Yosemite hard to look at?

Surprisingly little about Helvetica in the Ars Technica review of Yosemite

grahamperrin said:

… recommended reading for anyone who imagines that concerns about fonts with OS X began only after Apple began previewing Yosemite. …

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http://blog.cocoia.com/2008/swiss-interface-syndrome/ – nice.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/10/os-x-10-10/3/ (highlight) – in this week's twenty-five page review, were there truly only five sentences about Helvetica? (Am I missing something?)

ScottishCaptain said:

I don't really know how to explain this, but is anyone else finding Yosemite extremely difficult to look at?

I'm not sure if it's the fonts, or the bright colours and lack of contrast, or what- but I can't stand using it for more then an hour at a time. My eyes feel incredibly strained afterwards, assuming I don't get a full blown headache. I have had no such problems under 10.8 (and I stare at the computer for well over 8 hours a day, with several short breaks in-between).

Don't get me wrong, I want to like Yosemite. I think there's some relevant stuff in there, and I like the idea of a flatter UI. I've just... Well, never experienced anything like this in the 20+ years I've been using computers (all the way from DOS to OS/2 Warp, BeOS, Solaris, AIX, various incarnations of Linux, Mac OS 7 to Mac OS X, and Windows 3.1 to Windows 7). I know some systems take a while to get used to and I'm fine with that, but every time I boot into Yosemite for a few hours I come away from it feeling like someone has been prodding my eyes with chopsticks or something.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm fairly certain that using a computer shouldn't be physically taxing?

-SC

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One thing I found that I really like is you can increase the contrast of the OS in System Preferences > Accessibility > Displays

ScottishCaptain said:

I don't really know how to explain this, but is anyone else finding Yosemite extremely difficult to look at?

I'm not sure if it's the fonts, or the bright colours and lack of contrast, or what- but I can't stand using it for more then an hour at a time. My eyes feel incredibly strained afterwards, assuming I don't get a full blown headache. I have had no such problems under 10.8 (and I stare at the computer for well over 8 hours a day, with several short breaks in-between).

Don't get me wrong, I want to like Yosemite. I think there's some relevant stuff in there, and I like the idea of a flatter UI. I've just... Well, never experienced anything like this in the 20+ years I've been using computers (all the way from DOS to OS/2 Warp, BeOS, Solaris, AIX, various incarnations of Linux, Mac OS 7 to Mac OS X, and Windows 3.1 to Windows 7). I know some systems take a while to get used to and I'm fine with that, but every time I boot into Yosemite for a few hours I come away from it feeling like someone has been prodding my eyes with chopsticks or something.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm fairly certain that using a computer shouldn't be physically taxing?

-SC

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I am in the same boat. Just puts way too much strain on my eyes. I am only 39, and have a very good vision.

NYChaos said:

I am in the same boat. Just puts way too much strain on my eyes. I am only 39, and have a very good vision.

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Same for me, try the dark mode, it helped a lot and I personally prefer it to the bright mode

The limited extent of dark mode can make viewing 10.10 more uncomfortable

haafling said:

… dark mode …

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It's useful, but too limited.

For my use case, a dark menu bar and dark Dock had the undesirable effect of making excessively bright things elsewhere appear even brighter.

Teyla said:

… can increase the contrast …

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Thanks, already done, please see post #37 and others above.

PsykX said:

Never as hard as Pixelmator, but I do prefer the old fonts in Mavericks, and the window shades should be darker like in Mavericks. It's like there's too much whitespace now.

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Exactly, totally agree! With this
https://github.com/schreiberstein/lucidagrandeyosemite
you can at least change the font.

Agreed

My first sensation of Yosemite was eyestrain, and if I can be bothered in the future i plan to downgrade to mavericks.

In the mean time unticking "use LCD font smoothing when available" in general settings helped, marginally.

Yosemite is really screwing up my vision

Well, going back to Mavericks till this gets cleared up.

11 minutes till the TM restore is done.

I really tried, but the strain on the eyes is just too much.

ilandmac

ScottishCaptain said:

I don't really know how to explain this, but is anyone else finding Yosemite extremely difficult to look at?

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humar said:

Colors are good for my eyes. I just don't like how the new font looks on non-retina display

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This. I mainly use my rMBP plugged into a 23" non-retina monitor and some fonts bother me.

I know what you mean. I get this too. I think it’s because there’s very little contrast or definition, which seem to have been sacrificed for the “flat” look. I can imagine everyone at Apple assuring Jony "Can Do No Wrong" Ive that it all looks great, whilst quietly registering that the emperor is missing a few items of apparel.

Over 37,000 views to the thread "Yosemite is beautiful" here, but over 148,000 to "Yosemite looks terrible," which I think speaks to the fact that people are somewhat alarmed by the look of it, myself included. It has grown on me since I first used it, though I agree it really could do with some contrast and definition to help .. just looking at it.

Checking the “Reduce Transparency” option in System Preferences > Accessibility seems OK at first, until you notice that doing so produces some weird side-effects, like the one below (the corners - ouch!).

And I just can’t get on with “Increase Contrast”. It’s like, a modern System 6.

jennyp said:

Checking the “Reduce Transparency” option in System Preferences > Accessibility seems OK at first, until you notice that doing so produces some weird side-effects, like the one below (the corners - ouch!).

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Aye its in there as more of an accessibility kludge (for folks that really have to use it) rather than a general user preference feature of the UI itself

I'm not sure how easy this will be for them to fix in future releases (other than to change the style of those overlays completely and do away with rounded corners)

ScottishCaptain said:

I don't really know how to explain this, but is anyone else finding Yosemite extremely difficult to look at?

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for me it's like wandering around wearing the wrong prescription glasses. Not big thick beerbottle lenses turning everything into a goldfish bowl, just a slight one or two prescription out from what I should have got.

I can wander around all day and see all the stuff I'm meant to see without any real conscious impediment, but by time I get home at night my eyes will have been working overtime to compensate and are going to be way more tired than they normally would be.

IMO there's an element of that going on here. When I sit using recent 10.x releases other than Yos, my brain will be taking in all sorts of visual cues, getting all sorts of confirmations and discarding 99.9999% of all that stuff long before it floats up through to my conscious and interrupts my thought processes.

I can regularly pull a 15 or 16 hour session (yeh I know thats not ideal!) and pretty much 'zone out' anything that involves interacting with the OS during that from start to end; at a conscious level it just floats right in one eye and out the other

On 10.10, even when I'm not getting hit with something different that does make its way thru and ring an alarm bell, there's probably umpteen things being given a subconscious double take, so even if I'm not aware of it, my eyes are probably being worked all that much harder as my brain seeks its endless visual confirmations. About an hour or two is all I can manage.

Maybe that's why I really don't mind 'the look of it' in screen shots anywhere near as much as in actual use; I'm looking at a picture, my brain isn't kicking into 'using OSX' mode, my eyes aren't doing their usual constant scanning of every pixel on the screen etc.

On similar lines maybe the changes are (whisper it) just not radical enough; I can happily go back and forwards from Windows to OSX, and never had a problem making the initial transition from one to the other.

Perhaps 10.10 is just too much like earlier releases for me to switch off 'using OSX mode' and actually treat it like something new... Probably best if I hold out on 10.9 for the next three years and jump straight into a radically different 10.13

snorkelman said:

Probably best if I hold out on 10.9 for the next three years and jump straight into a radically different 10.13

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I would stick with it for a while and see. If you hold off using it you'll only delay the transition. And I'm not at all sure that a later version is going to go "backwards" to anything like an older style.

I had a very similar experience to begin with - I positively hated it visually. But I have to admit that it's getting a little easier.

Having said all that, I would have thought that some visual cues for "affordance" in the GUI would be more helpful to those switching to OS X. After all, the whole file system is a visual metaphor. Why not call folder icons "skeuomorphic"? Why not replace them with shapeless blobs of colour? Because if you did, they would give you no visual affordance to their function.

If you're using the "graphite" appearance, those three grey "dots" at the top left of say Safari don't really say anything much about what they do.

And, so far, I'm not too keen on having some underlying colour (e.g., a violent red) glare through places where you just don't want to see it, like through the Safari toolbar as I scroll down, and the tweaks on offer to reduce transparency are really not acceptable.

jennyp said:

I would stick with it for a while and see. If you hold off using it you'll only delay the transition. And I'm not at all sure that a later version is going to go "backwards" to anything like an older style.

I had a very similar experience to begin with - I positively hated it visually. But I have to admit that it's getting a little easier.

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Yeh, I stuck with it all through the betas until final release (June 3rd till last day or so) I cant say it got appreciably better for me, though hope it works out for you

I think what may be bugging your eye is the excessive use of blur, as your eyes may try to constantly focus on it without success. Have you tried checking "reduce transparency" in the Accessibility preferences?

I like the look, but I can agree with some of the OP's comments as well.

At the moment I'm trying something mentioned in Siracusa's review. In accessibility, there's the "Increase Contrast" option. It allows the same "look" to stay on the screen, but gives you some extra depth.

It's a stronger affect than "reduce transparency", but it might be what some are looking for.

A few brief quotes, a question and a comment

The last quote below was posted by hoeij to a Linux-related topic.

A few highlights for hoeij (if interested) and anyone else who might be new to this topic:

Ddyracer said:

… same amount of eye strain for me.

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VacantPsalm said:

… I also was getting a bit of fatigue from looking at it for a long while. Lots of white usually does that to me. …

PS: I'm on a retina Macbook Pro.

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See the last quote below …

eastamherstbias said:

It is the font. There is not getting used to it. It is tiny and your eyes need to strain. …

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dianeoforegon said:

I have Sjögren (dry eye) and the brightness of the folder icons are especially jarring to me. …

We need to have a way to adjust the glare. Apple hasn't been especially interested in anyone that has special needs. …

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RedrowMagic said:

My first sensation of Yosemite was eyestrain …

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ilandmac said:

… back to Mavericks …I really tried, but the strain on the eyes is just too much. …

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snorkelman said:

for me it's like wandering around wearing the wrong prescription glasses …a slight one or two prescription out …

… About an hour or two is all I can manage. …

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snorkelman said:

Yeh, I stuck with it all through the betas until final release (June 3rd till last day or so) I cant say it got appreciably better for me …

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snorkelman: any better yet, have you grown accustomed to it; can you work comfortably with Yosemite for longer than two hours?

hoeij said:

I've been using Linux for over 20 years now (since version 0.98) and recently acquired a macbook pro 15". To me, the #1 reason to use the Mac is the retina screen. This screen is a one-way ticket, once you get used to it, you can never go back.

I could think of other reasons to pick Linux and other reasons to pick Mac, but for me, reason #1 trumps all the other reasons combined.

So far my experience with Mac is very short, but it looks like switching to Mac goes something like this: (a) you'll pay a lot of money, (b) you'll get something that is much better than what you could have imagined, (c) you'll be very happy with it.

As far as I know, you simply can't buy a better laptop than macbook retina at any price.

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If Apple intentionally gave less consideration to customers whose environments are not all-Retina (a majority?) than to customers in all-Retina environments: it would have been polite to make that intention clear from the outset. At WWDC 2014, and so on.

I was similarly critical of Apple when the company ceased to include Rosetta. I was aware of the change – and happy with it – but I thought it careless of Apple to not make so significant a change more obvious to potential purchasers. I understood, completely, why some customers were disappointed or angry, and I was doubly disappointed by the few within the Mac community who seemed to take pleasure in unsupportive attitudes along the lines of "How could you not have known?".

I expect to get a new 15" MacBook Pro very soon, and I assume that Mavericks will appear better than it already does on a 17" MacBookPro5,2, but my interest in this topic and others will not diminish. (There's a loss of confidence that makes me wonder how long it will be before Apple does something else that falls far below customer expectations.)

It's not the most popular topic, but it may – eventually – prove to be exemplary of an uncharacteristically questionable approach to development by Apple.

I actually find the Yosemite font easier on my eyes than Mavericks. Although, if you're using a non-retina display, I could see how the Yosemite font would be more difficult to look at.

I'm torn between transparency or not.

grahamperrin said:

snorkelman: any better yet, have you grown accustomed to it; can you work comfortably with Yosemite for longer than two hours?

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oh much, much better now - banished from the test machine so I no longer have to use it at all

Yosemite was too bright, too harsh

Traverse said:

… principle of needing to use accessibility when I have no inherent disability. …

… now that I have used Yosemite heavily, I will say this: using Mavericks does now seem "UI heavy" if that makes sense.

Yosemite trimmed down the UI, used lighter colors, and the translucency does make the UI seem a bit "lighter" (that may not be the best word). When I go back Mavericks with the glass 3D dock, shiny icons, and heavy gray toolbars I do get a sense of "weight." and even a bit clunky. Don't get me wrong, I like both designs, but Mavericks is just easier to use so I prefer it.

I knew, and was okay with, the fact that OS X would be redesigned for iOS consistency and trends. I wish they done a more hybrid between Yosemite and Mavericks. Bolder font, slight 3D effects on certain elements, reduced translucency, etc.

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If the darker greys of Mavericks are relatively 'heavy', then 'light' might be a good word for Yosemite.

Too light, too bright. I tried Yosemite again a few days ago, but not for long. Uncomfortably bright.

Restarting Mavericks, OS X 10.9.5, was a relief.

----

The excessive brightness was probably one of many problems that I simply didn't bother to report. I know, that's defeatist, but honestly: so many things were wrong about the design of pre-release Yosemite, I had almost zero confidence that whoever drove those changes would respond reasonably.

Happened to me as well OP. I tried recently to give it a chance and couldn't go for more than a few hours and it just looks to kiddy/teenage girl to me. Also too bright. (Dark mode didn't help) They probably won't ever change it since the overall opinion seems to like the look, and most will get used to it like they did iOS7, which also looks like crap IMO.

ErikGrim said:

Completely opposite for me. Once you get over the novelty of the UI updates, it just fades back into the background just like you expect and OS to do.

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And this really is key, as an OS should not be be something you look at and belabor for hours on end. It should be something that intuitively helps you to get where you're going (to do what you need to do, functionally) and keep out of the way.

I could never understand why my Android friends take such delight in clouds floating across their home screen. Or icons dancing around. What's the use? To me, it's like get to the app you need and do what you need to do to complete your business.

And that's where the magnificence of Mac OS X and iOS shines through.

Maybe if the OP and others that are getting eyestrain lower the screen brightness it'll stop.

Another possible solution would be to have an eye test! It's possible you need reading glasses if your eyes get blurry, or you get headaches after a while reading - if you already wear glasses, you may need to be retested. Computer monitors are notorious for highlighting bad eyesight.

Yosemite is too bright

Artimus12 said:

… lower the screen brightness …

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Done – months ago. It's not a solution.