Image credit: Devindra Harawar/EngadgetSafariI was unable to tell if the Monterey beta had been updated from Big Sur after I loaded it up for the first. Then I opened the Safari browser. It was a complete shocker. You can forget about the tabs bar. Instead, you can juggle your tabs and address bar with the thin menu at top.The goal is to give as much screen space as possible to web pages. This allows for better browsing on smaller devices like the MacBook Air 13-inch I have been using. It also creates a lot of clutter when you try to navigate through your tabs. Although it's fine to manage a few tabs at a time, once I had accumulated more than 10, they all became reduced to their respective site icons. Safari was not as usable before there were many tabs.Devindra Hardawar/EngadgetYou can hover your cursor on the icons to view a preview of the page. However, this can slow down if you are trying to navigate through a lot of tabs from the same site. If you are on a serious research spree, you can group tabs together into groups. It's easy to name tab groups and switch between them in a matter of seconds. This is a better solution than opening multiple Safari windows and it syncs across Safari on iOS and iPadOS.Safari is still the fastest browser on macOS, despite the new interface. It's easy to use Chrome and Safari simultaneously. I also find it useful for keeping work and personal logins separate. Apple's browser loads pages a lot faster than Chrome.AppleFaceTime and PlayShareFaceTime in macOS Monterey is beginning to look more like Zoom. Given the importance of group video chats over the last year, it makes sense that FaceTime is starting to look more like Zoom. You can now start a FaceTime chat without having to call anyone. After you are in, you can invite your friends, or create a link that anyone can join. Instead of being individual chats, your calls will be more like events that anticipate a group of people.My testing revealed that a friend could join my FaceTime weblink using his iPhone running iOS 14. However, he couldn’t hear any sound. Everything worked perfectly when he switched to his Mac. However, macOS Catalina was still running so it opened the app as a web call instead of opening automatically.You can also hear the voices of others via FaceTime if you have AirPods, or any other headphones that support Spatial Audio. The feature will only work if they are running the Monterey or iOS/iPadOS 15 beta. However, it'll be much more useful when those updates become available. During testing, I heard two people coming from my AirPod Pros' right and left channels. It's almost like you're all sitting together at a small table. It would be great for visually impaired people and those with hard of hearing. The separation makes it easier to track multiple people.It's likely that FaceTiming will become more popular as people face-taped their friends to make use of SharePlay. This allows them to share music and watch shows with each other. It could be easier to use. It took us some time to realize that there was no SharePlay button in FaceTime. We tried it out with Monterey and iOS 15 beta testers. Instead, you must start playing media. This triggers a pop up notification asking if you would like to share it with your friends or view it yourself.After I had figured this out, it was great to be able watch Mythic Quest with friends. FaceTime will not be available to Android or Windows users via web video chats. It remains to be seen how and if media providers will adopt the service. To watch Apple TV+ content, you must have subscriptions for yourself and your friends. Netflix and Disney+ are not as flexible as they allow one subscriber to share content with their friends.Additional notable additions
