Yosemite - Why the "Blah?"

[cptkrf]

I had to go back to Mavericks on my 2013 Mini because of major problems with Yosemite (discussed elsewhere). Once again, Time Machine proves itself to be one of OSX’s best features.

Anyway, I didn’t realize just how plain looking that 10.10 was compared to the last releases. For myself, I don’t use an OS based on it’s prettiness, especially after years of ‘nix usage with nothing but white letters on black, but the new look is pretty… well, amateurish. Sort of like some beginner programmer would build because they haven’t learned to make the 3-d effect, yet.

And the color choices! Apparently, the programming cubicles at the infinite loop need to be shielded from the sun glare though the windows so they can see what they are actually color-picking.

Did Tim Cook explain the reasoning for the flat look in Yosemite during any of his presentation?

It certainly does not cause a sensation of “Wow” the first time you see it. More of a “Blah.”

 

[dtravis7]

I don't see it this way, but this is an article on Flat Design and why some feel its better. I personally like it the old way.

A Look at Flat Design and Why It's Significant | UX Magazine

 

[rfomlover]

I can agree that it is more "blah" then previous releases, mainly because they are trying to make it look like jony Ives' ios. I think they back tracked. The dock look like the one from 10.4 tiger and earlier. While it is a little more "blah" I certainly do welcome the new features although I did just switch to android. It's nice and I agree with you with time machine being great lol.

 

[cptkrf]

I don't see it this way, but this is an article on Flat Design and why some feel its better. I personally like it the old way.

A Look at Flat Design and Why It's Significant | UX Magazine

A decent article, even if I don't quite agree with his reasoning. Flat still looks amateurish and shallow to me, but as I said, I don't use a computer because of the look of icons.

His idea of doing it for speed is fallacious on the computer side. First off, with modern processors, the difference in presenting a 3-d icon and a flat one would be measured in nanoseconds and probably with a lot of zeros to the right of the decimal.

And mainly, if companies actually wanted to "make their websites faster," they could try eliminating the hundreds of third party links that track, push, and stall on every page.

 

[vansmith]

Did Tim Cook explain the reasoning for the flat look in Yosemite during any of his presentation?

Not that I remember but Yosemite does seem to be following the very drawn out trend of "toning it down." If you compare Yosemite to something like Leopard, that to Tiger and keep going backwards, you can see the muting of OS X's aesthetic. I admit that I like it (I think Yosemite looks quite nice aside from the folder icon colour which is just garish) - Apple toned down the iMessage speech bubbles (which looked hideous), added a font that looks nicer (when it's not blurred) and cut down on the window chrome. That's just me though - I know that Yosemite has one of the most polarizing aesthetics.

 

[cwa107]

Putting the UI in dark mode improves things quite a bit, IMO.... now I wish this applied to windows too, but it's a good start:

 

[harryb2448]

Surprisingly, I agree with you vansmith and think Yosemite is great! Although there still seems big problems for folks not doing a clean install, or carrying problems over from earlier operating systems.

 

[vansmith]

Putting the UI in dark mode improves things quite a bit, IMO.... now I wish this applied to windows too, but it's a good start:

I've taken to dark mode as well as a test and I quite like it. I actually like how it sort of blends in with the bezel on my MBP.

Surprisingly, I agree with you vansmith and think Yosemite is great! Although there still seems big problems for folks not doing a clean install, or carrying problems over from earlier operating systems.

What do you mean "surprisingly"? You mean there are times you don't agree with me?

 

[MacbookWilis]

You could change a little of the aspect of the windows in yosemite I think I'm not sure if the app works in yosemite yet but you should check it out, its called Flavours Flavours - Tasteful Themes for Mac I have OS X Lion and works pretty cool since there are a lot of themes to modify, Since I can't install yosemite on mi MacBook, Lion was as far as it goes I make my desktop look a bit like yosemite even changed the icons. I don't feel the nee to buy a new computer if this one still works perfectly fine =)

 

[chscag]

Theme changers like "Candy Bar" and Dock software (SuperDocker) do not work with Mountain Lion, Mavericks, and now Yosemite. Perhaps later on we'll see software which will allow making changes possible.

 

[MacbookWilis]

Theme changers like "Candy Bar" and Dock software (SuperDocker) do not work with Mountain Lion, Mavericks, and now Yosemite. Perhaps later on we'll see software which will allow making changes possible.

I checked the page from Flavours app and seems to support Mavericks it may work for yosemite if anyone would wanna check it out

 

[chscag]

I checked the page from Flavours app and seems to support Mavericks it may work for yosemite if anyone would wanna check it out

According to the developer, the new Flavours (Flavours 2) is not ready yet for release. It will support Yosemite when it's released. See this.

 

[chas_m]

I'm really quite fond of the icons and think the screenshots above are quite lovely. Perfect? No. Still need some polishing yet. But the flatness doesn't bother me a bit, I think it's a huge improvement over fake shadows and fake 3D everywhere.

I wasn't that bothered by the skeuomorphism that was apparently Scott Forstall's signature, though I didn't think it worked well in Contacts. Now that I've seen Time Machine, Contacts and Calendar without it, however, I approve of Ive's choices there (though I'll be the first to say that I don't need QUITE so much white everywhere).

 

[Magroglex]

Yosemite, installing & aesthetics

I love the way Yosemite looks! I think it's breathtaking. I can't compare it to Tiger and Leopard becuase I don't remember what they looked like. (And don't care.)

Discovered in launch pad a piece of Yosemite waiting to be downloaded. Did the beta purgatorical testing. Over many weeks, several of the releases wouldn't download for me and they sat in launch pad. A few days ago, it finally began to download all of the bits and pieces. About 14 hours worth with my crappy internet connection. Thought I was all done. Checked with app store. No upgrades.

Cleaning house in Launch Pad and discovered one more piece that hadn't been installed. Surpirsed me. Didn't show up in app store which is where I'd been looking just to make sure I hadn't overlooked anything. Guess when I tried to download it at the time of its release, it couldn't quite make the trip, so it sat, waiting, in launch pad. I think I have all the bits and pieces now. Works fine. In particular, I do heavy duty mailing with Mac Mail (deleted 4000 emails last week) and it's much faster and actually delivers the mail this time.

 

[harryb2448]

Spot on van! Charlie and Tom told me to be careful with you whatchamacallems!

 

[vansmith]

Spot on van! Charlie and Tom told me to be careful with you whatchamacallems!

"Amazing administrator" is the word you're looking for.

 

[harryb2448]

Wow I really misunderstood them Texan accents alas!!!!

 

[vansmith]

It's okay, everyone makes mistakes.

 

[MacInWin]

I'll chime in as another satisfied customer with Yosemite. The icon changes are somewhat startling (particularly for iTunes, can we have blue back, please?) but like all things, in a few hours it just seems natural. I haven't upgraded my business machines yet to Yosemite (you don't do that sort of thing in the run-up to holiday sales season, if you know what you are doing) so when I go back to Mavericks on those machines it just seems "cluttered" somehow after the clean look of Yosemite. I also think Yosemite is significantly snappier in performance than Mavericks. I have learned in my 69 years that change is inevitable and that if I stand still, the technology world moves on and leaves me behind, so I just keep moving along with change and embrace it whenever I can. With Yosemite, I'm embracing it and enjoying it.

 

[lclev]

I honestly have not been upset with the "new" look. Do I prefer the old Dock look of Mavericks? Yes, but is it that big of a deal? No, not really. Do I prefer a blue iTunes to a red iTunes? Actually, for me I find it easier to not confuse it with the App icon. Okay, so I get in a hurry and click too fast but the more different the better for me.

I will say this, given the initial Yosemite difficulty with mail, I was skeptical at first but, I have been very impresses with what I can only describe as self-healing. All the quirky email issues "fixed" themselves. I am not sure if it was apple tweaking in the back ground or vendors, like google, fixing issues. What ever or who ever - it got fixed.

And on the subject of fixes, I have read postings where some have hailed the fact that Microsoft seems to address issues in a much timely manner with updates and patches. Please....really.... I love coming to work and turning on my Windows 7 editors only to find I will have to wait anywhere 30 minutes or more for updates to download, install, and reboot. And on more than one occasion, after the reboot, something doesn't work - like Premiere Pro, which I use daily. And now I have to troubleshoot, find the offender and uninstall it. Would it be unreasonable to ask for an operating system that did not require frequent and constant fixes that take a long time and require long reboots? Oh, wait, there is - OS X. Okay, off my soap box...back to work....

Lisa