Yosemite looks terrible!

[grahamperrin]

Cold, inhuman, unforgiving, usability, fonts, transparency, contrast, spring 1915

I feel absolutely the same, that is why Yosemite seems to me "cold" and "inhuman". I stay with Mavericks.

Cold, yes.

Similar to 'inhuman', I often think of Yosemite as 'unforgiving'. Ulenspiegel, and anyone else who dislikes the looks of Yosemite, do you also think of Yosemite as unforgiving?

… There are two issues for me:

(1) Highly subjective: …

(2) Less Objective: … usability … fonts … translucency …

Let's not forget the default lack of contrast. Only slightly off-topic, from recently published pre-release Human Interface Guidelines for Apple Watch:



– and that image is … drum roll … to exemplify how buttons are distinguished from other elements by rounding the corners of buttons.

/drumsticks on cymbal​

Earth to Apple. Hello?

"everywhere" is a figure of speech

I'm glad that we can retain a sense of humour in this potential minefield of words.

Incidentally my "remarkably difficult" comments above were somewhat misleading. What I meant to say: there may be a few articles that touch upon Sir Jonathan's involvement with OS X, but when a supposedly thorough overview omits or excludes software, customers should worry; and

… The same is true for https://twitter.com/hashtag/dm25ivelive?f=realtime – unless I'm missing something, no mention of software, OS X or iOS. …

There's this trend that everything modern and cool should be flat these days … Movie posters are the perfect example because they're always a product of their time. Is this all because of iOS 7 which started it all? I doubt it.

Thanks. For some reason I thought of a recently seen London Underground poster from ninety-nine years ago … twilight colours; dusks without danger; children at play in a spring landscape …



Maybe this is the reason. How would that colourful spring landscape appear if we playfully apply Apple's approach to distinguishing one element from another?

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Wow. Some obstinate ranting from me above, mostly yesterday. Sorry folks. That's what happens whenever I try to use Yosemite with Apple's defaults.

I just checked out the Flavours web site. It seems they will need a complete redesign to "fix" Yosemite with their theming engine, but at least it seems they think they CAN do it. Whether they succeed may very well decide whether I EVER "upgrade" to something higher than Mavericks or even if I ever buy another Mac again (the horrible Mac Mini update that wiped out the quad-core i7 option and dual-drives has convinced me to NOT buy a Mac any time soon again with the possible exception of the 5k iMac, which is the ONLY Mac with a truly decent (yet still not "great" and still MOBILE) graphics card. Actually, given that iMac is using a MOBILE GPU, that is in fact the GPU I'd like to see available for a Macbook Pro. I mean if your best performing Mac is going to use mobile parts, why not put them a in a mobile chassis???? (a no-brainer but I think Ive my no longer have brains at this stage).

Don't blame Ive too much. This is probably just the guy who has the honor to play the designer role in Apple's stage play. Why didn't we see Ive on the stage during the last keynote? I'm not sure if he really is part of he involved design teams.

No, the Yosemite (design and quality) mess is a clear sign of an organizational failure within Apple.

Well, Ive is the guy they're giving all the credit to these days (certainly for iOS) and so I say to whom the credit goes also the bell tolls. If Ive isn't in charge of the UI design team at Apple, then who is? You can blame it all on Tim Cook, but I honestly think the guy has not a single creative bone in his body and appears to leave those decisions to someone else. So who is in charge of design at Apple these days? You don't hear a lot of other names thrown around. Who do we blame for Yosemite? Someone has to take the blame because someone has to be at the top of the food chain. The ONLY name we ever hear about for design is Ive and in the past Scott Forstall. Forstall left because of Ive. It seems pretty clear to me where the blame lies. If Ive can't manage a team to keep a cohesive and usable GUI then they need to get rid of him and bring back Scott and apologize for letting that megalomaniac ruin iOS and OS X.

 

[la4est]

Success!

I successfully returned to Mavericks without a Time Machine backup. I went to app store/purchases and downloaded it. I put it on a usb drive and was able to do a restore on my macbook pro.

 

[Traverse]

unforgiving?

Well, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this. Could you explain a little more? Are you emphasizing that Yosemite's look is it meaning there's nothing you can do to adjust it?

__________________________

I also forgot to mention contrast. I like buttons and fields to pop. Look at Safari 8 with no accessibility options. The lighter gradient at the top blends in with the white "Smart Search Field." Yes, I can make it out, but at a glance I feel like my eyes have to work harder. It may just be me, but I feel like some of there choices hurt my eyes.

It just bugs my eyes, I like to have things pop for me, not to have to look for them. I know I'm being picky, but these were basic things I've actually never thought about until Apple took them away.

It's sad really, because the more I use Yosemite on my USB drive the more I like the new menu bar and the new dock (minus many icons). Another thing I am surprisingly attached to and never knew it was the "stoplights." I never thought anything about them until Yosemite and then suddenly missed their accent.

 

[Traverse]

I

I believe you mentioned Yosemite's spotlights. Didn't you refer to the old versions as "jewels." I never really thought much about them until they lost their accent in Yosemite. Something just looked off about the window until I realized that they were just colored circles and nothing else.

Honestly, for a person being introduced to a computer, I could seem them not even realizing they were buttons. They don't look like buttons! They just look like. . . well...dots.

 

[FrtzPeter]

I just checked the App Store and right now at the time of this post the number of 1 star ratings (112) exceeds the number of 5 star ratings (105.) Apple dumped the preceding ratings when they released 10.10.1.

Interestingly, a lot of people are seeing the downloads lock up. I wonder how many of them are being caused by that brilliant feature introduced in Mavericks called App Nap. If App Nap isn't a stupid idea, I don't know what is.

Seriously?????? Putting applications to sleep while they're running. Are they trying to get a quad core computer to actually act like an iPhone?

What's the next great improvement? Get rid of the Unix/Mach core kernel and replace it with one using cooperative multitasking???

 

[GerritV]

Apple is a company consisting of people. People organize themselves in teams and departments. Apart from designers there will be product management and marketing. There's no way a single person will have much influence in the end.

The current result more looks like a bad compromise, resulting from endless committee meetings without clear directions. But that is only my opinion.

Do you think I don't know Apple consists of departments and teams with people in in??? That's exactly my point. Every single person can hide behind that structure so in the end, there's no real person you can address. Convenient, ain't it?

If I need a task to be done in my team, I assign it to one single person. If I do as much as CC another, they'll both sit and wait because the assignment wasn't clear.

Therefor, your second paragraph is yet another excuse waiting to be used. Meetings, no clear directions etc. all come down, again, to the same conclusion: someone (a real person) should be put in charge.

If we take Apple's shouting as true, we all know it's Ive. If he can steal the show as the hot shot, so should he take the ****** for recent failures.

----------

[...]Well, Ive is the guy they're giving all the credit to these days (certainly for iOS) and so I say to whom the credit goes also the bell tolls. If Ive isn't in charge of the UI design team at Apple, then who is? You can blame it all on Tim Cook, but I honestly think the guy has not a single creative bone in his body and appears to leave those decisions to someone else. So who is in charge of design at Apple these days? You don't hear a lot of other names thrown around. Who do we blame for Yosemite? Someone has to take the blame because someone has to be at the top of the food chain. The ONLY name we ever hear about for design is Ive and in the past Scott Forstall. Forstall left because of Ive. It seems pretty clear to me where the blame lies. If Ive can't manage a team to keep a cohesive and usable GUI then they need to get rid of him and bring back Scott and apologize for letting that megalomaniac ruin iOS and OS X.

Exactly my sentiment.

----------

I successfully returned to Mavericks without a Time Machine backup. I went to app store/purchases and downloaded it. I put it on a usb drive and was able to do a restore on my macbook pro.

At the time I wanted to return to Mavericks, my TimeMachine backup didn't work. Instant Goodbye TimeMachine, Welcome ChronoSync!

But... I had the Snow Leopard DVD that came with my 2010 MBP and started from there. In the end, like you, I downloaded Mavericks again from my AppStore download history. Success!!

Clean install, clean OSX, clean GUI

 

[GerritV]

[...]Let's not forget the default lack of contrast. Only slightly off-topic, from recently published pre-release Human Interface Guidelines for Apple Watch:

[url=https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B28kDAyCAAAVeV0.png]Image[/URL]

– and that image is … drum roll … to exemplify how buttons are distinguished from other elements by rounding the corners of buttons.

/drumsticks on cymbal​

Earth to Apple. Hello?

Hilarious

 

[aicul]

I'm writing this here for a lack of a better spot;

Yosemite has some absurd behaviours which are more bad programming than anything else.

I so wish the smart ones at Apple would not do showcases gasping at aesthetics when the underlying code is - in some cases - worthless for 2014 standards.

 

[Ulenspiegel]

Cold, yes. Similar to 'inhuman', I often think of Yosemite as 'unforgiving'. Ulenspiegel, and anyone else who dislikes the looks of Yosemite, do you also think of Yosemite as unforgiving?

Unforgiving...interesting, might say original definition. Yes, if I consider Yosemite to be cold and "inhuman" and Mavericks being "warm" as well as "playful" with its 3D icons, animations etc., then Yosemite is "unforgiving".
The original idea is lost, i.e. putting your favorite applications' icons on a "shelf". Animate when you click on any... In Yosemite instead you have flat, cold, ""paralized" icons. The flat icon design and the dock looks like a product of n

äive art.

 

[Omega Mac]

Interesting anecdote from a PA about Steve Jobs culture of not tolerating defects, you only need the watch the opening few minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL_VIAnOaaM

 

[tkermit]

Interesting anecdote from a PA about Steve Jobs culture of not tolerating defects

Playing devil's advocate, if you think about it, it is also indicative of a certain superficialness of S.J.'s thinking at times.... he's commenting on the quality of a circuit board layout solely based on his impression of its visual symmetry...

 

[joedec]

Interesting anecdote from a PA about Steve Jobs culture of not tolerating defects, you only need the watch the opening few minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL_VIAnOaaM

I like his reasoning. Its like washing your car, might be superfluous to some, but the majority of unwashed filthy vehicles are also poorly maintained because that's the nature of the owner.

A culture of perfection has to be all encompassing.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Playing devil's advocate, if you think about it, it is also indicative of a certain superficialness of S.J.'s thinking at times.... he's commenting on the quality of a circuit board layout solely based on his impression of its visual symmetry...

So you're saying it shouldn't be as pretty on the inside as the outside??

I dunno, if it's ART and not "tech" then it maybe it should. Macs strike me more as "art" these days as the tech world has largely passed them by in every possible other area. Personally, I'd prefer Macs that give no quarter. If you're going to pay a premium for a computer, I'd prefer that money go to being the best not the prettiest.

Truly, I'm concerned for the Mac's future. It's not the fastest computer, the best graphics or even sound and it sure as hell isn't the easiest to expand and to add insult to injury, the one thing it DID have was the BEST OPERATING SYSTEM (save 3D gaming) is not in dire peril with the UGLY and BUGGY release they call "Yosemite". I say burn the freaking forest down! Bring back skeuomorphism and admit it was the best (when not taken to Notes and Calendar extremes).

 

[tkermit]

So you're saying it shouldn't be as pretty on the inside as the outside??

Sure. Make it as beautiful as you can. As long as you know that's what you're doing.

Whether a barn, a basket, or sacred song: if it is not useful or necessary, free yourself from imagining you need to make it. If it is useful and necessary, free yourself from imagining that you need to enhance it by adding what is not an integral part of its usefulness or necessity. And, finally: if it is both useful and necessary, and you can recognize and eliminate what is not essential, then go ahead and make it as beautiful as you can.

 

[joedec]

So you're saying it shouldn't be as pretty on the inside as the outside??

I dunno, if it's ART and not "tech" then it maybe it should. Macs strike me more as "art" these days as the tech world has largely passed them by in every possible other area. Personally, I'd prefer Macs that give no quarter. If you're going to pay a premium for a computer, I'd prefer that money go to being the best not the prettiest.

Truly, I'm concerned for the Mac's future. It's not the fastest computer, the best graphics or even sound and it sure as hell isn't the easiest to expand and to add insult to injury, the one thing it DID have was the BEST OPERATING SYSTEM (save 3D gaming) is not in dire peril with the UGLY and BUGGY release they call "Yosemite". I say burn the freaking forest down! Bring back skeuomorphism and admit it was the best (when not taken to Notes and Calendar extremes).

We're all concerned. The new softer, leaky, open Apple seems not so intent on perfection. A lot of people accused SJ of being superfluous, but we agree the result was some pretty fine running systems.

 

[tkermit]

I like his reasoning. Its like washing your car, might be superfluous to some, but the majority of unwashed filthy vehicles are also poorly maintained because that's the nature of the owner.

A culture of perfection has to be all encompassing.

Except there's no technological downside to a washed car. The same is not necessarily true for a completely symmetrical circuit board layout...

 

[joedec]

Except there's no technological downside to a washed car. The same is not necessarily true for a completely symmetrical circuit board layout...

Sure, symmetry is not the rule in printed circuit layout, but some boards are just ugly, poorly thought out. Open a Dell or HP desktop sometime.

I think the point is, Steve wanted good looking hardware, inside and out. Its about discipline and holding a high standard with everything you do.

 

[Cubytus]

Apple has made it VERY clear over the years that adoption is the measuring stick they use for "success". They constantly shove figures in our face about how fast the community adopts iOS and certainly OS X as well in the past. They've made it "FREE" to encourage that even further.

Not mentioning "mandatory" for anyone who buys a current Mac. This number is necessarily heavily skewed because adoption is forced whenever one buys a new machine.

because Apple does notice when something isn't being used. They're not used to people avoiding upgrades.

And how would Apple know that I am still using a late-2011 MBP running SL? They are not asking for any feedback, nor send any survey to its users.

Tim Cook is a brilliant supply chain guy. A huge part of Apple's success is the efficiencies he has brought to the company. Apple never has greater than 10 days finished product in the pipeline, that's best in the industry by a long shot.

Problem is, the qualities a person possesses to be a great manager of processes does not make him creative. Kind of the opposite.

There better be a fix for some of this UI crap with the next update, especially the font. I've spent way too much time trying out different fixes to fix this UI mess. My newest beef is Yosemite's menu bar in Safari has been lightened dramatically to the point where it looks white at a glance.

And even carefully calibrating the screen doesn't solve this. Blues are much too intense to my taste, especially compared with the contrast-less UI. Just have a look at the Bluetooth icon in the System Preferences panel.

I like his reasoning. Its like washing your car, might be superfluous to some, but the majority of unwashed filthy vehicles are also poorly maintained because that's the nature of the owner.

A culture of perfection has to be all encompassing.

+1

If you're going to pay a premium for a computer, I'd prefer that money go to being the best not the prettiest.

Why wouldn't it be both powerful and beautiful, just like previous iterations?

I think the point is, Steve wanted good looking hardware, inside and out. Its about discipline and holding a high standard with everything you do.

This.

 

[n-evo]

To me, the unification was self-explanatory and entirely logical.

From the 2008-01-15 edition of HIG for Mac OS X:

I wasn't talking about Mac OS X Leopard. The rol of Mac OS X Tiger's unified title / toolbar look was never explained. As far as I'm aware.

 

[Traverse]

Why wouldn't it be both powerful and beautiful, just like previous iterations?

We do need to keep in mind that our perception of Yosemite is only an opinion. There is are other threads dedicated to how beautiful Yosemite is. Drastic change will always spark resistance.

 

[Omega Mac]

Cook & Ive will have to go back to their distro/drawing board roles else Apple is chasing the very thing it didn't that made it what it was.

"We don't ship junk" - Steve Jobs - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAo8gnUCWzE

 

[Partron22]

"We don't ship junk" - Steve Jobs - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAo8gnUCWzE

Macintosh Performa came close to killing the company.

 

[joedec]

Macintosh Performa came close to killing the company.

Off topic, but, I owned a Performa. The price/performance was dismal. However, the OS was great, and the Apple programming model was so much better than PC. Even at their worst they made the PC seem clunky and frustrating.

Then Jobs came back and the world changed.

 

[Partron22]

Interesting tip at OSXDaily Today:
Don’t Want to Update your Mac to OS X Yosemite? Hide the Update from the App Store

While many Mac users have updated to OS X Yosemite, a notable amount have chosen to stay on OS X Mavericks or Mountain Lion for a variety of reasons, and some have even had to downgrade due to frustrations or incompatibilities that were experienced with the new version of OS X. Whatever the reason...