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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."
From the summary:
Excuse me, but the only way for OS X to become a "peer" to iOS would be for iOS to become a whole lot better (e.g. to gain better multitasking and multiuser support, the ability to freely install software without a walled garden, a command line, etc.) or for OS X to become a whole lot worse!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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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I really wish this sad trend of minimalism would go away.
In a way, I feel minimalism reflects the decline of our society because let's face it, we aren't putting all that much effort into our designs at this point.
Place something witty here
Look, Apple couldn't have developed this technology themselves. This came from the UFOs they have at Area 51 and the alien flying saucer technology from the Roswell crash. Do some basic research before you post these stories.
Swift must be really in demand. In the past few weeks, I've gotten at least five recruiters with positions open, but with requirements of at least five years work with the language.
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?
These Ars OSX reviews have always been really impressive things, full of technical examination and as you can see, very long to write...
It made more sense to me back when you had to pay for an upgrade though, so you could see if it was worth getting. Now that it's free, the need for long technical examination seems to diminish...
That said I hope they keep doing them because it is nice to have a deep technical examination of what is new.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
Nope. The failed Microsoft experiment of the same GUI on desktop and mobile was not and will never be done by Apple. They are aligning technologies, not UIs.
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!
The issue I have with Windows 8, and OS X.10 is the fact that they are trying to make the OS into the next tablet/mobile OS.
No, they aren't. At least, not Apple.
They are making your Mac work with your iDevice more seamlessly. There's a pretty big distinction there.
Anyone claiming this is akin to Windows 7 -> Windows 8 isn't paying attention. For one, Apple has never (and still doesn't) ship a touchscreen Mac, so it would be quite ridiculous to put a touch-centric UI on OS X. OS X is still clearly ruled by the mouse / trackpad and keyboard, and will be for the foreseeable future for one very good reason - OS X is where the content for iOS is made, and iOS is where the content made on OS X is consumed.
That is the business model for Apple, and very close to what Google is doing too if you haven't noticed. They haven't exactly been whipping people to get Android onto laptops - that's what ChromeOS is for.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It's not a failed experiment.
'Success' does not need to mean, "Everyone universally enjoys this XXXX".
I'm a Windows Phone user as well as a Windows 8 user. I like both of them. I like that they've combined them. It works very well for me.
The interface needs to be refined in order to appeal to more people, but that does not mean it is a failure. It just means that Windows 8 was the first iteration of something that could/should/can be very, very good.
Taking the first steps toward a goal is not failure- it's building a foundation.
No reason to lie.
I'm with you on the eye rolls. I'm not sure how a free upgrade with new features, to an already purchased product constitutes planned obsolescence. I realize language shifts, but planned obsolescence to me is when a product you purchased has a given shelf life where it loses the capability to do what you bought it for. This is a product that still does what you paid for it and actually increased utility, just some features that you didn't pay for anyway you can't use.
Did anyone buy the MacBook in 2011 and say "you know, when they stop charging for OS upgrades, and give out free updates and dozens of new features to the mac and iPhone, i won't be able to use this one new free feature they both get 3 years from now, curse you Apple!"
Personal likes can be subjective. But the failure of Windows Phone & Tablets in the market and the need of Microsoft to backpedal on the desktop is objective, The same Windows UI everywhere failed. A failure is not a foundation. It could be a learning exercise from which they'll recover. But in no way was it not a failure.
that implements the application of cooking something--why don't you expect to be able to re-write that program? Why don't you expect that you can re-write the code on the dozen micro-controllers in your car, or your refrigerator. What about your cable box? your DVR? your DVD player? How about that PS3 your kids play?
You probably own a few dozen processors which are similarly handicapped by the manufacturer to function as an appliance.
Your ethical criteria is arbitrarily created to castigate Apple for doing the same thing that hundreds of other manufacturers have done over the last 100 years. The point of technology is not "to let you tinker"--the point is to perform a specific function. Enabling tinkering is valuable and there are lots of computers made for that purpose (including Apple's entire Mac line)--but it is hardly the only valuable thing out there.
"I'm a Windows Phone user"
WOW! Finally, I've 'met' one. According to the sales states there was someone who bought a Windows Phone but I didn't expect to actually make contact with you. Hey, how's it working out?
I too have no problems with Windows 8.... on my Lumia. On my laptop, however, it was such a bitch that I replaced it with PC-BSD
I've met one too, in person. They worked for MS.