Sunday, October 19, 2014

OS X Yosemite Mostly Stabilized ... But Still Hideous

There's been plenty of bitching here already about Apple trying to turn my computer into an iPhone.  I don't have an iPhone and I don't want one.  This is a computer not a fookin' telephone or some kiddie game toy.

So much of Yosemite is completely useless crap ... but at least it was destructive.  Where the installation of Mavericks and most other installations have been relatively easy and revealed cool things, Yosemite revealed cities burning in an image painted by an artist who couldn't even get his stuff on Instagram.

GarageBand is largely resolved by sneaking up on "It's for You" by opening another song and then opening the actual one after GarageBand was already started.  You figure it out why that would work.  What I see is something so Windows that it should never have got near an Apple machine.

There are good things in GarageBand as there is a boatload of new sounds.  Look out for new sound filters as the Audio Unit filters are being downplayed for some reason.  That's not a bad thing, just look out for it as your sound will definitely be affected.

The samples available in the World sounds are extraordinary.  For example, there are fourteen ways to play an Udu.  You may not have ever heard one but it has one of the widest spreads of sound types of any instrument as it almost has a true reach from percussion to woodwind.  Even a kick drum going to a cymbal is still obviously percussion but the Udu goes beyond that ... and there's a ton more in the samples.  Unknown when Apple added them but I specifically downloaded extra content with the new GarageBand and I assume they came with it, at least a few were there already.

Final Cut Pro is definitely not crash-proof and Yosemite did nothing to improve it.  One of the first experiences with Yosemite was Final Cut exploding.  I'm not even finished bitching about how Apple trashed Final Cut 7 when it went to Final Cut Pro.  However, it does, generally, run.

There is coolness in Mail in the ability to send very large files but this hardly justifies (cough) a new OS X level.

As to increased speed, no noticeable improvement but Facebook runs noticeably worse as there are annoying surges in scrolling.  Safari does not seem to suffer this anywhere else so I conclude it hates Facebook.  I can't say I fault it for that.  The so-called improvements to the UI for Safari are useless and annoying.


After thirty+ years working with operating systems, my interest in Yosemite is now concluded.  Either do something cool or get the fuck out of the way and I've disabled as much of its cosmetic crap as I could.

Onward.

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