Apple announces major MacOS Sierra update called… High Sierra

Apple has kicked off WWDC 2017, where it just announced a slew of updates to its products, including an update to MacOS Sierra. 

The company said it decided to perfect the operating system powering its Mac machines, as it does every year. But instead of announcing an all-new system with an all-new name, it announced MacOS High Sierra. It’s a major update to Sierra, which Apple announced and rolled out last year. And Apple executive Craig Federighi wasted no time telling developers that High Sierra is “fully baked”.

All joking aside… Apple is fairly predictable when it comes to macOS updates. It unveils a new version at WWDC each year. So, everyone expected a new version of MacOS at WWDC 2017, and that it would be a California location-themed name, but no one expected it to be a continuation of Sierra. However, Apple is apparently focused on refining Sierra, the name of the update makes sense.

Keep in mind Apple has done this sort of thing in the past. For instance, OS X Mountain Lion update for Macs was a refinement of the previous year’s OS X Lion. Anyway, in terms of what’s new for High Sierra, the new macOS is about deep technology but also added some refinements, Federighi said. He also said that Safari is now the “world’s fastest desktop browser” with High Sierra.

Speaking of Safari, Apple is going after Chrome and its upcoming ad-blocking it features, which will presumably try to curb intrusive, annoying ads. He announced that Safari now has AutoPlay blocking. Also, Safari no longer has intelligence tracking prevention. “Now your privacy, your browsing history is your own. It’s not about block ads, the web behaves like it always has,” Federighi explained.

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Pocket-lint is live at Apple’s annual developers conference and will bring you the latest as it happens. Check out our WWDC 2017 round up for more details about the show, including what’s being announced and how to stream Apple’s main keynote yourself. 

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