Midweek mini-roundup
Yosemite was widely available as public beta long time before the release.
Whilst I went on a bit of a rampage, I suspect that most beta testers were far more cautious about discussing any aspect of the pre-release software in public.
Non-professional reviews can be surprisingly enlightening and from what I have seen, the majority of comments may be not favourable. More on this
maybe tomorrow.
its visuals are praised by overwhelming majority of both professional and private reviewers.
A few weeks ago (some time in November) I spent a long time many hours over a few days going back through Twitter with various search terms, back to include tweets during the months when pre-releases were being tested. I now know that Twitter offers advanced search syntax that would have made the task less arduous, but I don't regret the work because ploughing through so much, in a concentrated way, left me with a strong impression that public comments on the looks of the pre-release were mostly favourable (point 10 above). I can't treat it as qualitative analysis, but I did get that impression.
That exercise, and others, with Twitter also gave me the impression that the majority of post-release tweets about the looks of Yosemite some of which are posted by professionals are not favourable.
A fraction of what I bookmarked
http://tinyurl.com/1010uglystick might have been posted to Twitter by bots of some sort but I'm not beating myself up about that. There's plenty to be ridiculed/disliked/hated and if a bot can perform the ridicule, then I sort of admire whoever wrote the bot. (Note that I was not careless. Some of the Twitter accounts did appear odd and if I suspected that a bot was at work, I refrained from bookmarking. I blocked and reported a few accounts as a result of the exercises.)
This thread might give you a different idea, but then again, it has stayed active because of dedicated activity of two-three very passionate users.
My most passionate expression my worst rant ever, online was in a different topic, about Mavericks.
I came to Apple after years of putting up with the stuff Windows and PC's produced with their constant tweaking and changes. Have those who have written of their frustration forgotten their experiences with other systems?
Not forgotten. Part of every working day for me is spent supporting an environment where the vast majority of managed computers run Windows 7.
Having Mavericks, in the midst of that Windows environment, is a pleasure that's near-essential. If someone forced me to use Windows instead of Mavericks as well as support other people's uses of Windows I would seek a different job. It has been suggested to me that I might try greater use of Yosemite (instead of Mavericks?) for maybe six months
it's a reasonable suggestion but honestly, I have tested Yosemite often enough (I'm testing it now) to know that it's intolerable. Things are in the wrong place and moreover, it makes my head hurt; it's too bright. There's simply too much wrong about it
charitable thoughts (the list above, for example) disappear. Thankfully at work I'll use Mavericks with this notebook.
Yosemite is the first significant paintjob that OS X has received within the single OS iteration, so its going to be polarising.
Apple could have, should have, allowed users to prefer a different appearance. Whether we like it or not, the word 'theme' will be used by some customers.
Frankly, it's almost inexcusable. There's money within the company, there was obviously an appreciation of Mavericks, and there were maybe thirty years of experience of development (including user-oriented preferences) so I
can not find it difficult to excuse the exclusive, divisive, polarising end result.
The marketing slogan 'Completely New. Completely Mac.' should not have been an excuse to ignore things that were previously known to be very, very,
very good for Mac users.
the sense of comfortable state of domination and ability to influence
Apple's ability to influence third parties was an essential part of my rant a few weeks ago. I'll attempt to justify that rant, that ongoing passion, in this topic before the end of this week.
I strongly suspect that some of the QA advice is ignored by management at some level. That's not necessarily a failing of that level of management
I can now finish that sentence. Charitably: I might treat that failing as
limited if there were reasonably
educated guesses at that level of management.
I doubt that QA people are to blame
Charitably: I assume that reasonably educated guesses at some level of management caused those managers to defer advice from QA people.
I assume that there were thousands of public beta testers, but (for some combination of reasons) the appearance-related feedback did not have the required effect.
Three rushed points before I go to work:
For example, a good beta tester does more than file a report that says "Contacts crashes." You'll instead want to explain exactly what you were doing when you saw that crash. If the steps are reproducible, even better
At the time of wishing to give feedback, I found it
terribly difficult to describe most appearance problems.
The one-armed man?
Obscure connection: the thought of an iPad in one hand reminded me to include the images of iPad and Feedback Assistant when writing
about the transition to iOS 7.
