First Look: macOS Monterey Public Beta
If there’s a theme of Apple’s operating-system releases in 2021, it’s platform unification. This development is most significant for macOS, which tended to lag behind iOS in the 2010s, missing out on some or all of the year’s exciting innovations.
Apple has spent the last few years getting the base technology of iOS and macOS back in sync, removing 32-bit software, adding Mac Catalyst and support for iOS apps on Apple silicon, and introducing new cross-platform development technology via SwiftUI. And with macOS Monterey, you can see the fruits of all that labor: The big new features of iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 are also the big new features of macOS Monterey.
The Mac is also getting a boost with older iOS features finally being brought to the other side, most notably Shortcuts, the iOS automation tool that is the first sign of a renaissance of user automation on macOS.
The good news is, for all the recent fears among Mac users that Apple might be attempting to collapse Mac, iPhone, and iPad into a single amorphous product, macOS Monterey still feels unreservedly like a Mac. Apple wants its platforms to share features, but it also recognizes that each serves a different (albeit overlapping) audience.
