Just installed macOS 13.0 Ventura

[OtinG]

I just installed macOS 13.0 Ventura on my MacBook Air M1 2020 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD. I thought I would quickly report how well it went.

Disclosure: I bought the MacBook Air M1 in March of this year and it came with Monterey installed, so it isn't like it had been upgraded to a newer macOS, nor is it loaded down with ancient apps, etc.

Timeline for Upgrade

11:36 Initiated: This is the download and initiation stage.
11:46 Restarted: This is when the upgrade actually starts.
11:51 Login: I was asked to login with the password.
12:05 Finish: The upgrade was complete and the MBA had booted up into Ventura.

It went very smooth and only took about 29 minutes. So far everything seems to work okay.

[OtinG]

The interface is a huge change. I went to check my storage levels and of course it nows takes 10x more clicks to do that and looks different. So a lot of relearning where things are.

[OtinG]

Just a few preliminary comments for those thinking about upgrading:

I use the Apple built-in Mail app with Office365 as my mail server. Nearly all macOS updates I installed for Monterey after buying my MacBook Air M1 2020 would break my mail, at least the sending portion. The Ventura upgrade didn’t, so that is good. I didn't have to trouble shoot and correct trashed settings, so Apple must have gotten that resolved.

My external monitor and external drives all connected without issue. I disconnected the external drives before running the upgrade then reconnected them afterwards. I left the external monitor attached. I have the external monitor connected to a hub and whenever the MacBook Air M1 restarts I have to unplug the power to the hub and plug it back in before the hub communicates again, and that hasn’t changed. Apple really needs to resolve that as a lot of users have this problem. Yes the cables are all correct, the issue is crappy programming by Apple. The hub sends the power to charge my MacBook Air M1 and if I don’t remember to unplug/replug its power cable then my MacBook Air M1 will drain the battery. Not a Ventura issue, but still an issue.

I will add more thoughts and comments as I use Ventura over the next several days. Overall it feels and looks good. I don’t appreciate having to look for stuff though and wish Apple wouldn’t move things around all the time. I also wish they wouldn’t multiply the number of steps required to do things!

[OtinG]

The Weather app, which is new to macOS, is buggy. The settings don’t work at all for this app. Apple’s QA team must be really bad as this kind of failure should be caught within minutes, yet it wasn’t.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by OtinG

The Weather app, which is new to macOS, is buggy. The settings don’t work at all for this app. Apple’s QA team must be really bad as this kind of failure should be caught within minutes, yet it wasn’t.

It seems you have to enable notifications for Weather app before you can customize them in Weather Settings.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by tomsem

It seems you have to enable notifications for Weather app before you can customize them in Weather Settings.

Thanks. I turned on Notifications in the Settings app and also set up Weather --> Settings for the two locations I added. It still won't allow me to delete the My Location, nor modify it in any way. I don't see why Apple insists on making things so damn kluge all the time. A band of wild monkeys could do a better job at programming and design than Apple does.

Stage Manager seems a bit flaky too, and kluge.

If you have to remember a thousand hand gestures to get things to work, then it only makes me want to use a single hand gesture at Timmy boy to show him my dislike of his OSes. iPadOS is still as useless as teats on a boar hog, and tvOS has too many caveats to make it truly competitive. Great hardware, but the software is below mediocre. It reminds me of buying Detroit cars back in the 1960s and 1970s. You knew the darn things wouldn't last until you had them paid off! They wouldn't steer well or break well, you felt like you would roll them in a curve. They were garbage, but they finally start improving them when all the Japanese cars started arriving.

[tomsem]

Yeah, I still don't get the point of Stage Manager. My usual home office setup is 2 5K monitors (iMac and Studio Display), and Spaces set up on both, with Split View on some, full screen on the others. I'm experimenting with SM on one of them (things that don't merit full screen or one side of Split View). But it is not a clear improvement over just having them tiled and overlapping each other.

I'm very comfortable with Spaces, except I'd like to tile more than 2 windows sometimes.

There don't seem to be any keyboard shortcuts to switch between the items in Stage Manager.

On iPad Pro 12.9 the benefit seems even more dubious until they add external monitor support. And <11" screens seem too small to sacrifice so much real estate to it.