Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite Review

Yosemite is the second version of OS X since its reboot last year, when Apple switched from naming its annual OS X updates after big cats to places in California. It also neatly side-stepped the problem of where to go after 10.9 by avoiding the use of numbers altogether (although they do still exist in the geekier parts of the OS like System Information, where Yosemite is referred to as OS X 10.10).

Interface

The most obvious change, visually at least, is the new interface. Yosemite does 

to the Mac what iOS 7 did to the iPhone and iPad. Its user interface is flatter – 

though not flat, there are still drop shadows and other nods to the third dimension, 

it's just that now they exist for a purpose rather than being merely eye candy. No 

more glassy textures.

There's more translucency in Yosemite than its predecessor, Mavericks. Where once it was limited to the Finder's menu bar, it now pops up in lots of places, including Finder menus and the sidebar of Finder windows. It's been tweaked so that the underlying image is blurred and less distracting than in Mavericks, but we suspect it will still be a love it or hate it feature. If you do hate it, you can 'reduce' it in the Accessibility pane of System Preferences.

Perhaps the most controversial change in Yosemite's user interface, however, is the switch in font from Lucida Grande to Helvetica Neue – another alignment with iOS.

Some of OS X's application icons have changed to resemble their iOS counterparts.

Finder

Not a huge amount has changed here, but there is one key addition: iCloud Drive. 

Your iCloud storage drive now shows up in the Finder and you can drag and drop 

files and folders to it just like any other location. It also displays the files you've 

opted to store there from apps like Pages, Numbers, and Text Edit.

Folders are now a brighter blue. For those of us who used to mark Finder 
files and folders with a specific coloor to indicate action that needed to be 
taken.

Dock

The shelf has gone, which will be a great relief to many, and the Dock has now 

reverted back to its original format, a rectangle. Not so good is the loss of the 

Dock preferences from the Apple menu – to change things like magnification or 

show/hide, you must now pay a visit to System Preferences.

Windows and Button

The traffic light buttons at the top left of windows have, like everything else in 

Yosemite, lost their glassy texture and are now flat matte red, amber, and green. 

But there's a more significant change – the green button now acts, by default, as 

the full-screen switch in apps that support full-screen use. The arrows at the top 

right corner of windows are gone. In apps that don't support full-screen operation, 

the green button reverts to its regular duty of maximising windows. Holding down 

the Option (Alt) key also switches the green button from full-screen to maximise.

Dark Mode

Brand new in Yosemite is Dark Mode, which turns some aspects of the OS a much 

darker shade of grey, to make it more comfortable to use your Mac in dim lighting. 

These include the Finder menu bar, Dock, and application switcher.

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