
Mac OS X Yosemite Under the Magnifying Glass - lominming
https://bold.pixelapse.com/minming/mac-os-x-yosemite-under-the-magnifying-glass
======
kunstmord
The low readability/contrast in some places seems to be the main problem. Sad
to see the old Finder logo go – the central curve ending outside the "box" was
a nice touch.

The new dock reminded me of the old Powerbook G4 I had, with 10.2 installed. I
still somewhat miss the whole "Aqua" interface sometimes – but maybe that's
just nostalgia or I over the years it's become harder to surprise me with UI
design.

~~~
Gracana
> The low readability/contrast in some places seems to be the main problem.

Contrast is decreasing everywhere these days, and that trend is really causing
me trouble. I hope they darken things a bit. Perhaps the light-on-dark mode
will help with that?

~~~
pietro
I just hope they grow up. I can't read anything anymore, and it's entirely due
to use of grey over black.

------
antidaily
I hate Helvetica Neue as a desktop font. I'm on an (non-retina screen) iMac
and it just looks too thin at times, blurry.

Also, Id suggest waiting a couple days/weeks if you're a Chrome user. Just
keeps crashing, every build, even Canary.

~~~
blt
I agree. Lucida is about the nicest sans-serif screen font I've ever used.
Helvetica has noted flaws at normal screen resolution. At Retina resolution,
typography for the screen starts following same rules as typography for print.
Helvetica is not traditionally used for significant amounts of body text in
print typography. It is better for titles and signs.

They should have used a Humanist sans-serif
([https://typekit.com/lists/humanist-sans-
serifs](https://typekit.com/lists/humanist-sans-serifs)), of which Lucida is a
good example.

~~~
arrrg
That use case should fit then, shouldn’t it?

UI fonts are not supposed to be used for large blocks of text. UI fonts are
used for, well, basically “titles and signs”.

~~~
pietro
Except that they use it for everything, including mail messages and help
texts, some of which are very long.

------
0X1A
The new folder icons are extremely reminiscent of the old Oxygen icons
included in KDE.

See:
[http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/linuxguide3/kde4-dolphin.p...](http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/linuxguide3/kde4-dolphin.png)

~~~
arrrg
Not really … those folders are as similar to the old bright blue folders of OS
X as the Yosemite folders are to them … which is to say not a whole lot.

------
glifchits
I think its good the search bar looks like a button. It makes it more clear
that searching is an action. The user has to click on it to activate the
textbox anyway, and once clicked it should be quite apparent that its a
textbox.

------
hcarvalhoalves
Things that I've found annoying:

\- The inconsistency between some icons (e.g. Finder vs. Trash).

\- The inconsistency between icons and the overall UI (e.g. folder icons just
look blurry, while other icons have sharp lines).

\- Juxtaposed rounded buttons in the toolbar are weird.

\- Aliasing on some UI elements (e.g. tooltips, slider, buttons, sidebar).

\- Too low contrast on some UI elements (e.g., sidebar, traffic lights).

IMO Apple is struggling to make this new visual language coherent and
polished, I guess it'll take more 2-3 iterations to get to the level of
coherency Aqua achieved.

~~~
cmelbye
I feel the same way, I think it will definitely take a couple more iterations
for the new design language to feel strong. But, look at the first beta of iOS
7 and compare it to iOS 7.1/8 and Yosemite. Huge, huge improvements already,
IMO.

------
pietro
I miss Windows. You could change the UI fonts, and there's nothing I'd rather
do than escape Helvetica Neue. It's a terrible, terrible font.

~~~
hippich
w8, you can't change fonts of windows/etc in macos?

------
sdegutis
I'm really surprised at how similar their new checkboxes are to the ones I
designed for my music player Bahamut[1] last year.

Which makes it kind of ironic and upsetting that the UI APIs they provide for
writing Bahamut (AppKit) made it so incredibly difficult to make it look that
way.

[1]:
[https://github.com/sdegutis/bahamut](https://github.com/sdegutis/bahamut)

~~~
ximpathy
Wow looks nice! Now if only it were a SoundCloud client..

------
sdegutis
I started using Mac OS X at version 10.4, and over the years it's becoming
really apparent when part of a style change is to appeal to perceived
obsolescence.

When a reviewer says "this is definitely an improvement over the last version,
which looked and felt awkward", I recall how in their review of the last
version, they said the same thing.

~~~
sdegutis
That said, Yosemite does look really pretty, and a part of me is excited to
use it.

------
rglover
Scary times when work that's still months away is already getting scrutinized
like this.

~~~
pavlov
Heh, it's always been like this in Apple-land.

I fondly remember Ars Technica's review of Mac OS X Developer Preview 3, back
in February 2000, where John Siracusa roasts the "lickable" new Aqua UI that's
a complete mess:

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/2000/02/mac-os-x-
dp3/](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2000/02/mac-os-x-dp3/)

A good and honest critic is the artist's best friend, even it may sting for a
moment.

------
mbell
> In particular, I like the new trash can icon. Craig Federighi made a note of
> the time they spent refining this particular icon and the effort definitely
> shows.

Was it lost on the author that Federighi's comment on the trashcan was made in
jest?

~~~
arrrg
I don’t think that’s the case at all. He was telling you that they spent a lot
of time on the trashcan, knowing that sounds a little ridiculous. That’s where
the humour was, not in the designers at Apple not actually caring about the
trashcan. It was certainly not set up as an ironic statement in any way.

If Apple didn’t really spend a lot of time on the trashcan then he was just
dishonest, but not saying something in jest.

------
pgt
The glassy translucency reminds me of Windows Vista's "Glass" theme. Are
modern operating systems moving toward a solid, flat design language?

------
shadytrees
Has anybody gotten Continuity/Handoff to work? Or is it completely disabled in
the betas?

------
Kiro
What's weird with the alignment of the traffic light buttons?

~~~
shravan
If you look at the Safari traffic light icons, the spacing above them is
narrower than the spacing below. It's a bit hard to see immediately but it's
highlighted with red lines in that section.

~~~
lcnmrn
They are vertically aligned with the arrows, not with buttons.

~~~
unfunco
And the arrows aren't vertically aligned with the buttons. I don't despair,
it's common of Apple to make big changes and gradually improve over time, Aqua
wasn't perfect, but in Mountain Lion (despite not being truly Aqua, it has
evolved to a certain perfection.) – what Apple have released in Yosemite is
for developers, it will surely change before the open summer beta, and it will
surely change again before Golden Master.

------
Russell91
I was looking forward to seeing some feature changes, but I could care less
about anything this post raved/complained about. Prepare yourself for some
serious bike shedding though.

~~~
smackfu
If a blog post is about the visual changes, and you don't care about the
visual changes... I guess it's not for you?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I object to every shell being labeled 'an OS' now. Whole releases are
dedicated to changing the desktop, which is actually just an app.

------
3rd3
> _There are still many rough edges in the new OS ..._

I hate to say it, but that blog post is mostly bike shedding. Do people really
care that the toolbar icons aren't perfectly aligned, that the folder icons
lack a little contrast and that the search bar looks like a button?

~~~
glifchits
It seems trivial when you read people criticizing it, but even though you may
never explicitly notice them, small annoying things will accumulate to you
feeling not right about the design.

~~~
3rd3
I cannot imagine a scenario that any of the points of criticism mentioned pose
a real problem. UX problems arise when things are ugly, when they get in your
way, when they surprise you more than they should or when they limit the
accessibility, which is clearly not the case here. It's irrelevant bike
shedding because OSX is 'sexy' enough anyway; there is not enough to gain that
could justify the energy people put into it.

[http://xkcd.com/1015/](http://xkcd.com/1015/)

~~~
glifchits
I didn't say they posed UX _problems_. I don't even think the author of the
article suggested that. I merely suggested that small problems add up to a
less than optimal user experience. The article is "OSX Yosemite under a
microscope", not "OSX Yosemite has substantial UX problems"

~~~
3rd3
> _I didn 't say they posed UX problems. I don't even think the author of the
> article suggested that._

The article literally says that there a still many rough edges in OS X. I
don’t see rough edges. There are small inconsistent details and extremely
minor legibility problems. It’s not worth mentioning and Apple won’t listen
anyway.

> _I merely suggested that small problems add up to a less than optimal user
> experience._

I believe that this is _only_ true if you delude yourself into thinking these
minor inconsistencies and flaws matter.

There will always remain some "rough edges" because costs rise exponentially
when approaching an optimal design. People have lifes, deadlines etc. and
Apple is no exclusion to that. Of course they could find and fix these
problems if the threw another $10MM at it, but they don’t because they’ve
already reached 98% of optimal and the last 2% aren’t even worth thinking
about. There are _much_ bigger problems elsewhere (both from their perspective
and from customer perspective).

------
VeejayRampay
The "Applications" icon still looks like it was designed by a 8 year-old.
There are some thing all the billions in the world can't fix I guess.

PS: This comment doesn't bring anything of value to the conversation but
negativity and I am sorry for that, but it's been nagging at me for years.

