macOS 27 Golden Gate – Review

macOS 27 Golden Gate – Review. That means that the Golden Gate update requires an Apple M1 chip or better/newer, a list of hardware that includes the following: 2020 M1 MacBook Air or newer 2020 M1 MacBook Pro or newer 2020 M1 Mac mini or newer 2021 M1 iMac or newer 2023 Mac Pro Any Mac Studio 2026 MacBook Neo My primary testing hardware for this review has included an M1 MacBook Air (16GB/1TB), a 15-inch M3 MacBook Air (24GB/512GB), and a MacBook Neo (8GB/512GB), which means I have a pretty good sense of how Golden Gate and future macOS releases will treat Apple’s least-capable hardware.

What happened

Generative AI is unavoidable if you install macOS 27 Golden Gate. Golden Gate addresses the most irritating of macOS 26 Tahoe’s design sins, adds a big pile of incremental improvements, and promises a bunch of under-the-hood fit-and-finish optimizations to make common tasks feel just a little faster and more reliable than before. This makes for a combination that is occasionally jarring: big, hard-to-ignore and impossible-to-disable AI changes wedded to an understated update that in other years might have been called a “Snow Leopard release. ” Table of Contents Jump to section System requirements: Farewell to Intel The Golden Gate update is the first macOS release since the mid-2000s not to run on any Intel Macs.

You might think that macOS 27 is named for the Golden Gate Bridge since it’s an iconic landmark and it factors into all the real-world desktop wallpaper videos in the operating system (there’s also, per usual, an “abstract color swirl” option, which in this release is gold that fades to black). For those still creating USB install drives for new macOS updates, you’ll definitely need at least a 32GB disk to install Golden Gate.

Installation and free space: Golden Gate, devourer of GBs It’s not a given that every macOS update will take up more space than the one before it—as recently as macOS 12 Monterey and macOS 13 Ventura, overall install size actually decreased in newer versions, possibly because of the steady removal of old Intel support code. I had hoped that the removal of Intel code would mean that Golden Gate would save some gigabytes—the disk space savings that came from the removal of PowerPC code was one of the better features of macOS 10.

The wider picture

92GB The main culprit is Apple Intelligence, which went from being an optional multi-gigabyte download in macOS 15 Sequoia and macOS 26 Tahoe to a mandatory multi-gigabyte system component in Golden Gate. Set up Golden Gate in a virtual machine on top of macOS, and it never offers Apple Intelligence or downloads those models. MacOS 27 Golden Gate was announced at WWDC in June, but it's now available to download right on your Mac—assuming you have a compatible one.

Is Your Mac Compatible With macOS Golden Gate? AccordionItemContainerButtonThe new update, macOS 27 Golden Gate, is only compatible with Apple Silicon Macs. How to Install macOS 27 Golden GateAccordionItemContainerButtonThe MacOS Golden Gate beta has been available since July, but the official release is now available to download and safe to install on your Mac if you want to try out the new features. From there, you should see macOS Golden Gate 27 available, with the option to Update Now or Update Tonight.

But this new version of the chatbot, known as Siri AI, looks a bit more tailored for this new version of macOS Golden Gate.

What has been reported

Tweaks to Liquid GlassPhotograph: Luke LarsenWhile AI is the focus of the update, Golden Gate is also a follow-up to last year's macOS Tahoe. Liquid Glass represented a major change to the way all the user interface elements of the appear, and in macOS Golden Gate, those UI elements are being refined. Upon installing macOS Golden Gate, you now get a Liquid Glass slider right off the bat. Apple Intelligence defines the Golden Gate release, in everything from its marketing to its features to the chips it runs on to the amount of space it takes on your disk.

The good news is that if you own any Apple Silicon Mac that isn’t falling apart, Golden Gate should run mostly happily. Apple Intelligence requirements Golden Gate introduces a minor split between older Apple Silicon Macs and newer ones. Apple Intelligence in Golden Gate is powered by its AFM 3 Core model, which has been built “in collaboration with Google. ” But there’s also an AFM 3 Core Advanced model, Apple’s “most powerful on-device model,” which has additional hardware requirements.

Optimists can choose to believe that this means a MacBook Neo with an A19 Pro and 12GB of RAM will be released at some point during Golden Gate’s lifespan).

What happens next

What to do with an unsupported Mac The 2019 Mac Pro is one of the latter-day Intel Macs being dropped by Golden Gate. Golden Gate is our second consecutive release named for a body of water, following a stretch of releases named for towns/regions (Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma, Sequoia) and another stretch named after things that are mostly rocks (Yosemite, El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina). Did you know that the Golden Gate Bridge is so named because it’s a bridge that spans a strait called the Golden Gate?

And not because it’s a bridge that is sort of arguably golden-looking and loosely resembles a gate? Towers go up in the Golden Gate strait as the now-iconic bridge is built. Credit: Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District The website for the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District has a bunch of neat historical pictures and factoids about the construction of the bridge itself. Golden Gate’s installer is another squircle, though if anything, it has an even larger, glassier arrow inside of it, as if to say, “You can complain all you want, but Liquid Glass is here to stay. ” Though Golden Gate takes up quite a bit more space on your disk than Tahoe—more on that momentarily—the installer itself isn’t all that much bigger than last year’s, at roughly 17GB.

The report has been compiled by The Daily Waves using information reported across arstechnica.com, wired.com. Details are presented according to the information available at the time of publication and may change as authorities, organisers or other relevant parties provide updates.