Apple : WWDC2014: 10 big things you need to know about OS X 10.10 Yosemite

WWDC2014: 10 big things you need to know about OS X 10.10 Yosemite

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10 big things you need to know about Yosemite

The new OS X, OS X 10.10, will be called Yosemite (sadly it's named after the place rather than the Looney Tunes cartoon character). There's a brand new interface, some impressive new features and the odd prospect of Macs becoming rather large and expensive iPhone accessories. Here are the ten biggest things about OS ten ten point ten.

1. It's got a brand new interface

Yosemite has new typography, a flatter design and lots of translucency. Some observers have rightly pointed out a resemblance to iOS 7; other less kind observers have equally rightly pointed out the similarities to Windows Vista. The dock looks like a single block of frosted glass, the icons are flatter and the title bars are translucent like Safari on iOS 7. Translucency is used throughout to emphasize content; for example, in messages the messages themselves are on solid backgrounds but the message list is translucent.

There's good news for pro app users too: there's a new dark mode that turns the menu bar and other elements dark grey to match the darker interface of apps such as Aperture and Logic Pro X.

2. It's got Windows Vista's Sidebar

Apple calls it Notification Center but we're not fooled: the presence of app widgets in the slide-in panel means it's a 2014 take on the old Windows Sidebar. The Center provides an at-a-glance Today view, just like iOS, and there's a second list of app notifications and other key information.

3. Spotlight does much more

Spotlight looks rather like the excellent Alfred app: instead of popping out of the top right corner of the screen it takes pride of place in the center, providing easy access not just to files but to Wikipedia, your apps, to maps and associated Yelp reviews and any other content you might be interested in. It displays results as inline previews and looks rather nifty.

4. Mail works

"Email works now" isn't much of a boast, but it solves a problem for a lot of OS X users. The revised Mail app focuses on the basics - fast fetching, not hiding sodding messages for no good reason - and also includes a nifty feature called MailDrop. It's designed to prevent email attachments from being bounced, and if you send mail with huge attachments - up to 5GB - to a non-OS X user they'll get a download link instead of a file attachment.

Mail also gets MarkUp, which enables you to scribble on and annotate images you send in messages. It works on PDFs too.

5. Stream smarter

The new Safari promises two additional hours of Netflix before your battery runs out. It also features significantly faster web app performance, and it's been given a redesign too: the interface has been condensed to a single bar. When you click in the address box your favorites appear in an iOS-style grid. There's an iOS-style sharing menu too, and private browsing is now available on a per-window basis instead of putting the entire browser into private mode. Apple also promises easy subscriptions to RSS news feeds, which it ditched after Safari V.6.

#6-#10

6. It has excellent iOS integration

The new Continuity feature looks fantastic if it works as well as advertised, which, given iTunes' ongoing inability to find our iPhones when they're RIGHT THERE, is by no means guaranteed. Continuity makes your Mac and iOS devices part of one big happy family. Jobs you start on one device can be finished on another; for example, you can start composing a message or document on an iPad and bring it up on your Mac, and vice-versa.

Communications are shared too: SMSes sent to your phone can be read and replied to on your Mac, and you can use your Mac as a speakerphone for your iPhone via an instant, zero-configuration hotspot that works even if the iPhone is charging in a completely different room.

Apple's strategy is clear here: it's making iOS and OS X look more alike and work better together, but its mobile and desktop operating systems remain distinctly different beasts. Maybe that'll change if the rumored ARM-based MacBook Air ever makes it out of Jonathan Ive's lab.

7. iDisk is back

Well, almost. The new iCloud Drive looks awfully like Dropbox and works in much the same way, enabling you to store and synchronize any files you like between Mac, iOS and PC. iCloud gets a new pricing structure too: the first 5GB is still free, but 20GB is a reasonable 99c per month and 200GB is $3.99 per month.

8. AirDrop works properly

If you were flabbergasted by AirDrop's inability to share between Macs and iOS devices, you'll be delighted to discover that there are no such problems in Yosemite.

9. There's no sign of Siri

While the revamped Spotlight does much the same on OS X as Siri does on iOS, there's no sign of the much-rumored Siri integration in Yosemite: unlike in iOS 8, it seems that you won't be able to control your Mac with a cheery "Hey, Siri.".

10. It'll be free this autumn

Like Mavericks, Yosemite will be a free upgrade this autumn (or a free download right now if you're one of the WWDC attendees). If that's too long to wait there will be a free public beta this summer - and interestingly, that's the first time there's been a public beta of OS X since the very first version back in 2000. That one cost money, but this time the beta will be free.

We can't stress enough the importance of patience here: while dodgy downloads of Yosemite will no doubt appear online in a matter of hours, it's early beta software that isn't intended for use on people's everyday computers.

What are the new iOS 8 features?

WWDC 2014: Why Apple's OS X Yosemite means business

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Any suggestion Apple was prioritising iOS and resting on its laurels regarding OS X were blown out of the water at WWDC 2014's keynote.

The company unveiled OS X Yosemite, boasting a slew of new features, a revamped but still familiar design language, and plenty of opportunities for professionals who work with and create for Macs.

As ever, the aesthetic choices are likely to prove divisive, bar the much-requested 'dark' UI mode that's a boon for video editors and visual creatives; elsewhere, Apple's fixation with translucency is questionable from a legibility standpoint, and its obsession in maximising content viewports by shoving buttons in toolbars could make it fiddly to move windows.

Otherwise, efficiency was the watchword.

Do things faster

A clear pattern emerged as demos unveiled new features within OS X that would help people work smarter and faster, enabling more time to be spent concentrating on important things. Apple's tag-line of "do everyday things in extraordinary ways" seemed entirely appropriate.

Notification Center showcases this shift in thinking, transforming a rather throwaway stream of app notifications to a centralised at-a-glance overview of your day's events, reminders and weather, along with a succinct summary of what's happening tomorrow.

Widgets can be added from the App Store to customise this pane, enabling you to perform basic tasks rather than opening up a browser or app.

Spotlight re-jig

Spotlight has been entirely revamped, borrowing heavily from OS X productivity app Alfred. Again, the emphasis is on presenting information more clearly, smartly, and in-context. Rather than a huge list of files relating to a search string barrelling down from the menu bar, Spotlight now opens in the centre of the screen, and results are more intelligently curated.

When typing an app name, you'll see recent files and previews; when searching for more general information, you'll receive Wikipedia content, maps, and conversion results.

Even the less visible OS X changes have the potential to transform mundane tasks and make the Mac experience more streamlined for professional users.

iCloud Drive provides a more flexible means of accessing documents in Apple's cloud, enabling you to work across applications and organise files as you please; and MailDrop and MarkUp, respectively, bring the means to route massive attachments via Mail and annotation to emails, natively and intuitively.

Get connected

Perhaps the biggest productivity news regarding OS X Yosemite, however, is how it aims to provide a seamless experience across platforms. This is at odds with Apple's rivals, whose visions typically revolve around making a single device do everything; Apple instead recognises the value in varied form factors, but OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 will provide the means for devices to more harmoniously work together.

Pre-WWDC, many people were expecting a slightly greater degree of cooperation between Apple's platforms, most notably AirDrop working between devices; what no-one foresaw was the degree to which Apple wanted its hardware to work together. Devices will now recognise when they're near each other, providing unparalleled coherence and continuity.

Examples Apple demonstrated included making and receiving iPhone calls on the Mac, full integration of SMS within Messages, Instant Hotspot for rapidly connecting a Mac to a networked iOS device, and the audacious Handoff.

The last of those enables you to automatically pass work you're doing between devices, taking advantage of their relevant hardware and input methods, or purely because of mobility and environment. PCalc developer James Thomson told TechRadar this was the feature that really caught his eye during the keynote:

"That idea of moving tasks from iOS to Mac and back again was something I was already thinking about adding to my app, and having an OS mechanism to do it should make things much simpler."

You've been Sherlocked

Inevitably, some of these new features come at a cost, and accusations have flown around that Apple has again 'Sherlocked' existing apps and services.

The phrase derives from Apple's now-discontinued Sherlock search tool, which made its debut in Mac OS 8.5, supplanting third-party equivalent Watson. With its new features, OS X Yosemite tears chunks out of a range of players, from the aforementioned Alfred to services such as WeTransfer, Google Drive and Dropbox.

But changes to the OS also provide business opportunities: new features add scope for app upgrades to take advantage of them, and even widgets could become a profitable sideline for developers, if the revamped Notification Center takes off.

Still, as Thomson remarks, developers will have their work cut out for them, given Apple's simultaneous announcement regarding new programming language Swift:

"I've been programming in C/C++ for over 20 years, and in Objective-C for over six. The thought of having to start over and learn a new language isn't something I've begun to process."

He adds that although Objective-C won't vanish overnight, "everything is going to be Swift going forward," which is a "really big change from a developer standpoint," although one he reckons will benefit the platform through Apple thinking about the long-term.

Hit and miss

Thomson says developers may have been left stunned by Swift, but the reaction online nonetheless seems broadly positive. Still, there were omissions, both in terms of user features and also from a developer standpoint.

Elephant-in-the-room iTunes somehow survived, despite its iOS equivalent only being a store, and separate apps existing for music, video, podcasts and iOS app purchase. A rumoured two-up window view in full-screen or elsewhere remains absent, meaning no Windows 8-style window-snapping and full-screen remaining too limiting for some.

And developer Kevin Meaney says one of the biggest developer grumbles persists: "The process for code-signing and applying entitlements in preparation for app release is buggy and poorly designed, and so it's easy to make mistakes.

"Because of poor error messages, it's tricky to work out what's gone wrong, and so devs end up with duplicate code-signing certificates, and are confused which certificate to use in any particular situation. Apple needs to take the approach it's following with application development and apply that to code-signing."

The future of OS X

But beyond such specifics, it's clear the general path Apple is taking with OS X is one in which developers can thrive, creating apps that work in tandem with new features that will benefit professional users.

"When the Mac turned 30, Apple went to great lengths to stress that the Mac wasn't standing still, and the WWDC announcements certainly prove that," says Realmac Software product manager Nik Fletcher.

"The move to a sandboxed environment in OS X worried advanced users that tight-knit app integration would be stifled." But he reckons Apple's now proving otherwise.

"Apple's announcement of App Extensions should prove popular, and elevates third-party apps to the level of first-party apps. Best of all, this is also true for iOS, making it even easier for developers who build for the Mac and iOS to provide great experiences across all Apple devices."

Continuity indeed.

Yahuui Blog

Tuesday, June 3, 2014