Yosemite looks terrible!

iPhone and Watch and my iMAC Question

blucolar said:

Just my opinion:
What Tim Cook and J. Ive needed was a wireless capable jump drive home station for their iPhone. Preferably with a keyboard and some sort of screen, if possible. Welcome to Yosemite, which is nothing more then a place for iPhone users to store pictures, finish projects started on the iPhone, and manage the Apps while the iPhone is charging. It would also be practical it the interfaces looked similar. So you see, form follows function. They expect you’ll get used to the font, it is just a peripheral device after all, 34,000 iPhones sold a day. The new 12 inch MacBook is a perfect mate for the iPhone.
And:
The apple watch, contains a smaller less capable version of Yosemite that can be worn. A lesser interface that the iPhone can use wirelessly to call the wearers attention to Apps on the iPhone that require or might need their attention. It can also tell time.
Something else I found is that if you try to project Yosemite onto an average screen with an average projector, corporate budgets what they are, it is unreadable, too much white and small type.

Click to expand...

Since I do not possess nor use an iPHONE nor the watch - I use a 2008 iMAC which I am happy with - where does that leave us 'old timers'?

sgtbob said:

where does that leave us 'old timers'?

Click to expand...

Unable to buy our saddle shoes, bobby socks and poodle skirts.

Yosemite strains my eyes

I've been using both Yosemite and Mavericks (dual-boot system) everyday since last June on both my MacBook Air and Mac mini. They do not have Retina or HiDPI displays. I find Mavericks being much, much easier on my eyes.

For myself, I'm 16-years-old, and my eyesight is 5.1(L), 5.0(R). So there should have no issue on my eyes.

When I work for more than one hour under Apple-designed-Yosemite apps such as Finder or iWork, I experience eye-strain.

I think there are four contribution factors here:
1) Helvetica Neue
This is partly resolved by a utility I made with Alex, LucidaGrandeYosemite, but even with this, Yosemite still causes eye strain for me, which led me to discover the next issue.

2) The overuse of white color
Mavericks had a lot of light-grey to dark-grey gradient throughout the system, most noticeably applications' frameworks. However, Yosemite replaces them with much whiter gradient, and they cause eye-sour during darker environment (Dark mode do not help with these as they only change the color of Menu bar and Dock). Certain app also has textures stripped away, which previously served as resting area for my eyes and now they're completely white.
I always think simple design should be ones with a clear, simple logic instead of being visually empty. (Just to me,) it feels Yosemite tries to be simple with the latter, not the former.

3) Text on sidebar are a tad shallower to accommodate the visual style
A lot of text throughout the system are shallower, shifting from dark grey to slightly lighter grey. This is most pronounced in sidebar (or as Apple calls them, "Source Lists"), and turn on "Increase Contrast" will partly revert the text darkness to the previous behavior, but rest of the UI looks pretty bad.

4) Buttons bleeding into each other
Buttons are even lighter white, and they do not have clear separators. The white-ness of such button shape seems awkward, as they neither separate themselves from the title bar, nor distinguish themselves as individual buttons. But at the same time, they make my eyes painful because of the stark contrast of color within the title bar. Again, turning on "Increase Contrast" will partly make things somehow better (and even remind me of OS 9!), but rest of the UI looks pretty bad.

5) Poor sub-pixel rendering for selected file under Finder and Safari tab names.
This is not a personal preference. It's a bug (and has been marked as a duplicate, which means I'm not imagining this), where when file name is high-lighted in Finder, the blue overlay makes the text above have really bad sub-pixel rendering.

There are probably also other reasons, but for now, that's my best guess on why it stresses my eyes. Using a Retina/HiDPI display seems to migrate these issues, but again, I don't have money for those...

I have been using Yosemite in the office for the past few days and I feel like my eye balls are being burned with a lighter. The lack of contrasting colors everywhere and washed out interface is horrid.

Low contrast web sites and interface design have been a designer industry trend the past few years. Where I work currently we ended up yelling at a designer on a daily basis for the low contrast designs they would pass over until they got the message.

Thus, sites like http://contrastrebellion.com/ have been appearing trying to help battle the issue.

This is a lousy click bait article, but it does quickly highlight some other design trends. https://econsultancy.com/blog/62335-14-lousy-web-design-trends-that-are-making-a-comeback/

vista980622 said:

I've been using both Yosemite and Mavericks (dual-boot system) everyday since last June on both my MacBook Air and Mac mini. They do not have Retina or HiDPI displays. I find Mavericks being much, much easier on my eyes.

For myself, I'm 16-years-old, and my eyesight is 5.1(L), 5.0(R). So there should have no issue on my eyes.

When I work for more than one hour under Apple-designed-Yosemite apps such as Finder or iWork, I experience eye-strain.

I think there are four contribution factors here:
1) Helvetica Neue
This is partly resolved by a utility I made with Alex, LucidaGrandeYosemite, but even with this, Yosemite still causes eye strain for me, which led me to discover the next issue.

2) The overuse of white color
Mavericks had a lot of light-grey to dark-grey gradient throughout the system, most noticeably applications' frameworks. However, Yosemite replaces them with much whiter gradient, and they cause eye-sour during darker environment (Dark mode do not help with these as they only change the color of Menu bar and Dock). Certain app also has textures stripped away, which previously served as resting area for my eyes and now they're completely white.
I always think simple design should be ones with a clear, simple logic instead of being visually empty. (Just to me,) it feels Yosemite tries to be simple with the latter, not the former.

3) Text on sidebar are a tad shallower to accommodate the visual style
A lot of text throughout the system are shallower, shifting from dark grey to slightly lighter grey. This is most pronounced in sidebar (or as Apple calls them, "Source Lists"), and turn on "Increase Contrast" will partly revert the text darkness to the previous behavior, but rest of the UI looks pretty bad.

4) Buttons bleeding into each other
Buttons are even lighter white, and they do not have clear separators. The white-ness of such button shape seems awkward, as they neither separate themselves from the title bar, nor distinguish themselves as individual buttons. But at the same time, they make my eyes painful because of the stark contrast of color within the title bar. Again, turning on "Increase Contrast" will partly make things somehow better (and even remind me of OS 9!), but rest of the UI looks pretty bad.

5) Poor sub-pixel rendering for selected file under Finder and Safari tab names.
This is not a personal preference. It's a bug (and has been marked as a duplicate, which means I'm not imagining this), where when file name is high-lighted in Finder, the blue overlay makes the text above have really bad sub-pixel rendering.

There are probably also other reasons, but for now, that's my best guess on why it stresses my eyes. Using a Retina/HiDPI display seems to migrate these issues, but again, I don't have money for those...

Click to expand...

Thank you so much for your excellent analysis! If you have not already done so, I would urge you to post this to Apple's feedback site for Yosemite! Thank you.
Best wishes, Nate

----------

Washuu said:

I have been using Yosemite in the office for the past few days and I feel like my eye balls are being burned with a lighter. The lack of contrasting colors everywhere and washed out interface is horrid.

Low contrast web sites and interface design have been a designer industry trend the past few years. Where I work currently we ended up yelling at a designer on a daily basis for the low contrast designs they would pass over until they got the message.

Thus, sites like http://contrastrebellion.com/ have been appearing trying to help battle the issue.

This is a lousy click bait article, but it does quickly highlight some other design trends. https://econsultancy.com/blog/62335-14-lousy-web-design-trends-that-are-making-a-comeback/

Click to expand...

Thank you so much for this!

Regards, Nate

Nice links from Washuu!
Fashion in Computing design is a fascinating topic.

This reminds me of the inaugural address by Honor B. Fell "Fashion in Cell Biology" Science (2 December) Vol. 132. no. 3440, pp.1625-1627.

Paulk said:

Nice links from Washuu!
Fashion in Computing design is a fascinating topic.

This reminds me of the inaugural address by Honor B. Fell "Fashion in Cell Biology" Science (2 December) Vol. 132. no. 3440, pp.1625-1627.

Click to expand...

Thank you

Partron22 said:

The end is nigh for Mavericks.
10.9 use dropped off a cliff around the vernal equinox, and Yosemite use shot up like a bat out of hell.
Currently 60%Y 25%M
Resistance is futile.
I've got my UI modded enough so it doesn't hurt to look at.

Click to expand...

Pls share what you've modded to make the transition easy for the rest of us.

vista980622 said:

I've been using both Yosemite and Mavericks (dual-boot system) everyday since last June on both my MacBook Air and Mac mini. They do not have Retina or HiDPI displays. I find Mavericks being much, much easier on my eyes.

Click to expand...

Here's the thing: I'm assuming (and very likely right on this) that Yosemite was designed with retina in mind. Whereas with Mavericks it was more of an afterthought (because this UI started in 10.7, when there were no retina displays), Yosemite's redesign put retinas front and center. This led to "lower-res" displays being neglected.

The problem is that many people don't own a retina Mac yet (I do, however, and it is a big difference) for various reasons. Apple should have thought about those users, but they want everyone to upgrade to the latest and greatest.

You can see a similar pattern with the iPhone where iOS 7/8 (but mostly the latter) were designed with big screens in mind, 4.7" and higher. Everything looks cramped on an iPhone 5/5S.

I actually like Yosemite - in terms of design - but only on a retina. Performance-wise, it pales in comparison to Mavericks, especially on a retina Mac (UI lag after a few hours in Mission Control and other apps is very disappointing and STILL exists). I'm actually still running 10.9 due to this.

You are probably right - a search for UI lag using google shows this come up a lot in relation to Yosemite.

I am sorry in advance.

I really really really don't like the direction Apple is going. I am a Apple fan for about 7 years now and I am cooling down so hard that I start to look at Windows now.

I just saw a video of Yosemite vs Mavericks and the guy in the video was saying how good Yosemite was, but I only thought how good the previous versions where and why I love'd Apple so much.
I really hate what Jonathan Ive has done with Apple.
I understand that he has done some really good things in the past under Steve but as af today???
Even the hardware is not of the standard I recognize from Apple. I am in the market for a new computer and for the first time in 7 years I think it will not be an Apple.
The biggest thing for this is really Yosemite and I don't like it because I am really an Apple fan. I hate this...

P.s. does anyone else getting constant log in messages to log-in to your Apple-ID. I can log-in till the message is gone but the next time i start the iMac I get the message again. It is really irritating. My parents have the same problem so there must be more people (I think) with the same problem?

Ezio Auditore said:

I am sorry in advance.

I really really really don't like the direction Apple is going. I am a Apple fan for about 7 years now and I am cooling down so hard that I start to look at Windows now.

I just saw a video of Yosemite vs Mavericks and the guy in the video was saying how good Yosemite was, but I only thought how good the previous versions where and why I love'd Apple so much.
I really hate what Jonathan Ive has done with Apple.
I understand that he has done some really good things in the past under Steve but as af today???
Even the hardware is not of the standard I recognize from Apple. I am in the market for a new computer and for the first time in 7 years I think it will not be an Apple.
The biggest thing for this is really Yosemite and I don't like it because I am really an Apple fan. I hate this...

P.s. does anyone else getting constant log in messages to log-in to your Apple-ID. I can log-in till the message is gone but the next time i start the iMac I get the message again. It is really irritating. My parents have the same problem so there must be more people (I think) with the same problem?

Click to expand...

The login thing is a total pain. The issue is iMessages and FaceTime don't support 2 step verification. Once you assign an Application Password that settles down. Its a really ugly implementation, its password hell.

Like Ezio Auditore, I have also been reconsidering my continuing loyalty to macs, and the possibility of going back to microsoft. As long as my macbook pro retina works I will not do anything, but when it comes to buying the next laptop I will seriously consider ms.

The whole issue is bound up with the shift from laptops to smart phones and internet book readers (these have a different name, not sure what it is called). But the 2-step verification demands you have a smart phone. And google have also been going over to verifying with two smart phones, which just shows how insecure the whole idea is. https://www.google.com/landing/2step/. People throw their mobile away as they get one free with the company who sell them.

Paulk said:

Like Ezio Auditore, I have also been reconsidering my continuing loyalty to macs, and the possibility of going back to microsoft. As long as my macbook pro retina works I will not do anything, but when it comes to buying the next laptop I will seriously consider ms.

The whole issue is bound up with the shift from laptops to smart phones and internet book readers (these have a different name, not sure what it is called). But the 2-step verification demands you have a smart phone. And google have also been going over to verifying with two smart phones, which just shows how insecure the whole idea is. https://www.google.com/landing/2step/. People throw their mobile away as they get one free with the company who sell them.

Click to expand...

So just to be clear, it's not really Yosemite's fault right?

People get confused sometimes... We live in a world where it can be extremely easy to access our various digital devices, whether they were designed by Jonathan Ive or not.

Again, valid criticism is one thing...

----------

Paradoxally said:

Here's the thing: I'm assuming (and very likely right on this) that Yosemite was designed with retina in mind.

Click to expand...

That's my biggest issue with Yosemite. The majority of users don't have a retina mac, helvetica looks gorgeous on my iPhone, but too thin on my Mac. I haven't tried the various workarounds to change the system font, but I might. On another note, 10.10.3 is solid, improvements in performance are noticeable (Finder & Safari for example - I couldn't care less for Photos for now so I can't comment)

Morpheo said:

That's my biggest issue with Yosemite. The majority of users don't have a retina mac, helvetica looks gorgeous on my iPhone, but too thin on my Mac. I haven't tried the various workarounds to change the system font, but I might. On another note, 10.10.3 is solid, improvements in performance are noticeable (Finder & Safari for example - I couldn't care less for Photos for now so I can't comment)

Click to expand...

Yet it's quite thick on a regular Apple Display. Funny how there is no balance.

Reliability of GoSquared graphs

MacRobert10 said:

That looks extremely suspicious to me. …

Click to expand...

A response from GoSquared: https://twitter.com/GoSquared/status/585381015520223232

I wonder about the period(s) when the graphs were less reliable, but I'll not pursue the enquiry.

For posterity, here's a screenshot of the post-launch graph.

Conspiracy theories are a lot more entertaining. Apple hitting their sites with more browser hits to skew the data or their lawyers contacting GoSquared saying "You're making Jony Ive look really bad. STOP IT!! STOP IT RIGHT NOW!!" Now that's fun.

Truth be told, even if their reporting was off for some technical reason and now it's corrected, Yosemite still isn't looking that good. It only has just over 50% of the share and that's excluding Snow Leopard, which the last time I checked was hanging in at about 10%. If you just estimate their error and project it onto the curve prior to the jump, it's still basically flat lined.

grahamperrin said:

A response from GoSquared: https://twitter.com/GoSquared/status/585381015520223232

Click to expand...

So it's like a govt. rejiggering the unemployment or GNP numbers.
There's really no way to compare across the discontinuity.

This has probably been done to death and isn't going to change just for cupcake here but I wish they weren't turning my Mac into a giant iPhone.

I can absolutely handle some visual distraction that looks nice. I even like it. I can live with getting a minute amount less work done each day if need be. I'm totally fine with that.

For me, Yosemite does not have any negative impact in terms of my vision or visual strain that I am aware of although it is possible it bores my eyes to tears at times I thought I was sad about something else.

Personally though, while I would like a user interface that I find attractive it isn't a deal breaker. There is no way I would consider a windows computer. The geek in me likes playing with Linux but it isn't a system that is likely to have its act together enough in my lifetime to be a candidate for my primary desktop.

On a bright note I find that pretty nature wallpapers help.

I agree with just about everything Dirtyharry50 wrote, (apart from what Yosemite looks like, as I have chosen not to upgrade to it). I believe the market is dominated by the need to take into account smart phones (which I don't have either).

I have thought about going over to MS windoze but decided against it. I will stick with Snow Leopard. No problems with my pro retina mac, good colour and contrast.

Paulk said:

I believe the market is dominated by the need to take into account smart phones (which I don't have either).

Click to expand...

That's very true and I think it's called moving with the times. Had Apple not done it, they'd be shooting themselves in the foot. I think this is a good thing. Having computers and gadgets in sync with each other has always been the vision for me. Personally, I don't think the OS is becoming more like an iPhone apart from a few visual flourishes, I think the tech is just starting to work together far better.

Personally, as a Apple phone owner, the addition of continuity to the OS is one of the best thing they've ever done. It has increased my workflow and made everything so much easier. UI fatigue is also better now with the cleaner and simpler lines of the flatter OS.

There are so many small things a user is missing out on if they don't upgrade. The built in dictionary is just one example. It's been totally overhauled and is a fantastic tool now.

Sure some Pro apps may stop somebody, but for the average user, there is no reason to hold back. Even if they don't like the look, all the neat features make up for it.

smoking monkey said:

That's very true and I think it's called moving with the times. Had Apple not done it, they'd be shooting themselves in the foot. I think this is a good thing. Having computers and gadgets in sync with each other has always been the vision for me. Personally, I don't think the OS is becoming more like an iPhone apart from a few visual flourishes, I think the tech is just starting to work together far better.

Personally, as a Apple phone owner, the addition of continuity to the OS is one of the best thing they've ever done. It has increased my workflow and made everything so much easier. UI fatigue is also better now with the cleaner and simpler lines of the flatter OS.

There are so many small things a user is missing out on if they don't upgrade. The built in dictionary is just one example. It's been totally overhauled and is a fantastic tool now.

Sure some Pro apps may stop somebody, but for the average user, there is no reason to hold back. Even if they don't like the look, all the neat features make up for it.

Click to expand...

If that's the point, then they are going in the WRONG direction! Steve Jobs intent was to make cell phones that were pocket-sized Mac computers; NOT to make Mac computers that were desk-sized cell phones!

That's why he selected OS X to be the foundation for iOS!

Etan

Etan1000 said:

If that's the point, then they are going in the WRONG direction! Steve Jobs intent was to make cell phones that were pocket-sized Mac computers; NOT to make Mac computers that were desk-sized cell phones!

That's why he selected OS X to be the foundation for iOS!

Etan

Click to expand...

I followed your suggestion Etan to submit some feedback where it hopefully in concert with others might do some good, who knows? I may get some serious flak around here for my comment referencing Aqua but hey, I get to like what I like so too bad. Here's the comment I left them:


I feel like OS X has been morphing such that my 27" iMac is turning into a huge iPhone.

I can absolutely handle some visual distraction that looks nice. I even like it. I can live with getting a minute amount less work done each day if need be. I'm totally fine with that. I don't see a need for OS X to look like iOS.

Don't get me wrong, the functionality improvements are great. It's the visuals being downplayed that I don't like. I am someone who misses the likes of Aqua. I loved the pretty scrollbars, etc. It just lifted my mood I guess and perhaps that benefits productivity more than it is given proper credit for.

Etan1000 said:

If that's the point, then they are going in the WRONG direction! Steve Jobs intent was to make cell phones that were pocket-sized Mac computers; NOT to make Mac computers that were desk-sized cell phones!

That's why he selected OS X to be the foundation for iOS!

Etan

Click to expand...

I'm not sure what the point is. Continuity is your problem? You believe that continuity is making OS X closer to IOS? I'd call it a great feature. I really don't understand this. I have no idea why you believe a mac computer is becoming mobile phone. Just because I can take phone calls and make texts from them, doesn't diminish their value, it enhances it. And at what loss? None that I can see.