OS X 10.11 All The Little Things!

[nextstop]

Hmm, mine is completely white after update (Public Beta 4; 15A243d). Sidebar remains translucent as before.

Edit: Never mind, its translucent again after a restart. My bad.

I bet you had a white window under the Mail panel..😎

 

[hamis92]

I bet you had a white window under the Mail panel..😎

The 'vibrancy' effect introduced in Yosemite always blends in colours of the desktop picture in addition to showing underlying windows. Unless also your desktop picture is also white, a white window underneath a translucent one wouldn't make the translucent window entirely white.

This effect is discussed in detail in John Siracusa's excellent review of Mac OS X 10.10 for Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/10/os-x-10-10/4/#vibrancy

 

[gklka]

The 'vibrancy' effect introduced in Yosemite always blends in colours of the desktop picture in addition to showing underlying windows. Unless also your desktop picture is also white, a white window underneath a translucent one wouldn't make the translucent window entirely white.

This effect is discussed in detail in John Siracusa's excellent review of Mac OS X 10.10 for Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/10/os-x-10-10/4/#vibrancy

...which reminds me, that there will be no Siracusa OS X review this year ;(

 

[bmac89]

Spotlight Dark Mode bug has been fixed in PB3 or PB4.

Screenshot from PB2 shows the bug - text whited out by highlight. This occurred when returning to a spotlight search.

 

[bmac89]

Is Apple phasing out the Red dot save and exit button? It seems a lot of apps just have the Red X even when you would expect the Red Dot.

 

[danielagos]

Is Apple phasing out the Red dot save and exit button? It seems a lot of apps just have the Red X even when you would expect the Red Dot.

View attachment 573618

I think it depends whether an app supports Auto Save or not. If it does, changes are saved on exit and the dot isn't shown. Else, a dot is shown and when the user exits, a dialog box asks the user if he wants to save the changes. However, even if an app supports Auto Save, I think it shows the dot when it's a new document and when the user hits close, a dialog box appears so the user can save the newly created doc. So I think that the dot means that a dialog box will appear before closing the window.

EDIT: in the OS X Human Interface Guidelines (section about Auto Save and Versions), you can read the following:

As much as possible, avoid displaying a dot in the document window’s close button. In earlier versions of OS X, a document with unsaved changes always displayed a dot in the close button, which indicated the “dirty state.” To encourage users to embrace the Auto Save experience, you want them to get out of the habit of checking the close button to see if they need to save their work. In general, only apps that are not document-based should regularly display a dot to indicate unsaved changes.

​

 

[KUPOinyourWINDOW]

I've noticed an interface tweak, see the image I've attached. (The look of the feature has changed, not the feature itself)

 

[hamis92]

I think it depends whether an app supports Auto Save or not. If it does, changes are saved on exit and the dot isn't shown. Else, a dot is shown and when the user exits, a dialog box asks the user if he wants to save the changes. However, even if an app supports Auto Save, I think it shows the dot when it's a new document and when the user hits close, a dialog box appears so the user can save the newly created doc. So I think that the dot means that a dialog box will appear before closing the window.

EDIT: in the OS X Human Interface Guidelines (section about Auto Save and Versions), you can read the following:

​

I wish this was dependent on the setting in System Preferences -> General where you can say "Ask to keep changes when closing documents". I never liked autosave as more than an insurance policy (if the application or the computer suddenly malfunctions I don't lose my work) – I still want to be the one to decide when I want my changes permanently saved and when not to. Checking that box effectively disables autosave so the dot should be there in the close button, in my opinion.

Edit: after typing that I realised it works just as I described. The dot appears when autosave is "off".

 

[nextstop]

I've noticed an interface tweak, see the image I've attached. (The look of the feature has changed, not the feature itself)

What is and how works?

 

[danielagos]

I wish this was dependent on the setting in System Preferences -> General where you can say "Ask to keep changes when closing documents". I never liked autosave as more than an insurance policy (if the application or the computer suddenly malfunctions I don't lose my work) – I still want to be the one to decide when I want my changes permanently saved and when not to. Checking that box effectively disables autosave so the dot should be there in the close button, in my opinion.

Edit: after typing that I realised it works just as I described. The dot appears when autosave is "off".

I love AutoSave simply because I can get an older version of my document without worrying if I should or not delete something (like a block of text). Besides, you can still manually save with AutoSave on.

 

[gamesetmatch]

I would like to have an option to disable the mouse pointer magnification when hovering around the screen. It's annoying and distracting for me.

The last PB seems to have reduced this "feature", but I hope Apple implements an option to toggle it on or off as per user's decision in the final release.

I also noticed less pinwheel or beachballing activity when using Safari and closing out Mail.

Localizations have been locked -- I only use English, so I can't get rid of other languages with Monolingual.

--
Mark.

 

[bluefirex]

Localizations have been locked

Are you sure this isn't because of rootless? Have you disabled it and tried again?

 

[gamesetmatch]

Are you sure this isn't because of rootless? Have you disabled it and tried again?

Hi bluefirex -- this isn't because of rootless. I have disabled it and localizations cannot be removed as they are "in use by the system". My SSD contains more than 2 GB of localized files that I'll never use.

Only localizations for non-Apple apps can be safely removed such as Dropbox, Transmission, Skype, etc.

-- Mark.

 

[bluefirex]

I have disabled it and localizations cannot be removed as they are "in use by the system". [...] Only localizations for non-Apple apps can be safely removed such as Dropbox, Transmission, Skype, etc.

Hm okay, good to know. Thanks!

 

[dyn]

I've noticed an interface tweak, see the image I've attached. (The look of the feature has changed, not the feature itself)

Difficult to see but previously it used the old aluminium Cinema Display bezel. In El Capitan it uses the new Thunderbolt Display bezel.

 

[KUPOinyourWINDOW]

Difficult to see but previously it used the old aluminium Cinema Display bezel. In El Capitan it uses the new Thunderbolt Display bezel.

Thank you for not ignoring my message! It's happened twice on this forum pointing out new things I've noticed -_-
We have good eyes!

 

[nontroppo]

...which reminds me, that there will be no Siracusa OS X review this year ;(

Indeed 🙁 ... probably the thing I enjoy most about new OS X releases, play with the OS while reading through pages and pages of Siracusa's observations...

 

[danielagos]

I've seen no mention about this but Dictation & Speech has been MASSIVELY changed. On Yosemite, Dictation is used on a text field (you can't invoke it outside one) and all actions are related to text editing, formatting, selection and navigation. On El Capitan, you can invoke Dictation outside a text field. You have all the functions present in Yosemite plus a lot of other system functions, app-specific functions and window-specific functions.

For example, when you say "Show commands" you get a list of all commands (same as in Yosemite). This is what it lets you do in Finder (with no file selected):

This is in TextEdit (when writing something):

And here is in Safari (no text selected):

I can confirm that it's easy to use voice to order the computer around. You can hide, open and close apps ("Hide/show/close System Preferences") and windows ("Hide/open/close window"), go to menu bar items ("Open/close Apple/File/View/Help menu") and you can navigate the user interface (just read the name of the button, for example while reading MacRumours you could say "Click Buyer's Guide" to click on the button named Buyer's Guide; you can also ask to scroll up, down, to top and to bottom).

"What if the two buttons appear with the same name?", you ask. Just say "Show numbers" which will label each button with a number and then say "Click <number>" like "Click 2". Below check how System Preferences is visually labelled with numbers (if you wanted to open Mission Control, you could say either "Click Mission Control" or "Click 11"):


EDIT: you can also create Dictation commands by saying "Make this speakable" which will bring the following wizard to create your own commands (you could also do this through Automator since Yosemite).

 

[hamis92]

I believe most of the stuff you described existed years ago. I just used Speakable Items on my PowerBook running 10.4.11. The vocabulary does appear richer in El Capitan, most apps offered just barebones voice commands on Tiger.

 

[danielagos]

I believe most of the stuff you described existed years ago. I just used Speakable Items on my PowerBook running 10.4.11. The vocabulary does appear richer in El Capitan, most apps offered just barebones voice commands on Tiger.

Yes, I guess most of what I showed also exists in Yosemite (Speakable Items were added to Dictation). I didn't have the "Enable advance commands" (System Preferences > Accessibility > Dictation > Dictation Commands…) checked on Yosemite, that's why I thought it was so much improved…

Anyway, there are still enhancements: El Capitan introduces the commands "Make this Speakable", "Find in text <phrase>", "Find next", "Search now", "Go back/forward", "New/close tab" and "Zoom in/out".

The "Show numbers" command is also new in El Capitan and I think it's a nice feature. Also new in El Capitan, you can use a custom keyword to activate Dictation, play sound when a command is recognised and mute audio output while dictating.

 

[hamis92]

The "Show numbers" command is also new in El Capitan and I think it's a nice feature. Also new in El Capitan, you can use a custom keyword to activate Dictation, play sound when a command is recognised and mute audio output while dictating.

View attachment 574565

The custom keyword feature has been there at least since Mavericks. Playing a sound upon recognition is also not new (present in Tiger). But nonetheless, nice that Apple keep improving the accessibility features!

 

[danielagos]

The custom keyword feature has been there at least since Mavericks. Playing a sound upon recognition is also not new (present in Tiger). But nonetheless, nice that Apple keep improving the accessibility features!

Well, if it's not new, they moved it there now. And I'm sorry for posting stuff already present in older versions of OS X. 🙁

 

[AdeFowler]

Well, if it's not new, they moved it there now. And I'm sorry for posting stuff already present in older versions of OS X. 🙁

Thanks for posting. I use dictation all the time. A couple of Yosemite updates back, it suddenly became very slow to load. Is that fixed in El Capitan?

 

[danielagos]

Thanks for posting. I use dictation all the time. A couple of Yosemite updates back, it suddenly became very slow to load. Is that fixed in El Capitan?

Well, it's still slow to begin dictation when the computer starts (15 to 30 seconds of wait using a hard-drive), but then it's fast.

 

[hamis92]

Well, if it's not new, they moved it there now. And I'm sorry for posting stuff already present in older versions of OS X. 🙁

Nothing to be sorry about. If anything, some people might discover features they like but never knew existed, because of these. Let's keep the posts coming 🙂