try, and of course you can,

I suspect, I predict that after a little while, you'll say, oh, but why can't I...

You know, there'll be a lot of those, but I used to be able to, and now I can't.

I think that's the key thing.

And that's just the way it's designed. It's not meant to do all those things. It's not meant to

have all the bells and whistles. It is limited, and it's Apple's kind of good enough solution

for people that do not have very elaborate needs.

Joe, I don't want to take us down too far down this road, but does it assist in the management

of passkeys?

Yeah.

It seems to be kind of confusing at the moment.

It handles passkeys just the way it did in Sonoma and earlier. I don't remember when

Apple started, but yeah, passkeys are, of course, supported. And I will say that the

Passwords app makes it a lot clearer what's going on with passkeys than the old interface

did. So that's nice. But fundamentally, in terms of the password, it's a lot clearer

because of storing passkeys and using them. It's not significantly better than in Sonoma.

I won't say it's not better at all. It is a little bit better. But previously, passkeys

were stored in your keychain. And I think Safari has kind of gotten better at automatically

storing passkeys when it's appropriate to do so.

Yeah.

I personally still prefer other solutions.

Makes perfect sense. Makes perfect sense. Do we have more we should talk about in Sequoia

itself or should we shift over to the Apple Intelligence discussion yet? I'll let you

tell me.

There's lots. There's really interesting new things in the Notes app, new stuff in

the Messages app.

Safari has some, yeah, like, again, like, there are new features that I'm sure that

for people who use these certain apps in certain ways, they're going to go, oh, that's so cool.

Like Safari's reader view has some new stuff. I use reader very, very seldom. So it's not

super exciting for me. But if you use reader, hey, yes, there's shiny new things. There

is an effect.

I mean, there is an effect now. The machine I'm using right now is still on Sonoma. My

Sequoia machine is in the other room, my test machine. But there are some new video conferencing

features. So if I were using Sequoia, I could replace this real background with a fake background.

I mean, I have a green screen here, which sometimes I use, but even without pulling

that down.

There are some apps, including Zoom, that can try to replace your real background with, you know, a photograph or some, you know, a color gradient or whatever.

And so macOS can now do this too without the need for a green screen.

And the results I've gotten with this background replacement feature have been very impressive.

They look much more convincing than what I've seen with third-party tools, and I've tried a few of them.

If you're moving around a lot, you'll still see some, you know, some stuff around the edges where it takes it a minute to catch up.

But for the most part, it's a really convincingly clear delineation between you as a subject and the fake background.

And so that's nice.

That's a feature.

That's a feature that I don't mind Apple having sort of Sherlocked from other apps because they did a better job at it.

So, like, you know, that's nice.

And, like, there's a whole list, a whole list of other apps that have changes and, you know, calculator.

Calculator.

Apple hasn't touched calculator in who knows how long.

And, oh, it's actually really cool now, especially when you're doing conversions.

And so it's, that's, that's remarkable.

That's very, very nice.

I like calendar improvements to, you know, maps and photos and what have you.

Joe is back next time to finish up our conversation about his new take control of Sequoia and also dig into Apple intelligence and the implications of Apple intelligence.

That's next time on Mac Voices.

I'm Chuck Joyner, and I'll see you then.

As always, thanks for watching.

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