MONTEREY BETA 6

Monterey beta 6 is came out together with iOS and iPadOS 15 beta 8 so it is still two betas behind schedule. 🤷‍♂️

There are some notable items:
  • Sidecar: is missing from System Preferences. Its functionality is supposed to be replaced by Universal Control. 🤔
  • Display Preference Pane: Nicely redone with IMHO significantly improved controls, especially if you have multiple monitors (this is where Universal Control is supposed to be lodged) 😀
  • Universal Control: a highly touted feature of Monterey was working in beta 4, albeit a bit flakey at times, but it has disappeared in beta 6. Rumors are that it won't make the full Monterey release but likely will show up in an update. 🤷‍♂️
  • LaunchPad: I have all of my apps arranged in carefully curated "groups". Perhaps I need to re-frame that in the past tense. Some of my groups are now empty of any applications, won't go away, and resist having apps move into them, while other groups are growing and apps are moving to them on their own. Similar to how apps are grouped in the Application Library in iOS and iPadOS. So far I have not discovered a way to disable this behavior. My only consolation is the Application Library in iOS/iPadOS is getting pretty good at grouping. On the other hand I used to know where everything was and now I don't. 🤬
  • Safari: I adapted to multiple mini-address bars at the top of the window and I particularly like the "preview" windows that appear as I mouse over them. It changes the way I interact with Safari and in the final analysis it is working out to be better and more functional. The difference does take some getting use to however. 😎


FOOTNOTES: I thought I had discovered the cause of the nightly reboots in beta 5. The indicators seemed to point to I/O issues of one sort or another so I removed the only third party kernel extension extant last evening (SoftRAID), but this morning my mini had spontaneously(?) rebooted once again. Hopefully I will get through tonight without a reboot after installing beta 6. 🤞

That's my story to date and I am sticking with it.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein