What Is Missing In macOS Mojave?

While macOS Mojave brings lots of great new features, it also retires some. The Mail stationery templates are gone. Cover Flow view has been replaced with Gallery View in the Finder. Integration with Facebook and other social networks is gone, most likely for privacy reasons. Back to My Mac has been retired, but all sharing functions like Screen Sharing and File Sharing remain. Warnings that 32-bit apps will soon no longer work with macOS are just warnings, however. Those old apps still work in Mojave.

Video Transcript: So macOS Mojave adds a lot of new great features to our Macs. But it also removes a few features. With every OS upgrade we get lots of new stuff but old features sometimes get retired or sometimes features are removed for other reasons. Let's take a look at some of the things that we had in High Sierra but now are missing in Mojave. 
Let's start with Mail. Mail used to have this feature in it for templates. It was called Stationery. There were all these predefined stationery things. Like birthday cards and invitations and things like that. They were really colorful. Lots of graphics. They looked really good but it's probably a good idea that they're gone. Why? Because, well you don't know what the person at the other end is using to view their email. They could be using a web based email viewer like Yahoo or gmail. They could be using a mobile device, android, iOS, maybe an older mobile device as well. Each of these viewers has different capabilities so they may not have seen exactly what it was that you sent. It may not look very good. It may even be on a small screen and be unreadable to them in that kind of format.
It's best for communication to actually send a simpler email and not use complicated templates like this. Of course, also, sending an email that's maybe several hundred K in size just to convey a few lines of text isn't a good idea if somebody's is over a mobile network too. So these are gone. You can still use lots of rich formatting. That hasn't changed in Mail. You can copy and paste elements from Pages or TextEdit or something in there. Maybe to accomplish a similar effect. There's just no more of this stationery template kind of functionality in Mail.
Another feature that's gone is CoverFlow. CoverFlow was a way to view files in the Finder. It was really handy for viewing lots of images and you could flip between them. Now in Mojave we have a new view called Gallery View and that replaces CoverFlow. It pretty much performs the same functionality. But it definitely looks different. Instead of seeing these huge icons at the top of the screen that you can flip through now you have these small icons at the bottom and a large preview in the middle. So some people may miss CoverFlow and have to get used to using Gallery View instead.
Another feature that's gone is the integration of social media networks right into the operating system. This is probably a good thing. Previously we could sign into Facebook, or Twitter, or even Vimeo and Flicker right in System Preferences in the operating system. Add it as an account and then system wide you could share things directly to these accounts and they had other hooks too. For instance you saw your Facebook friends appear in Contacts. So these are gone most likely because of privacy concerns. Right. A lot of people concerned about privacy with these different networks. There's been a lot of scandals and probably Apple thought it was a good idea not to have a direct tie-in with the operating system to these social media networks. You can still post to them. You can still go to their webpages, use their functionality, just as you could before you had this system integration. Certainly apps can actually hook directly into them as well. You just don't have the kind of, you know, macOS hooking directly into Facebook which is probably a really good thing.
Another network type thing that is gone is something called Back to My Mac. Now this was a way for you to log into your Mac remotely. So you could be traveling and you could use your Apple ID to basically either Screen Share or File Share with your Mac. Now all the functionalities are still there. You can still Screen Share. You can still File Share. Back to My Mac was just a way of finding your Mac remotely. It was handy but very few people actually used it. So, you know, if you're worried about screen sharing things with that going away it hasn't at all. There's been some misinformation there. Just the Back to My Mac functionality that very few people used. 
There's still lots of solutions. Lots of third party solutions for finding your Mac and, of course, a lot of people don't need this anymore. Because if you're using the iCloud to store your files you have access to all your files everywhere. You don't have to use something that actually grabs the files directly off the hard drive. You can use Cloud Solutions for that instead. That's probably one of the reasons why Back to My Mac was discontinued and isn't in Mojave anymore.
Now one of the things not gone in Mojave is the ability to use 32 bit apps. So all Macs for the last ten years are 64 bit processors and you should be using 64 bit apps with them. But they still support all 32 bit apps. So if you have an old old app or a developer that hasn't updated their app in a long time you can still use those apps in Mojave. But you do get a warning now. Why? Because Apple has been warning developers for years that a future operating system will only support 64 bit apps. Now they're saying, okay Mojave is the last operating system that will support 32 bit apps. Next year you'll most likely get a version of Mac OS that doesn't support them. So if you see a message saying that an app needs to be updated and optimized by the developer that means that that app is old and it's 32 bit and either you need to use the current version of the app from that developer or perhaps if that app has been abandoned by that developer move onto a new app that does the same thing. You've got about a year to do that before the next version of Mac OS comes out. But for now those 32 bit apps still work fine. You just get the little warning.

Comments: 13 Responses to “What Is Missing In macOS Mojave?”

Osni Passos

6 years ago

Any alternatives to Share Menu in Safari?

Gary Rosenzweig

Osni: Can you be more specific? What is wrong with the current Share Menu (I assume you mean File, Share or the Share button)? What is it not doing that you want it to do?

rebg

Screen Share may be present but only allows discovery of Macs on LAN, where BTMM also allowed discovery of Macs (w/ same iCloud credentials) via WAN / Internet, which is sorely missed. There are third party Remote Login 'servers' that can be run to sort of resolve this but I haven't found one that supports SS via WAN and is overall much less satisfactory.

max

for rebg: You can use a service like the free dyn dynamic dns client which runs on your mac in the background and gives it a name. Then when you need to screen share it, it will be yourname.homends.org or something you pick.

On Mojave audio over HDMI on my Macpro 5,1(flashed from a 4,1) is broken, although this worked flawlessly on High Sierra. I have been reporting this on the betas for months.

Catherine

Do I have to update to Mojave? I’m new to Macs and still getting used to High Sierra.

Catherine: You don't have to do anything. But Mojave is the latest operating system. And it is free. Why not?

Jerry L. LeVan

5 years ago

I just spent about 45 minutes looking for those birthday, etc. cards in Mojave. One search on Google and the FIRST question answered by you is that one. Many thanks to you for saving me more time. (Of course Apple wouldn't tell me and their help, well it wasn't). Many happy faces to you.

Sue Ryan

Hi Gary,
What is the best way to share photos from our Photos app to Facebook from MacBook Pro?
Many thanks!
Sue

Sue: I would just go to Facebook in your browser, create the post there as normal, then choose to add photos. On the left side of the "open" dialog when you go to select a photo, choose the Media/Photos option. See https://macmost.com/choosing-photos-to-upload.html

Pavla

How to get back the Mission Control in OS Mojave? It is something that I use all the time and I do miss it!
Thank you for letting me know.
pb

Pavla: Mission Control hasn't changed with Mojave. You activate it the same way as before, either with the F-key on the keyboard, or Control+Up. Check to make sure you haven't changed your shortcut settings in System Preferences, Mission Control.

Gudrun

had new MacBookPro with ElCapitan (and a problem, long story), wiped clean at Apple Genius Bar and they then clean installed Mojave. I can not find the "Facebook" option on the drop-down share menu in photos, which was on my previous computer with High Sierra. It was easier to see and select from the larger photos in the photos app, rather than selecting a photo when on Facebook. Any fix for this, or an extension? Thank you for your help!

Gudrun: There are a lot of ways to do it. You can still browse through Photos to find the images you want, then when you go to select a photo on Facebook, drag and drop from Photos into that file selection window. Personally, I like to use the Favorites designation to show which photos I want to use, then in Facebook I go to select the photo, click on Media, Photos on the left, go to Favorites, and then my photos are right there. Then I remove them from Favorites when done or before I need to do it with some new photos. Also, not that pressing the spacebar while browsing Media, Photos to select a photo will show you a larger version of the selected photo.

Comments Closed.

What Is Missing In macOS Mojave?

Comments: 13 Responses to “What Is Missing In macOS Mojave?”

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