November 2021

macOS Monterey released

Apple have just released to latest version of it’s operating system - macOS 12 “Monterey”. It’s now showing in Software Update available to download.

Packed with some new features it’s a fairly big upgrade (all 12GB to download). They’ve also listed which systems it will run on.

You can read more about the features from Apple here .

MacRumors did a pretty good write up on the feature list also, which you can read about here .

Like most system upgrades, you may want to wait for a month or two before upgrading, just to make sure all the “first release bugs” get ironed out. As generally within the first month or two once a large upgrade like the above happens we start to see some bug reports and issues come to light. Then after they get fixed it tends to becomes a bit more stable with less problems.

As always with any major upgrade you want to make sure all your current software you use will work with it, and any hardware you use (printers, scanners etc) are also all supported in macOS Monterey. You don’t want to be left first thing Monday morning not being able to print or scan for example! Or something worse…..

Unfortunately we’ve already seen a couple of articles relating to issues with the install, which you can read about here and here .

Hopefully won’t be long before all the bugs are ironed out though. Once it’s at macOS 12.1 or 12.2 then it should be a fairly smooth upgrade.

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Office 2021 released

Microsoft this month released updates to it’s Office software. For people that like to purchase it outright the new current version is now “Office 2021” which can be purchased as a “one off cost” (with no upgrades to new versions) in either a standard or business edition.

For those running the subscription based version of “Microsoft365” the upgrade will show up automatically to bring it up to the same latest version.

For a list of some of the new features and a run down you can read through here .

Microsoft365 starts at $99/year for a single licence or $129/per year for up to 6 users. The “pay once” Office 2021 versions start from $219 (or $329 for the Business edition.)

Be aware of “Fake webpages” advising you need to update.

So there is a bit of a rise on the number of webpages or fake links that will try to trick you into calling a number or clicking a link to “update” some piece of software.

I’ve written a page with a bit more info on it here