When I say wonky Mojave, of course I mean that its behavior surprises me and not in a good way. If any of these complaints have a silver lining or a workaround that I’m missing, please say so. Also, unless otherwise noted, all these behaviors occur while the MacBook is connected to an external display and the MacBook lid is closed.
Since installing Mojave, Time Machine seems to take longer to prepare backups and to perform backups. Time Machine usually took a minute to finish copying after it said 10 seconds remaining, but under El Capitan, after the actual copying of files began, the time remaining rarely increased. Perhaps Mojave is simply being more accurate with its estimate; in a typical example, Mojave just started with an estimate of 8 minutes and it climbed to 14 minutes as files were being copied. This is using a USB disk as the storage unit, but similar things happen when using an Apple Time Capsule over ethernet. (Why would I care, since Time Machine should work in the background? Because I have an external drive that is usually not mounted. I mount it as needed, and usually perform a Time Machine backup while it’s mounted, and dismount it afterwards. Under Mojave, it takes longer for Time Machine to do its thing.)
When the screen saver kicks in, pressing a key will not restore the desktop. Under El Capitan, I would press a modifier key (usually command) and the desktop would come right back. Under Mojave, nothing happens. If I press the space bar, the screen flickers and a beep sounds, but the screen saver stays engaged. I need to press a mouse button to get the desktop back. It’s not a big deal, but it’s a change in the way the Macintosh reacts to the user. It seems like pressing a key should interrupt the screen saver. If the MacBook has gone fully asleep, then pressing a modifier key does wake it, although there is a significantly longer delay than under El Capitan.
I use tabs in a Finder window. Under El Capitan, I could close the Finder window, and when I clicked on the Finder icon in the Dock (if no other Finder window was open), I would get a Finder window with my tabs. Under Mojave, the Finder forgets the tabs, and I need to re-open them each time. (My workaround for this is to leave the Finder window open and hide the Finder when I would have closed the window. I think this would work fine if I were trainable.)
If I use Firefox on the internal screen (which I do if I’m away from my study, which is essentially daily), when I return to my office and use the external display, Firefox windows are sized for the internal display and located at the bottom left of the external display. Under El Capitan, on return to my office, Firefox windows usually took the size they had been when they were last open on the external display. (Not always; in case it’s significant, the windows would be at the top left of the screen when they did not resume their previous size and location.) I have an Excel worksheet that is usually sized for the internal screen, open, and hidden; today, after viewing the worksheet on the internal screen, it had migrated to the bottom left of the external display. It appears that Mojave lost the capability to remember window position and size if the window appeared on the internal screen.
I have an encrypted volume (on removable media, in case it matters). After I double-click the sparse bundle’s icon, I need to enter a password. Under Mojave, I need to click in the window with the password field to make it active; under El Capitan, I could just start typing. Also, under Mojave, it takes much longer (at a guess, 20 seconds instead of 3 seconds) to mount volumes. Also, when I dismount a volume on an external drive with a rotating platter, the platter keeps rotating. Under El Capitan, the platter would stop.
In my opinion, all these situations represent a step in the wrong direction. Is there some advantage that I’m not noticing? Is there a way to get the El Capitan behavior while using Mojave? Thanks for insight, or at least sympathy. And finally, is putting all this in one post appropriate, or should I have addressed each issue in a separate thread?