OS X Yosimate review

What is OS X Yosemite?

OS X Yosemite aims to tie Macs, iPhones and iPads, like one big happy Apple family. The Cupertino-based company has had many of the ingredients in recent years, but OS X Yosemite completes the recipe and gives it a darn thorough cooking. Missing elements, such as AirDrop support across iOS 8 devices and Macs, have been introduced, as well as numerous new features 

Indeed, with added functionality such as the ability to make and take calls from your iPhone from your Mac, and the addition of iCloud Drive, this is a larger update than last year’s Mavericks. And remember, Yosemite is free.

But despite all that, the thing most people will notice is how it looks.

SEE ALSO: OS X Yosemite tips and tricks

OS X Yosemite – The New Look

We assume Apple simply ran out of time with Yosemite’s predecessor, Mavericks. While iOS 7 introduced a refreshingly new, Ive-inspired look, Mavericks was more of a tinker under the bonnet – an oil change rather than a full service. Yosemite catches up and the lineage is obvious. It adopts the same ‘flatter’ appearance, simplifies and adds generous lashings of transparency.

The effect varies from app to app, but the basic idea is OS X Yosemite takes the colour of your desktop background (or webpage in Safari) and reflects that within the window you’re viewing. It’s not transparent in a ‘see-through’ way; it takes the colour and makes it diffuse – the nearest real-world reference is that it's like looking through frosted glass. This kind of change inevitably raises concerns about usability, but they’re largely unfounded. We’ve had no problems with unclear actions or interface elements arising from this.

The transparency effects and a change in font, the same one as in iOS 8, give OS X Yosemite a much-needed freshness. It’s also brighter. Yosemite adopts a similar colour palette to that introduced in iOS 7 – a fact reflected in app icons and even folders.

We also like the many ways Yosemite tightens things up and uses space more efficiently. The best example is how many title bars (not all) are now removed. The traffic-light buttons – the three ones in the top left of every window – are still there, but they sit along proper interface elements, making use of space previously wasted. This means, for example, that the address bar in Safari is now on the same level as the traffic light buttons. It gives you a little more space and it looks cleaner and neater.



OS X Yosemite – From iOS with Love
It’s not just the interface that has a strong iOS influence; many features are lifted wholesale from iOS. The best example is the Notifications Center. which looks, feels and works just as it does in iOS 8. This includes support for third-party extensions and widgets, plus the ability to replace and remove the default ones with those of your choosing. Third-party support is patchy at present, but it’s bound to pick up – it already has on iOS 8. There’s still no ‘clear all’ option notifications, though. 

Yosemite also picks up the third-party extensions support added to iOS 8. Third-party extensions work across the whole OS and fall into four categories: Actions (edit or view content in another), Finder (integrate with Spotlight search), Share Menu (share with other apps) and Today (widgets). They’re a useful addition, though we haven’t seen many examples yet – developers are only now starting to roll out Yosemite updates. Yosemite also adds Family Sharing, which makes it easier for parents to manage family accounts and share purchases, and iCloud Drive.




iCloud Drive is a belated admission that Apple’s previous iCloud system was too restrictive, even by Apple's standards. Instead of files being cocooned within individual apps, iCloud Drive organises them into folders in much the same way Dropbox does. By default iCloud Drive apps have their own folders, but you can access them and open the files in any compatible app.

Other iOS inspirations are subtle, such as the way the address bar in Safari hides the full URL until it's selected, in favour of the domain or – in the case of verified websites – the name. These kind of changes might upset purists, but there’s sense in them. Hiding the URL makes it harder for phishing sites to ‘spoof’ domain names, as they can’t hide the real domain with overly long and complex URLs.



The final iOS-like flourish is a significant upgrade to Spotlight. Just as in iOS 8, it pulls in search information from numerous other sources (Maps, Wikipedia, iTunes, Bing etc.), but it’s also gained a new, larger preview window. The new window gives you previews of the results and organises your search results by category (i.e. Bing results and files on the Mac are separated) and it puts what it thinks is the most relevant result at the top. It’s a useful improvement and, just like iOS, it’s integrated into the search bar in Safari, too.

OS X Yosemite – Continuity and Handoff

This is where the integration between Macs and iOS moves to a different level. Continuity, the collective name for a number of features such as AirDrop and Handoff, elevate OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 from solid, useful updates to must have ones. 

Handoff is likely to see more use. It lets you quickly pick up whatever you’re viewing on one device and switch to another. Most of the core apps, such as Safari, Mail, Maps and Pages, support it. On Yosemite it’s represented by an icon in the far left that pops up whenever a Handoff opportunity is available. 

We’ve found the most useful application is simply opening web pages from other devices on a Mac — i.e. viewing a website on an iPhone and then opening the same page on a laptop — but it’s also useful when composing emails or working on documents. It’s also open to third-party developers to exploit, though none have yet.

There are a few requirements for Handoff beyond iOS 8 and Yosemite, such as being logged into the same iCloud account, having Bluetooth 4.0 on each device and them being in range, but the feature works flawlessly. These are the same requirements for other Continuity features, such as the ability to make and receive iPhone calls on your Mac, and the Air Drop file transfer system.

Air Drop is very useful, particularly now you can finally transfer files to and from Macs and iOS devices, but its the phone call integration that’s the real kicker here. It’s a brilliant feature — just minutes before I reached this section of the review I took a call on my Mac while my phone was upstairs charging and it worked flawlessly. 

In our iOS 8 review we found audio quality and consistency of this feature was a little off, but in the final version of Yosemite there are no problems at all. Moreover, provided you don’t live in a mansion you can be reasonably assured that your phone will always be in range of your Mac, saving you a lot of unnecessary rushing about and missed calls.

Another aspect of the Continuity universe is the ability to send and receive SMS messages (not just iMessages) in the Messages app. Sadly this requires an iOS 8 update that’s still in beta (it’s due 20 October) so we haven’t been able to test it, but it’s the final piece in what are the most transformative features for any Apple devotee. They’re best argument yet to own an iPhone/iPad and a Mac together.

OS X Yosemite – Other Things to Consider

We haven’t included a section on setup and installation purely because it’s so simple. The update is available through the Mac App Store — it’s a little over 5GB — and took around 30 to 40 minutes to install on a 2013 Macbook Air. It’s good practice to back things up before you update, but we’ve had no problems in two separate updates.

The system requirements for Yosemite are the same as Mavericks, which means you can install and run Yosemite on any of the following systems:  iMac (Mid-2007 or later), MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, Late 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later), MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later),(15-inch, Mid/Late 2007 or later), (17-inch, Late 2007 or later), MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later), Mac Mini (Early 2009 or later), Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later), Xserve (Early 2009).

Finally, a short word on performance: it’s fine. We’ve been using Yosemite on a full-time work laptop (a 2014 15-inch MacBook Pro) since the very first beta with no serious problems. Those we did have were compatibility issues that have since been cleared up. If you’re running Mavericks you’ll have no problems. Owners of older Macs who aren’t running Mavericks already may want to wait for more user feedback, though. 

Verdict

The nature of annual system updates like this is that the differences are inherently incremental. This is good in one respect, as it avoids jarring, revolutionary changes that put off users (see: Windows 8), but it also eliminates the sense of surprise and ‘new-ness’.

OS X Yosemite, however, feels like the most ‘new’ Mac update since Apple switched to the annual, free update model. The new look and feel plays a large part in this, but it’s the Continuity features and the tight, effective integration with iOS that really sells it.

The bottom line is neither Microsoft nor Google currently offers a mobile and desktop experience as coherent as this. That could all change with Windows 9 and future Android and Chromebook updates, but right now Apple leads the way.