“I fink it looks great innit. Proper good. Just what the doctor ordered me old mucker”
(Keith Blount, mac expert, speaking on the interweb yesterday.
I’m amazed at the lack of reaction to Yosemite on the ‘net, especially as it seems to be the ‘iOS Pro’ update that I’ve had to listen to you all say you’re dreading over the past 6 years or so. So just to be sure… The latest Developers’ Pack didn’t come with a bunch of .aac files you’re supposed to play while your sleeping did it?
Everyone is just strangely hypnotised by the delicate translucency of the new trash can…
The absence of outrage is leaving me unfulfilled. 
I’ve been too busy reading reviews of the reviews. 
Reviews of the reviews? What did you think of them? 
Here’s my review of the Review of the Reviews I linked to above:
By employing the time-honoured technique of beginning with an excerpt from one of the reviews in question, this review was perhaps a little too knowing in it’s post-modern use of an entirely fictional quotation. Still, it was well done, and I’m sure its humorous parody of a well-known software developer hit the mark with its intended audience.
In the section following the quote, there was a lovely hint of outrage that the reviews under review were not themselves outraged by a lessening of the gap between OS X and iOS. This faux-anger seemed intended to suggest the pro Windows-reviews bias of the author that, to his credit, was delicately understated in comparison to the rabid rants against “Apple Fanboi Sheeple” so frequently repeated by the Windows and Android drones that typify such discourse at the underlying Review level. It was refreshing to see an attempt at wit and originality in a purported take-down of opposing operating system launch reviews; it suggested that reviewers of pro-Windows reviews may yet attempt to match the much feted, and now ageing, Macalope. However, despite the promising start, from this point the review shared the fate of so many attempts to discredit reviews of Apple’s products in that it failed to bring in any actual evidence to support the emotional tone. This truly was a shame because the mood was well struck and was nicely balanced – but without the content to support it, the tight structure was unable to sustain it beyond one brief paragraph. Even so, there is clearly talent behind this reviewer of reviews. Perhaps the lack of outrage in the reviews reviewed left little room for a smug-I-told-you-so review, and a knowing comparison to Windows 8 reviews was never going to be a viable approach given the preferred OS-review bias so subtly projected.
In summary, this was an enjoyable Review of Reviews that is worth the minimal required to read. It won’t change your opinions of the OS reviews in question or, indeed, inform those opinions, but it may well encourage you to visit some of the originals yourself. As such it was well presented piece and I look forward to seeing this promising talent develop his Review of Reviews skills further. It could signal a new, wittier and, dare I say, more equal stage in what has otherwise become a stale and irrelevant operating system review war.
I give it Three and a Half Stars.
They’re wearing us down is all. I’d be outraged if I hadn’t noticed how the dock is going back to a rectangle upon which application icons are displayed, instead of a shelf where a busy background can make the icons harder to spot.
I do hate the current iOS look-- the flat icons, the harder to use on-screen number pad. I like gradients and fancy icons. I like the illusion of 3-dimensional buttons and other objects (so long as they’re also easy to interact with via keyboard & mouse/trackpad). I’m not sure how that distaste and frustration will translate to a non-touch interface, so my outrage will have to wait until I see it in action.
Since they’ve been adding improvements that I care about–longer battery life through OS improvements, better encryption & backup implementations–I’ve gone with every upgrade. If they don’t provide anything like that, I probably won’t be compelled to upgrade the way I was with Mavericks.
A full five stars for your review of the Review of the Reviews.
phil
I’m afraid I have to disagree with your review of the review of the review of reviews. Whilst it (the review of the review of reviews) was on the whole excellent, it must be docked a star for a small but important factual inaccuracy (the reviewer responsible for the review of reviews is in fact primarily a Mac user now - it’s excusable for not noticing; it sort of slipped quietly under the radar).
I have to admit that from the pictures I’ve seen, I find it incredibly ugly.
This?
These kindergarden-blue folders?
These meaningless color dots in the upper left corner?
No, please.
As someone who likes the design and functionality of iOS 7, the previews of Yosemite and iOS 8 look very promising … the unveiling at WWDC seems to be about tighter integration between the two OS platforms and keeping users within the Apple family.
Particularly like the new menu aesthetic: both the font and the translucency. Carried over to Scrivener automatically, or does that depend on L&L doing a redesign?
Il love the new Full Screen button replacing the Maximize. Now, if you just want to enlarge a window to fit your page, you get a 50" empty display with some tiny text in the middle. Seems like a smart decision to me.
Paolo
Hmmm. DARK MODE 
for menus.
He-he, I’m quite tickled by that.
Le D 
I’d like a proper maximise, but not full screen. I find that to be ridiculous as it loses the menu bar, start menu and taskbar (or whatever they’re called in Macland).
Also, translucency is evil. 1 it’s ugly. 2 it’s distracting. 3 it uses more resources.
I’ll be sticking with my current Mavericks and Win8.1 setup I reckon.
Maybe this will rekindle the old Mac OS X widget and icon skinning crowd that died off once Tiger was shelved, and Apple was no longer in the business of making atrocious looking operating systems. We had a nice run for a while. For a while, it almost even resembled the low impact, just the facts ma’am, grey on grey of the Mac before it went all toothpaste and shimmering nipples on white cardboard.
[size=80]Really, we’ve just come full circle
[Full-size][/size]
Evil? Ugly? Distracting? Why? Personally, I love the pics and videos I have seen so far.
iCloud Drive, 5GB email attachments, Markup for editing attachments in emails, Mac and iOS AirDrop, answering and making calls on your Mac, SMS from your Mac, Handoff continuity, Instant Hotspot…you can resist all of these goodies?
So who’s gonna be the first to go cap-in-hand before the Terrible Mister Blount, knuckle his forehead, and politely inquire if Scrivener for iOS will require iOS 8? By way of sneakily enquiring about a, ha-hem, “release” date.
If you take my meaning.
If only the rest of the infrastructure would support that…
At this point I’m about to dump mac and go back to Linux. I hate myself for even thinking it, but there is nothing here that encourages me about the future of the platform. Leave the IOS stupidity for phones. Let those of us who use our systems in a professional, non-artistic/marketing environment, have a UI that won’t make us look like 12 year old girls.
The one thing about windows is that you have a choice on how the widgets look. Profession or less professional. At least give me that choice back.
