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Apple macOS Sierra Review

editors choice horizontal
4.5
Outstanding

The Bottom Line

macOS Sierra and Windows 10 are both mature, powerful, easy-to-use operating systems, but macOS holds the edge when it comes to coherence, convenience, and being pleasurable to use.

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Pros

  • Smooth, effortless upgrade from OS X El Capitan.
  • Improved performance over predecessor.
  • Smaller footprint.
  • Siri voice-enabled assistant now integrated.
  • Tabbed interface available everywhere.
  • Enhanced security features.

Cons

  • No touch or pen input capability.
  • Many new features require premium iCloud subscription.
  • Siri is harder to wake than Cortana.
  • Siri and Spotlight return different results.

When you upgrade your Apple computer to macOS Sierra, the hardest thing you'll have to learn is its name. With the advent of Sierra as a free download from the App Store, OS X is no more. Now the newly renamed macOS joins iOS, tvOS, and watchOS in the tightly interconnected Apple ecosystem. If you've been using OS X for years, everything except the name in macOS Sierra will look familiar, though with notable improvements throughout. The biggest change is the addition of Siri, Apple's voice-activated assistant, now accessible from Mac laptops and desktops after a long residence on the iPhone and iPad.

If you already have a Mac dating back to 2010 (or a MacBook( at Amazon) or iMac from late 2009), an upgrade to Sierra gives you dozens of advantages—including faster performance—and, as far as I can tell, no major disadvantages. But, unless you're really impatient, it's always safest to wait to upgrade until Apple releases the first point release, which typically arrives three or four weeks after the initial launch.

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Mac and Windows
If you're choosing a new computer and deciding between a Windows 10 ($139.00 at Microsoft Store)machine and a Mac, then the choice is more complicated. I'm bilingual in Windows and the Mac, and I use both every day, but when I have to choose one or the other—for example, when packing a laptop—I choose a Mac with the Mac version of Microsoft Office($69.00 at Amazon) installed. macOS strikes me the more transparent, usable, enjoyable, and hassle-free OS, and the built-in macOS apps like Safari, Mail, Photos, Maps, Contacts, Reminders, iTunes, and Messages combine consistency, power, and ease in a way that no built-in Windows apps can match.

It's worth noting, however, that in some ways Microsoft has been more innovative, with things like support for touch and pen input and Continuum for switching between desktop, tablet, and phones. Not to mention that it's included a desktop AI-powered voice-responsive digital assistant in Cortana more than a year before Apple got around to it. Windows Hello authentication, which lets you log in with your face, is another unique innovation. And Microsoft's main Office apps($69.99 Per Year at Microsoft Store) —Word and Excel—outclass Apple's Pages and Numbers in power and flexibility, and much of the business world relies on Microsoft's Outlook. But by using the Mac versions of Word, Excel, and Outlook on a Mac running macOS Sierra, you can enjoy benefits of both Apple's and Microsoft's software.

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Marquee Changes
The big features that Apple wants you to know about in macOS Sierra include the voice-activated digital assistant Siri, a universal clipboard that lets you copy and paste among any devices using your iCloud account, and a few other features that tighten the Apple ecosystem, such as the ability (not tested by me) to unlock your Mac when you get near it while wearing an Apple Watch($180.52 at Amazon).

DesktopDesktop

You can click the Share button in Notes to share notes with anyone using an Apple device so that everyone who shares it can make changes—for example, a list of family errands or shared planning for an event. Further iCloud integration includes a new feature that automatically uploads to your iCloud Drive($0.00 at Apple.com) any files on your Desktop or in your Documents folder—unless you switch this feature off. This means that all these documents are available almost instantly on all your Apple devices.

This is a feature that won't come into its own until the next full version of macOS arrives next year. That's because it will use Apple's forthcoming APFS file system, which will make this kind of upload more or less instantaneous. But it works at impressive speed even with the older HFS+ file system still used by Sierra. And note that all these new features that use iCloud storage mean it's likely that you'll be paying a subscription fee: You only get a measly 5GB free; upgrade options cost 99 cents per month for 50GB, $2.99 per month for 200GB, and $9.99 per month for 1TB.

Storage and Clutter
A related option (turned on by default) lets macOS save space on your Mac when your disk starts running out of space. When space is low on your Mac, the copies on your Mac of older documents in your Desktop or Documents folder, or anywhere else in your iCloud Drive folder, automatically get removed from the Mac and stored only in the cloud. They get downloaded again when you click on them to open them. I'm a bit leery of any system that stores the only copy of any file in the cloud, but you may find it worthwhile for large files that you've copied to a local backup disk or that you can afford to lose.

Finally, macOS includes an option to empty Trash items more than 30 days old (you'll find this in the Finder's Preferences, not in the System Preferences app), and it now prompts you to delete an installer after installing an app. Safari flags duplicate downloads and deletes the second of two identical copies. System caches and logs are cleared automatically, so expert users may stop using third-party apps to clear out system detritus that accumulated in earlier versions.

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The New Look
Interface improvements—always a feature of new macOS releases—include an optional tabbed interface in virtually any application that uses standard macOS interface design. So Maps, TextEdit, Mail, Pages, and other Apple apps now get tabs—but so do many third-party apps like VMware Fusion($79.99 at VMware). Live thumbnail previews of Web links now appear in Messages—not only in Spotlight—along with larger-scale emoji so that you can finally figure out whether your friend is laughing or crying. If you're really impatient, you can respond to texts by clicking an icon on a pop-up menu that includes a thumbs-up icon and a heart.

From iOS to macOS
Every recent macOS version borrows new features from iOS. Some of these are more valuable than others. For example, you can now set a System Preference that types a period when you type two spaces at the end of a sentence—even though the period key is just as easy to type on a Mac keyboard as any other symbol, and you'll end up making two keystrokes when one would work equally well. More usefully, by default macOS now automatically capitalizes the first letter of your sentences, though you can turn this option off in the Keyboard pane of the System Preferences app.

Hey Siri
I'm impressed by all the things that Siri can do on the Mac, but I have a few mixed feelings about her. The first thing you should ask Siri is "What you can do?" The answer is a long list of abilities ranging from telling you the time in Tokyo to opening a Finder window on a specific folder to sending an email message when you tell Siri the recipient, the subject, and what you want to say. I like being able to ask to see (for example) all the files I created in the past week and all the questions about directions, coffee shops, sports scores, and weather that you probably ask Siri about when using your phone. If Siri's answer has a plus sign in the upper-right corner of its result window, you can pin it to the macOS notification area, where the results will always be up to date. Stocks, sports, weather, and similar data are pinnable and updatable this way.

It's a bit awkward to get Siri's attention on the Mac, and you can't simply say "Hey, Siri." You can only get Siri's attention by clicking on a menu-bar icon or holding down the Command key while pressing the space bar, and you have to do the same thing again if you have a follow-up question. Unlike Windows' Cortana, which can wake up when you say "Hey Cortana" and accepts spoken or typed or even handwritten questions, Siri only accepts spoken questions. You can click in the transcript that appears on-screen in which Siri repeats in text what she thinks she heard you say, and you can type in modifications to your question, but you can't start by typing in a question. I'm used to waiting a few seconds for Siri to respond on my phone, but on a high-powered Mac, it felt slightly frustrating to wait while Siri processed my questions, typed them out, and slowly answered them.

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If you don't want to chat with Siri, you can type a Siri-style question into macOS's Spotlight field, just as in previous macOS versions. Strangely, Spotlight tends to give different answers from the ones that Siri gives you—for example, a completely different list of nearby places to get coffee. Windows' Cortana sometimes gives you different answers to typed versus written questions, too, and it's puzzling that neither Windows nor macOS hasn't done a better job of integrating spoken and written questions. One positive note: Spotlight in Sierra has many new powers. You can now ask Spotlight for files that you created yesterday or messages received today, and you can ask Siri the same question, though the results when you ask Spotlight will appear in a Finder window and the results when you ask Siri will appear in a notification-style box. I'd prefer to be able to choose one style or the other for both Siri and Spotlight, and maybe Apple will give me the choice in some future macOS version.

Overdue Changes
Some of Sierra's new features are nifty enough to make you ask why Apple didn't offer them before. My favorite is Picture in Picture, which lets you detach a miniature version of an iTunes or Safari-based video and watch it in a corner of the screen. It stays in that corner even when you switch desktops. You start it by Ctrl-clicking in a video and selecting Picture in Picture from the pop-up menu; in YouTube videos you'll probably need to Ctrl-click twice, once to bring up the standard YouTube context menu, then again to bring up Sierra's menu with options for full-screen, picture-in-picture, and more.

Other neat tricks include a drop-down menu at the top of the message list in Mail that lets you see only messages that are unread or flagged, or only addressed or copied to you, or only that have attachments. These filters were available in earlier versions with a bit of typing, but Sierra makes them available with two clicks. Users of Microsoft Exchange can see mail messages and calendar events as soon as they're sent, just like messages and events in Apple's native apps. After Sierra is released, Safari extensions will be accessible from the App Store and won't require manual downloading and installing as they do now.

PIPPIP

Photos
Other changes in Sierra include an overhauled Photos app that includes a new "Brilliance" filter (hidden under Adjust>Light) that intelligently makes photos look richer by adjusting different regions separately. Photos also uses high-powered automation to produce albums called "Memories" that combine photos taken at a single event or on a single day, and, by default, displays them with pseudo-animation that zooms images in and out. There's a similar feature in iOS 10's Photos app, with a different set of customization options, and my phone created a completely different set of Memories from my Mac. Sierra provides various themes for Memories, including the Ken Burns effect, Origami, Sliding Panels, and other fancy-looking transition effects. Maybe you'll like having your Mac compile movies for you, but, for me at least, this feature gets tired fast, and there seems to be no way to disable it other than to delete the Memories that Photos creates.

Experts Only
Some changes in Sierra aren't mentioned in Apple's publicity but will interest expert users nevertheless. For example, System Preferences used to offer an option to run apps downloaded from anywhere simply by clicking on them—just as you can do with apps downloaded from the App Store or from registered Apple developers. This option is now gone (though it can be restored with an expert-only command in the Terminal), so if you download an app from an unknown developer, and launch it for the first time, Sierra will display a message saying that your security settings block apps from unidentified developers. You can still run the app by Ctrl-clicking it and choosing Open, or by going to the Security & Privacy pane in System Preferences and clicking an Open Anyway button, but Apple is trying to make it harder for you to compromise your system by running malware. These precautions are similar to Windows' Smart Screen, and they're worth having, even if expert users have to click once or twice before launching an app for the first time.

Apple has cleaned up the System Preferences app by reducing the number of panes and consolidating separate panes into one. For example, the old Dictation & Speech pane is now divided between the Keyboard pane and the Accessibility pane. As always, it's easy to find the controls you need by using the search box at the upper right of System Preferences, and Windows 10 users will wish they had a single unified app like System Preferences instead of the baffling division of controls into the Windows Control Panel and the Settings app.

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Subjectively Snappier, Objectively Smaller
How does Sierra feel when you upgrade from the previous version, El Capitan? Subjectively, it feels snappier and more responsive. It also takes up less disk space, because it deletes some dictionaries and fonts that you've never used, and downloads them when needed. One way in which macOS and Windows continue to differ is that Windows now looks and feels more or less similar on all devices, and makes a touch-enabled interface on any hardware that supports it, while Apple reserves macOS for desktops and laptops and iOS for tablets and phones, with touch only available on iOS. I'm not the only Mac user who has tried to control my MacBook Air by touching its screen after spending the day with my iPhone($288.00 at Visible).

On the whole, I think Apple is right to keep the two OSes separate, partly because, for me at least, Windows doesn't feel at home on a tablet or touch-enabled laptop in the way that iOS feels at home on the iPad. But some touch controls might come in handy in macOS someday, and someday I would like to have a Mac laptop that works with a stylus like the Apple Pencil($79.00 at Amazon) so that I could interact directly with the screen—for example, for drawing or for signing forms—without smearing it with fingerprints. Windows Anniversary Update, by contrast, made a big deal about the OS's pen input and digital inking capabilities.

All-Encompassing OSes
Windows and macOS are now impressively mature systems, massively capable and highly reliable. Some of my PCMag.com colleagues will disagree, but I think macOS has the edge in coherence, convenience, and intelligent interface design. Apple also has the edge in its built-in applications. For advanced users, macOS has the advantage of its Automator and AppleScript features that make it easy for non-programmers to create custom workflows and other automated features that require far more expertise to reproduce in Windows. For advanced users, Apple's OS also has the advantage of being built on Unix, which means that a vast range of specialized and open-source software written for Linux is also usable in macOS. But what matters most to millions of nontechnical users is whether an OS helps make life and work easier—and that's what macOS does best.

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About Edward Mendelson

Edward Mendelson has been a contributing editor at PC Magazine since 1988, and writes extensively on Windows and Mac software, especially about office, internet, and utility applications.

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Apple macOS Sierra