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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sunnohh - Friday, October 31, 2014 - link
Why on earth do you expect a pc to work after warranty? Actually it sounds like it was engineered perfectly.name99 - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
God this is ignorant.What components do you expect to fail which require a "completely new purchase"?
Let's go through my various macs:
I have an HTPC mac mini. Internal HD has failed, so I boot it off an SSD I stuck in a firewire enclosure.
I have an old 17" PPC-based Macbook Pro with a sticky keyboard and more or less dead trackpad (belonged to a friend who spilled coffee on it). I use it as a digital clock.
I have a friend's old macbook air. He (different friend) spilled diet soda on it. The screen doesn't work, neither does the keyboard. So I plugged it into a (VGA-based) LCD screen that's 10+ years old, connected a USB keyboard, and it works fine for my needs.
I had an old Macbook whose fan died. Not ideal, but I directed an external fan at it, and kept it running for about three more years.
etc etc. In my experience Macs last longer than PCs, and they're only getting more reliable. The part that was most likely to fail was the HD, which is gone from portables and on its way out on desktops. The GPU tended to run too hot in desktop machines from around 2006/2007 and so provided a point of failure, but nothing tends to run too hot in a modern mac. etc etc
And when things DO fail, you can generally work around the problem pretty easily to maintain the machine as useful IF YOU WANT TO. If you are such a princess that you refuse to engage in such workarounds, that's your decision, not Apple's.
Sleepingforest - Thursday, October 30, 2014 - link
You spent extra money on an external enclosure, one of your laptops is a clock, another one is anchored in place with a keyboard and display, and the third needs a fan to be function. NONE of the latter are working laptops, in the sense of a portable computing device. And the HTPC required you to spend a non-trivial amount to keep it working.Significantly reduced functionality is not the same as "working," and expecting an expensive product to last in full working condition without cumbersome hacks is not the same as being a princess. If I have shoes with huge holes in the bottom I don't think "well at least it still covers the top of my foot." I replace it because it no longer fulfills it's primary role of protecting the bottom of my food, regardless of any auxiliary tasks it may still perform (and poorly at that).
FATCamaro - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
Trolling. Not an MBPro owner or a 13 year OSX user. Check this users posts later in the thread. They are nonsensical coming from someone who is a 13 year OS user.ViewRoyal - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
Good one! (͡° ͜ʖ°)You are right. We come across too many of these dishonest trolls, who are just out to be a nuisance to REAL users in the comments section..
KPOM - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
What's wrong with the new iMac? I was impressed that they pulled off a 5K display on a $2499 computer.LostAlone - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link
The display is great. Pity that it can only run at 30fps at 5k though. And pity it doesn't have anything like the graphics muscle to actually display anything other than pictures at 5k too. And unlike proper computers, you can't upgrade, so you'll be making a MASSIVE sacrifice to get all those pixels. If you ever want to do anything other than look at digital photos at 5k, then you need to look elsewhere. Congrats to Apple for selling a system around a 5k display that is utterly unsuited to doing anything that requires a 5k display.ex2bot - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link
Wrong! You are wrong, sir! I cannot list how many ways.:) Seriously, I'm not a huge fan of iMacs, though I am a huge fan of Apple laptops. Your statement that the only thing the iMacs are good for is viewing pictures is ridiculously wrong. Almost as if it's a sport to you or something. The iMacs have fast processors and decent GPUs. They'd be great for photographers and general computing tasks. How about editing 4k video? They can handle that just fine.
To recap: WRONG!
Sleepingforest - Thursday, October 30, 2014 - link
You really think a quad core mobile processor is enough (and that's exactly what it is, a mobile processor thanks to Apple's focus on the thickness of a *desktop*) to drive 4K video editing? 4K video editing is a slow crawl on my 8 thread overclocked desktop.x3n0n1c - Friday, October 31, 2014 - link
The iMacs use Desktop class CPUs, always have. The only exception to that is the very lowest model which uses the internals of a macbook air to cut cost.The GPUs are mobile class.