A Look At OS X Yosemite And iOS 8.1
by Brandon Chester on October 27, 2014 8:00 AM ESTNotification Center
Notification Center on OS X has been in a strange situation for a while now. While some features like Spotlight Search transitioned from OS X to iOS, Notification Center went the other way. It has never felt like it had much reason to exist, and it has lacked in features compared to its iOS counterpart. This was made even more evident when iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks rolled out. iOS received the new Today view with new widgets for apps like Calendar, Reminders, and Stocks, while on Mavericks the only change was the removal of the linen texture as Apple began to transition away from their old style of interface design.
With iOS 8 and Yosemite we receive parity between the abilities and design of the two versions. With the new Yosemite interface being modeled on that of iOS, Apple has been able to bring the new translucent design of Notification Center to OS X, along with the new support for Today view and widgets. Notification Center is one of the best examples of the use of translucency to convey what parts of the interface are on a higher vertical plane than others. While in previous versions of OS X Notification Center pushed the desktop to the left, in Yosemite it simply comes in overtop of the desktop and even the Dock.
Today view gives Notification Center a greater purpose than it previously had. The ability to add widgets allows it to become a hub for getting key information at a glance, or performing quick actions. It's actually even more functional than on iOS because Apple has provided widgets for apps like Calculator which do not have widgets on iOS. A weather widget with a full forecast is also available to make up for the fact that OS X has no standalone weather app.
Because I always keep the dock visible, I can see what applications I need to check based on the red badge. As a result, I still don't use the actual notifications tab of Notification Center very often. But I do use the Today view to check what events I have coming up, what the current weather conditions are, and to do quick calculations using the Calculator widget. Overall I would say that Apple has done a good job with making Notification Center feel useful, and although not every part of it fits into the way I use my computer, I can still find ways to make use of it.
Spotlight Search
Spotlight receives some great improvements in Yosemite. I said in my iOS 8 review that I had never really used Spotlight on iOS because it didn't feel like it offered convenience or features that made it worth using. Apple's improvements actually made me start using it. The same was true of Spotlight on OS X. I had never used it until Yosemite rolled out with the new capabilities that Apple had built in. Spotlight on OS X has an even greater number of improvements than the iOS version, and it starts with the UI. The field for entering your search has gone from a tiny input field in the top right corner of your display to a large window that appears right in the center. This may sound obtrusive initially, but it is done this way because once you begin typing the window expands to the one you see below.
Spotlight now adopts a dual pane design, and it makes it infinitely more powerful and useful than its previous form which was a list of results situated in the top right corner of the display. The left side gives results from Safari, files on your Mac, applications, etc. The right side acts as a preview for what you have selected. This is really useful when trying to find a document when you aren't quite sure of the name, but know what you wrote in it. Rather than having to open every single document that could possibly be the one you're looking for, you can have Spotlight find all the documents with those keywords and you can preview them right in the window without ever having to go into the app itself.
Spotlight can also do quick conversions now. This feature is especially handy, and it's notably absent in the iOS version of Spotlight which shows there's still work to do in creating parity between the features that Apple has on both of their operating systems.
Overall, Spotlight search on OS X has some solid improvements and it's a good feature. It can be hard to get in the habit of using it if you previously ignored it on older versions of OS X, but it's a useful tool to have and I encourage anyone who uses OS X to take a look at it. You may be pleasantly surprised.
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KoolAidMan1 - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
Maybe its because the products are actually good?Nope, its collusion and misinformation, says the fanboy.
mabellon - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
Cool links. I completely forgot Samsung even had this. It would be nice if it was at least mentioned in the article.That said, Samsung's solution is the cheap hacky thing you do when you don't control the software on both platforms. It's mostly just shared input (keyboard/mouse) and copy+paste support. For example, using your phone as a second screen to respond to an SMS while cool is not at all the same as responding seamlessly from the OSX Messages app. Better than nothing and still would have been nice to see a mention in the review.
Also, I read the links you posted and they had nothing to do with the actual point made by Brandon in the article. His point was that there was no incentive to purchase a SAMSUNG laptop. As far as I can tell, Samsung SideSync works with any Windows PC. And frankly that makes sense because Samsung doesn't sell that many PCs.
Bob Todd - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
Frankly, that looks retarded. My Atrix had a laptop dock with some full desktop Linux apps like Firefox, that doesn't mean it was a good experience. And that's the key here. Features for the sake of features that aren't worth using vs. things that will make your life easier.I'm predominately a Windows and Android user (Apple for work), but the integration with iOS 8.1 and Yosemite has some nice features which I hope Microsoft rips off for Windows 10.
* SMS Relay: don't have to check my work phone for texts, just respond from my laptop
* Answer calls directly from my laptop without fumbling for my phone
* Instant hotspot: don't have to grab phone, unlock, turn on tethering when I need to get online remotely
Even ignoring Handoff, those are nice features that can make your day-to-day life easier. I think Apple has actually been doing a _terrible_ job of integration across their products until now. They are unique in this space as controlling all of their hardware and software. This stuff should have been here 2 years ago.
In my dream world, Microsoft and Google make APIs to do these same things that work between their devices. Chrome OS doesn't fit my needs. Windows Phone app ecosystem still sucks. So unless they work through this together, just one of them building this functionality in a closed manner for _their_ systems won't do me any good.
Impulses - Friday, October 31, 2014 - link
There's literally dozens of apps on Play that accomplish the same thing as SMS Relay... I am jealous of call forwarding tho (then again I don't really talk much on the phone) and super jealous of instant hotspot. I'm gonna have to work on a Tasker shortcut to at least activate the hotspot on my phone from my smartwatch.gudomlig - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
typical of apple. new features limited to small subset of hardware. why would you ever need applepay for a desktop or laptop is beyond me. and transparent windows and flatter presentation...um windows aero anyone? apple has totally lost their innovation, they are just copying what their competitors have already done.tim851 - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
> why would you ever need applepay for a desktop or laptop is beyond meProbably as a PayPal alternative.
SirPerro - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
I know a good paypal alternative. It's called credit card.Apart from NFC/Simplicity for the act of paying in a store, what does apple pay offer in a laptop which paypal/credit cards haven't offered for years?
Furthermore. How is ApplePay supposed to success on a niche operating system anyway?
invinciblegod - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
thats a horrible paypal alternative. Apparently you forgot why people like paypal, which is that you don't need to make a new account for every website and the website don't get your credit card information.solipsism - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
1) Pay coming to Mac OS X would mean a secure element on the device, tokens being stored for each card, and perhaps a convenient biometric to help prove your identity, just like Pay on the iPhone 6 series.All that is inherently more secure than storing your actual card numbers on your OS. That said, I think that would be a flawed setup because, currently, Pay rightly only works with direct payments and within apps, neither of which is feasible on a laptop or desktop.
What Apple would have to do is grow their Pay concept into having the financial institutions issue a unique token for each website/company that you have an account with so that if any one of those server's gets compromised it can't be used to make payments -or- create a service that is closer to PayPal so that no website will ever store your personal card data again, but that will mean Apple will be a middle man, which I don't think they want to do.
Regardless of how they proceed the current Pay system isn't complete if purchases on websites are weak point in terms of security.
2) Calling iOS "niche" or simply not including it with a comment about Mac OS X in a discussion about a service to service an ecosystem is ridiculous. Are you going to say that Pay will be useless on Watch that runs WatchOS simply because it will be a new OS when it launches? The multination and financial institutions are already backing Pay. It was a success before it ever launched. This is the future of mobile banking. Now that the path is being paved and the backend rejiggered there is no reason for others (save for contracts) to jump on board with a similar secure end-to-end system.
Bob Todd - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
You can turn on tethering on your Windows Phone from Windows on your laptop? You can answer calls on your Windows laptop from your Windows phone? You can send/receive texts from your Windows laptop through your Windows phone?Bottom line is that Microsoft is just as guilty as Apple at doing a crap job of integration across their devices.