macOS Sierra has dropped!

Hi all,

I had upgraded one of my older MacBook Airs a while back and every public release of Sierra has been on it.  So each step of the way I confirmed my apps worked or didn’t.  A partial list includes: VMware View, Slack, Tweetbot, Evernote, SecureCRT, Office 2016, Trend Micro (I did have an issue where Trend Micro did not work but I upgraded it and it fixed all issues), Sublime, Skype and BackBlaze.  On my personal MacBook Air I upgraded Trend before I upgraded to Sierra so it worked there too. So while the upgrade took around 1.5 hours - which should be longer than most since I first made a USB stick and used it to do the upgrade.

There are a few of things after the upgrade I want to mention.

• You can find the bits here, as you are not prompted to upgrade.
• I upgraded using the USB so I had to boot to it and that means holding down the Option key during boot.  That meant I was prompted for the firmware key so needed to know that password. I do the USB so if I have an emergency need to boot and fix - I can. If you want your own USB copy you can find out how here.
• There is a feature called Optimized Storage.  It is a little different in terms of function and UI.  It puts old files in iCloud and leaves a stub in their place.  It is a little odd but I think useful.  Check out this article to learn more.
• Siri is pretty cool, but it takes a little bit to get going.  This article might help or maybe this one.
• You can save your Desktop and document folder to iCloud.  This is pretty cool, but not sure how multiple desktops are handled when it is the same user.  I will find out soon!  Here is an article that might help with this new feature. DANGER - don’t use this feature and see updates below.

Here are some links to material about the release that may be useful.

• iMore macOS Sierra review - a big one
• macOS Sierra review from Macworld - here
• An FAQ from iMore - found here
• At the same time Sierra was released Keynote, Pages, and Numbers were updated.  The big new thing for them is collaboration.  Will be curious to see how that works out.  Check this out for more info.
• I like how VMware supports it day of release too - see here.
• The upgrade is pretty easy, but if you want to see a little about the upgrade this article can help.

I have now upgraded two MBA with no issues. That doesn’t mean you won’t have issues but there is at least a chance you won’t!

I should mention that when I upgraded to Sierra in the beta, I made it work and have fun with it without any articles to help.  But they are useful to find the more discrete things or to help with the more complex things.

As always, if you have questions or comments let me know.

Update:

• 10/2/16 - want to learn more about how to use Apple Pay on the web? Here it is. And Optimized Storage is a little tricky.  Not sure about it?  Find out more in this article. Want to know more about the updated Photos app?
• 9/21/16 - I thought I was ready for my Apple Watch to unlock my MBA.  I had enabled two set login which I quite liked.  However, I had to turn it off, to turn on two factor authentication.  Find out more on that here. It truly improves the security of your iCloud / iTunes and it helps with unlocking your Mac with your watch.  Nice.
• 9/21/16 - DANGER - do not use the iCloud Desktop and Document if you are logging in on two Macs.  It doesn’t seem to handle that well.  Plus, if you try it, like I did, and decide to undo it, it is not good.  Disable removes everything from your Mac, and you have to copy things back.
• 9/20/16 - Maybe don’t enable the desktop and documents in the cloud just yet.  My primary machine desktop is devoid of the files and folders that were on it - except for a folder which contains my desktop files and folders..  My secondary machine desktop has a folder on it that contains all my files and folders from the primary machine.  So a little odd.

Michael

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