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OS X 10.10 Yosemite Review
An anonymous reader writes: With the release of OS X 10.10 Yosemite, Ars Technica has posted one of their extremely thorough reviews of the OS's new features and design changes. John Siracusa writes that Yosemite is particularly notable because it's the biggest step yet in Apple's efforts to bring OS X and iOS together — new technologies are now being added to Apple's two operating systems simultaneously. "The political and technical battles inherent in the former two-track development strategy for OS X and iOS left both products with uncomfortable feature disparities. Apple now correctly views this as damage and has set forth to repair it." Yosemite's look and feel has undergone significant changes as well, generally moving toward the flat and compact design present in iOS 7 & 8. Spotlight and the Notifications Center have gotten some needed improvements, as did many tab and toolbar interfaces.
Siracusa also takes a look a Swift, Apple's new programming language: "Swift is an attempt to create a low-level language with high-level syntax and semantics. It tackles the myth of the Sufficiently Smart Compiler by signing up to create that compiler as part of the language design process." He concludes: "Viewed in isolation, Yosemite provides a graphical refresh accompanied by a few interesting features and several new technologies whose benefits are mostly speculative, depending heavily on how eagerly they're adopted by third-party developers. But Apple no longer views the Mac in isolation, and neither should you. OS X is finally a full-fledged peer to iOS; all aspects of sibling rivalry have been banished."
Siracusa also takes a look a Swift, Apple's new programming language: "Swift is an attempt to create a low-level language with high-level syntax and semantics. It tackles the myth of the Sufficiently Smart Compiler by signing up to create that compiler as part of the language design process." He concludes: "Viewed in isolation, Yosemite provides a graphical refresh accompanied by a few interesting features and several new technologies whose benefits are mostly speculative, depending heavily on how eagerly they're adopted by third-party developers. But Apple no longer views the Mac in isolation, and neither should you. OS X is finally a full-fledged peer to iOS; all aspects of sibling rivalry have been banished."
Nope, no Windows 8 tiles, thank Jeebus. I've been using it since an early DP release and have been fairly impressed with the look/feel compared to past versions. A little buggy at first but that was to be expected being an unreleased OS and all. Even that first copy I installed was better than any iteration of Windows 8, and I'm primarily a Windows user.
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Not sure that's correct. I think the apps you distribute via OS X Server to mobile devices have to be signed with a enterprise dev certificate, which will cost you $299/year
Everyone's taking that snippet waaaay out of context.
OS X and iOS work better together now, they don't work the same.
As in, for example, you start typing a document on your desktop, like you normally would, and you can continue it on your phone seamlessly and automatically if you have to go out. Both with different, and appropriate, interfaces.
This isn't about making your desktop work LIKE a phone. It's about making your desktop work WITH your phone.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
I recently started a new role, where we predominately use Macs. As a long-term Linux user, I thought this would be a good opportunity to try out Macs, in case one day I decided to switch. Initially, I was very impressed, but after a few days, I find the whole thing to be dumbed down, unnecessarily.
The mouse scrolling was odd; the whole concept of "accelerating" while operating the wheel doesn't feel as natural as moving 2-3 lines with each movement. I had to download an app to get it the way I wanted (or, the same as it works in Windows and KDE).
It took me ages to realise that Command-Tab cycles through open applications, but not the windows. I found several windows all hidden behind one another that had been there for days, because OS X's window manager didn't present them to me. Apparently, I have to use Expose or something like that to see all of them.
Oddly, most things on Mac are Command+. However, on the command line, Ctrl+C is still used to break a program.
My Mac has been set up to be case insensitive. LS, GrEp, cAT, TAIl all behave as if they had been typed lowercase.
Pressing home and end take me to the top and bottom of the document, rather than the line I'm edit, making me have to do some finger gymnastics when I want to highlight an entire line I'm working on. That's probably just personal preference, though.
I'm not entirely sure why, when I click on the green plus, some windows will resize to fill the whole screen, while others will just get a little larger. Is that configurable somewhere..?
Maybe KDE has spoiled me, with its lashings of customisation options, but I can see if I were to switch to a Mac, I'd spend a lot of time downloading hacks and scripts to bring back the features I like to work with, and other scripts to do away with those that I don't. Can't see myself switching to a Mac any time soon, if I'm being totally fair.
including things like their version of Androids Intents (that they call "extensions")....notifications pane from iOS (stolen from Android, natch)...
Right, so you're upset that Apple is using plugins, extensions, and notifications because all of those things were invented by Android developers. Sure.
They're making it possible to make and receive phone calls on the desktop.
So they've added functionality. I don't' think anyone is complaining about Windows 8 for added functionality.
They're changing a bunch of apps to more closely mimic the cellphone UI. According to the review itself, this is resulting in UIs with excessive whitespace...
You might need to point that out in the review. I don't doubt what you're saying, I just need context, and skimming the review for a second, I didn't see anything specific about that.
Having used Yosemite for a while, I don't see there being a lot of extra unused space due to "mimicking the cellphone UI". It actually seems like, in a lot of cases (e.g. Safari), they've cut down on "wasted space" in a way that may have been inspired by the cellphone UI, but not in a way that sacrifices functionality. I definitely haven't had the experience of noticing that things are spaced out strangely as though it were optimizing OSX for touch interaction.
Mostly it seems like they just re-skinned it. The textures and colors are different, with almost the same spacing.
You DARE denigrate the OS X God that is John Siracusa*? You miserable infidel!.
How can you NOT bow down to the man who must have spent every waking minute of his life since 10.10 was released in alpha form working on this magnum opus? How can you NOT revel in his insights as to the amount of white space needed to click on a menu bar? How can you NOT bask in the glory of a 25 page Ars article (thank His Noodliness for Adblock).
Philistine.
* Thanks John, I mean really. I've followed you since BYTE Days (not that I understood half of what you were saying). But 25 pages?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
once you install a Start Menu replacement (e.g. ClassicShell)
In other words it's only different if you change the new UI for the old one.
It looks like Apple is doing the same thing
Not even slightly. There's no new UI that is like iOS, nor any "classic" UI to go back to.
Apple is flattening the graphical elements of the OS
Yes they are doing that. But that isn't enough to make OSX look anything like iOS.
If you want to program on an iPad download/install one of the many programming environments and stop bitching.
The iPad is not marketed as a 'computer' every one knows that. The fact that it is not easy to. 'compute' directly on it is well known.
Take it or leave it.
To install your 'own' software you only need a 'normal' developer account, to sign the software. An Enterprise account is not needed, AFAIK the distinction between OS X Server and OS X does no longer exist since 10.7.
And I don't get your bitching anyway. If you want a nice device to hack on buy a Nook or even more a Kobo, the later one even runs a more or less standard _linux_
However you can not connect your bluetooth keyboard to a Kobo/Nook.
So: get an android device and be done with it. The i ... being forced to use iTunes simple pisses me off.
ad I have right now is my last one as well, the fact that it does not mount as an USB drive on my Mac basically gave it the cupe de grace over the years
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.