Everything you need to know about the new Macintosh operating system.
Apple next major revision to its Macintosh operating system is called macOS Mojave. The company revealed the update at its 2018 Worldwide Developers Conference in June, and it features several user interface improvements to make the experience on the Mac better.
In this FAQ, we’ll give you the general details on macOS Mojave: When it will be release, what Macs are compatible, etc. We’ll add more details to this article as they become available.
Developers can get a beta of macOS Mojave through the Apple Developer Program. The developer beta costs $99 per year.
Apple also releases a free beta to the general public. Since the software is beta, it isn’t as reliable as officially-released versions to the general public and it could cause problems on your Mac. The public beta is a few cycles behind the developer beta, so they’re not the same. Learn more about the macOS Mojave public beta program.
If you try out the beta and decide later that you don’t want to use it anymore, you can go back to macOS High Sierra.
You can continue to participate in the beta program after the Mojave golden master has been released. You’ll get beta versions of the Mojave updates.
The features that Apple highlighted during WWDC focused on the user interface. They’ll make your Mac easier and more efficient to use. Here’s a list of some of the new features. Click on the link to get more information, including instructions on how to use the feature in macOS Mojave. (If there’s no link, we’re working on the article and will post it soon.)
Get more details on macOS Mojave’s major new features .
The features listed above will have the greatest appeal, but there are a lot of other features in Mojave that you’ll find useful.
No—and Apple was emphatic about that. But Apple did announce at WWDC that they are working on giving developers that ability to more easily port their iOS apps over to macOS. In fact, Mojave has three new apps that were originally iOS apps, and they were brought over to macOS using the new framework. Apple says that they are planning to have the iOS-to-macOS tools available in 2019.
Just in case you were wondering whether iOS and MacOS would ever merge.
As mentioned above, Mojave has three new apps that were originally iOS apps: Apple News, Stocks, and Voice Memos. There’s also a new Home app for managing internet-of-things devices.
The Mac App Store isn’t a new app, but it gets a major redesign that makes it look more like the iOS App Store.
The Mac App Store in macOS Mojave.
If your Mac isn’t on this list, you can continue to run macOS Sierra or High Sierra.
Apple does its major operating system releases in the Fall. So expect macOS Mojave to be released around the end of September.
Apple will make macOS Mojave available through the Mac App Store. The download will probably be over 2GB, and the installation will take several minutes, so use a reliable internet connection and be prepare to not be able to use you Mac for anything else other than the installation. Updates to Mojave will happen through the Software Update system preference, a change from previous versions that did updates through the App Store.
It’s free.
Apple names macOS after California locations, a method adopted in 2014 with OS X Yosemite. In case you’re wondering, it’s pronounced “Mo-HA-vey.” Mojave is a national preserve in the area between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, Nevada.
In 2015,Apple decided to switch from calling the Mac operating system “OS X” to “macOS.”
Officially, it’s macOS 10.14 Mojave.
