The low readability/contrast in some places seems to be the main problem.
Sad to see the old Finder logo go – the central curve ending outside the "box" was a nice touch.
The new dock reminded me of the old Powerbook G4 I had, with 10.2 installed. I still somewhat miss the whole "Aqua" interface sometimes – but maybe that's just nostalgia or I over the years it's become harder to surprise me with UI design.
Yeah the first thing I checked when I logged into 10.10 for the first time was the Finder icon, and sure enough, he looks like a total doofus. Overall there's a decent bit to like about Yosemite, a lot that... will take some getting used to.
Hopefully they'll refine it a lot more before release; also, can't wait for Dark Mode to hit the beta.
I couldn't hold out, and had a mini panic attack when Git and Ruby were jacked. Doesn't help that I actually uninstalled Xcode 5.1.1 after installing the Xcode 6 beta (broke a good bit of stuff). Ended up getting all settled, but still, not worth it. No point in rolling back now though (if that's even possible).
> The low readability/contrast in some places seems to be the main problem.
Contrast is decreasing everywhere these days, and that trend is really causing me trouble. I hope they darken things a bit. Perhaps the light-on-dark mode will help with that?
10.2 was a very pleasant surprise coming from windows or mac os 9. I don't think we will have that sort of jump in the future until things become 3 dimensional.
I agree. Lucida is about the nicest sans-serif screen font I've ever used. Helvetica has noted flaws at normal screen resolution. At Retina resolution, typography for the screen starts following same rules as typography for print. Helvetica is not traditionally used for significant amounts of body text in print typography. It is better for titles and signs.
If you look at the Safari traffic light icons, the spacing above them is narrower than the spacing below. It's a bit hard to see immediately but it's highlighted with red lines in that section.
And the arrows aren't vertically aligned with the buttons. I don't despair, it's common of Apple to make big changes and gradually improve over time, Aqua wasn't perfect, but in Mountain Lion (despite not being truly Aqua, it has evolved to a certain perfection.) – what Apple have released in Yosemite is for developers, it will surely change before the open summer beta, and it will surely change again before Golden Master.
Top aligned with the arrows? Weird choice, if it is a choice at all and not coincidence. If it is on purpose, I would like to see a version with larger traffic lights that also align with the bottom of the arrows. Those might be too large, but I would want to see them, anyways.
Not really … those folders are as similar to the old bright blue folders of OS X as the Yosemite folders are to them … which is to say not a whole lot.
I was looking forward to seeing some feature changes, but I could care less about anything this post raved/complained about. Prepare yourself for some serious bike shedding though.
I fondly remember Ars Technica's review of Mac OS X Developer Preview 3, back in February 2000, where John Siracusa roasts the "lickable" new Aqua UI that's a complete mess:
Apple moves away from Aqua after more than a decade using it, and you're surprised designers have already started pouring over the details to see what's new?
> There are still many rough edges in the new OS ...
I hate to say it, but that blog post is mostly bike shedding. Do people really care that the toolbar icons aren't perfectly aligned, that the folder icons lack a little contrast and that the search bar looks like a button?
It seems trivial when you read people criticizing it, but even though you may never explicitly notice them, small annoying things will accumulate to you feeling not right about the design.
I cannot imagine a scenario that any of the points of criticism mentioned pose a real problem. UX problems arise when things are ugly, when they get in your way, when they surprise you more than they should or when they limit the accessibility, which is clearly not the case here. It's irrelevant bike shedding because OSX is 'sexy' enough anyway; there is not enough to gain that could justify the energy people put into it.
It's sexy enough because they put that effort in in the first place. If they don't continue it would begin to look sloppy, as the piece points out. It's not bike shedding because good design is integral to Apple's brand, and good design is about attention to detail.
I appologize if that came across in an offensive way. It’s just that people seem to delude themselves into thinking that talking about minute design flaws in Apple products would sustain their high quality UX more. It’s extremely likely that they don’t listen at all to this kind of critique.
I didn't say they posed UX problems. I don't even think the author of the article suggested that. I merely suggested that small problems add up to a less than optimal user experience. The article is "OSX Yosemite under a microscope", not "OSX Yosemite has substantial UX problems"
> I didn't say they posed UX problems. I don't even think the author of the article suggested that.
The article literally says that there a still many rough edges in OS X. I don’t see rough edges. There are small inconsistent details and extremely minor legibility problems. It’s not worth mentioning and Apple won’t listen anyway.
> I merely suggested that small problems add up to a less than optimal user experience.
I believe that this is only true if you delude yourself into thinking these minor inconsistencies and flaws matter.
There will always remain some "rough edges" because costs rise exponentially when approaching an optimal design. People have lifes, deadlines etc. and Apple is no exclusion to that. Of course they could find and fix these problems if the threw another $10MM at it, but they don’t because they’ve already reached 98% of optimal and the last 2% aren’t even worth thinking about. There are much bigger problems elsewhere (both from their perspective and from customer perspective).
Agreed. I wish they'd focus more attention on the kernel. Many of the system processes frequently run amok consuming excessive cpu or memory. And the filesystem is hopelessly outdated.
I think its good the search bar looks like a button. It makes it more clear that searching is an action. The user has to click on it to activate the textbox anyway, and once clicked it should be quite apparent that its a textbox.
> In particular, I like the new trash can icon. Craig Federighi made a note of the time they spent refining this particular icon and the effort definitely shows.
Was it lost on the author that Federighi's comment on the trashcan was made in jest?
I think there was humor in it, but it was humor in him being aware that it is objectively weird to spend a lot of time on something as trivial as a trash can icon. But in the context of Apple's history, it is a testament to their attention to detail.
I have no doubt that they did spend what most companies would consider a ridiculous amount of time on it. And that's why it's funny.
The delivery of the comment was jovial in nature, but I do believe him that the team spent considerable time refining the trash can until they were satisfied with its look.
I don’t think that’s the case at all. He was telling you that they spent a lot of time on the trashcan, knowing that sounds a little ridiculous. That’s where the humour was, not in the designers at Apple not actually caring about the trashcan. It was certainly not set up as an ironic statement in any way.
If Apple didn’t really spend a lot of time on the trashcan then he was just dishonest, but not saying something in jest.
I started using Mac OS X at version 10.4, and over the years it's becoming really apparent when part of a style change is to appeal to perceived obsolescence.
When a reviewer says "this is definitely an improvement over the last version, which looked and felt awkward", I recall how in their review of the last version, they said the same thing.
I'm really surprised at how similar their new checkboxes are to the ones I designed for my music player Bahamut[1] last year.
Which makes it kind of ironic and upsetting that the UI APIs they provide for writing Bahamut (AppKit) made it so incredibly difficult to make it look that way.
- The inconsistency between some icons (e.g. Finder vs. Trash).
- The inconsistency between icons and the overall UI (e.g. folder icons just look blurry, while other icons have sharp lines).
- Juxtaposed rounded buttons in the toolbar are weird.
- Aliasing on some UI elements (e.g. tooltips, slider, buttons, sidebar).
- Too low contrast on some UI elements (e.g., sidebar, traffic lights).
IMO Apple is struggling to make this new visual language coherent and polished, I guess it'll take more 2-3 iterations to get to the level of coherency Aqua achieved.
I feel the same way, I think it will definitely take a couple more iterations for the new design language to feel strong. But, look at the first beta of iOS 7 and compare it to iOS 7.1/8 and Yosemite. Huge, huge improvements already, IMO.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 88.0 ms ] threadThe new dock reminded me of the old Powerbook G4 I had, with 10.2 installed. I still somewhat miss the whole "Aqua" interface sometimes – but maybe that's just nostalgia or I over the years it's become harder to surprise me with UI design.
Hopefully they'll refine it a lot more before release; also, can't wait for Dark Mode to hit the beta.
Contrast is decreasing everywhere these days, and that trend is really causing me trouble. I hope they darken things a bit. Perhaps the light-on-dark mode will help with that?
PS: This comment doesn't bring anything of value to the conversation but negativity and I am sorry for that, but it's been nagging at me for years.
Also, Id suggest waiting a couple days/weeks if you're a Chrome user. Just keeps crashing, every build, even Canary.
They should have used a Humanist sans-serif (https://typekit.com/lists/humanist-sans-serifs), of which Lucida is a good example.
UI fonts are not supposed to be used for large blocks of text. UI fonts are used for, well, basically “titles and signs”.
See: http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/linuxguide3/kde4-dolphin.p...
I fondly remember Ars Technica's review of Mac OS X Developer Preview 3, back in February 2000, where John Siracusa roasts the "lickable" new Aqua UI that's a complete mess:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2000/02/mac-os-x-dp3/
A good and honest critic is the artist's best friend, even it may sting for a moment.
I hate to say it, but that blog post is mostly bike shedding. Do people really care that the toolbar icons aren't perfectly aligned, that the folder icons lack a little contrast and that the search bar looks like a button?
http://xkcd.com/1015/
The article literally says that there a still many rough edges in OS X. I don’t see rough edges. There are small inconsistent details and extremely minor legibility problems. It’s not worth mentioning and Apple won’t listen anyway.
> I merely suggested that small problems add up to a less than optimal user experience.
I believe that this is only true if you delude yourself into thinking these minor inconsistencies and flaws matter.
There will always remain some "rough edges" because costs rise exponentially when approaching an optimal design. People have lifes, deadlines etc. and Apple is no exclusion to that. Of course they could find and fix these problems if the threw another $10MM at it, but they don’t because they’ve already reached 98% of optimal and the last 2% aren’t even worth thinking about. There are much bigger problems elsewhere (both from their perspective and from customer perspective).
Was it lost on the author that Federighi's comment on the trashcan was made in jest?
I have no doubt that they did spend what most companies would consider a ridiculous amount of time on it. And that's why it's funny.
If Apple didn’t really spend a lot of time on the trashcan then he was just dishonest, but not saying something in jest.
When a reviewer says "this is definitely an improvement over the last version, which looked and felt awkward", I recall how in their review of the last version, they said the same thing.
Which makes it kind of ironic and upsetting that the UI APIs they provide for writing Bahamut (AppKit) made it so incredibly difficult to make it look that way.
[1]: https://github.com/sdegutis/bahamut
- The inconsistency between some icons (e.g. Finder vs. Trash).
- The inconsistency between icons and the overall UI (e.g. folder icons just look blurry, while other icons have sharp lines).
- Juxtaposed rounded buttons in the toolbar are weird.
- Aliasing on some UI elements (e.g. tooltips, slider, buttons, sidebar).
- Too low contrast on some UI elements (e.g., sidebar, traffic lights).
IMO Apple is struggling to make this new visual language coherent and polished, I guess it'll take more 2-3 iterations to get to the level of coherency Aqua achieved.