Yosemite looks terrible!

[grahamperrin]

This topic is not about the beauty of Yosemite (orientation)

As the title says (if the web browser shows the title):

Yosemite looks terrible!

I'm looking forward to 10.11, wonder if they can -minimalise- it even more, like iOS 8. I do miss buttons in iOS 8, something Apple spent years ridiculing Windows for—clicking on text to perform an action.

Yosemite pretty much caught up to the clean look of http://elementary.io
Wonder if they can surpass it in 10.11

I've grown quite fond of the clean look of Yosemite. After struggling with Win8 at work all day, it's such a relief to come home to the clean look and feel of Yosemite on my iMac every night. AirDrop & Continuity are worth the price of admission "alone".

Haven't been able to bring myself to open Photos. Just can't get my head around storing photos in iCloud. Yes to iCloud for syncing, but I want my photo library on my Mac only. Pity, because I used iPhoto from time to time—slideshows and the odd book, so I have no idea what I'm going to do about the slides and books I had in iPhoto. Haven't had the need under Yosemite. Maybe Apple will have a solution I can use by the time I do.

Mavericks was OK, but I like Yosemite better than Mavericks… except Photos and…

Sadly, Yosemite rendered my 2010 2GB RAM 11" Air pretty useless—now only netbook capabilities, whereas under Mavericks, I could do reasonably complex image editing in Pixelmator. No more. It used to crash a lot under pre-release Yosemite betas, but at least it's been stable with the release and subsequent betas—just not very functional. Can't even edit complex Word documents with Libre Office anymore.

Bring on 10.11

I wonder if there will ever be a time when the OS has only 1 new feature - now twice as fast as previous OS! If only that were a bullet point.

As another sticky/pinned topic says: Yosemite is Beautiful …

 

[blucolar]

Yes, this is the Yoesmite looks terrible thread. I have found that Yoesmite, by reordering the suite of Apple Apps brings your home computer down to the functionality of an iPhone. I do not have an iPhone or a iPad. I don't need either one to do my business. The only thing Yoesmite is to me is a hammered down bag of hurt, that looks terrible.

 

[B-Eugen]

I put Yosemite on an external hard drive and basically just played with it once in a while. The looks, the first few times I used it didn't bother me that much. It wasn't an improvement, it was a downgrade appearance wise, but I thought I could tolerate it.

Today I decided to take the leap and actually try and use it for my base operating system. My conclusion: THANK GOD I PUT THIS ON AN EXTERNAL HD AND DIDN'T OVERWRITE MY EXISTING SYSTEM!!!

Wow!!! What a piece of crap!!

I've been using the milky way desktop background that came with Mountain Lion for years. When I put that on the desktop, I began to realize what all the complaints about thin fonts and translucency are about. A drop down menu is now a dark bluish gray with black thin fonts. The over simplification of icons, buttons, gradients just gives it a cheap appearance.

After starting Safari and Mail, the thing started paging. The first time I opened mail and migrated it, it worked OK. Then I closed it and re-opened it, and Mail crashed. I re-opened it again, and the mails in my mailbox weren't registered. Once again, another crash. When I opened up system preferences to set the boot drive back to my main system, that crashed too!

From an appearance and software quality standpoint, this reminded me of one and only one OS: Windows '95. That's actually not really correct, because at least Windows '95 sort of worked. I would say the graphics are comparably cheap as well.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a first: An operating system that actually managed to put me in a bad mood when I was done using it.

What a piece of crap!!!

 

[Agent-J]

I upgraded my rMBP from Mavericks to Yosemite so I could use the Office 16 preview.

When the Mac booted up for the first time after the update, it seemed... not like a Mac. The accumulation of changes large and small, from the font (I *miss* the old system font!) to the horrible, horrible blue of the folders was visually shocking to me and very unappealing. I've managed to make it livable, and have sort of gotten used to the bits I can't change, but it's an upgrade that offered me, personally, only one piece of useful functionality (and that's only Office 16 compatability) with a lot of unhappiness.

As long as the same people are in charge of the interface, it won't get any better, so I'm not hoping for any improvement in 10.11. Strange to feel hopeless for Apple products...

 

[B-Eugen]

Others clearly aren't happy either. Look at the user comments in the following review:

http://www.techradar.com/us/reviews...ng-systems/os-x-10-10-yosemite-1258661/review

As usual, the editors gave it 4 or 5 stars, and the users think otherwise. It leads me to believe "editors" are scared of saying anything bad about Apple, but it reflects poorly on them if so many disagree.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Others clearly aren't happy either. Look at the user comments in the following review:

http://www.techradar.com/us/reviews...ng-systems/os-x-10-10-yosemite-1258661/review

As usual, the editors gave it 4 or 5 stars, and the users think otherwise. It leads me to believe "editors" are scared of saying anything bad about Apple, but it reflects poorly on them if so many disagree.

The irony is, of course, that Apple might notice large scale commercial poor reviews rather than "users" that they will obviously conclude are a tiny percent of the overall user base and are just whiners that can be safely IGNORED. Based on the ever increasing profits they seem to generate DESPITE things like Yosemite, what other possible conclusion could they come to? NONE is the answer.

Thus, I'm sorry, but history will show conclusively that OSX is the new Windows and Windows 10 is the new Mac OS for while Johnny Idiot has been working to turn the Mac into a Microsoft product, Microsoft has been studying Apple's past success to figure out where the hell they went wrong and have been steadily and increasingly imitating Apple now for some time. The problem is that Microsoft has also gone for the FLAT interface and thus, if anything, they are looking more and more alike. At least I can read the text on Microsoft's OS, though.

Linux, meanwhile, has been doing what they always do, fight amongst themselves for what ten thousand flavors of Linux should be the "right" one to go forward as a contender against commercialism. Sadly, the answer is NONE of them while Google has co-opted Linux to do its own evil bidding, the irony of which Linux was designed to avoid, but happens anyway since they never really protected their assets until more recent times and still get far less than they've given. Thus, Google will cash in on their hard work for them and leave them with nothing but some code changes to ponder as Google sells Chromebook after Chromebook to people that actually want commercial software (even Steam at least has gotten SOME gaming support for the Steam Box, something which Linux 'gamers' can only salivate over as they get passed by and struggle to beat their best time with Tux Racer and pull their hair out trying to make Windows games work under emulation.

 

[karter16]

I put Yosemite on an external hard drive and basically just played with it once in a while. The looks, the first few times I used it didn't bother me that much. It wasn't an improvement, it was a downgrade appearance wise, but I thought I could tolerate it.

Today I decided to take the leap and actually try and use it for my base operating system. My conclusion: THANK GOD I PUT THIS ON AN EXTERNAL HD AND DIDN'T OVERWRITE MY EXISTING SYSTEM!!!

Wow!!! What a piece of crap!!

I've been using the milky way desktop background that came with Mountain Lion for years. When I put that on the desktop, I began to realize what all the complaints about thin fonts and translucency are about. A drop down menu is now a dark bluish gray with black thin fonts. The over simplification of icons, buttons, gradients just gives it a cheap appearance.

After starting Safari and Mail, the thing started paging. The first time I opened mail and migrated it, it worked OK. Then I closed it and re-opened it, and Mail crashed. I re-opened it again, and the mails in my mailbox weren't registered. Once again, another crash. When I opened up system preferences to set the boot drive back to my main system, that crashed too!

From an appearance and software quality standpoint, this reminded me of one and only one OS: Windows '95. That's actually not really correct, because at least Windows '95 sort of worked. I would say the graphics are comparably cheap as well.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a first: An operating system that actually managed to put me in a bad mood when I was done using it.

What a piece of crap!!!

How fast is your external drive? What interface?

I think its fair to acknowledge that your brief experience of Yosemite isn't exactly representative of that of the many other people using it as their OS. Therefore it's probably reasonable to look at what's different in your case that could be causing your issues.

I'd say the external drive is a good place to start....

 

[ZVH]

How fast is your external drive? What interface?

I think its fair to acknowledge that your brief experience of Yosemite isn't exactly representative of that of the many other people using it as their OS. Therefore it's probably reasonable to look at what's different in your case that could be causing your issues.

I'd say the external drive is a good place to start....

10.10.3 had a horrible bug in it that made systems behave exactly how he's describing. I don't know if it applies only to certain systems but it was definitely there. In 10.10.4 beta the problem seems fixed. Apparently Yosemite is an OS being developed "on the fly."

A hard drive problem didn't cause that, and a hard drive didn't make him look at the application and make the following comments:

I've been using the milky way desktop background that came with Mountain Lion for years. When I put that on the desktop, I began to realize what all the complaints about thin fonts and translucency are about. A drop down menu is now a dark bluish gray with black thin fonts. The over simplification of icons, buttons, gradients just gives it a cheap appearance.

That has nothing to do with a hard drive. I see the complaints at the App Store are back up again.

 

[Etan1000]

Flavours 2 - some possible relief?

Well, Flavours 2 is apparently now out in some sort of public beta, which I just installed.

It won't do anything for readability/legibility, but hopefully it will provide more relief for UGLY!

OS X Yosemite support
New UI
New Theming Engine
Light: lightweight engine with overall better system performance
Fast: fast theme generation, fast theming engine, and apply themes instantly (no need to logout to see changes)
Safe: seamless system integration, no system files modified
Variants: themes can now have multiple artistic variations
Scheduling*: use a light theme for the day and a dark one for the night, or schedule a random pick from a collection
Collections*: organize your favorite themes with collections

http://tinyurl.com/kofdk7b

I'm trying out "Lion - Refined"
Okay - just switched to "Lumineux"


Etan

 

[Paulk]

What is Lumineaux? Some sort of new floodlighting?

 

[TheRainKing]

I held on for over 6 months, but I'm finally ready to downgrade to Mountain Lion. I was never a fan of Apple's new design philosophy but I gave it a chance. I would go back to Mavericks, but they had already began ruining OS X by then so I'm going all the way back to Mountain Lion. I have OCD so it's going to drive me insane seeing the new flatter design style on my iPhone and the classic design on my Mac. I want everything to look the same! I was also hoping to avoid iTunes 11, but since that gets bundled in with 10.8.3 and beyond, there's not much I can do about that.

 

[grahamperrin]

Yosemite with, without a Sneak Peak of Flavours2 aka Flavours 2: first impressions

… Flavours 2 …

It won't do anything for readability/legibility, but hopefully it will provide more relief for UGLY! …

I'm trying out "Lion - Refined"
Okay - just switched to "Lumineux" …

What is Lumineaux? …

Lumineaux is amongst the most popular themes for Flavours.

There's now a Sneak Peak version of Flavours2.app (Flavours 2).

https://interacto.zendesk.com/forums for discussion of Flavours. There are four topics about Yosemite, all of which are in the knowledge base, two of which are closed for comments. Expect more discussion there in due course; I should not treat the current sneak peek as a beta.

In the meantime, http://imgur.com/a/LDBTg#0 for a few screenshots of Yosemite – and some Microsoft-themed (Yosemite-like) apps on Yosemite – with and without theming by the current Flavours 2.

Thoughts?

 

[Paulk]

Lumineaux is amongst the most popular themes for Flavours.

There's now a Sneak Peak version of Flavours2.app (Flavours 2).

https://interacto.zendesk.com/forums for discussion of Flavours. There are four topics about Yosemite, all of which are in the knowledge base, two of which are closed for comments. Expect more discussion there in due course; I should not treat the current sneak peek as a beta.

In the meantime, http://imgur.com/a/LDBTg#0 for a few screenshots of Yosemite – and some Microsoft-themed (Yosemite-like) apps on Yosemite – with and without theming by the current Flavours 2.

Thoughts?

I followed all the links in this post but don't feel much wiser. Perhaps you need Yosemite to feel the advantage of themes of Flavours (2), or for that matter Flavours (1)., makes it easier to see the screen...

 

[grahamperrin]

Yosemite with, without a Sneak Peak of Flavours2 aka Flavours 2: first impressions

… Perhaps you need Yosemite to feel the advantage of themes of Flavours (2) …

That's certain. At the foot of the page for Flavours 2, amongst answers to frequently asked questions: "… requires OS X Yosemite …".

Anyone: thoughts on the screenshots? http://imgur.com/a/LDBTg#0

 

[F1Mac]

That's certain. At the foot of the page for Flavours 2, amongst answers to frequently asked questions: "… requires OS X Yosemite …".

Anyone: thoughts on the screenshots? http://imgur.com/a/LDBTg#0

Well....... I do like the darker look (pic#4 for example), but I have to admit, these themes make the OS look even more inconsistent and amateurish. And the gradient bg, ouch! If people find this honestly better than Apple's UI, then I just don't know what to say

Back in the OS 8-9 days, you may remember a little control panel called Kaleidoscope? It was fun and was supposedly the utlimate tool to personalize the look of your Mac... I've played with it a few times, but after no more than a few days, I always found myself going back to the standard UI. From boring to awkward looking (depending on the application in question), it jut confirmed to me that designing a GUI was no simple task. I'll just say this: as terrible as Yosemite might look to some, there's consistency, homogeneity. When I look at Flavours, suddenly Yosemite doesn't look to bad at all. But that's just me of course.

I really hope 10.11 will include a true darker theme, not just the menubar!!

 

[Etan1000]

Well....... I do like the darker look (pic#4 for example), but I have to admit, these themes make the OS look even more inconsistent and amateurish. And the gradient bg, ouch! If people find this honestly better than Apple's UI, then I just don't know what to say
Back in the OS 8-9 days, you may remember a little control panel called Kaleidoscope? It was fun and was supposedly the utlimate tool to personalize the look of your Mac... I've played with it a few times, but after no more than a few days, I always found myself going back to the standard UI. …

I don't think it's fair to judge Flavours 2 by these early examples.

I for one am looking forward eagerly to the finished product and its choices in appearance, especially since Apple seems unwilling to rescue us from the disaster of Yosemite.

I too remember Kaleidoscope and your point back then, but I think the present situation is not comparable, because that was back in the days when Apple was doing a great job on the appearance of the operating system, which was hard to beat. With Yosemite, the bar for successful improvements is much lower, IMHO. (Many have already remarked that their children or grandchildren could have done a better job in the appearance of Yosemite.) So the door is wide open for people with real talent, like those behind Flavours 2.

Etan

 

[grahamperrin]

… these themes make the OS look even more inconsistent and amateurish. …

It's prerelease … too early to be certain, but I suspect that the nature of Yosemite – and of Apple's lacklustre guidelines – will make it relatively difficult for theming to appear good across a broad range of Apple and third party apps.

… as terrible as Yosemite might look to some, there's consistency, homogeneity. When I look at Flavours …

Today, for a comparison, I purchased classic Flavours. Off-topic from Yosemite, https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=21251832#post21251832 (in the Mavericks sub-forum) includes a screenshot of one of many themes that can appear very good across a broad range of things in/on Mavericks.

Essentially: compared to Mavericks, I see reduced consistency in and around Yosemite; I find fault with Apple (not with Interacto or the designers of themes).

Under https://twitter.com/interactolabs/status/597075244680126464 I'll post a question about compatibility with prerelease Microsoft Office …

… Back in the OS 8-9 days, you may remember a little control panel called Kaleidoscope? …

Vaguely

 

[One13Truck]

That's certain. At the foot of the page for Flavours 2, amongst answers to frequently asked questions: "… requires OS X Yosemite …".

Anyone: thoughts on the screenshots? http://imgur.com/a/LDBTg#0

They don't look AWFUL. And certainly much better than the pastelly trainwreck that is Yosemite.
But my issue with it is I shouldn't have to pay to fix something that should not have been broken in the first place especially when it was already working perfectly. I'm rolling my eyes for the same reason at people begging Google to let them pay to still use Classic maps instead of getting rid of it. Sorry. I'm not paying for it.

With that said... If someone creates a way to theme it to look exactly as Mavericks did I would probably be breaking down and buying it just to get this awful looking Yosemite mess off of my computer. There really needs to be a way to roll back to the previous OS when you don't use Time Machine. Lesson learned there.

 

[Paulk]

There is a special BugReport.apple.com page where bugs can be reported, though even here the person reporting adds that they were never really resolved either.

This and all the other evidence here suggests to me that apple are not going to change anything, that this is a major change done to cope with the new market for mobile phones. Does this make sense? Surely the look of things on a mobile device can't be dumbed down to that extent?

 

[Etan1000]

Getting back to the blurry font issue …

In exploring alternatives to Yosemite, I found that Windows 7 and 8.1 have what seems to be a built-in sort of "eye-test" to fine-tune the display of fonts for readability, called ClearType. The test has four screens and on each screen are multiple blocks of identical text, from which you pick the one most legible to you, and then on the last screen Windows sets the font display to match your choices. It is described like this:

To tune ClearType

You can use the ClearType Text Tuner to adjust the legibility of the text on your screen to your visual preference.

1. Open the ClearType Text Tuner by clicking the Start button  , and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type cleartype, and then click Adjust ClearType text.

2. Make sure the Turn on ClearType check box is selected, and then click Next. On each page, click the text sample that looks best to you.

3. On the last page of the tuner, click Finish to save your settings.  If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/make-text-easier-read-cleartype#1TC=windows-7]

Does Yosemite have anything like this "eye-test" built in to enhance legibility and eliminate bluriness? I have not been able to find anything like this on my MBP.

Etan

 

[neversink]

I see many people talking about buying third-party software like Flavours to make their Yosemite operating system look decent. I refuse to buy an add-on software to make an operating system look better, when it is hyped by Apple to be incredible, and when I have never needed to add such "enhancement" software to any Apple OS in the past. That is the most absurd thing I ever heard of. The OS should not have to have an add-on to make it more legible. I am sticking with Mavericks right now and eventually thinking of leaving Apple, which will mean a lot of work on my part as all my professional and personal work was done on Apple.
I wonder how many more people feel as I do.

 

[grahamperrin]

… http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/make-text-easier-read-cleartype#1TC=windows-7]

Does Yosemite have anything like this "eye-test" built in to enhance legibility and eliminate bluriness? …

Probably only font smoothing of the type offered in System Preferences, but I don't know whether the preference is effective immediately (I'm writing from Snow Leopard).

 

[F1Mac]

I am sticking with Mavericks right now and eventually thinking of leaving Apple, which will mean a lot of work on my part as all my professional and personal work was done on Apple.
I wonder how many more people feel as I do.

While I'm not crazy about Yosemite's appearance, the OS still works like OS X, the paradigm hasn't changed. The applications I use to make my living haven't changed either - I spend more time on Digital Performer than using the Finder, or Photoshop, etc. These applications are still very much the same as before. I don't see why I would switch to another platform simply because I don't like the system font or the Finder windows...

----------

Probably only font smoothing of the type offered in System Preferences, but I don't know whether the preference is effective immediately (I'm writing from Snow Leopard).

You have to log out to make the change effective.

 

[Agent-J]

With that said... If someone creates a way to theme it to look exactly as Mavericks did I would probably be breaking down and buying it just to get this awful looking Yosemite mess off of my computer. There really needs to be a way to roll back to the previous OS when you don't use Time Machine. Lesson learned there.

I believe there's no way to significantly alter the system font (thought I saw some tweaked version out there), so we're stuck with Helvetica Neue or Neo or WETH it's called. But I sure miss the old font.

In the end, Apple decides what they want it to look like, and we're stuck with it. They know better than we do, of course

I wish we had more control, but we don't, so we either learn to like it, learn to live with it, or dump it for Windows or Linux.

 

[Etan1000]

I see many people talking about buying third-party software like Flavours to make their Yosemite operating system look decent. I refuse to buy an add-on software to make an operating system look better, when it is hyped by Apple to be incredible, and when I have never needed to add such "enhancement" software to any Apple OS in the past. That is the most absurd thing I ever heard of. The OS should not have to have an add-on to make it more legible. I am sticking with Mavericks right now and eventually thinking of leaving Apple, which will mean a lot of work on my part as all my professional and personal work was done on Apple.
I wonder how many more people feel as I do.

While it is great to stand on principle and for which I admire your point, nevertheless when it comes to spending a few bucks more to enhance my sense of comfort and satisfaction in my use of what I already own, my usual reaction is "I'm worth it." And it's a tiny teardrop in the ocean compared with replacing my equipment and re-learning my routines.

That's why I bought and installed the LucidaGrande font switcheroo, YosemiteRevert, dumped Safari and added Theme Font & Size Changer to FireFox, etc.

I have no connection with Flavours or any other software company - it's just my personal opinion.

Etan