A Look At OS X Yosemite And iOS 8.1
by Brandon Chester on October 27, 2014 8:00 AM EST
Introduction
It has been a busy year for Apple, although one could argue it has been more of a busy few months. The yearly updates for most of Apple's products now occur in September and October, and as a result we've seen the release of a number of new products and services in a very short period of time. On the hardware side we have the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the iPad Air 2 and Mini 3, the iMac with Retina 5K display, and a preview of the upcoming Apple Watch. The software side has arguably been even more exciting with the release of iOS 8 and its first major update iOS 8.1, OS X Yosemite, and Apple Pay.
The theme this year appears to be integration and the power of a software and hardware ecosystem. Apple has always had some level of integration between iOS and OS X. As time went on, both operating systems began to share a core set of applications like Reminders, Calendar, and Notes. The iPad extended this even further by bringing the iWork and iLife suites to mobile. iCloud also played a key role in integrating both systems, by synchronizing documents and photos between all of a user's devices. However, the launch of iOS 7 with its visual and functional enhancements left many of the shared features and applications on OS X feeling left behind.
OS X Yosemite brings with it a massive visual overhaul, on a scale even greater than what we saw with iOS 7. This makes sense, as OS X is an operating system for desktops and laptops which makes it inherently more expansive and complex than iOS. Although OS X is not nearly as popular as iOS in terms of user base, the fact that the redesign changes some visual elements that have existed for over 14 years makes it quite a monumental moment in Apple's history. These changes finally unify the visual styles of both operating systems, which were once united but split with the launch of iOS 7.
The integration of these two operating systems goes far beyond a common type of visual design. OS X Yosemite and iOS 8.1 also include new features that allow them to work together in unprecedented ways. Features like Handoff blur the borders between the iPhone, the Mac, and the iPad by allowing you to continue work you began on one device on another. SMS and call forwarding takes communication abilities that were typically reserved for the iPhone and brings them to every device.
There's a lot to talk about, and it all begins at the aesthetic level with the new design of Yosemite.
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Impulses - Friday, October 31, 2014 - link
Clearly that just means you're a shill, doing it for the money rather than the love of all things out of Cupertino.jk
KoolAidMan1 - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
Its all because not enough negative things were said, right?Middle aged fanboys and their unfulfilled negativity quotas, how sad...
retrospooty - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
Generally speaking tech articles will list the good and bad and diplay it for the user to determine what fits best. I honestly cannot recall the last time I saw anything at Anandtech on the neg. 1/2 of that equation with regards to Apple products... And there has been quite of that alot lately... Anandtech? Amazingly quiet.But, drink on kool aid man. Your name says it all.
KoolAidMan1 - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link
Or maybe all the positive reviews you see on the internet are because its actually good?Your love of conspiracies rivals 9/11 truthers
retrospooty - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link
OR MAybe I see all of the negative reports of the heinous slowness IOS8 has caused and the various other problems and bugs that go along with it... My once nice iPad 4 is now slower scrolling through web pages than my old Droid3 w/OMAP CPU on Gingerbread FFS. Then I read an article at a once great tech site that has been my home page for over 15 years and see "Its a little bluebird on my shoulder".I am not calling that a conspiracy, but it is a very one sided take on things... Which as I said is par for the course at Anandtech for the past several years. If you cant see that then you are far too biased to even talk about it... Oh wait... n/m
Brett Howse - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link
Let's be fair here this is right from Brandon's iOS8 review: "Given that the iPad 3 I have for testing falls into both the Apple A5(X) camp and the iPad camp, I won't be updating it to iOS 8. While the new features like SMS Relay will be nice, the missing features and issues like keyboard lag outweigh the benefits of updating."KoolAidMan1 - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link
The iPad Air was my first one. It runs everything great in iOS 8, totally fast and smooth.I can't speak for your two year old hardware. I know my GS3 from the same year was choppy and slow right when I bought it, wifi was bugged after an update, and so on. Brainwashed apologists deflect that but whatever.
Nothing is perfect, even your precious, but try and keep your head together.
retrospooty - Wednesday, October 29, 2014 - link
It doesn't require you to "speak to" it. It's all over the place. The slowness, the apps crashing, even on the pliant 6 and 6 plus.KoolAidMan1 - Wednesday, October 29, 2014 - link
iPhone 6 here, solid. No slowness, no stutters, no crashing. Oh, right, I must be lying...And you're still going with the bendgate thing when only dozens out of tens of millions of units have bent?
Suckers that feed on news cycles are funny.
KoolAidMan1 - Wednesday, October 29, 2014 - link
By the way, I just Googled for "bent iPhone" to see how big it is. The stories run from September 25th to October 1st, then nothing.Only a couple dozen out of tens of millions of units have bent. If this was actually a problem then it would still be a part of the news cycle, maybe even a recall.
I changed my mind. Middle aged fanboys desperately grasping at dead news stories from a month ago are what's actually funny.