Mac OS X Yosemite Under the Magnifying Glass

https://bold.pixelapse.com/minming/mac-os-x-yosemite-under-the-magnifying-glass

by lominming • 12 years ago

83 62 12 years ago

bold.pixelapse.com

kunstmord• 12 years ago

The low readability/contrast in some places seems to be the main problem. Sad to see the old Finder logo go – the central curve ending outside the "box" was a nice touch.

The new dock reminded me of the old Powerbook G4 I had, with 10.2 installed. I still somewhat miss the whole "Aqua" interface sometimes – but maybe that's just nostalgia or I over the years it's become harder to surprise me with UI design.

notduncansmith2• 12 years ago

Yeah the first thing I checked when I logged into 10.10 for the first time was the Finder icon, and sure enough, he looks like a total doofus. Overall there's a decent bit to like about Yosemite, a lot that... will take some getting used to.

Hopefully they'll refine it a lot more before release; also, can't wait for Dark Mode to hit the beta.

actsasbuffoon• 12 years ago

Thanks for pointing out that dark mode isn't in the beta. I should be able to restrain myself from installing the beta for a bit longer.

Gracana• 12 years ago

The low readability/contrast in some places seems to be the main problem.

Contrast is decreasing everywhere these days, and that trend is really causing me trouble. I hope they darken things a bit. Perhaps the light-on-dark mode will help with that?

pietro3• 12 years ago

I just hope they grow up. I can't read anything anymore, and it's entirely due to use of grey over black.

nutjob123• 12 years ago

10.2 was a very pleasant surprise coming from windows or mac os 9. I don't think we will have that sort of jump in the future until things become 3 dimensional.

VeejayRampay• 12 years ago

The "Applications" icon still looks like it was designed by a 8 year-old. There are some thing all the billions in the world can't fix I guess.

PS: This comment doesn't bring anything of value to the conversation but negativity and I am sorry for that, but it's been nagging at me for years.

antidaily• 12 years ago

I hate Helvetica Neue as a desktop font. I'm on an (non-retina screen) iMac and it just looks too thin at times, blurry.

Also, Id suggest waiting a couple days/weeks if you're a Chrome user. Just keeps crashing, every build, even Canary.

jevinskie• 12 years ago

I did like the kerning on the "i" in "While" better in Helvetica Neue than in Lucida Grande. I agree that the thinness is unpleasant.

blt• 12 years ago

I agree. Lucida is about the nicest sans-serif screen font I've ever used. Helvetica has noted flaws at normal screen resolution. At Retina resolution, typography for the screen starts following same rules as typography for print. Helvetica is not traditionally used for significant amounts of body text in print typography. It is better for titles and signs.

They should have used a Humanist sans-serif (https://typekit.com/lists/humanist-sans-serifs), of which Lucida is a good example.

arrrg3• 12 years ago

That use case should fit then, shouldn’t it?

UI fonts are not supposed to be used for large blocks of text. UI fonts are used for, well, basically “titles and signs”.

Kiro• 12 years ago

What's weird with the alignment of the traffic light buttons?

shravan• 12 years ago

If you look at the Safari traffic light icons, the spacing above them is narrower than the spacing below. It's a bit hard to see immediately but it's highlighted with red lines in that section.

lcnmrn• 12 years ago

They are vertically aligned with the arrows, not with buttons.

0X1A• 12 years ago

The new folder icons are extremely reminiscent of the old Oxygen icons included in KDE.

See: http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/linuxguide3/kde4-dolphin.p...

arrrg3• 12 years ago

Not really … those folders are as similar to the old bright blue folders of OS X as the Yosemite folders are to them … which is to say not a whole lot.

Russell91• 12 years ago

I was looking forward to seeing some feature changes, but I could care less about anything this post raved/complained about. Prepare yourself for some serious bike shedding though.

auxbuss• 12 years ago

Could care less? Haven't seen that for a while, so: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw

smackfu5• 12 years ago

If a blog post is about the visual changes, and you don't care about the visual changes... I guess it's not for you?

JoeAltmaier• 12 years ago

I object to every shell being labeled 'an OS' now. Whole releases are dedicated to changing the desktop, which is actually just an app.

pgt• 12 years ago

The glassy translucency reminds me of Windows Vista's "Glass" theme. Are modern operating systems moving toward a solid, flat design language?

rglover• 12 years ago

Scary times when work that's still months away is already getting scrutinized like this.

pavlov• 12 years ago

Heh, it's always been like this in Apple-land.

I fondly remember Ars Technica's review of Mac OS X Developer Preview 3, back in February 2000, where John Siracusa roasts the "lickable" new Aqua UI that's a complete mess:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2000/02/mac-os-x-dp3/

A good and honest critic is the artist's best friend, even it may sting for a moment.

Hovertruck• 12 years ago

Why? This is what betas are for.

cmelbye2• 12 years ago

Apple moves away from Aqua after more than a decade using it, and you're surprised designers have already started pouring over the details to see what's new?

smackfu5• 12 years ago

You don't think Apple presents their visuals designs as nearly finished in these betas?

3rd38• 12 years ago

There are still many rough edges in the new OS ...

I hate to say it, but that blog post is mostly bike shedding. Do people really care that the toolbar icons aren't perfectly aligned, that the folder icons lack a little contrast and that the search bar looks like a button?

glifchits3• 12 years ago

It seems trivial when you read people criticizing it, but even though you may never explicitly notice them, small annoying things will accumulate to you feeling not right about the design.

3rd38• 12 years ago

I cannot imagine a scenario that any of the points of criticism mentioned pose a real problem. UX problems arise when things are ugly, when they get in your way, when they surprise you more than they should or when they limit the accessibility, which is clearly not the case here. It's irrelevant bike shedding because OSX is 'sexy' enough anyway; there is not enough to gain that could justify the energy people put into it.

http://xkcd.com/1015/

nofollow• 12 years ago

Agreed. I wish they'd focus more attention on the kernel. Many of the system processes frequently run amok consuming excessive cpu or memory. And the filesystem is hopelessly outdated.

glomph• 12 years ago

Talking about trivial features is not bike shedding.

3rd38• 12 years ago

Yes it is.

smackfu5• 12 years ago

Apple has a rep for sweating the small stuff. So when they get the small stuff wrong, it gets pointed out.

3rd38• 12 years ago

And what is the value of that?

glifchits3• 12 years ago

I think its good the search bar looks like a button. It makes it more clear that searching is an action. The user has to click on it to activate the textbox anyway, and once clicked it should be quite apparent that its a textbox.

mbell• 12 years ago

In particular, I like the new trash can icon. Craig Federighi made a note of the time they spent refining this particular icon and the effort definitely shows.

Was it lost on the author that Federighi's comment on the trashcan was made in jest?

ebbv• 12 years ago

I think there was humor in it, but it was humor in him being aware that it is objectively weird to spend a lot of time on something as trivial as a trash can icon. But in the context of Apple's history, it is a testament to their attention to detail.

I have no doubt that they did spend what most companies would consider a ridiculous amount of time on it. And that's why it's funny.

bitsoda• 12 years ago

The delivery of the comment was jovial in nature, but I do believe him that the team spent considerable time refining the trash can until they were satisfied with its look.

arrrg3• 12 years ago

I don’t think that’s the case at all. He was telling you that they spent a lot of time on the trashcan, knowing that sounds a little ridiculous. That’s where the humour was, not in the designers at Apple not actually caring about the trashcan. It was certainly not set up as an ironic statement in any way.

If Apple didn’t really spend a lot of time on the trashcan then he was just dishonest, but not saying something in jest.

Shorel• 12 years ago

For some reason this trash can icon reminds me of the Zyme vials in Deus Ex.

pietro3• 12 years ago

I miss Windows. You could change the UI fonts, and there's nothing I'd rather do than escape Helvetica Neue. It's a terrible, terrible font.

hippich• 12 years ago

w8, you can't change fonts of windows/etc in macos?

sdegutis3• 12 years ago

I started using Mac OS X at version 10.4, and over the years it's becoming really apparent when part of a style change is to appeal to perceived obsolescence.

When a reviewer says "this is definitely an improvement over the last version, which looked and felt awkward", I recall how in their review of the last version, they said the same thing.

sdegutis3• 12 years ago

That said, Yosemite does look really pretty, and a part of me is excited to use it.

sdegutis3• 12 years ago

I'm really surprised at how similar their new checkboxes are to the ones I designed for my music player Bahamut[1] last year.

Which makes it kind of ironic and upsetting that the UI APIs they provide for writing Bahamut (AppKit) made it so incredibly difficult to make it look that way.

[1] https://github.com/sdegutis/bahamut

ximpathy• 12 years ago

Wow looks nice! Now if only it were a SoundCloud client..

hcarvalhoalves• 12 years ago

Things that I've found annoying:

- The inconsistency between some icons (e.g. Finder vs. Trash).

- The inconsistency between icons and the overall UI (e.g. folder icons just look blurry, while other icons have sharp lines).

- Juxtaposed rounded buttons in the toolbar are weird.

- Aliasing on some UI elements (e.g. tooltips, slider, buttons, sidebar).

- Too low contrast on some UI elements (e.g., sidebar, traffic lights).

IMO Apple is struggling to make this new visual language coherent and polished, I guess it'll take more 2-3 iterations to get to the level of coherency Aqua achieved.

cmelbye2• 12 years ago

I feel the same way, I think it will definitely take a couple more iterations for the new design language to feel strong. But, look at the first beta of iOS 7 and compare it to iOS 7.1/8 and Yosemite. Huge, huge improvements already, IMO.

shadytrees• 12 years ago

Has anybody gotten Continuity/Handoff to work? Or is it completely disabled in the betas?

Mac OS X Yosemite Under the Magnifying Glass

Related Stories