OS X Yosemite: Do you Like the Look?

[Hypersphere]

Today I upgraded my Mac to OS X Yosemite, and I was surprised to see that the system font had changed from Lucida Grande to Helvetica Neue. To my eye, this font is harder to read, and it looks particularly bad in the menu bar.

In addition, the overall look is flat. OS X now looks flatter than my linux desktop under Xfce.

The dock is translucent white again -- previously, I was able to control the dock color separately from the menu bar color by using EasySimbl with Blackdock -- the current versions of these do not work with Yosemite.

Some say that Yosemite looks great on a Retina display, but it will be some time before I can upgrade my monitors to Retina resolution.

Suggestions welcome on how to get the look and feel of Mavericks back while keeping the presumed performance enhancements of Yosemite.

[Muirium]

I like it a lot. And I've been using it for months, in the developer program. But I won't get in the way of you lot, who I expect to complain for, oh, no particular reason!

Just reading Siracusa's epic review, I'm struck by how dated Mavericks looks now that I see it again. I could have sworn some of those screenshots are straight out of 2007's Leopard.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/10/os-x-10-10/

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I could live with it, but it looks a bit patronising to me. These insipid flat interfaces only seem to serve to remove all the useful interface cues, leaving a wash of indistinct streaks on the screen. It's like Outlook 2013: apparently it's not sensible to distinguish mail folder types by icon any more.

It's a pity that Apple couldn't at least offer a few themes, and offer a nice dark theme. At least with Windows 8 there is a proper theme engine that, with the appropriate hackery, lets me have my nice dark title bars.

[jacobolus]

Yeah, Helvetica is one of the worst possible choices for a UI font.

(To be honest, Helvetica is one of the worst possible choices for anything that isn’t a corporate logo or an art student’s poster.)

The Myriad that Apple uses for all their branding would be a great UI font, but I suspect that Adobe puts the licensing cost for that out of reach.

Assuming the UI designers have good taste, theme engines are unnecessary. Epitome of the “well, we can’t get anything right, but at least we give them choices” Windows ethos.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I look forward to you expounding on the idea of universal good taste.

That in fact is one of the things that bothers me about Macs.

Something that confuses me is how there can be so many different designs of jewellery, enough that for example everyone you meet wears a completely different watch or completely different necklace, yet enough of every design are sold that the tooling, cataloguing, marketing etc costs are justifiable. I guess the world just is that much bigger than the Internet makes it feel.

Macs are a bit like if everyone wore the same watch (which Apple are no doubt hoping for) or if everyone drove the same car. I am not sure I could stomach a whole world of that level of monotony.

Why would I want my computer desktop to look the same as everyone else's?

Besides, Apple took years to develop a sense of taste with OS X, and just when they finally found it, they blew it all away.

[Findecanor]

I am not happy about them removing visual cues that made the previous interface easier on the eyes and easier to comprehend. They have lowered the contrast between elements, removed colour, flattened shadowed/outlined text (again: removing contrast), and use the same font at the same size everywhere.

I really hate when there is random crap in a window's title bar. Leave it alone! It does not belong to the app, it belongs to the windowing system.

[mtl]

There is a dark menu option in the general preferences that seems nice.

I don't like the Vibrance effects since I first saw them on the iPad. Something red scrolled up behind the Safari title bar and it made the whole UI pink and I thought it was indicating an SSL error or some other major problem.

[Compgeke]

Honestly the flatness is a bit annoying - it looks like a step into the past imo. I would almost swear it's just a 20 minute Illustrator mockup of what they wanted their UI to be.

[overstrike]

I look forward to you expounding on the idea of universal good taste.
Macs are a bit like if everyone wore the same watch (which Apple are no doubt hoping for) or if everyone drove the same car. I am not sure I could stomach a whole world of that level of monotony.

Apple's watch ambitions don't really fit your point here, given the wide variety of wristbands, finishes, and faces that will be available.

[overstrike]

Yeah, Helvetica is one of the worst possible choices for a UI font.

You really need to see it on a Retina MacBook before you make that judgement call. From here, it looks beautiful.

[jacobolus]

You really need to see it on a Retina MacBook before you make that judgement call. From here, it looks beautiful.

I’m looking at it on a Retina MacBook Pro (by the way, MacBook / MacBook Pro is such a terrible name compared to the great PowerBook name). I think it’s terrible from a legibility standpoint. It’s “beautiful” if you want your computer to look 60s corporate. Their modified Lucida Grande used OS X 10.9 is pretty good.

Hopefully sometime they’ll update iOS and OS X to use the new typeface designed for the watch (or something new designed with the same principles for larger displays). On that one, they actually consulted experts in typeface legibility.

[jacobolus]

Why would I want my computer desktop to look the same as everyone else's?

Daniel, you might really appreciate Mac OS 9 and Kaleidescope:
http://kaleidoscope.net/schemes/schemespotlight.shtml

[bazh]

I like the flat look, been using it since beta but I have to agree on the font, Helvetica is much worse, at first I though that would be different on the retina model, but then it's not.

[webwit]

Nice OS. I bet if you click an icon, it launches an application even more effectively than the prior version.

In design Apple is now a MS and Google follower.

[Muirium]

Define precisely what they could have done to please you? Give up and run a stock install of your personal preferred Linux distro, by any chance?

Meanwhile, I like this one better than any OS X version since Leopard or Tiger. Both of those were great, and so too Yosemite. (Let us never speak of Lion / Mountain Lion again…)

[matt3o]

Merely from a design standpoint, I like yosemite better. I couldn't stand the pill-buttons.

Most of the other new features are for integration exclusively with other Apple devices or products, so to create an even stricter Apple ghetto.

[Madhias]

Also installed it yesterday, but seen and used it some months ago already. I like the new design in general with all its blur softness and the flatness (non-aqua looking pseudo 3D design with fancy wooden textures). The design was really outdated before.

I don't like the use of Helvetica as a GUI font though, it looks cheap somehow (i'm looking at it on a Retina display). It looks a little bit like a fan made desktop theme.

I think it would be also better to make more simplified icons in the future. For example the HDD symbol is like taken from an add-on icon theme pack you can download on desktop theme webpages.

[webwit]

In general I'd be pleased with identity, which is what they've been losing. For example, compare these two phones:



Same identity, same feminine coloring.

The colors remind me of a documentary about Avatar, which got its colors from marketing research - it is a way to increase demographics and get more visitors to the movie. Sci-fi used to be for men, but this would mean a large potential is being left out. OS are like movies, it must appeal to as many people as possible, but for any subset it will never be optimal. This is why most movies suck now.

They (Apple, Google, MS etc) are all moving towards the same thing, and Apple is a follower, where (of all companies...) MS was the bravest trendsetter. But unique identity was a prime selling point for Apple. If I'd think about buying Apple stock, their prospectus boasts about the best profit margins in the business. But to keep that up they need identity and actually having better products. This OS version is just going through the motions.

[Madhias]

Same identity, same feminine coloring.

[webwit]

Bless them, but I'm not a 12 year old metrosexual.

[matt3o]

The colors remind me of a documentary about Avatar

I wanted to upvote, but this ain't reddit

[Muirium]

Thank goodness. We would have far more pissy platform battles like this! Keep your dirty habits indoors, guys…

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Daniel, you might really appreciate Mac OS 9 and Kaleidescope:
http://kaleidoscope.net/schemes/schemespotlight.shtml

Mac OS 9 had a theme engine built in. I only ever used native themes. Kaleidoscope probably had fixes to deal with programs that weren't theme-compliant though.

[matt3o]

you know... I still have the OS9 installation CD...

[Muirium]

So do I! I picked it up with an old Mac a few years after it was current. Kaleidoscope is great. I used to run the icy theme (can't remember its name) in Classic mode in older OS X. Next time I have the old PowerBook on, which was my first Mac incidentally, I will fire it up and grab some screenshots. I thought it was pretty cute.

[Hypersphere]

After some tweaks, my Mac desktop under Yosemite looks almost as good as it did under Mavericks (although neither one looks as good as my Linux Mint/Xfce desktop).

First, I wanted to have a black Dock and a light menu bar. The current versions of EasySimbl/Blackdock failed to run, but I installed cDock, which is more customizable than Blackdock. Now I have a black Dock and a light menu bar. In addition, cDock has an option to restore color to the Finder sidebar.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdock/

Next, I was annoyed by the transparency in the menu bar and pull-down menus. Finally, I found out how to turn transparency off:

System Preferences > Accessibility > Display > Reduce Transparency

How intuitive is that?

Still annoyed by the new system font, I found a script that changes the system font back to Lucida Grande without modifying system files:

https://schreiberstein.co.uk/

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... sp=sharing

Now if I can just convince Dropbox to provide a color option for its icon in the menu bar, I will be all set.

Well, not quite. I found several sources online for the Chicago font (from System 7). I now have it installed; it would be fun to set this as my system font.

Chicago.png (6.49 KiB) Viewed 6004 times

[Findecanor]

Apple's watch ambitions don't really fit your point here, given the wide variety of wristbands, finishes, and faces that will be available.

Still the same size, shape and features. Even there are different colours of the plastic or metal, one size fits all.
No alternatives for those who want a slimmer watch with longer battery life or for those who want a watch that is more featured. Everything is running in Apple's system - from iTunes to ApplePay.

[ماء]

DT need to more off topic

[mr_a500]

I don't understand why every article about Yosemite says that the new look is "fresher" and "more modern". How the hell did flat become "modern"? I would call it "more cartoonish" or "lacking detail". Back when I first saw OSX in 1999 (before it was even released), I was shocked by how awesome it looked. It looked..."modern". Why then would removing all the nice artistic details, flattening it and making it look like you only have a limited colour palette make it "more modern"?? Flat used to be "old and boring" because it meant didn't have the colour range to make something nicer.

Speaking of colours, I hate all this over-saturated bright, flat colouring. I've never liked bright cartoonish colours (once again reminding me of limited colour palettes of old computers). I like natural colours, gradients and subtlety.

I don't mind the font change. I never really liked Lucida Grande. I always changed my OSX system font to Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro W3, 14 pt - back when they allowed you to change it. That brings me to the point - why the fuck can't they let the user decide which fonts they use?? Why do they have to remove this customization?

Translucency can be nice if not overused. They seem to be overusing it.

Sci-fi used to be for men, but this would mean a large potential is being left out.

"Sci-fi"? "Sci-fi"?? Real men say "Science Fiction"!

These days when somebody asks me, "Do you like Sci-fi?", I say, "Definitely not! I do like Science Fiction though."

[webwit]

OS has kept trying to impress us with visual effects until the hardware and resolution could do anything. So we've seen gradients, shadows, transparency, wild transformation effects, things that look like metal or transparent glass, and you needed better and better hardware to get the newest updates to full effect. That is no longer relevant, so we're returning to the basis of design. Typography, colors, white space, etc. This is good. The rest is noise. If you look at a toolbar and admire the beauty of its translucency effect, by that the toolbar just failed its primary function.