The only thing I am not super fond of in Yosemite are the new icons. Everything else is a great improvement in both the style and usability. I can understand people complaining about the new font, it does seen to have some drawbacks on non-retina machines, but the look is cleaner and more at home on my rMBP. And I admit that I was unsure about the translucency at first, but in the end, it adds a lot if depth to the UI, while being extremely non-obtrusive.
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Yosemite looks terrible!
- Thread starter OldGuyTom
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A MBP 2011 is not an old device. It is not comparable to an iOS device. I know that 3 years is a long time but we aren't in the 90s anymore. Except for SSDs not much changed in the computers world between 2011 and now.
I don't have anything against progress and I am also not a fan of Apple's skeuomorphism, but this direction? I am not so sure what to think about.
I really miss Apple's attention to detail: https://bold.pixelapse.com/minming/mac-os-x-yosemite-under-the-magnifying-glass
Most of the complaints I heard about Yosemite had to do with the new system font, the icon color of the folders, the limited 3D effects, and the translucent windows.
Here's what I discovered:
When I heard all the bad about it i looked at it with a MacBook Pro with a 13" display. Big deal I thought. What's the big stink about?
Then I plugged in a big display and what was not bad looking suddenly became really kind of stupid looking. Childish looking is a good word to describe it.
The display settings make a huge difference too, because the once not-so-obnoxious turquoise folders that didn't bother me on the MacBook took on an almost offensive appearance on a big display.
From a GUI standpoint this thing needs tweaking and some serious tweaking at that. I can definitely see how people would complain about it if they're looking at it with big displays. If I had to look at it day in and day out on a large display I think I'd get annoyed.
FYI, if you want to complain about the GUI you can visit the following site and provide feedback about Yosemite:
https://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html
If you would prefer to write a complaint, here's the address for that too:
Apple, Inc.
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
I'm probably going to report what I found to the web site because switching from a small screen to a big screen shouldn't cause an interface to be OK in one then kind of dumb looking in another. The big screen is showing a complete lack of detail. With luck this will just be a sign that the things still under development.
I'd also like to see them revive Snow Leopard. Maybe they could have 2 releases - the new one, Yosemite, and then something they could call "OS X Classic" which would be Snow Leopard. It would also be a really interesting experiment to see that given a choice, what the users would want to use.
If forced to choose, i'd go with Snow Leopard.
Here's what I discovered:
When I heard all the bad about it i looked at it with a MacBook Pro with a 13" display. Big deal I thought. What's the big stink about?
Then I plugged in a big display and what was not bad looking suddenly became really kind of stupid looking. Childish looking is a good word to describe it.
The display settings make a huge difference too, because the once not-so-obnoxious turquoise folders that didn't bother me on the MacBook took on an almost offensive appearance on a big display.
From a GUI standpoint this thing needs tweaking and some serious tweaking at that. I can definitely see how people would complain about it if they're looking at it with big displays. If I had to look at it day in and day out on a large display I think I'd get annoyed.
FYI, if you want to complain about the GUI you can visit the following site and provide feedback about Yosemite:
https://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html
If you would prefer to write a complaint, here's the address for that too:
Apple, Inc.
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
I'm probably going to report what I found to the web site because switching from a small screen to a big screen shouldn't cause an interface to be OK in one then kind of dumb looking in another. The big screen is showing a complete lack of detail. With luck this will just be a sign that the things still under development.
I'd also like to see them revive Snow Leopard. Maybe they could have 2 releases - the new one, Yosemite, and then something they could call "OS X Classic" which would be Snow Leopard. It would also be a really interesting experiment to see that given a choice, what the users would want to use.
If forced to choose, i'd go with Snow Leopard.
Hmmmm, seems folks have widely varying opinions and are passionate about them... imagine that
Why not Mavericks?
Regarding to the UI Mavericks is as refined as Snow Leopard.
What I like is that in Mavericks still some Aqua elements are included. The grey is a bit boring so I really welcome the translucent effect in Yosemite, but I really can't stand the color choice. Especially the "traffic lights" - they don't have to be 3D but right now they look like something a small child has produced.
Yes, there is definitely an in-between that is the best key to the solution, they wanted to be the showoff in OS X.0, but it was too much. But removing everything really makes the OS dull.
At least OS X and iOS keep being colourful, and at least IMO they did somewhat of a good job at flattening OS X, but to me designs prior to iOS 7 were way better than what I have on my iPhone today. I totally understand the "focus on the content" thing though. I develop for iOS, and I clearly see how I have much more room in iOS 7 than iOS 6, but this shouldn't have happened with stripping everything and making everything plain white everywhere.
Yeas loads had changed since 2011 and now. I mean it's not minority report stuff but come on. Intel processors have vastly improved, graphics, Bluetooth, etc. so a 2011 mac book is old and thus it is totally understandable that some features will not work. It's like saying why are these new mac books pro so much thinner than my old one now I cannot use my sleeve or case anymore and I blame apple for it. You are quite right it's not the 90s anymore which means progress is even faster and more noticeable.
A gold mark V is not an old car per se, but compared to a golf MARK VI OR VII it is old and clearly will not have the same features as the newer ones. That is the definition of progress and will always happen yet people will complain that their old tech won't have these new features and it makes no sense.
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Oh my god you people have no idea what you're talking about.
Skeuomorphism is the act of emulating real world 3D properties in user interfaces to make them more "relatable" and recognizable to real-world objects, like the shadows and highlights on the buttons to make them "pop out" and the stop sign/crayons/calc icon.
Just because there are no gradients in the screenshot above does not make it "flat."
While the "flat" movement claimed to have some non-scientific conjecture about why it was the end-all-be-all of UI (computers no longer need to emulate the real world, we're smart enough now to know that a colored flat rectangle is a button... etc) it turned out to be nothing more than a stylistic trend movement. The shift from iOS 6 to iOS 7 UI was mostly stylistic and for a lot of the usability that was gained in this transition, a lot was lost for the sake of visually separating itself from it's old counterpart... and it worked.
As you can see from the recent Google/Android conferences as they unveiled the Material design ("turns out shadows and 3D effects actually have some value! Flat+Skeuomorphism 4ever!!"), "flat" has become nothing but a shift in style. It's different but not a regression as long as usability isn't sacrificed in the name of baseless conjecture.
After having used Yosemite, it's UI is different in style but doesn't sacrifice usability. You're free to say you think it's ugly but don't claim it's been "downgraded" or "dumbed down" without some evidence.
Processors gain maybe 15-20% every year, hardly the revolution of the 1990's. "Vastly improved" sounds like you've bought marketing.
The transition between System 9 and OS X + Aqua was not an anomaly and it's something we should be very thankful that happened.
While Microsoft's OS design stagnated at Windows 98/XP with static bitmaps and bright blues and greens, OS X stampeded through with Aqua and it's evolution over half a decade. Sure, the water ripple effect that occurred when you added a new widget to the Dashboard can be argued as "pointless" but it could also be argued that it added value to the OS by showing that fancy, impressive animation didn't have to be constrained to video games and video editing software.
That said I understand what you may think of it looking at it now but those pinstripes and transparencies were very visually impressive for their time and set standards for UI for the next decade. Without them, we would have never arrived to the tasteful "frosted glass" blur effect in iOS and now OS X. And who knows; in a couple of years people may be blasting the frosted glass effect for being over-the-top and distasteful. It's hard to say, but don't assume that OS X's UI won't be perfect until it's "skeuomorph-less". OS X has always been about good design. While it's easy to look back at it now and think of how ugly it was compared to today's standards, at no point in it's history do I think it was impeded with bad design (except for the old Lion calendar design. yeesh.)
Thank you someone that understands his stuff. As I said in my other comment calling flat design regression rather than progress is stupid and uniformed. Yosemite is the same osx we all know and love just a lot more sexy and usable. Certain aspects like icons etc could always be argued, but just looking at mavericks now hurts my eyes. I'm glad that in 2014 the people that still prefer ios 6 rather than 7 and now mavericks rather than yosemite, are not in charge of UI design at apple. Let's not mention the new features I have been dying to use the minute I finished watching the keynote. Mavericks now feels dumb down to me in so many ways, look being only 1 of them.
Well if by your estimates a 60% increase (15% x 4years), much better integrated graphics, and much better power efficiency and battery life is not vastly improved all the power to you. I might as well use windows 2000 and only upgrade every decade. It seems like you don't know anything in processor progress, but hey at least you can have your line about me buying into the marketing. Must have thought that was witty. ��
I believe the general frustration some mention is the current push by corporations into a tablet world (I state "push" as this fad wasn't merely created by consumers but by an industry dictating what consumers should want). Tablets are great, but they cannot do a fraction of what desktop systems can accomplish. This frustration leads into the comparable stagnation of todays power-systems when compared to a decade ago. Quantum processors just recently have hit a reliability target of 99.9%, that is a massive stride.
Current systems, like a Turing machine, work by manipulating bits that exist in one of two states: a 0 or a 1. Quantum computers aren't limited to two states; they encode information as quantum bits, or qubits, which can exist in superposition. Qubits represent atoms, ions, photons or electrons and their respective control devices that are working together to act as computer memory and a processor. Because a quantum computer can contain these multiple states simultaneously, it has the potential to be millions of times more powerful than today's most powerful supercomputers.
Why aren't we learning of these massive breakthroughs in the media? Why isn't Apple or other large computing corporations looking beyond our current desktop systems and focusing on ARM processors in tablets and smartphones? Because they sell. Period. I guarantee you, this change in extreme profit focus will hinder progress into low energy power systems that could one day be the "Higgs" particle in modern day computing, resolving issues that our current minds could never comprehend.
While we diddle on our small devices, we're missing a bigger picture. More importantly, as market analysts, Apple sitting on so much cash is actually not good for the bottom line. If they don't invest more and progress into further area's aside from the consumer based "iWatch" and entertainment industry, we'll all pay the price.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-2720QM+@+2.20GHz
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-4850HQ+@+2.30GHz
CPU wise, it is only roughly 33% faster after three years according to this test.
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Intel+HD+3000
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Intel+HD+5000
This is where you're actually right in terms of integrated graphics. It sucked before, and it sucks a lot less now.
That doesn't really matter a whole lot, though, because both models are able to get dedicated graphics (Pro Machines typically do).
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-6750M.43958.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-750M.90245.0.html
This paints a different picture, though, when you look at it.
You sound like a very smart guy and to be honest I had to read this comment a few times to understand it. I totally agree with what you said, the main problem with technology is not necessarily availability but about economics. That's why prototype cars look very futuristic but it is not yet possible on a mass scale and thus not economically viable.
As you said profit matters but also production cost and manufacturing on a large scale.
Do I want some crazy super computer, of course I do. But still just comparing battery life to 3-4 years ago or even just integrated graphics there already is a massive improvement just over the last 2 years.
intel showed of the new Haskell chips in 2011 but it took 2 years plus for them to be the norm. That's already a crazy amount of time
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It does but the performance gain that might seem small also comes with other benefits, battery life for one and also packaging. I'm pretty sure a mac book pro retina would have not been possible to do with intel processors from 2010-2011. So maybe it's not the big increase that people think but having a smaller package, much better graphics performance, 3-5 hours more battery all the while being more powerful, I would consider that vastly improved.
Some evidence ? Ok. Take a look at every toolbar in Yosemite, let's suppose the transparency's not there. We could have done this 15 years ago.
Flat interfaces : no shadows, no gradients, no borders, no 3D or isometry, actual physical things that exist in real world are substituted by symbols to refer to them. In the end, the G part of a GUI is dumbed down to its most simplistic point.
Looks like Google understands the in-between better than Apple. Android L is actually pretty good looking, better than iOS 7.
Just because he's on your side doesn't mean he understands his stuff more than people against you.
By the way, if Steve Jobs were still alive, we'd still have skeuomorphism everywhere. He was very fond of it, and that divided the designers at Apple. The point of skeuomorphism is, you don't have to be alienated by technology, and even if you don't know how it works, if you see something on the screen that looks like an object that actually exists, you'll already have an idea of what it does.
Look, I'm not against change, I would have appreciated a totally new interface in iOS 7, but skeuomorphism would still be present all over the place, trust me.
That has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion. Skeuomorphism or flat, both cases would have allowed to new features in Yosemite.
I actually like iOS 7, hate skeumourphism, but I also think the icons in Yosimite are hideous, and the whole thing is very reminiscent of Aero in windows, which I never liked.
I find the look refreshing, but as somebody who uses spotlight as a launcher, I'm not overly rapt with the in-your-face dialogue. That will take some getting used to.
You guys doesn't like new Yosemite UI looks and feel but you will get over it in one weeks after it released. I thought everything is getting retro now. 
A problem I have is that its just way to white.
I hope dark mode is systemwide on all windows/software etc.
I hope dark mode is systemwide on all windows/software etc.
The average user is not the OCD riddled, over opinionated or ego driven geek that hangs out on sites like this.
The average user only cares about using the UI, not the looks. If the appearance impedes use then there is an issue. And flat buttons etc doesn't really impede use.
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I, for one, love the direction they are going with the look and feel of Yosemite. I welcome flat design with open arms, It's very modern and fresh.
I really don't understand the 'retro' comments people seem to be making. Compare any screenshot of Yosemite to that of an older UI and you'll see quite a striking difference. Flat may be simple but it's strength lies in it's efficiency.
I really don't understand the 'retro' comments people seem to be making. Compare any screenshot of Yosemite to that of an older UI and you'll see quite a striking difference. Flat may be simple but it's strength lies in it's efficiency.
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