macOS Sonoma: Did It Meet Expectations?

Where have I been for the last few months? And why have I not been posting? I’ve had a lot on my plate, both personally and professionally, but it was time to dust off the typewriter and share some of what I have been up to.

I had saved in the drafts an article aptly named “Winter is Coming, Sonoma is almost here.” I never got a chance to actually push publish. Since Winter did come early, Sonoma was released almost a month earlier than what most admins were expecting.

So how did it go? The bad news, we were not able to release it to all of production on day one. There was a bug that caused the password to be rejected at the lock screen if a certain key was enforced via MDM.

The good news? We discovered the bug, the cause and the workaround while testing the beta releases with our “Early Adopters”. It was just a matter of filing feedback and working with our Apple team and MDM vendor until it was fixed. At that point, the deferral profile was removed and the OS was certified for production.

While all this was going on I was privileged to present a mac-centric session at a few industry events for my employer (see my LinkedIn posts), and it was surprising to see how many admins had not spent some quality time with macOS 14. While it is true that most of us are extremely busy with the usual workload, I cannot overemphasize the need for beta testing from day one. Had we not done so and allowed Sonoma to release on day one it would not have gone well.

As of today, the majority of the estate is running the latest Sonoma builds and it has proven to be a very stable OS.

Wishlist reviewed

Have you ever looked back at something you wrote and thought, wow, this makes no sense, or maybe, it was prophetic.

Looking back at my last post, before the initial release of macOS 14 macOS-14-Wishlist I’m amazed by how many of the wishes came true, or will come true at least in a future update… It has taken a lot of feedback from the community but it feels like at least on this topic Apple has listened.

While some of the more complex enhancement requests are still just that, wishes. The overall reliability of the Software Update in general has improved. When new updates are released, telemetry shows that the fleet picks them up much quicker and with less calls to support.

As for the more end-user centric features, at least in my organization:

The “Click to Reveal Desktop” elicits some strong opinions, you either love it or hate it. Widgets was universally liked, and who knows how many man-hours have been wasted on conference calls where everyone is trying the video overlays.

Sadly some of the more useful behind the scene features of this release require implementation by MDM vendors, since some rely on Declarative Management. At least we are halfway there, it is now time to push our MDM vendors to support the new commands as soon as possible.

Now it’s time to start thinking about the future. Spring is coming, macOS 15!

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