BEST New Features in MacOS Big Sur

hey folks and welcome to the class today we are talking about my favorite new features found in the brand new operating system for the mac known as mac os big sur that's coming up next on tech talk america hey everyone and welcome to the class i apologize that it took me some time to make today's video i've actually been off of the air for the last seven weeks apparently moving across the country during a global pandemic is mildly stressful that being said i do have some really exciting news to share with you guys i want to get down to business so if you want to hear those updates stick around i'll save them for the very end of the video or if you like you can fast forward to that time stamp today we're talking about the brand new operating system for the mac known as mac os big sur now in the interest of time i've decided to focus today's video on just my favorite new features aka skipping the boring stuff please keep in mind not everyone should upgrade to big sur when it comes to hardware i tend to recommend if your mac is under four years old you can probably proceed but there are other things that you need to consider like software and hardware compatibility mac os big sur is a 15 gigabyte file so you also need to make sure that you have adequate space to install it the good news is for those of you out there who are terrified of change most of these changes are subtle compared to past operating systems so take a sigh of relief sit back relax and let's go over the best new features but before we do today's video is brought to you by our friends at malwarebytes if you've watched my youtube channel over the years you know that i've been recommending malwarebytes well before they started sponsoring my videos it's a really solid product it protects your mac from malware attacks phishing scams and a lot more you'll find it on my computer and even more telling you'll find it on my parents computer the interface makes it super easy for anyone to use and get ready for this malwarebytes has offered me a 25 discount to pass on to all of you you will find that link down below in the video description and you can get an even bigger discount if you add additional devices all right end of sponsored segment let's get to the class the first new feature that we're going to discuss are some of the overall design changes now some of these may take a little bit of time to get used to but what i really like is that apple is using this operating system as a way to introduce a bit more consistency between the mac and ios experience if you look at the dock you'll see that it has a new floating design with all new icons as well if you look at the top menu bar you'll see that it's now translucent and let me show you why i think this is actually a really nice subtle change i'm going to go into system preferences and swap this desktop background with some of the other desktop backgrounds that are available in big sur i think you'll agree this subtle design change really allows your desktop to stand out like a piece of artwork and for those of you who don't have a perfectly clean desktop well it'll just have a little bit more of a jackson pollock flair to it i got an art joke in alright since i just cracked out the new desktop backgrounds let's dive into this a little bit deeper now just to be clear those of you who are following along at home i have clicked on the apple icon at the top left gone into system preferences and now i am here in desktop and screensaver so for example these first images are all referred to as dynamic desktops which means that the images themselves will transition from daylight to night time over the course of the day apple first introduced dynamic desktops in mac os catalina and what they've done now is taken that to the next level so if we scroll down a little bit you'll find another option for set light and dark modes so just to be clear these images do not transition they just snap between daytime and nighttime mode on the topic of night photography i did want to let you guys know that one of my future classes is going to be all about the brand new night photography mode for the iphone so be sure to look for that class soon another change in mac os big sur is the control center icon which you'll find at the top right of the menu bar this allows you to control all sorts of different preferences on your mac and what's great about this is it can be widely customized so let's say you have a laptop and you need to constantly switch between wi-fi networks all the time you can click and drag elements like wi-fi into the top menu bar so that they stick there you can also do this with anything else you see here in control center to see a full list of all the items you can access in control center just head over to the apple icon at the top left then go into system preferences and from there go into the dock and menu bar there is one setting that i would like to recommend that you consider changing when i first updated my mac to mac os big sur one of the things that i immediately noticed was that the do not disturb symbol was here at the top and don't get me wrong i love using do not disturb mode since it allows me to actually get work done occasionally but when i see this symbol it's really hard for me to distinguish the difference between when it's on and when it's off if you like me want to only see that icon when do not disturb mode is turned on go back to that same menu and check this option so that it only appears when the feature is active by the way another little trick that you might not know if you hold down the option key and then click at the top right of the screen which would normally reveal all the widgets that is actually another way that you can quickly enable do not disturb mode and thank you to jeff greenberg for teaching me that trick another cool feature here in control center is that you can now see and control all of the apps that have the ability to play music so let's say you have spotify you have the podcast app and maybe you have something playing from the web you can see and control all of them from right here most definitely a very handy feature clicking at the top right of your mac will of course launch all the widgets and this next feature is going to make it look very similar to the widgets on ios if we scroll to the bottom and click on where it says edit you'll see that we can now add widgets to your feed and just like on ios many of these are now available in different sizes so for example for me i really like having a big calendar for weather i like to see what it is here in palm springs but i also like to keep an eye on my old hometown in provincetown massachusetts if we open up a new finder window you'll see that we have all new icons here at the top you can customize these items by right-clicking in this space and then select customize so here's another little recommendation in my experience i found that the groups feature is not very helpful so personally i tend to recommend removing it from the top menu bar which you can do of course by simply dragging and dropping it off and instead you might want to consider adding something like airdrop now i don't know about you guys but i use airdrop all the time to send files from device to device the next feature that we're going to talk about is actually one of my favorites it's long overdue and that new feature is expanded video editing capabilities for videos that you have stored inside the photos app now in past versions of mac os pretty much the only thing that you could do was rotate a video but now in mac os big sur you can perform a ton of different types of corrections to video clips without ever leaving the photos app for example you can now crop your videos which is perfect for those of you who have a tendency to shoot videos with your thumb partially obscuring the lens you'll also now find that you can add filters to your videos and if we go here into adjustments you can even adjust things like exposure highlights shadows brightness contrast and a bunch more again without ever leaving the photos app absolutely love that feature apple thank you by the way let me know which of these new features is your favorite down below in the comment section now just in case apple's watching this video which i have reason to suspect they might i do have one little request that i would like to make for a future update because it is now possible to make adjustments to video clips from the photos app it would be really nice to be able to copy and paste those attributes to another video now just to be clear that feature is currently available for photos but not for videos so come on apple make it happen the maps app recently received a few new updates including indoor maps for airports and shopping malls so now you can see exactly how many shops you have to run past in order to make it to the gate in time while trying to keep your mask on there's also new travel guides built into the maps app which i will absolutely use next time i'm able to travel you can browse through different guides from different brands so let's say for example you're a big fan of rick steves you can see all of his recommended places to visit in that area another great feature which is not available everywhere just yet is referred to as look around right now this is most commonly found in well-populated cities but if you zoom in far enough on a map you may see this icon here light up when you do and you click on it you'll see a window up here which definitely resembles google maps now this is definitely going to be handy next time you're visiting a place that you've never been to or i guess you could just use google maps which already exists for those of you who use the voice memos app you will be very happy to discover that you now have the ability to organize your voice memos into folders it should also be noted that voice enhancement is now also built into voice memos so if there's some sort of external background noise this will intelligently filter it out there are a lot of new changes built into safari now personally i'm a chrome user but that being said let's go over the new features when you open up a safari window you should see something similar to this and in addition to your favorites you can now see a whole bunch of other types of items just by clicking here at the bottom right including things like your reading list items websites that you visited on other devices frequently visited websites and a lot more you can also add different types of backgrounds to your homepage just by skimming through these options you can also click on this plus symbol to reveal additional high definition wallpapers which again are all part of big sur intelligent tracking prevention is now built into safari so that when you start it up you can clearly see what websites were trying to track you safari also now has built-in password monitoring which is a great feature if you didn't already have a password solution in place personally i think my favorite new feature is that if you do tend to use a lot of tabs you can now see a preview of each of those sites just by hovering your cursor over each item another big feature is you can finally watch youtube videos in 4k high definition on safari moving on to the messages app you will now be able to pin conversations or group conversations so that the people that you stay in touch with the most stick to the top another new feature is inline conversations which is now available on the mac so let's say you're in a group chat with someone and you want to reply specifically to one person just tap the at symbol and then type that person's name another new feature i wanted to highlight in messages is that now you can hit this little app store icon and get access to a few different things including trending gifs another new feature is message effects so for example now you can send balloons confetti echo spotlight or fireworks so which of these new features in mac os big sur was your favorite let me know about it down below in the comment section alright so that about does it for the tutorial part now let me share with you some of the updates uh so hi everyone i've missed all of you i'm sorry that i haven't uploaded a video in like seven weeks it's been absolutely insane when i moved to palm springs it was my intention to rent for several months and then eventually buy a house that didn't happen called my realtor and i said hey can we just look at a couple of properties and that way i can just kind of start to get an idea of what to expect well we looked at seven properties on day one nothing really that appealed to me also things that were at the very very top tier of my my price range and then the next day he emailed me this listing and i went to look at it and my mind was blown we went out that day to check it out and the next day i made an offer so the big news here is i bought a house i was not intending on this happening this quickly but i'm really excited because it really has several different spaces that work as different backgrounds for my videos and one of the things i've always wanted to do is really turn my house into a production studio so we can do it in any room and it works and so uh made the purchase of the house i as of the date that i'm recording this right now i've got a little over 20 days before i close on that property but there's big things happening and i can't wait to take you guys all along for it a couple of other quick things so right as soon as i moved to palm springs i had this event that uh was part of the reason why it was so late in getting this video out which is a lot of you are familiar with final cut pro made by apple there's a final cut pro global summit that takes place every year and it happens in cupertino california in fact one of the things you get to do if you go to the event is you get to actually go to apple like the new spaceship on my bucket list totally on my bucket list and amazingly i got asked to be a guest speaker at the event now i'm dying inside because i didn't get to go visit apple but one day one day i gave a one hour presentation and then i was also on a panel called how apple changed my life which was wonderful along with caleb marshall and kimberly first people seemed to have a good time and i had a good time so that's a little bit about what's been going on here uh still getting settled my apologies but probably the next couple of weeks my videos are going to be very scattered it's just really hard to be in a temporary state of living and be able to make videos so thank you guys for sticking with me over the years and i can't wait to show you the new house stay tuned it's coming soon thank you all for watching everyone this is david a cox with tech talk america class dismissed

Channel: Tech Talk America

Views: 61,484

Rating: 4.8953924 out of 5

Keywords: new features macos big sur, best new features macos big sur, mac os big sur, macos big sur, new feature in macos big sur, big sur, new to mac, how to use a mac, david cox, david a. cox, tech talk america, palm springs, provincetown, tech talk, new to mac basics, best feature in macos big sur, top features in macos big sur, malwarebytes, control center, dynamic desktop, apple m1, apple, imac, macbook pro, new to macos

Id: HwlrHTyw_no

Length: 14min 17sec (857 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 01 2020