I don't own any Apple machine at the moment, but I can't get enough of Ars Technica's OS X reviews.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/10/os-x-10-10/
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/10/os-x-10-10/
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OS X Yosemite [OT]
- Thread starter giga
- Start date
The Real Abed
Perma-Junior
Shame Siracusa isn't doing them anymore. Supposedly someone else will take over but who knows if they'll be as good and in-depth from now on.
Probably be less pedantic, which is a good and a bad thing at once.
What's your setup? I can drag and drop on all three of my monitors just fine.
Thought I had found a workaround to my automount issue by mounting the NAS into the standard user's home directory and symlinking it from the old path, but nope, doesn't work. Admin is still mounting it. This is pissing me off so much.
Apparently, one of the default options enables only root users to access automounted shares (which still wouldn't explain why Admin is reading the share). And there's an option to overwrite this and give only non-root users access. Sounds like the solution, but when I enable it, no user has access to the share, not even Admin.
Well, I'm out of options. All that's left is ugly hacks, like a cronjob ls-ing the NAS every five minutes, for instance. Ugh.
Alternatively, I could directly enter the NAS' credentials into Kodi/Plex and not mount it at all. Don't like this either, but I guess it would work.
Just an old Samsung 1080p monitor connected via HDMI.
I can try a few things when I return home later today, but the basic problem is just what I wrote: I can't drop anything onto the Desktop of the monitor. The drag&drop action is just cancelled. Doesn't matter whether I'm dragging something from the Samsung monitor or from the MBPs built-in screen.
However, I remember now that there was a time when dropping stuff onto the external monitor's Desktop did actually work, but the file was placed onto the built-in screen's Desktop instead. Weird stuff.
Apparently, one of the default options enables only root users to access automounted shares (which still wouldn't explain why Admin is reading the share). And there's an option to overwrite this and give only non-root users access. Sounds like the solution, but when I enable it, no user has access to the share, not even Admin.
Well, I'm out of options. All that's left is ugly hacks, like a cronjob ls-ing the NAS every five minutes, for instance. Ugh.
Alternatively, I could directly enter the NAS' credentials into Kodi/Plex and not mount it at all. Don't like this either, but I guess it would work.
Just an old Samsung 1080p monitor connected via HDMI.
I can try a few things when I return home later today, but the basic problem is just what I wrote: I can't drop anything onto the Desktop of the monitor. The drag&drop action is just cancelled. Doesn't matter whether I'm dragging something from the Samsung monitor or from the MBPs built-in screen.
However, I remember now that there was a time when dropping stuff onto the external monitor's Desktop did actually work, but the file was placed onto the built-in screen's Desktop instead. Weird stuff.
Well, and suddenly everything works fine. Probably some infrequent WindowServer glitch, I don't know.
One of my major annoyances in Yosemite, sometimes it sits there forever.
Why u no fetch!
Stop trying to make fetch happen.
As in set a default?
Edit: yeah of course. Doh, I'm so stupid sometimes.
Many thanks.
Nope, not going to happen.
The Real Abed
Perma-Junior
Brilliant.
But yeah, I hate how long it takes to fetch too. What is it fetching? What is it doing during this? Checking every single app on the system to see what it can handle? Why isn't this cached from the beginning via Spotlight or something? Pre-calculate this when doing the indexing. When you index an app, create a cached list of file types it handles. When indexing a file of a new type, create a cached list of all the apps that can open it. Update those lists every time a new app or file type is created.
You'd think it'd be that simple.
That said, it doesn't happen that much for me thankfully, at least not on my SSD. But occasionally on my HDD it does occasionally.
CrudeDiatribe
Member
Have you tried to telling Finder to ignore permissions on the volume once it has mounted? I don't even know if that's an option on network shares.
That option isn't there. The Sharing & Permissions section just says "You have custom access".
badcrumble
Member
"Open in..." has generally gotten much more annoying since Apple broke Perian. Sigh.
Any idea why I get prompted to do this every 1-2 days? It's immensely annoying and all of my Google account integration breaks if I don't do it.
Already tried totally wiping out the account and re-adding it, etc.
I used to get this pretty frequently.
When I realized I had still used app-specific passwords with Google, I switched to OAuth and made sure to remove all old credentials from both Google and OS X (System Settings, Mail). The issue appeared to be gone until yesterday, when fucking Mail stopped working once again, showing me the exclamation mark warning icon. Soon after, the message you posted showed up again. It just doesn't work.
Cleaning up my keychain right now. There's a lot of old stuff in there, including outdated Google credentials which might possibly cause this issue.
I hate how Google and Gmail stuff works with some of Mac OS X.
Used to use just standard authentication and was happy with that in mail, but recently changed my password and mail threw a fit. Guess it wanted to switch over to Oauth tokens or whatever. Now my phone doesn't fetch as responsively as it used to.
Also had my firewall screwing up access to my messages app until I discovered it was because I had a gtalk account that was being denied because Google blocks "apps with lower security".
And apples 2-factor was great until they forced app-specific passwords. When I change my password all my devices not only wanted my new password, but all the app specific ones throw up requests separately.
Oh well. Guess there's a spectrum with security on one end and convenience on the other and you have to choose where you want to be.
Used to use just standard authentication and was happy with that in mail, but recently changed my password and mail threw a fit. Guess it wanted to switch over to Oauth tokens or whatever. Now my phone doesn't fetch as responsively as it used to.
Also had my firewall screwing up access to my messages app until I discovered it was because I had a gtalk account that was being denied because Google blocks "apps with lower security".
And apples 2-factor was great until they forced app-specific passwords. When I change my password all my devices not only wanted my new password, but all the app specific ones throw up requests separately.
Oh well. Guess there's a spectrum with security on one end and convenience on the other and you have to choose where you want to be.
Perian picked a bad time to stop development, because it was right before Apple decided to deprecate QTKit and its very old codecs.
Can anyone help me figure out why the mail app doesn't work correctly? I have 3 email accounts, including 2 gmail, 1 regular and 1 for job applicationsI. For the 2 gmail accounts it seems no matter what I do it will only send replies from the personal account. Even if it shows the job account being used in the body of the reply it sends it from the other one. I've looked at outgoing server setting but it shows 2 just named gmail with no way of telling them apart.
badcrumble
Member
I mean, they did and they didn't. Apple hasn't opened up AVFoundation/AVKit to people for adding new codecs, so Perian wouldn't really have been able to adapt anyway. IIRC the only additional codecs you can get are the ones that come with Final Cut (and that still doesn't include stuff like proper MKV container support, divx/xvid, WMV, and other extremely fucking common media types).
Flip4Mac kept getting support for a few years after Perian but it got broken just as hard.
Gotta learn for a freaking important lecture. All materials are provided as PDFs. Relatively simple PDFs: No images, just plain text. And not even that much text.
And yet, Preview.app completely shits itself. I can't even scroll a single page without extreme stutter. This is absolutely insane. How could they release it like that? Are they fucking serious? Premium experience, my ass.
Thought about booting into Windows. Yes, that's right, I considered booting a different OS to read a fucking PDF. But then I remembered that Chrome uses its own PDF engine. And there's no stutter. Hell, of course not. Why would a simple PDF stutter?! How broken does an app have to be to not being able to handle a PDF?
So, Chrome is my designated PDF reader now.
Speaking of Preview, there's something else I realized yesterday.
When I was a tutor, I had to correct student assignments handed in as PDFs using annotations. Before Yosemite, you had to select the textbox icon in Preview. Then, a textbox was created at the cursor's position when you clicked somewhere. So.. click on the part you want to annotate, enter text. Click on the next part, enter text. And so on.
With Yosemite's Preview app, clicking the textbox icon immediately inserts a textbox, right in the middle of the window. Why? How does this make any sense? Now you have to move the textbox every single time you insert one. Fucking sucks if you rely heavily on annotations.
And yet, Preview.app completely shits itself. I can't even scroll a single page without extreme stutter. This is absolutely insane. How could they release it like that? Are they fucking serious? Premium experience, my ass.
Thought about booting into Windows. Yes, that's right, I considered booting a different OS to read a fucking PDF. But then I remembered that Chrome uses its own PDF engine. And there's no stutter. Hell, of course not. Why would a simple PDF stutter?! How broken does an app have to be to not being able to handle a PDF?
So, Chrome is my designated PDF reader now.
Speaking of Preview, there's something else I realized yesterday.
When I was a tutor, I had to correct student assignments handed in as PDFs using annotations. Before Yosemite, you had to select the textbox icon in Preview. Then, a textbox was created at the cursor's position when you clicked somewhere. So.. click on the part you want to annotate, enter text. Click on the next part, enter text. And so on.
With Yosemite's Preview app, clicking the textbox icon immediately inserts a textbox, right in the middle of the window. Why? How does this make any sense? Now you have to move the textbox every single time you insert one. Fucking sucks if you rely heavily on annotations.
Another issue that occurs frequently is that some keyboard letters don't work, or send the wrong keys. Something about the keyboard language/layout, I assume. And it's weird as hell.
I'm using a German keyboard. The keyboard layout of OS X is set to German. Same thing with the target computer, my Mac mini.
- All latin letters work, including German special characters like ä, ö, ü or ß.
- Numbers don't work at all
- Shift + Number prints the correct German characters (!, ", $, %, etc). Except for 8. Shift + 8 is the opening bracket on the German keyboard, but an asterisk in the US layout. Shift + 8 prints an asterisk.
- Plus doesn't work. Shift + Plus, which is an asterisk on the German keyboard? Works fine.
- Comma works. Semicolon (Shift + Comma) works. Period does not work. Colon (Shift + Period) works.
Seriously, what the hell?
But wait:
As outlined above, it's not fixed.
OS X 10.11 Could Feature Control Center, 'Rootless' Security and More, iOS 9 to Support A5-Based Devices
Third comment:
Sounds about right.
Third comment:
Sounds about right.
Not that surprising that iOS 9 would still support A5 devices. They had the iPad 2 around forever, and they are still selling fifth-gen iPods and iPad minis (all of which will presumably be retired come this fall.)
I bet there are a lot of people waiting for Apple to cut support for those models though.
I bet there are a lot of people waiting for Apple to cut support for those models though.
badcrumble
Member
Lots of developers are waiting for that for sure, lol.
CrudeDiatribe
Member
As far as I know, you can only rearrange them. (Hold command and drag them.)
You can use something like Bartender to organize (or even hide) menu bar icons. One of my must-have app since the menu bar became a mess like the old Windows notification area...
That's a shame.
That said, is it worth upgrading to Yosemite just yet? I'm still on Mavericks, but I was going to do a clean install when I move this Mac to SSD either today or tomorrow.
The main apps I use work on Yosemite now, but I'm still a bit apprehensive.
Realistically there's no reason to upgrade to Yosemite unless you really like the design, and/or you have apps or features that need it (Continuity, Handoff.) Especially if you're on an older (2012 or earlier) computer and phone, et al, there's not a huge amount that benefits you, and there are still some frustrations (discoveryd, etc.) There's also the question of TRIM usage; if you've got a third-party SSD you can't use TRIM on Yosemite without opening so serious security holes.
I'd hang on Mavericks.
Ah cheers! I'll stick with Mavericks then.
Wowfunhappy
Member
Almost a year later, I feel like I'm the only one who still can't stand Yosemite's new design.
I mean, I'd gotten more-or-less used to it. Then I got home from college about two weeks ago, and booted up the desktop that I hadn't seen in a while. It's still running Mountain Lion.
My god does everything look better. There's so much CONTRAST. I'd forgotten what it was like to have contrast in the OS X interface. Bright colors are nice and all, but the pre-Yosemite interface had a BALANCE that's much more pleasant to my eyes.
I'm not going to downgrade because I have an iPhone 6 and use continuity/handoff a lot. But geez... I really wish someone would come out with some kind of Pre-Yosemite UI skin.
I mean, I'd gotten more-or-less used to it. Then I got home from college about two weeks ago, and booted up the desktop that I hadn't seen in a while. It's still running Mountain Lion.
My god does everything look better. There's so much CONTRAST. I'd forgotten what it was like to have contrast in the OS X interface. Bright colors are nice and all, but the pre-Yosemite interface had a BALANCE that's much more pleasant to my eyes.
I'm not going to downgrade because I have an iPhone 6 and use continuity/handoff a lot. But geez... I really wish someone would come out with some kind of Pre-Yosemite UI skin.
Wowfunhappy
Member
That's not really the problem though. The overall color scheme of Yosemite is still overly-bright.
I like a lot about it, don't like a lot as well. To me the reduced contrast isn't a big deal in most cases (and looking at Mavericks, certain elements such as the sidebar are actually far *more* legible and dark.) I appreciate the cleaner style in places, and I always wanted a dark menu bar. I mostly miss a few touches, such as the satin-finish 3D dock from 10.8 and 10.9, and the glossy window jewels.
It helps, but it's never going to satisfy most people for whom the interface is too bright.
Like most Apple UI design it's not going to stand still. I imagine a lot of the concerns are going to get settled over the course of a few point revisions. Aqua really didn't get refined until Panther (and then unfortunately we got brushed metal, which otherwise curses one of my favorite UIs.)
Question regarding browsers:
I have already switched from Google Chrome to Safari for personal use. However, one of the tools for my job refuses to work on Safari and I'm pretty much forced to use Chrome for work but I hate how hot my laptop gets after long usage when on Chrome compared to Safari.
Does Firefox suffer the same energy/memory issues that Google Chrome does? If it does not, I might use Firefox as my work browser.
I have already switched from Google Chrome to Safari for personal use. However, one of the tools for my job refuses to work on Safari and I'm pretty much forced to use Chrome for work but I hate how hot my laptop gets after long usage when on Chrome compared to Safari.
Does Firefox suffer the same energy/memory issues that Google Chrome does? If it does not, I might use Firefox as my work browser.
Firefox is still going to be more power-hungry, but I haven't heard of it eating RAM to the degree of Chrome.
The Real Abed
Perma-Junior
Firefox is terrible. Complete trash. At least on OS X. It was once the top of its game, but the game changed and browsers moved forward. Mozilla seems too lazy to catch up fast enough. I guess maybe it works fine with small amounts of data, but overload it too much and it chokes under its own framerate and makes watching any sort of video impossible. I only keep it because it's the only browser that has a proper video downloading extension that works by itself without requiring a website and works on any web video as long as it's not DRM protected.
DownloadHelper if you're wondering. Indispensable tool.
Completely outdated browser. Stuck in the 2000s. Refuses to move into the 2010s.
As for RAM, well since it is only single process it doesn't use as much RAM no. But that's not a good thing if you ask me. All tabs and plugins and add ons are all in one process still which is a terrible thing to do these days.
Great for porn basically and downloading YouTube videos.
Completely outdated browser. Stuck in the 2000s. Refuses to move into the 2010s.
As for RAM, well since it is only single process it doesn't use as much RAM no. But that's not a good thing if you ask me. All tabs and plugins and add ons are all in one process still which is a terrible thing to do these days.
The Real Abed
Perma-Junior
There's a reason I dropped Chrome too. Well, many reasons. Sadly Safari really is the only one left that's being done properly. Even with all its faults and missing features and bugs. I don't think there really is a single proper perfect browser anymore. All the ones that used to be perfect have become imperfect due to changes and added bugs and feature bloat.
I was actually disappointed when I had to dump Chrome too. But after using the newer Safari, I realized I was much better off. Shame the tool you need doesn't work in it. Funny, there are some parts of my work's website portal that didn't work on Chrome and required me to use Safari. And at work, there are parts that only work in Chrome but when you switch to another certain portion of the site, it launches IE and requires you to use that instead. It's a mess.
I was actually disappointed when I had to dump Chrome too. But after using the newer Safari, I realized I was much better off. Shame the tool you need doesn't work in it. Funny, there are some parts of my work's website portal that didn't work on Chrome and required me to use Safari. And at work, there are parts that only work in Chrome but when you switch to another certain portion of the site, it launches IE and requires you to use that instead. It's a mess.
Safari's only advantage is battery life, Chrome does everything else better in my experience. Safari has so many niggles like poor multi-screen support and the way it resizes tabs is a pain when you have a lot open and the addon situation is still rubbish. I've tried so many times to like Safari but I always go back to Chrome.
I feel History is handled better in Safari, the preferences/settings are laid out in a way more logical and Mac-like way, it has native print dialog, I find it faster than Chrome, Flash seems much better in Safari (Chrome bundles their own rather than using the system one, Chrome's has lots of performance issues for me). Browser extensions seem pretty much identical to me, all of my plugins work on both browsers the exact same way.
I can see arguments about the tabs, and I do miss some of the nice smaller features of Chrome like the auto-translate stuff. But overall I find Safari better than Chrome now, I switched back to Safari with Yosemite. Chrome has really degraded a lot over the past 2 or 3 years IMO, it keeps getting worse while Safari keeps improving.
infiniteloop
Member
It still is odd they ever made discovered, considering it was written in C++not exactly what you'd expect if they were going to write a new network process.
Zombie James
Banned
Great. Maybe they should bring back whatever it was pre-Yosemite was doing to render the UI since that's still a chuggy mess, too.
badcrumble
Member
Yay.
Maybe they'll come back to a revised and fixed version of it in OS X 10.11, but for now I'm delighted to see it gone.