Mac OS X Yosemite Beta Opens

New submitter David Hames (3763525) writes Would you like to test drive the newest release of the Macintosh operating system? Apple is opening up the beta for Mac OS X Yosemite starting Thursday to the first million people who sign up. Beta users won't be able to access such promised Yosemite features such as the ability to make or receive your iPhone calls or text messages on your Mac, turn on your iPhone hotspot feature from your Mac, or "Handoff" the last thing you were doing on your iOS 8 device to your Mac and vice versa. A new iCloud Drive feature is also off-limits, while any Spotlight search suggestions are U.S.-based only. Don't expect all your Mac apps to run either. Ars has a preview of Yosemite.

Comments

Flat UI Design

[TitusC3v5]

Am I the only person who hates the flat UI style that Microsoft, Google, and Apple have all adopted? I hated it being shoved onto my iPhone, and now it looks like the same nonsense it coming to OSX.

Re:Flat UI Design

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hideous; a plague pushed by "designers" who have run out of new ideas. You're not alone.

Re:Flat UI Design

[UnknowingFool]

Nope. While I agree that skeumorphism may have gone too far in previous designs, the shift to flat UI takes away from functionality sometimes. I want to clearly tell if something is touchable/clickable as opposed to nonfunctional text/graphics. All I can say is that it's not quite as bad as Metro/Modern. But that's not saying much.

Re:Flat UI Design

[tipo159]

Clearly you are not the only one. The flat UI seems to be the hot idea among UI designers and I am sure that they are all impressing themselves with their work. But, to me, as a user, it is just a gratuitous change that does not contribute to the UI's usability. And, to my kernel s/w engineer eyes, it, for the most part, doesn't look as good as what it is replacing.

I wonder how long I will be able to get by with OS X Mavericks.

Re:Flat UI Design

[angel'o'sphere]

Yes, I hate it.
I'm ebay-ing right now old Mac OS X Server OS versions.
Mac OS X after 10.6(.8) is a pain for me to use.
If 10.3 (or was it 10.4) was not so buggy I would even consider to buy an old PowerPC and run that.
iOS 7 is such a pain, I did not even repair my broken screen on my iPad. My next tablet is an e-ink Linux/Android, either a Kobo or a Nook.
Good bye Apple, I was 'trustfull' customer of you the last 30 years and bought hardware worth 50,000 Euro over that time ... but thats it.

Re:Flat UI Design

[DarkOx]

Gotta join in on this here.

On the one hand it all evokes fond memories of CDE on the other hand CDE is open source now if what I wanted was CDE I could have it. I expect something better than this.

Re:Flat UI Design

[Cinder6]

I really wouldn't call Yosemite flat, even though a lot of tech sites claim it is. It has a lot more visual eye candy than Mavericks, IMO, what with all the transparency and other stuff. I think it looks pretty nice.

Re:Flat UI Design

[azav]

I KNOW!

You CAN'T TELL if a UI element is a clickable element element if #1, it looks just the same as everything else, #2, isn't displayed on the screen until you mouseover it!

Xcode actually REMOVED the damn disclosure arrows from hierarchical controls so that you had NO IDEA that you could click on them until you tried it.

OMF! Infuriating. Someone thought that was a good idea? Why do they still have jobs?!

What's even worse is that in some areas, the clickable items are INVISIBLE until you mouse over them. Holy crap!!

Buttons need to look like fucking BUTTONS so you can eyeball the screen and know what everything on the screen does without needing to interact with each element!

How does the "professional" design team at Apple not know this???

Flat UI design REMOVES valuable context from the user that HELPS the user figure out how the interface behaves without having to manually hunt and peck through the interface!

Ive needs to never touch a human user interface EVER.

The iOS and Mac interfaces have only gotten worse since Ive's started touching them. It's seriously tragic.

Re:Flat UI Design

[azav]

No, it doesn't. The glassy look is all prerendered into bitmaps that are stored as PNG files.

Re:Flat UI Design

[azav]

Meh.

It's visually appalling crap.

Deference and Clarity lose all the time over the Visual Context that is gained by clearly defined controls with moderate depth, shadow and lighting.

And their color scheme of garish and overly luminous colors that clash with each other? Just how is this a good thing? It isn't.

Re:Why does Apple charge for Mac OSX?

[tbuddy]

The don't charge for Mac OS X actually anymore. Didn't last revision cycle and the previous two versions were $29 and $19 respectively.

Re:Why does Apple charge for Mac OSX?

[aristotle-dude]

But give free updates for iOS?

Apple does not charge for OS X anymore. The last update was free and so is this one.

Mac OS X Yosemite

[Snufu]

National parks are selling commercial naming rights?

Yosemite?

[slashdice]

Are you sure he wasn't talking about your mom?

FYI - Yosemite Dev Seed vs. Public Beta Notes

[djupedal]

Important Info: OS X Yosemite Beta Seed

Today we have released a public beta build of Yosemite for people who are part of the OS X Yosemite Beta Program. This is an open-to-the- public seed of similar pre-release software that you test for us. The build they received is 14A299l which is identical and not any newer than your current build 14A298i. There is no benefit in moving to the public seed build. Participants in the public seed get access to the pre-release software and a lighter version of Feedback Assistant. We suggest that you DO NOT participate in the OS X Yosemite Beta Program. If you participate in both programs, you may experience the following issues:

* You will have multiple projects listed in your projects list in Feedback Assistant and the AppleSeed portal.

* Installing the public seed build will prevent you from seeing additional software update OS X builds that are only available to the AppleSeed Program.

* If you write bugs using the OS X Yosemite bug form while using the public seed build, they may not get screened.

Please remember your current participation in the Apple Software Customer Seeding Program contains many added benefits:

* You receive additional information in the form of release notes, emails, and bug correspondence

* You have access to a discussion board

* You have access to more detailed bug forms

* Your bug reports are screened by engineering

* You will have access to builds not available in OS X Yosemite Beta Program

We appreciate all that you do for the AppleSeed Program. Your steadfast participation truly makes Apple software a high quality product. If you have additional comments or questions, please post on the discussion board.

iTunes

[CanadianMacFan]

Feels like I've already been doing beta testing since the last major release of iTunes has been released. It's been very buggy, especially where podcasts are concerned. They keep throwing more features in which seem to break basic functionality and slow the application down. It now takes over two seconds to delete a podcast episode since version 11.3 came out. And that's for every episode. If you want to delete three episodes it takes over six seconds. How do you write something that bloody slow? I fear updating to the new version in Yosemite for how bad it's going to be.

Not Apple's first Yosemite-named Mac product

[wernst]

Those of us of a certain age will probably find the codename of the new OS X oddly familiar.

The so-called "Blue & White" PowerMac G3 was also code-named "Yosemite" (http://apple-history.com/g3blue). Mine still works fine, 15 years later - it'll be old enough to drive and vote soon.

Too bad my Yosemite Mac won't be able to run Yosemite OS X...

Flattened icons were good enough for Windows 3.0

[zephvark]

...and if they were good enough for my Dad, they're good enough for me.

It's always "change for the sake of upgrades" with these guys. Microsoft went from flat icons, to 3D icons tilted one way, to 3D icons tilted the other way, and now back to... flat, yes, I'm glad we're continuing to improve by revolving around in circles. Possibly they got the idea from the "busy" cursor.

Prepare to buy new copies of all your software because they have old-fashioned icons but, not sufficiently old-fashioned icons.

Re:Why does Apple charge for Mac OSX?

[UnknowingFool]

Apple hasn't charged for OS X since Mavericks. Then they charged before Mavericks:

• 10.0 "Cheetah": $0
  I don't think there was a price as it was the first OS X to be installed on new machines.
• 10.1 "Puma": $129
• 10.2 "Jaguar": $129
• 10.3 "Panther": $129
• 10.4 "Tiger": $129
• 10.5 "Leopard": $129
• 10.6 "Snow Leopard": $29
• 10.7 "Lion": $29
• 10.8 "Mountain Lion": $19
• 10.9 "Mavericks": $0
• 10.10 "Yosemite": $0

Re:Who is this aimed at?

[azav]

Yes. Yes it does. Bouncing rubber banding scroll views in Safari and the Finder if you use the Magic Mouse. Who the HELL needs this? Kill it. Kill it with fire. Windows and alerts that pop open in your face just like from iOS. So many iOS conventions that simply suck on a desktop. Full screen use on my 30 inch display is counterproductive. Full screen on a multi monitor system with a 30 inch display is a joke.

Re:What is so wrong with Skuemorphism?

[Billly Gates]

What is soo bad that it makes people afraid of change, give headaches, cause confusion, or just makes uses apathetic to upgrade to shiny gradients, colors, shadows, animations etc?

Well I tell you one thing? I HATE BLINDING WHITE ALL CAPS office 2013. I HATE FULL SCREEN. I hate less functionality. I hate no buttons (Apple is removing all buttons in iOS 8 because it ... gulps does not have real ones). Is there anyone who hates the leather bound address book as much as we all hate Metro and flat 72 pixel fonts?

Anyone like seeing only 2 videos instead of 7 on youtube on our phones due to big fonts and flat elements?

There is a reason Skuemorphism was used. Namely ... IT WORKS. People can replicate real world objects quite efficiently and maybe just maybe the reason real world objects look, act, and function a particular way is because it was THE BEST way to use it. Nothing is wrong folks with pretty gradients and animations that are soothing to the reader. I can still read my MS word documents fine in older colorful versions of Office. No really I can really read without distraction when a distinction between element panes are visible in non-white anti skuemorphism crowd.

Proof: Look at the Iphone 1? The reason Apple won the 1st battle from MS and blackberry overnight is because they were pretty and drop dead gorgeous. Android won battle 2 but still Apple never got defeated.

If IOS looked like it did in 2007 it frankly wouldn't sell. People wanted the gum drops of Safari.