OSX Yosemite Public Beta Review

Photo from Macrumors.com

So I've just finished my first day with Yosemite's public beta, and I would like to start by saying that it is incredible. I've seen very few bugs, and everything has worked just like it would have on Mavericks. There were a couple annoying bugs I ran into today, but you can expect to see those taken care of by this fall I would hope.

Speed

First and foremost, this OS is fast. It feels a lot faster than Mavericks on my 2011 iMac, and that is a great thing! I spent today working on a project in Pro Tools 11, utilizing Preview, Excel, and Keyboard Maestro all running together. Everything ran silky smooth and I didn't encounter any problems with compatibility, which is always something you fear when working with Pro Tools and other high end software on a new update.

The Look

This OS looks really nice, although it takes a little getting used to when coming from Mavericks, just like iOS 7 took a lot of getting used to after iOS 6. I love most of the new icons, even the new trash icon that I've seen getting hated on quite a bit. The one icon I would change is the Finder icon, it just looks like it's up to no good. I also really like the frosted glass look in the finder windows, it's a nice touch for sure. 

I feel like they really did a nice job with the look of this OS, and the task bar reminds me of when I got my first MacBook Pro running 10.4 Tiger. 

Spotlight Search

This is something I never used previously, and I kind of doubt I'll use it now. However, they definitely added some useful functionality for people who don't want to just open up Safari and do a quick Google search. They added the ability to search movie times, places, web search, and various other things that could be useful. 

Safari

Safari looks weird, but you get used to it. By default it comes very minimalistic, so you'll have to do some adjustments to the settings to get it fully functional (in my humble opinion). I've noticed a bit of speed increase overall, however Flash runs into a lot of issues (but that's nothing new). 

iTunes

So, iTunes REALLY threw me off, there were some big changes that I'm still getting used to. The biggest change for me was that the sidebar is fully gone now. Now all your devices are at the top of the window in a neat little row. The only way to get access to the sidebar now is to go to the Playlists tab, and then you get the sidebar back, which seems like a weird thing, but I think it shows that the sidebar is going the way of the Dodo. You'll also notice they made it easier to access iTunes Radio, your iTunes account, and of course, the iTunes store. As I get more and more used to it I'm starting to like it more and more, but it definitely threw me off at first.

Mail

Mail looks very similar, just with a flatter design. The biggest update they did to Mail was the new feature where you can annotate images that you're emailing, which could be very useful and fun. They also added the new feature where you can email attachments that are up to 5GB without using WeTransfer or another third party solution. This is honestly my favorite thing about the new mail app, because that will make my life of transferring Pro Tools sessions and video files back and forth a lot easier, so thanks Apple! 

In Conclusion

Overall I absolutely love this update. I think Apple has a very strong offering this fall, and it will be interesting to see what happens with the new products. Yosemite is quite possibly the greatest OS Apple has ever released, and even though I'm running the beta, it feels like an already released product with full support of all the software I normally use. Not to mention, Yosemite will be a free update, so there's no reason to skip it!