© 2021 by Lawrence I. Charters, Vice President, Strait Macintosh User Group
When the Macintosh was first introduced in January 1984, Steve Jobs tried hard to suggest that the Mac did not have an operating system. It was a “mind appliance,” an extension of your brain, and didn’t need one of those awkward, complex “operating systems” that computers used. Instead, on the Mac, you just touched and manipulated objects: documents were placed in folders, drawings were drawn by hand (though with a mouse), you could tap on keys to produce “notes,” and you could even produced very robotic (but extremely well done, for the time) computer-generated voice synthesis, with a fair amount of effort.
The “it’s not an operating system” that ran the original Macintosh was eventually dubbed System 1, and progressed through various numbers and decimal fractions until it was rebranded MacOS 8 more than a decade later, in 1997, and then to Mac OS X 10 (the “X” was pronounced “ten” which made this a bit odd) in 2001, until OS X 10.8 in 2012, then macOS 10.12 2016, until we finally left the world of macOS 10.something with macOS Big Sur 11 in 2020. It is now 2021, and we have a new ordinal number, macOS 12 — not 11.something, but a full progression from macOS 11 to macOS 12:
Rumored for release “this fall,” which usually means October, macOS Monterey will be the second version that will run on both Intel-based Macs and “Apple Silicon” based Macs. There is also a chance the operating system release will accompany a release of new Macs, too.
Attached are the slides (in PDF form) used at the August 2021 meeting on Monterey. The slides address some of the more prominent changes in the operating system, chiefly focused on interacting with other devices (and people), protecting your person and data, and protecting your privacy. There are also some advances in more tightly integrating your Mac with your Apple Watch, iPhone, and iPad.
We wil probably have an additional presentation on Monterey this fall, with a demo.