Going back to Mavericks - Yosemite = YUK!

[Steve Steele]

Any reasons I should not go back to Mavericks?

I don't like Yosemite. First of all it's UGLY. It's flat and very white. I have trouble seeing items in the dock and the toolbar in Safari and other apps. I'm not happy that Ivy is in charge of software. He's messing with a time tested and much loved Finder look. Safari looks like Chrome. I HATE CHROME. 10.9 was the best recent OS X release. It worked perfectly for me.

10.10 seems quick enough. Not sure how much better or worse DP runs. I'm going to open a huge file and check the Activity Monitor and if there is no difference, I'm going back.

I can't use handoff, AirDrop with my iPad, or the phone feature unless I buy a bluetooth card (and that's not a certainty). The iCould Drive is nice but it's not a big deal. The other new features are not enough for me to have to stay.

Rhetorically, I wonder who Apple was trying to please with this new look. I think Apple is trying to look something like Chrome or Android, and that's a shame.

Any reasons you guys can think of why I should reconsider? If not, I'll go back to my last Mavericks backup.

Any improvements in the audio subsystems (CoreAudio) in 10.10?

Thanks!

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Can't address everything at the moment but did you know you can reverse the tool bar to white text and a black background? Did it once and never looked back.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Yo' is working very well here in all other respects.

[bayswater]

I was pleasantly surprised how much I like the look of it. I've just dismantled the old ML partition
and I'm on 10.10 for everything now. A few things seem to work better for me, like audio and MIDI connections, although that might be the new MOTU drivers. As usual, most of the things that have changed visually are subject to preferences if you want to change them back.

In the end, It doesn't really matter. We spend most of our time in application screens and those haven't changed noticeably. DP and others I use a lot look the same as they always did. Switching back would be a lot of effort -- for what?

[Steve Steele]

Can't address everything at the moment but did you know you can reverse the tool bar to white text and a black background? Did it once and never looked back.

Yeah. I tried black for a few days and that got old. I'm back to white. I'm just not diggin the new font (maybe I need a new monitor to appreciate it), the dock and especially the 2D red, yellow and green stop light look. I know it's trivial, but I really hate the look of Yosemite (Safari and iTunes being the worst). I was really looking forward to all the new functionality. I can't take advantage of much of it until I get a newer MacPro, which is ok I guess. But the look, I'm an old school System 7 user and too many skeuomorphisms have been removed. It just looks cheesy.

I liked the look somewhere between Leopard and Mavericks. If Apple takes this anti-skeuomorphisms too far it's gonna suck. I mean, just look at the trash can! What is that? And I can't grab the Safari window half the time.

Anyway, I hope Ivy doesn't go too much further in this direction. It doesn't say "power user". it says cheap consumer device. Well, whatever..

[bayswater]

It doesn't say "power user". it says cheap consumer device. Well, whatever..

Well they got that right then. It IS first and foremost a consumer device.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Can't address everything at the moment but did you know you can reverse the tool bar to white text and a black background? Did it once and never looked back.

Yeah. I tried black for a few days and that got old.

I actually like the black menu bar. It gives my eyes a little rest and forces them to change their focus a little. Very good for the eyes. That's my main reason for keeping it. The ascetics of the GUI are meaningless to me. They are neither exciting nor boring. They exist and I'm just glad they're not green on black like the old 8 bit machines.

The important thing is how are my programs working and the answer is just fine, so I will not be reverting. I had thought of that the first couple of days and evaluated function v. form. Function won out so I accepted the form. It's now second nature: just there.

Once I'm working I don't care much about how the Finder looks. I even prefer the lower detail color button. I just need to see where to click the damn mouse. The less detail the better. Simple is good. Function is better. I'll take function over form any day. Besides, you gotta keep up with the times.

[Steve Steele]

Well, there was a time when Apple seemed to take the Apple Human Interface Guidelines very seriously. And it worked. Now it seems like they're unsure of themselves and in some cases, they're just plain sloppy.

A version of iTunes a couple years ago (v10 or 11), was so unintuitive, and amateurish looking I seriously could not figure it out for a bit. Once I did, I found myself not using iTunes at all. A friend of mine remarked it looked like something MS would do. Apple has abandoned their own philosophy for GUIs. They've always done that with their own apps. That's why Claris and all the old Apple software never really took off. They didn't practice what they preached. But, they ALWAYS remained strict with the Finder.

If you think about it, the Finder IS Apple, or at least the Macintosh, IMO. That's what attracted me to the Mac.

Yes, we spend most of our time in apps, and with DP full screen it's the same. And I do appreciate when the GUI is easy on the graphics card. But like I said, I've been around since System 6/7 (I even saw a running version of Copland when I was at Apple. I didn't have the clearance to see it but I bugged an engineer to show me a sneak peak and he did, that was cool), but Yosemite is the first time that I've thought to myself that something doesn't look right.

I'd be willing to bet that if Steve Jobs were alive this OS would not have been released like this.

Anyway, that's it. What can I do? Just keep moving forward with what Apple does and hope they stick with the game plan and not chase trends. At least it's running fairly stable. Only a few minor issues that I'm sure will be fixed soon.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

...when I was at Apple.

Why didn't you say that sooner, 'splains everything! ☺ For my money, as long as no one goes around changing standard piano keys, I'm good for everything else.

[Michael Canavan]

I would have to respectfully disagree with your take on Yosemite night watch.

I'm extremely pleased that the glossy bubble look is dead in 10.10. Honestly that look never did much for me, and to combat it I've always turned off the colors on the expand, close, collapse to Dock, buttons. I don't need or appreciate aesthetically three blobs of color on my interface. I'm also a huge fan of the darker Dock and Finder menu. In some ways I like the look of OS 9 better than X and to a degree Yosemite is a return to simplicity in design, I'm good with that.


Beyond the look, I'm happy with most of the Finder improvements, double tapping anywhere on a column line to expand it to fit the name of a file was looooong overdue! The only one I'm not that into is changing the expand button to be the full screen button, that IMO was dumb. Either add another button or add the new feature in as option/click.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Um... the new feature is opt-clicking. It is working here, even in DP! Full screen but with menus showing. I prefer the menu hidden in true screen as I can move to program to program and not have a lagging background. DP does tend to leave hidden windows behind (i.e. - visible in the next app if it is not also full screen). No a big deal but it should be working.

[Michael Canavan]

Um... the new feature is opt-clicking. It is working here, even in DP!

Right, my point was that option clicking to do something you previously did by just clicking, with a new 'feature' that had previously been on the right hand side (the expand to full screen arrows in apps that supported it), introduced in the same place is IMO counter intuitive. IMO the one anti UI practice that Apple does is to force the user to change their workflow for a new feature, and as we all know, not every time is that feature in an update.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Oh duh! I git it now. Lol