Yosemite looks terrible!

[Eithanius]

Translucency isn't worth it.

There's only one word to describe it - Regression...

Early OS X days has some sort of translucency effects involved. But it wasn't until 10.5 that such effects (almost completely) disappeared...

I guess Apple has been so bloody desperate of attracting Windows users that they're bringing it back and making translucency more pronounced on ************ (sorry, I meant Yosemite) enough to copy useless, resource intensive effects from Windows Vista/7 just to entice these users to switch, and thus saying "Hey, we're better than Windows"...

EDIT: Damn... even the word Yo****tingme is censored... I didn't even know it was a valid word at all...

 

[n-evo]

Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.0 contextual and menu bar menus were highly transparent. Apple reduced it to the point of almost not being noticeable with the v10.5.2 update after people complaining. Apart from the Dock Mac OS X Leopard didn't have any less transparency than Mac OS X Panther or Tiger really. The big shift away from transparency occurred from Mac OS X Jaguar to Panther.

 

[F1Mac]

With 10.10.2 out, the ratings for Yosemite have gone up! Now only a little more than half the commenters are giving it one star.

I have to wonder, with a lot people are mentioning lag, delays, etc., just exactly what toll is translucency taking on the CPU and memory consumption. I've noticed that on some older units, if you try to scroll through the list of mails using the keyboard, the lag is quite noticeable. The screen has to be constantly adjusting it's video contents.

Translucency isn't worth it.

As a test, navigate fast on the menubar or scroll up/down the safari sidebar. I have iStat Menus so I can see the percentage of cpu used. With transparency on, it goes up to 14%, when it's off it never gets past 7-8%. I just did the same little test in Mavericks, 8%. And despite what my sig suggests, yes these results come from the same machine, for instance my Mac Pro 1,1 - which ran Yosemite up until last week, on the 5,1, numbers were smaller but there was a difference as well. Transparency is a cpu/gpu hog, and it is completely unnecessary.

 

[ToM7]

You can say that again!!!!

I got actually got rid of the iPhone I had running iOS7 and got a used one running iOS6 to replace it. I could not stand the glaring white everywhere, the stupid controls that look almost like hyperlinks, and the bizarre, almost imperceptible colors, like yellow stick figure icons on a blaring white background in Notes. Is Apple now limiting users to those with 20/20 vision? Are those of us that have even minor vision problems now "throw aways?"

The translucency and the kiddie corner icons in Yosemite just irritate me. If I use Yosemite for about 10 or 20 minutes I actually find myself getting into a bad mood. More stupidity. More poorly thought out ideas. And to top that off, it's bug ridden.

Apple in 2006: It just works.
Apple in 2014: It might work, and even if it does, it might look like crap.

I REALLY MISS TO IOS 6!
this was the best iOS ever!
& about os x i've 3 macs at home:
1. white macbook from 2008 with 10.7.5
2. Retina macbook pro mid 2014 with 10.9.5 that i bought in purpose before the Yosemite is going out to public
3. the new mac mini with 10.10.2

now. every time i'm on the mac mini i just get angry & just after 5m i get back to my rMBP with 10.9 & everything feel so much better, Yosemite just don't feel right, the UI is just not apple, really

 

[KALLT]

As a test, navigate fast on the menubar or scroll up/down the safari sidebar. I have iStat Menus so I can see the percentage of cpu used. With transparency on, it goes up to 14%, when it's off it never gets past 7-8%. I just did the same little test in Mavericks, 8%. And despite what my sig suggests, yes these results come from the same machine, for instance my Mac Pro 1,1 - which ran Yosemite up until last week, on the 5,1, numbers were smaller but there was a difference as well. Transparency is a cpu/gpu hog, and it is completely unnecessary.

Not only that, but this vibrancy effect is sometimes ‘choppy’ even on very fast devices, like the iPhone 6. When you look really closely, you can see that the OS sometimes needs a tiny bit of extra time to complete the redrawing for this effect. Anyone who has used gaussian blurs in e.g. Photoshop knows that on pictures, it can require a wee time before it is applied. The OS just does it coarsely, but still over a fairly large surface. Every time you scroll, the OS needs to redraw the background and apply the gaussian blur and glow to it.

 

[grahamperrin]

Please

… apply the gaussian blur …

Please, no more. Yosemitean blur is enough.

 

[n-evo]

Please, no more. Yosemitean blur is enough.

Apple should blur the blur and then blur that.

 

[KALLT]

Apple should blur the blur and then blur that.

With that much blur, it will be just transparent again.

 

[Eithanius]

Apple should blur the blur and then blur that.

No wonder the entire Apple senior management team seems to be on a blur case scenario...

 

[Ritsuka]

Btw, the Finder icons on the petition page https://www.change.org/p/tim-cook-d...ption-to-go-back-to-the-old-theme-in-yosemite
are neither the mavericks one or the yosemite one…
Totally unrelated to this topic, but at least use the right icons lol.

 

[SSD-GUY]

Went back to Mavericks today. Was slightly disappointed as I do like the overall feel of Yosemite, but I don't know, just can't handle the blur/font/colours.

Is it me or does Yosemite just look "fuzzy"?

 

[Etan1000]

Went back to Mavericks today. Was slightly disappointed as I do like the overall feel of Yosemite, but I don't know, just can't handle the blur/font/colours.

Is it me or does Yosemite just look "fuzzy"?

It definitely looks fuzzy, at least on non-retina Macs. No question about it.

Etan

 

[F1Mac]

Went back to Mavericks today. Was slightly disappointed as I do like the overall feel of Yosemite, but I don't know, just can't handle the blur/font/colours.

My sentiments exactly.

 

[ZVH]

I REALLY MISS TO IOS 6!
this was the best iOS ever!
& about os x i've 3 macs at home:
1. white macbook from 2008 with 10.7.5
2. Retina macbook pro mid 2014 with 10.9.5 that i bought in purpose before the Yosemite is going out to public
3. the new mac mini with 10.10.2

now. every time i'm on the mac mini i just get angry & just after 5m i get back to my rMBP with 10.9 & everything feel so much better, Yosemite just don't feel right, the UI is just not apple, really

Do what I did. Buy another one and make sure it has iOS 6 (or earlier if you like) on it. I actually liked many of the features of iOS 7, but cannot stand looking at it. The glaring white everywhere, effectively hyperlinks as controls, and the cartoon like icons just irritated the hell out of me.

Used iPhones are surprisingly cheap.

I would also regress the Yosemite system(s) you have back to 10.9. Why put up with frustration?

 

[grahamperrin]

Mavericks is not a regression compared to Yosemite

… regress the Yosemite system(s) you have back to 10.9. …

I should not view Mavericks as a regression.

----

As a side note, to all readers: there's a growing amount of off-topic content. Posts that are entirely off-topic from the looks of Yosemite are routinely reported. The same goes for off-topics such as https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/20670839/ and the like; if you have nothing but love for the looks, please say so under Yosemite is Beautiful – that topic is also stuck/pinned, difficult to overlook.

(In a topic as extraordinarily long as this, the lack of focus can become frustrating. Spare a thought for newcomers to the topic … and so on. Thanks.)

 

[Masada31]

There's only one word to describe it - Regression...

Early OS X days has some sort of translucency effects involved. But it wasn't until 10.5 that such effects (almost completely) disappeared...

I guess Apple has been so bloody desperate of attracting Windows users that they're bringing it back and making translucency more pronounced on ************ (sorry, I meant Yosemite) enough to copy useless, resource intensive effects from Windows Vista/7 just to entice these users to switch, and thus saying "Hey, we're better than Windows"...

EDIT: Damn... even the word Yo****tingme is censored... I didn't even know it was a valid word at all...

Translucency in Yosemite is too much and to distracting and it has all been done before with windows. Apple needs to go back to been original and not been the same as everyone else as it seems to be doing with Yosemite .

----------

Do what I did. Buy another one and make sure it has iOS 6 (or earlier if you like) on it. I actually liked many of the features of iOS 7, but cannot stand looking at it. The glaring white everywhere, effectively hyperlinks as controls, and the cartoon like icons just irritated the hell out of me.

Used iPhones are surprisingly cheap.

I would also regress the Yosemite system(s) you have back to 10.9. Why put up with frustration?

Same here with my iPad with iOS 6. It's just nice to use and I look forward to using it which is more then I did with iOS 8 . White everywhere did my head in.

 

[grahamperrin]

Safari 8, Yosemite. Ugh. Ghastly.

I'm approaching the end of day or so with Yosemite. Safari … ugh. Such an ugly, annoying experience. I can't bear it any longer.

Like … Macs aside for a moment … cheap, small, poorly made loudspeakers can be tinny. Really annoyingly tinny. Listeners think, "Why bother?".

So, a sound can be tinny … what's a comparable word for a cheap annoying sight that makes the viewer think "Why bother"?

If there's a word for it: Yosemite has that look. Sorry, Apple. I know it was well-intended but it's really, deeply displeasing.

Back to Mavericks. (And again this weekend I spent some time with PC-BSD.)

 

[vedmant]

Why just not to ask people do they want new design at all? Especially so uncomfortable for eyes, too bright and annoying. From first sight yes, it looks bright and takes attention, but it's all about marketing and PR. Do they ever think that people buy their products not because they are have bright icons, but because of quality, to have ability to work with more pleasure and longer. Now, new Yosemite design makes it impossible to work longer, it's really bad for eyes, not contrast, some texts are hard to read, for example backgrounds have to be mostly consistent color to be able to read text on it easily, but with their new translucency background can be almost the same color as text on it, how it's expected to be read. And there are lot of other really annoying and uncomfortable design ideas, their designers trying to follow global flat trend, just spoiled whole Apple previous really good looking style. Why nowadays such a trend like flat design, it's all about usability, to remove all extra stuff what distracts from main interface items, but what Apple done, absolutely opposite, trying to pretend they follow flat design they made it unusable at all.

I'm on Mavericks, and not going to install Yosemite or ever new OS with their new design, and wouldn't recommend anybody installing Yosemite.

 

[Etan1000]

Why just not to ask people do they want new design at all? Especially so uncomfortable for eyes, too bright and annoying. From first sight yes, it looks bright and takes attention, but it's all about marketing and PR. Do they ever think that people buy their products not because they are have bright icons, but because of quality, to have ability to work with more pleasure and longer. Now, new Yosemite design makes it impossible to work longer, it's really bad for eyes, not contrast, some texts are hard to read, for example backgrounds have to be mostly consistent color to be able to read text on it easily, but with their new translucency background can be almost the same color as text on it, how it's expected to be read. And there are lot of other really annoying and uncomfortable design ideas, their designers trying to follow global flat trend, just spoiled whole Apple previous really good looking style. Why nowadays such a trend like flat design, it's all about usability, to remove all extra stuff what distracts from main interface items, but what Apple done, absolutely opposite, trying to pretend they follow flat design they made it unusable at all.

I'm on Mavericks, and not going to install Yosemite or ever new OS with their new design, and wouldn't recommend anybody installing Yosemite.

Great Post!
Please also be sure to copy it and go to the Apple Feedback website listed below and paste it in to send it to Apple!
Thanks!
Etan

 

[Don't panic]

finally decided to upgrade.
I hope the improvements are worth it, because i have to agree it really looks terrible

i have no doubt i will get used to it, and i have used much worse, but it is most definitively a step down.

the worst part is that a lot of stuff is just hard to read, at least for me.

hopefully in the next iteration we will see a reversal of direction.

 

[denpashonen]

Converging designs

There are forum posts stating that Yosemite is the best UI design work to date and even claims that Windows and others should follow. Really? I think MS has been on this trend for sometime since struggling to increase adoption of Windows 8.

Proof is when I open the new Office suite in the Coherence mode while running in Yosemite. The UIs in general now look very seemless between the two co-existing OS on my MBP.

Flat design is fine when executed correctly. If you overdo it, usability suffers greatly. Many changes I don't see it as "fresh", but anachronistic, dated and in some instances like the new FaceTime app icon, horrible as it fails to communicate the essence of what the app is supposed to be.

 

[ZVH]

If you don't like Yosemite, you should complain, and complain, and complain yet again to Apple.

Why do I say this? Graham Perrin posted a link to a video of an interview with Jony Ive (who I think is responsible for this mess) and in it he essentially stated that he really didn't know much about computers.

This is exactly what we DON'T need. From what I've been able to assemble, he's unaware of what are considered historical design "norms" like using 3D effects to segregate controls from input fields, the massive use of translucency and the hit it takes on hardware and performance seems to have been overlooked, the appearance of the UI on large displays seems grossly overlooked (as in, not tested,) and the effects translucency and the new, finer fonts have on people with vision that's less than 20/20. That's a few, but read the entire thread for more.

In any case, I'm under the impression that what Apple did was decide that since Ive did a great job with the cases for Mac's (one or more of them are in a museums of art) I guess they decided that since he was good at that, he'll do wonders with the OS. This is sort of like having a famed plastic surgeon, a specialist in the superficial and fads, being named head of cardiac surgery at a hospital, who then gets those that don't agree with him either forced out of the company or fired. Hey, that heart operation you just had may leave you with a heart that doesn't quite work right, but in the opinion of the overlord and grand master, it looks great.

Picture this:

Jonathan Ive decides that the way GUIs work are all screwed up. Instead of controls, force users to buy a trackpad, do away with all window controls all together, and force users to learn series of "gestures" to use instead. For example, you could minimize an application with a "pinch" operation. You cold bring back with some archaic tap three times with 2 fingers, or some such nonsense. Do you think this is ridiculous? I don't. I could easily see this guy completely destroying a perfectly good operating system and trashing it for his own (in his opinion) brilliant visions.

I'd also like to add that before the fan boyz or representatives on this site from Apple's marketing group offer yet another rebuttal using iPhone sales as an example, keep in mind that the iPhones are likely sold based heavily on the price of contracts plus the fact that they've finally made the phone a little bit bigger, which I'm sure appeals to many, especially those that found the original versions too small to see.

CHEERS!!!

 

[greghuntoon]

Yosemite look terrible!

Computers used to be cool. What the heck have we turned into? I just don't understand the comments like "I've gotten used to it." When you spend $2500 on a computer you shouldn't have to get used to it. I left Windows when they released version 8 and bought 2 Macs with Mountain Lion which I’ve since upgraded to Mavericks, now a dead end for me since I will never upgrade to Yosemite. I’m still using my iPhone 4 with IOS 5. Yes I would still buy apps but I can’t use them so essentially I can’t.

I know it’s a pre-beta but Microsoft Wind-X still looks pathetic. "We give you a flat OS but include a 3D holographic API." What for? Why do we need 3D, that’s so yesterday, obviously we’re being told that flat is the future. "We will also let you stream from your XBox 360 to Wind-X." So what? If I already have an XBox and need it to stream, why wouldn’t I just use the XBox?

Microsoft marketing people said you have to go through the stages of acceptance. Anger, confusion, grief, and finally acceptance, then you will embrace Windows 8, really? Kind of sounds like you’re describing a prisoner of war not a consumer. When the iPhone was initially released it was a total departure from other cell phones of the day. People flocked to it in droves, you didn’t need to get used to it. By this logic, if you’re eating turds and don't like them, just keep eating them, eventually you’ll like them.

This is obviously about choice which is why skinning applications are so popular. Just let us configure the OS to look the way we want. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I know right now Apple sales are great but if they continue I can’t see it lasting. Apple has historically provided premium products with a premium price tag. If they have nothing to distinguish themselves in the marketplace and become just another commodity how will they be able to justify their high sticker price?

 

[F1Mac]

I know right now Apple sales are great but if they continue I can’t see it lasting. Apple has historically provided premium products with a premium price tag. If they have nothing to distinguish themselves in the marketplace and become just another commodity how will they be able to justify their high sticker price?

Apple is front and foremost an hardware company, and in that area, they do distinguish themselves imo. With the new 1-year upgrade cycle, liking or not liking Yosemite is not the end of the world either. I'm not saying the next revision will see another major UI change, but I'm confident over time they will adjust as well. Maybe I'm too confident, but I trust them. For now I'm totally fine with 10.9.5 though

 

[joedec]

Apple is front and foremost an hardware company, and in that area, they do distinguish themselves imo. With the new 1-year upgrade cycle, liking or not liking Yosemite is not the end of the world either. I'm not saying the next revision will see another major UI change, but I'm confident over time they will adjust as well. Maybe I'm too confident, but I trust them. For now I'm totally fine with 10.9.5 though

They'll self correct, the reviews are just not going well. Now an iOS 9 hardening release, that could lead to the same with OS X. However, they will never admit fault with both at the same time, that would be suicide. I guess they'll just slip in the changes quietly.