About the OS X Yosemite v10.10.1 Update
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http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/152038/prevent-redr...
I heard anecdotes that it was passable on Mavericks, but prior to that there were all manner of basic usage problems.
It makes me think that there must be some kind of "apple way" resistance to multiple monitors ? Is it considered a "wrong" use-case ? Do people at apple not use multiple screens in their own work ? (how could they, with the issues that have plagued it since snow leopard...)
What's the deal ?
Mac OS and OS X always had good multi-monitor support. In 10.7+ Apple tried to push a "one app in fullscreen as in iOS" approach as new paradigm, negatively affecting the multi-monitor experience. It backfired and they adjusted in 10.9+.
OSX (and I think even earlier MacOS) have supported multiple monitors for quite a long time, historically better than most other OSs. Many of us use multiple monitors on OSX with no problems. One neat thing OSX/MacOS have always done with multiple monitors is allow you drag windows from one to the other as if they were one big workspace -- even having a window partially on one monitor and partially on another, with it working fine.
What has happened recently is that the combination of the OSX UI, multiple monitors, and new features to support a 'full screen' mode (which seems to some people like a sort of convergence with iOS) -- have been problematic. Apple has had trouble deciding what _should_ happen with multiple monitors in this situation, and has had trouble making it work reliably.
Until the most recent OSX release, you could only do 'full screen' mode on your 'main' monitor, the other monitors would all go dark. Which was pretty annoying for those who wanted to use this newish feature. But other than that, multiple monitors had no real problems.
In the most recent OSX, they've tried to do some things to take care of this, so you can use 'full screen' mode on all your monitors (one 'full screen' workspace on each monitor). (Sadly, these things also get rid of the ability to have a window half on one monitor and half on another).
The solution they tried appears to have some technical problems. Which yes, is frustrating for people with multiple monitors, who want to use the 'full screen' feature, with the new improvements (which you can turn off if you want, to back to only being able to use one monitor in full screen mode).
I think many people do have a sense that Apple QA isn't quite as good as it used to be. And they do seem to be having trouble getting the new-ish 'full screen mode' (which people seem to like) to work reasonably with multiple monitors. But I don't think it accurately represents the history to suggest that OSX has historically poorly supported multiple monitors. I am not familiar with what you are referring to when you say "prior to [Mavericks] there were all manner of basic usage problems," that has not been my experience and I have not previously heard of such experience.
Such as? And how?
"even having a window partially on one monitor and partially on another, with it working fine."
Huh? In Safari, on 10.10 - dragging a window from my iMac to half on my TB display results in the window being partially visible on the iMac, and not at all visible on the TB. When you drag further to the TB display (so your mouse, but not the entire window is on the TB), then it snaps to the TB display. Both inconsistent and not at all what you describe. I don't have any windows so far I can get to sit across monitor boundaries.
Which I read later is related to 10.10?
So handling of multiple monitors is broken from one extreme (full screen pre Mavericks) to the other "Well, full screen works now, but your screens are effectively fenced off (Yosemite). Not sure how this is "better than most" support for multiple monitors.
"(which you can turn off if you want, to back to only being able to use one monitor in full screen mode)."
That's a horrible hack that with everyone's insistent claim on Apple's attention to detail and quality should never have made it passed QA.
The monitors built into Apple products are typically much better than consumer $150-$200 monitors and most externals look horrible side-by-side with Macs (dim, mismatched color, wildly lower pixel density, etc). It wasn't until I bought a $400 24" IPS UltraSharp that using an external monitor next to my laptop was actually preferable.
I used to use a Matrox DualHead2Go DP Edition so I could use my two 19" monitors in addition to my main laptop screen. Earlier this year I bought a LandingZone docking bar which let me run one monitor via miniDV and the other via HDMI. This solution has worked pretty well so far, so I hope the flickering either magically fixes itself or that I'm able to find some cause and resolution. :)
I need my three monitors. I've never liked the whole idea of virtual desktops, etc. and I like being able to see mail, calendar, shell, and browser just by glancing instead of requiring any sort of gesture or keystroke.
[0] http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/152038/prevent-redr...
[1] http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/152038/prevent-redr...
Low transparency mode has this weird bug where the corner of rounded rectangles are black rather than fully transparent. Try enabling it in accessibility and then changing the volume.
Edit: I wonder why I am being downvoted. UI/UX bugs are bugs as well and need to be addressed!
I've been using it since 10.1, and the only time I thought they took a step back was with Mavericks. I attribute that to major UI changes needing a version to sort out.
It might look great, and I agree it's pretty slick and much more à la page if you will, but it's much less usable. Windows 8 looks so much better than 7 [1], but it's a train wreck in terms of discoverability and usability.
[1] one might argue that this flat UI trend originated at Microsoft that Apple is copying them and that some of the things Microsoft is doing now look much better than their Apple counterpart especially on mobile. I can't comment on usability, because I haven't tried either.
That's a personal opinion and really doesn't matter on HN.
The link you provide is not about aesthetics, but about UX. So to back up your (pointless) claim that Yosemite is ugly to look at, you link to an article that rightly points out useability problems. This is like saying "The top speed of my car is too low, here's an article that talks about its slow acceleration"
I am assuming you are being downvoted because your claim is irrelevant to HN discussion and your link is irrelevant to your claim.
Your second claim is partially true though. While volume indicator does show black corners, there are plenty of rounded corners that do show correctly in Yosemite with transparency turned off.
Lastly, according to the HN guidelines, you are kindly asked to "Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. "
Here's hoping it fixes the issue I've been having since upgrading. My wifi doesn't drop, but my internet access stops working every 10 minutes or so. Cycling my wifi connected brings it back.
Open that in Script Editor and then export is as an application. Then just run that application whenever your wifi stops working for no reason.
I have not upgraded to OSX Yosemite yet. I am afraid that there will be a performance hit. Even the new iPhone 5S I got replaced faces some lags that weren't present in iOS 7.
What are your views about upgrading to Yosemite, esp. related to dev environments?
Edit: I have faced similar lags after updates on my iPad Air too. Hence, the dismay.
Have also had some weird issues with wifi connectivity, which is ostensibly one of the reasons for this update. And there have been some strange lockups on the mail screen on my iPad, occasionally forcing me to hard-close the mail app.
Other than that, I haven't noticed anything significantly "bad" about the updates. Yosemite has been fine for me, and aside from some third-party compatibility issues (which happen with every major OS upgrade), the upgrade has been seamless. iOS 8 performs well, aside from the aforementioned problems.
I'd upgraded since Leopard/Snow Leopard it had always just worked for me. Yosemite though had crashes and hanging - I decided a fresh install and it's been working great since.
Not the best news if you're used to upgrading but for me it worked wonders.
Agreed. I don't want to have to worry about shit like this. When I use Windows I would ALWAYS do a clean install and almost always do a clean install every few months because I run my machines hard (installing tons of stuff to try out then removing it). With OS X I didn't have to worry about this and have saved a TON of time not having to rebuild my computer with each release. I expect better from Apple.
I was unaffected by the big issues (wifi) plaguing iOS 8 and didn't get burned by the 8.0.1 issue. I have the 6+ and I do have some weird issues still like BT Audio sometimes skipping a second or two when the screen rotates (I know... odd) or just screen rotation issues as a whole (I shouldn't have to shake my phone or switch orientations multiple times before it works!!). Also the healthkit stuff not working at release (because of a security bug) was annoying, where is the homekit integration?, handoff is gimmicky and I have found little/no use for it so far (I have a MBPr + iPhone + iPad, I expect better), keyboards where glitchy as fuck on release, Apple Pay didn't support either of my CC's and the process to setup a card was far from what I would expect from Apple.
All in all: Yes, both releases were shit if you ask me and that's coming from someone who loves Apple products and owns quite a few of them.
[0] http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/152038/prevent-redr...
Thanks! I have similar thought and I have not even updated to Yosemite! Just the sheer amount of issues I read about online and my iOS disasters lead me to believe that Apple's entire update across the suite of products was not what it used to be. I left the Windows land to get the stable and tested products and updates. If I have to be locked down tremendously and face the issues I used to face with Windows, I might as well just use something where most of my development is - Linux.
- No longer able to connect to any 5GHz wifi routers.
- Wifi drops suddenly and won't reconnect automatically even though the network is present.
- Very slow wifi generally.
- Unable to restore from sleep, machine reboots.
- External display doesn't come up during login after sleep, need to open MacBook and login there.
- Random hangs/kernel panics. (Could be explained by faulty RAM, but starting to happen just after Yosemite upgrade? Doubt it.)
- Laggy UI.
The last point is the worst. "Reduce transparency" does nothing for me. WindowServer is occasionally using 20-30% when the system is doing almost no redrawing. Safari is sluggish, and often hangs for several seconds — especially on opening new blank tabs, loading a new site, trying to load an embedded YouTube video ("HTML5" mode) — before becoming responsive again. Overall, it feels like my machine (early 2013 MBP, quad-core 2.7GHz i7, 16GB, SSD) just rolled back two hardware generations.
Hopefully this update should fix the wifi issues. But the lagginess isn't mentioned in the release notes. Has anyone gotten any performance improvements by reinstalling the OS from scratch?
Yup. Early 2013 15" rMBP, on Mavericks? Rock solid. Even on a fairly minimal clean install of Yosemite? Hard freezes, kernel panics.
iMac will occasionally come back from sleep with a all white screen except for my user logo. I can type (though can't see) my password and login, but the quality has gone horribly downhill.
- Random graphics glitches, especially in Safari. Random garbage/empty areas being painted.
- FileVault's encryption process doesn't finish. "Connect power adapter to resume encryption". It is connected. Has been doing this since I upgraded.
- If you enable "Reduced transparency", you get certain graphics artifacts. For example, the rounded corners on screen overlays such as the brightness and volume settings are painted in.
The news OSX Ysemite 10.10.1 Mail (v8.1) is a disaster. It keeps on crashing.
rm -rf /Volumes/<10.10 Partition>/System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext
cp -r /System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext/Volumes/<10.10 Partition>/System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext
touch /Volumes/<10.10 Partition>/System/Library/Extensions
kextcache -u /Volumes/<10.10 Partition>
Commands Source: http://www.cindori.org/forums/topic/heads-up-osx-10-10-beta-...
Disabling this check returns you to 10.9-level security and removes barrier to malware installing its own kernel modules.
This update is meant to address the wifi issues of intermittent connections, weak connections, constant dropouts and lost packets. Installing the update has not fixed the wifi issues and some Googling/Apple forums proves this. I have resorted to using my Dell laptop more than my Mac because the wifi issues have been too much to bear.
Apple used to be about quality. Mavericks was a fantastic operating system I had no such issues with. What are Apple doing over there? This is what happens when you put an industrial designer in charge of your software.
Jury is still out on 10.10.1.
Except that Yosemite stopped recognizing my Time Machine drive because it was plugged in through a powered USB 3.0 hub.
It doesn't look like I'm the only one with this problem - if someone from Apple were to PM me, I could reply with the USB vendor & product ID to help get this solved.
Edit: Nope, FileVault is still broken after the patch.