A Look At OS X Yosemite And iOS 8.1
by Brandon Chester on October 27, 2014 8:00 AM ESTConclusion
It has definitely been a busy few months in the Apple world. September delivered the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, along with iOS 8, and a preview of the still mysterious Apple Watch. This month we got the iPad Air 2, the iPad Mini 3, the iMac with Retina 5K display, iOS 8.1, Apple Pay, and OS X Yosemite. Those last three points are some of the most interesting, and they all happen to be part of Apple's software ecosystem. I don't think that's a coincidence. We're reaching a point where it's becoming more and more difficult to differentiate your products based on hardware alone. Great software driving a great experience is where the focus needs to be moving forward.
Apple's strategy to provide that experience appears to be deep integration of their services across all of their product lines. It starts with the cloud, with new additions to iCloud like iCloud Drive and Photo Library. From there it goes to software commonality, with a design language that exists on both iOS and OS X, and applications that exist on both platforms. On the opposite end of the spectrum from the cloud are the new continuity features which provide integration between all the devices that you have right there with you. SMS Forwarding and iPhone call transferring expands communication on iPad and the Mac to new areas, while Handoff makes the transition between applications seamless and accurate right down to where your cursor was.
What interests me the most about Apple's stategy is how it provides incentive for a user with one Apple device to buy other Apple devices. This exists to a certain degree with other manufacturers as well. If you own a Samsung smartphone, you may be more inclined to buy a Samsung tablet due to the similar hardware design and user interface. But apart from any brand loyalty you feel, you don't really have any incentive to buy a Samsung laptop which runs Windows and doesn't integrate with your other devices. Apple's integration covers their entire lineup of devices. An iPhone user has a lot to gain by choosing a MacBook over a Windows Ultrabook, and an iPad over a Nexus 9. It would be interesting to analyze what percentage of people purchasing a new Apple device already own one or more Apple products.
Overall, I'm happy with the work that Apple has done with iOS 8.1 and OS X Yosemite. It's clear that a lot of this has been in the works for some time now, and integrating products and services to this degree requires a lot of planning to position your hardware and software so that it will be capable of working together in the ways you want them to. The Yosemite redesign has also gone quite well, and there aren't as many jarring inconsistencies as there were with iOS 7 at launch despite OS X being a more expansive operating system. Apple has definitely learned from their experiences with the iOS redesign. That being said, there is still a lot of work to do. Apple Pay needs to expand rapidly, and iCloud Photo Library isn't as far developed as I had expected it to be.
It's hard to say where Apple will go as we move forward. It will be hard to outdo the work that has been done with Yosemite. However, history tells me that there are still great things yet to come from Apple. It seems that year after year Apple is able to make updated products and proclaim them to be the biggest advancements in that product's history, and regardless of my initial reaction, I somehow always find myself agreeing .
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
173 Comments
View All Comments
blackcrayon - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
That's notification center, it was already in Mavericks. And iOS for that matter. It's not exactly like the gadget sidebar but there is some overlap now that you can put custom widgets there.Colin1497 - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
Suggestion for 8.1.1: Recalibrate "Motion Calibration" so that it isn't constantly running location services and destroying my battery life, forcing me to simply turn off the functionality. There's no way that it's working as intended when it basically runs location services all the time to the extent that my phone is always warm and my battery only lasts half a day. Obviously everyone isn't having this problem, only people who have apps that tie into "Motion Activity," but it's a legit problem with plenty of discussion on the support forums.Brandon Chester - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
Yeah seriously, I turned it off because it runs almost constantly. I don't even know what it's doing but it hasn't impacted my device by not having it.tipoo - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
You know what I'd love is some performance tests with it, especially on older hardware, like Core 2 Duo/320M era, and on spinny hard drives. I've held back on upgrading the macbook in the family due to some mixed messages about it, some say it's the same as Mavericks (which I find a dog, tbh, Windows 7 is so much faster on the same system), some say it's a bit slicker in some areas, while others say it tanked performance.I've gotten the feeling that OSX has become less optimized for HDDs as they optimized more for SSDs. I wonder if it still even does things like hot file clustering?
xrror - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
This will sound like a cop out, but I can't recommend strongly enough just getting a cheap SSD for the older core2 iMacs and macbooks. Even without a ram upgrade (stock 2GB), the difference is astounding.tipoo - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
I would agree with that, though it's not my own system so explaining and getting someone else to invest in a SSD is a bit of an uphill battle, and besides that I think they'd rather be putting that towards saving for a new system eventually too.Maybe I'll give them the Momentus XT hybrid from my dying Dell Studio 1555, that adds a bit of peppiness.
DPUser - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link
Only problem is Apple has really put the screws to enabling Trim for third party SSDs in Yosemite.http://www.cindori.org/trim-enabler-and-yosemite
tipoo - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link
That sucks, but wasn't TRIM killing SSDs in OSX for some reason? It only worked well on Apple certified SSDs.DPUser - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link
Trim works perfectly in OSX with SSDs that support it (meaning all current SSDs). I encourage anyone who cares to lobby Apple to change its policy in this regard: stop locking out Trim for third party SSDs.Penti - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
Regarding design, I don't think old users will be shocked. The dock looks essentially the same as in OS X Tiger (10.4 or reminiscence of Ceetah – Tiger 10.0 - 10.4).Translucency or semi-transparency has been done for so many years in different Window Managers and shells for *NIX system or Windows Vista–7. While they drop some skeuomorphism they at the same time introduce transparency, new animations and other stuff that Microsoft sacrificed in order to run on low-end devices. They even keep rounded of corners. Though I don't think it's much of a shift, it's more back to the roots of earlier OS X releases and still builds on NeXTSTEP looks in some ways. A simpler cleaner look doesn't go against that. Of course technology and hardware makes some things more natural today than 15 years ago. The roots isn't really on machines capable of translucency or of 16.7+ million colors, or accelerated animations.