Apple officially released OS X Yosemite today, and to mark that occasion – as has become tradition among our people – the only OS X Yosemite review you need, from John Siracusa.
OS X and iOS have been trading technologies for some time now. For example, AVFoundation, Apple’s modern framework for manipulating audiovisual media, was released for iOS a year before it appeared on OS X. Going in the other direction, Core Animation, though an integral part of the entire iPhone interface, was released first on the Mac. Yosemite’s new look continues the pattern; iOS got its visual refresh last year, and now it’s OS X’s turn.
But at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple made several announcements that point in a new direction: iOS and OS X advancing in lockstep, with new technologies that not only appear on both platforms simultaneously but also aim to weave them together.
These new, shared triumphs run the gamut from traditional frameworks and APIs to cloud services to the very foundation of Apple’s software ecosystem, the programming language itself. Apple’s dramatic leadership restructuring in 2012 put Federighi in charge of both iOS and OS X – a unification of thought that has now, two years later, resulted in a clear unification of action. Even the most ardent Mac fan will admit that iOS 7 was a bigger update than Mavericks. This time around, it’s finally a fair fight.
Grab some tea or coffee, and enjoy.
I like the synergy between OSX and iOS. It’s something that us Windows/Android users will probably never have, because Google can’t be bothered to build anything native for Windows. Of course, there’s probably 8 million different browser extensions for this kind of thing, but it isn’t the same kind of integration that Apple users will enjoy.
Well, Chrome OS is getting more Android integration…
If only more app devs would write ChromeOS-native apps that work offline. It’s better than it was, but not quite there yet.
Don’t get too gealous. The biggest ones like continuity and hand-off you aren’t even permitted to have unless you get on the upgrade treadmill, even if your existing setup could do it without issue.
Handoff requires bluetooth 4. Which products have bluetooth 4 and yet don’t support handoff?
My Mac Mini Server, mid 2011 for one. This is the one model of that generation that does have Bluetooth 4 LE, yet I’m forbidden from having hand-off not because Apple check your system’s capabilities, but because they simply check your machine generation.
Your comment is kind of strange; windows and android aren’t really a pairing.
Windows on desktop and windows on phone should have this, for sure.
Same as ChromeOS on desktop and Android on phone.
There’s no reason Google should support their direct competitor’s operating system, even if it is still obscenely dominant in the desktop space.
“Windows/Android”? What a curious pairing. Didn’t you mean “Linux/Android”?
I’d expect people using Windows on computers to be more interested in Windows phones, not Android ones.
Well, reality says otherwise. It actually says a lot about how badly Microsoft has been missing the boat on the mobile space.
Assuming I were interested in Windows Phone (which I’m not, for many reasons), what is MS doing in this regard? Do they have similar Continuity-style features on Windows? Can I send/receive SMS messages from my PC and ‘airdrop’ files between the two?
I use GNU/Linux on a travel netbook, Windows on my main laptop, and have a few Android and Windows Phone mobiles.
I know what you mean. Google also refuse to integrate fully with Haiku, their AIX support is terrible and their OpenVMS integration is non-existent. This complete lack of full integration for operating systems that are nothing to do with Google is clearly unacceptable.
I’m glad to hear that Apples integration is better and not proprietary in any way, so I guess I’ll be able to connect an iOS device to Linux and it’ll all seamlessly Just Work.
ifuse and adb works on AIX with some fiddling and can probably be made to work on Haiku as well (at least to some degree) so both iOS and android devices is supported almost equally on both platforms for most usages and purposes.
I’m guessing you’re trolling here, right? Who the hell uses OpenVMS or any of the others on the desktop? Well, I’m sure somebody does, but let’s be serious here. Google doesn’t have a real desktop OS offering, so it makes sense from an end-user’s perspective to support an OS that tens of millions of its users use every day.
Google is an advertising company. They need customers to work online to raise revenue. That’s the rationale behind Chrome and Android.
Why would Google waste its resources on such obscure operating systems like Haiku, AIX or OpenVMS? Haiku isn’t even complete yet and is still very much a work in progress. AIX and OpenVMS are server operating systems designed for big iron. How many admins are attaching Google devices or using Google software on such systems? Moreover, the number of enthusiasts using such systems as workstations is vanishingly small.
You do realise they were being sarcastic, right?
The point is: why should Google give deep integration for some third party’s operating system?
ChromeOS makes sense – integrate deeply, so as to provide a great platform for your service.
Windows makes no sense – it’s a terrible OS, that nobody should be using, and it’s made by a company which is in direct competition with Google, threatening and extorting Android OEMs over ridiculous patents.
Because Android is a Linux derivative and not a Windows derivative.
In fact, it is possible, though not always worth the effort, to write an interpreter on Linux that can run Android apps.
Still an invalid comparison.
Pairing Windows and Android is like pairing Linux and Windows.
The only ground for comparison is Microsoft’s .net framework.
Edited 2014-10-17 14:58 UTC
Do not be jealous: I have a Mac, I am pretty happy with it (it is IMHO the best computer OS right now); but as happy as I am, I do not have any plan to buy an iOS device at all. iOS is a mutilated/politically tweaked toy OS that limits the users in ways that OS X do not.
Edited 2014-10-17 14:47 UTC
I am with you, I bought a MBP 2 years ago after over 20 years on PCs. I love it , and I have no desire to buy an iphone/ipad
i’m hoping apple understands that OSX and iOS both serve certain markets perfectly without help from the other.
What about the iOS/Windows synergy?
With the minimal penetration of Macs in computing it is very safe to say that the vast majority of iPhone users are running Windows. And in exchange for their (lots of) money, they are punished with that iTunes mastodontic POS and its continual pushes for intrusion with half baked Quicktime trialware and the totally unnecessary Safari for Windows.
Edited 2014-10-20 11:34 UTC
With the minimal penetration of Macs in computing it is very safe to say that the vast majority of iPhone users are running Windows. And in exchange for their (lots of) money, they are punished with that iTunes mastodontic POS and its continual pushes for intrusion with half baked Quicktime trialware and the totally unnecessary Safari for Windows.
which pales in comparison to the mighty force of OFFICE.
if you don’t read/write OFFICE files you are constantly at a disadvantage, even in 2014, even after this run of Apple growth.
i agree apple’s windows offerings have a lot of nagware, but really, it’s nothing compared to the kind of stuff that nearly put apple out of business for many years.
if there were no google docs or open office or apple’s converters microsoft could tighten the screws using something you surely know as .ppt, .xls, .doc, and put good people right out of business, just like the old days.
Edited 2014-10-20 14:49 UTC
Safari for Windows was discontinued few years back…
Google builds Picasa or Sketchup or Google Earth, that’s …something native
It is my understanding that 8K models are due soon.
http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/amd-an…
There’s always something better around the corner. “Soon” is a relative term. For example, the closest competitor to Apple’s 5k display is Dell and they’re not going to ship ’till next quarter.
When 8k displays ship, I would wager that Apple would be first or among the first on that front as well.
I’ve learned… never wait for better tech unless its no more than 1 month out. It’s just not worth it.
I doubt it. Apple is not in the habit of chasing specs for specs sake. They are going to retina displays on their devices but no further. Trying to drive 8K on a screen smaller than about 40″ that you sit close to would be a pointless waste of resources.
Joke of the Year. Apple will embrace any new technology that can be used as product differentiation or a marketing gimmick eg 64 bit phone processors, Firewire, Magsafe and proprietary connectors.
Technologies that are useful but don’t have marketing power eg ECC ram or a modern file system are typically ignored or downplayed by Apple.
Edited 2014-10-17 06:39 UTC
HFS+ probably exists for the same reason NTFS still does – programmers write software that abuse the ugliest, weirdest corners of its implementation details, like assuming a directory listing would always return NTFS sort order has caused delays in Linux ports of various games.
Anyway, we cannot compare the nice [and still modern and still being developed] design of NTFS against the old HFS+.
Whatever about 64-bit CPUs (it’s a pretty normal step that they’re spinning into a massive deal) and proprietary connectors (I’ve seen plenty on non-apple devices, such as that bastardised DVI port Dell had on some of their compact machines), but Firewire and Magsafe are both pretty excellent technologies that were (and still are) very useful and not just “chasing specs”. I’m also struggling to think of a proprietary connector that Apple pushed as a marketing gimmick.
It’s very unusual for consumer-grade equipment to use ECC RAM, and most systems carry around baggage of older filesystem support for compatibility reasons.
FireWire is an excellent product that can beat most other short cable standards in many areas. USB devices tend to (at least used to) choke a lot more when transfering in many directions at once, and usb is not as good at parallel stuff. Also the power specs of FW/iLink is great and could power a DV camera. (perhaps usb3 can do this, but i am not certain, as the power usage of such cameras keeps going down and the USB standard becomes ever more flexible)
The standard is very open but require rather large (making low cost devices almost impossible) license fees, and that was the only reason USB even had a chance back when FW was invented.
Not the only reason; many peripherals (for example mouses, keyboards, printers, digicams) were only ever made in USB versions, not FW – USB was simply a great example of “good enough”
Magsafe is the only sane power connector in the laptop market. Definitely not a gimmick.
64 bit mobile is obviously the future and getting their migration done early is clearly a benefit for everyone.
Firewire didn’t win out, but also wasn’t a gimmick, and had huge advantages over USB when it came out.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought I read somewhere that Apple killed FW in order to bring the iPod to the masses, which were using PC’s that only had USB on the motherboards. Despite the fact that FW had the obvious advantage of speed of transfer, they threw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater for larger marketshare and it proved the right move.
I didn’t say Apple technologies are inferior. I simply believe they rarely offer compelling advantages over existing industry standard solutions. However they do lock consumers into the Apple ecosystem, increase costs and reduce choice.
In my view/taste the by far ugliest version of OSX to date (including DR, DP and Preview releases like rhapsody)
The lack of indication of the close, minimize and maximize buttons will surely confuse a colour blind (4%of all males or more) initial user to the OS. Perhaps OSX users is turning once again turning into an exclusive club instead of the mass market success they have hade since Jobs took over.
There are indicators on them when you mouse over. This will take anyone about 5 seconds to learn and then know forever. Really not an issue, colour-blind or not.
Complete nonsense. This would be like claiming that color blind people are confused at stop lights. Nope, they know: top, middle, bottom, and they’ll know left, middle, right. Moreover, it’s not as if it hasn’t been exactly the same for 15 years already. (They didn’t change the order or the colors… they simply made them flatter. Hell… as mentioned by the other reply, they have mouseover indicators so they are actually more understandable than they have been in the entire history of OS X ^aEUR” they’ve always been red, yellow, green but prior to Yosemite, they never had iconographic mouseover indicators.)
They are. Colour blind drivers are overrepresented in accidents at intersections. However there is no political will to change the design of traffic lights or restrict colour blind drivers.
Let’s just recollect that judgen is claiming that the colored close, min, full screen buttons is an indicator that the success of Jobs is over and that this will be a significant UI problem… and that judgen is apparently talking about an OS that he has never looked at once in 15 years.
I was just thinking that this is the first release of Mac OS X that I actually like the look of, especially with the “increase contrast” option, and the transparency effects turned off.
But to me Mac OS 8 is still easily the most attractive OS Apple have designed, so I’m not sure many people will share my view.
OS8 is along with Classical BeOS the most beautiful OS’es in my view. Small but functional, visible to the vision impaired (not like flat as most of the others of the time and today), maximizing screen real estate for what you actually want to do (run applications) instead for keeping docks or large icons in taskbars. Value added matters.
Edited 2014-10-18 04:46 UTC
Haiku OS is pretty good on that count too… it’s just missing so many drivers and applications that it might never be good as a general PC OS.
Auto-hide the dock then. Reduce it’s size to your heart’s content. Set the icon size as small as 16×16; change the grid spacing as you see fit. There is no way it can be said that OS 8 maximizes screen real estate better than OS X. OS X has a magnitude greater set of features and customizations for the vision impaired (and many other impairments) than OS 8. But, again, from earlier posts it is clear you know nothing about OS X but like to criticize it based on your own personal ignorance.
Edited 2014-10-19 16:53 UTC
OS8 wasn’t bad as long as you:
— had conflict catcher and knew how to use it
— hit Apple-S after every word typed
— expected to reboot 4 times a day
— knew the “mac voodoo move” where you wiggled the mouse violently whenever you were at crash points (app launching, app quitting, big copy/pastes, etc.), knowing that the rapid mouse movement would distract the mac just enough to not crash
So yeah, “System 8” was a great OS, but nothing near stable. OSX is 100x more stable, I don’t think I’ve saved a document in 10 years ;-).
On the positive side it booted really quickly (about 5 secs on my IIsi).
this might be more of a style preference, or the lower resolution of the era.
i think you can modify OSX to work the way you describe.
there’s never been a perfect OS though.
i bought BeOS and still have the shirt and discs. time passed it by quickly, like many great products built on a bad business plan. i’ve run just about every apple, microsoft, atari, and be operating system made at some point in my life, plus various nixes and randoms and they all have issues.
i do think apple gets very close to perfection with some versions of OSX. it always comes down to if it has the software you need.
So surely you can’t wait for Haiku to come of age?
I don’t even use them in color… I prefer the graphite grey ones. The mouse-overs let you know what they do, and anyone who is used to OS X does not even think about it. You might ask yourself how do color blind people use traffic lights? Simple they know the standard pattern they are arranged in. I like the OS to be clean and minimal, so I am pleased with the all the extraneous visual cruft they removed.
The indicators are more or less the same as they ever were.
Same positions.
Same colors.
Same mouseover indicators (x|-|+)**
Mostly the same functions. Zoom became fullscreen at some point but that^aEURTMs been basically the only functional change that has ever happened.*
The only change in Yosemite has been a minor tweak to the look that changes none of what is listed above and it has been this way since Aqua first debuted and throughout all of the other changes it has undergone. Not even sure you could call it Aqua anymore, but that^aEURTMs beside the point.
* Interesting trivia: there was at some point before OS X 10.0 was released a purple button on the far right that was a kind of pseudo-fullscreen button. That was removed. Way way later a real fullscreen button was added in the same place but with a different look, then removed and the Zoom button became fullscreen instead.
** I stand corrected on one thing. I just checked and the + icon actually has changed to two right triangles pointing away from each other. Honestly did not notice that.
/subtopic-closed
Edited 2014-10-18 08:48 UTC
Ah, yes, been using Yosemite for so long already had forgotten that there were mouseover indicators in the past somehow (mostly because their purpose is so obvious and intuitive, I never needed them probably?)… unsure how I forgot. Thanks for the correction.
My Logitech K800 numberpad no longer works under OS X.X. Instead, the number keys on the numberpad slightly control the mouse on both of my Mac’s.
I have used the beta releases and submitted bug reports to Apple and Logitech. Neither have addressed the issue. Still not working in the final release. I have even tried tweaking the type of keyboard, such as using the English Extended or International keyboard in the system keyboard settings. Frustrating, since it works fine on systems running OS X.5 through X.9
Sounds like Mouse keys got turned on somehow. Did you check that? System Prefs/Accessibility/Mouse and Trackpad. Make sure “enable mmouse keys” is not checked.
Yup, that was it. Not sure how it happened, but very grateful for that finally fixed.
Very good review. So I guess I can go ahead and go through the upgrade on my Mac Pro. I have been holding off until some reviews and success stories. I know the iOS upgrades have been kind of half baked.
Roberto J. Dohnert
Lead Developer
Black Lab Linux
http://www.pc-opensystems.com