“For a few years there, it felt like major changes in OS X’s look and behavior were imminent,” Jason Snell reports for Macworld. “The conventional wisdom during the Lion and Mountain Lion eras was that Apple had placed OS X on a collision course with iOS, and inevitably the two would come together to form… well, if not a single operating system, then two variations on a single theme.”
“In the past year, though, it’s become clear that Apple no longer believes in that approach, if it ever truly did,” Snell reports. “iOS 7 took big, bold steps in one direction — and OS X Yosemite takes smaller steps in a different one. After spending several days running Yosemite (on a Retina MacBook Pro provided to me by Apple and pre-loaded with the first developer release), it’s clear that Apple has a very clear and distinct future in mind for the Mac — even though some of today’s Apple hardware might not be up to delivering it.”
Snell reports, “For a while now, I’ve thought that 2014 would be the year that Retina spreads across the Mac product line. After spending time with Yosemite on both Retina and non-Retina systems, I’m more confident than ever in that guess. Yosemite’s new design feels like it was built for Retina displays…”
Read more,and see screenshots, in the full article here.
The new font is OK, but the letters are a bit too close together and it makes it a bit hard to read at times.
I’m glad someone said this. I hope the final decision about the new UI font is not final, and user experience will influence some changes. Narrow and close-together characters is exactly one of the reasons why the Windows UI was so annoying to use. Not sure if Windows 8 has addressed that finally, but it’s sad to see OS X go in the wrong direction.
Helvetica sucks. It is always hard to read. On a retina or 4K display, there is absolutely no reason to have such a wimpy font.
Isn’t Helvetica just too boring for Apple?
I haven’t had any trouble viewing Yosemite on a non-Retina display. My Mac mini has a really nice HP Pavilion 23xi attached via HDMI. Everything shows up great. Of course it’s not as good as my MacBook Pro w/Retina display, but that’s no different than it is with Mavericks.
I choose to believe the trashcan is glass, not plastic.
The Apple theme is now “glass” not “metal”. This has much more potential in design elements.
I think it looks awesome.
I only wish the world continues to move away from utilitarianism and takes to heart that we are only on this planet once, unless you are reincarnated, and should be looking at something beautiful every day.
My hats off to all of the artists and designers that make our work and play joyful.
Let’s let Apple continue to make design choices that are deemed by some as “pointless” as this author suggests.
I welcome those changes as utterly important and required.