Mac OS X Yosemite: What's Missing?Mac OS X Yosemite: What's Missing?

Apple's Next Chapter: 10 Key Issues

Apple has scheduled a media event on Thursday, Oct. 16, at which the company is expected to introduce an updated iPad Air, a Retina iPad Mini, and a Retina iMac. The company also probably will discuss Mac OS X Yosemite, which is currently available for beta testing to registered developers and to participants in Apple's OS X beta program.

If OS X Yosemite, the next iteration of Apple's desktop operating system, is not released at the event, it can be expected shortly afterward, perhaps when the Retina iMacs ship.

OS X Yosemite -- version 10.10 for traditionalists -- marks the second free OS X release, excluding the OS X 10.1 Puma release, which was more of a patch than a full update. It continues Apple's effort to make OS X and its mobile operating system, iOS, more complementary. It also builds on the design changes introduced in iOS 7 last year and extended in iOS 8.

What we like
The Yosemite update will make OS X icons look more like iOS icons. That's a good thing for consistency and visual appeal. It also does away with the font Lucida Grande, replacing it with Helvetica Neue. The OS X menus are translucent, unless you want to disable that through the Accessibility control panel. The glassy finish on buttons and other interface elements, however, has become matte. And there's a dark theme option, if you want your desktop interface to look more like an Adobe app. 

[We think we know why Microsoft went straight to Windows 10. Read 10 Real Reasons Microsoft Skipped Windows 9.]

OS X Yosemite makes iOS communication available through your OS X computer, with a little help from iCloud. It allows you to send and receive SMS and MMS messages, as well as calls to your iPhone, through your Mac. The Handoff feature makes data from Apple apps -- Mail, Safari, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Maps, Messages, Reminders, Calendar, and Contacts -- available on iOS and OS X devices, so you can start a message in Mail on your Mac and finish it on your iPhone. Handoff will work with third-party apps, too, once developers implement the technology. 

To help OS X work better with iOS, AirDrop has been improved to simplify file transfers across the two operating systems. iMessage screen sharing will help bridge the two OSes as well.

The update brings meaningful improvements to Apple's apps, including Mail, Messages, Safari, and Spotlight. And Apple's iCloud service has been refined and rebranded, under the name iCloud Drive.

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One of the most promising features in OS X Yosemite is its support for JavaScript as a language for system automation. Far more people are familiar with JavaScript than with Apple's previous solution for system scripting, AppleScript.

For all the improvements OS X Yosemite will bring, though, there are a few more changes we'd like to see. 

1. Break up iTunes
iTunes should really be three applications: a music player, a file synchronization app, and a digital commerce store. By combining these three apps into one, Apple has created an app that's mediocre, bloated, and confusing. Apple could provide a far better customer experience by focusing on three different apps that each excel at one task. 

2. A social Mac App Store
Apple's Mac App Store frequently feels sluggish and its interface could be better. Apple should provide users with more ways to find interesting apps. User-curated lists of favorite apps would be one way to do this. General interface improvements and fewer Apple-selected favorites would be another.

3. Merge Notes, Text Edit, and Stickies
Do we really need three apps for light composition? No, we do not. One app could handle the creation of simple text documents. Modifications to the Finder could allow users to store text documents with the visibility afforded Notes and Stickies.

4. Make iTunes Match free
Apple was out of step with the industry when it charged for MobileMe, the precursor to iCloud, and it's out of step now by charging $25 a year to keep copies of iTunes songs in iCloud. Drop the file fidelity improvement feature if

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necessary. This would also simplify the process of deleting songs from iCloud, which currently is possible only if you're an iTunes Match subscriber.

5. Slimmer applications
If you open your Mac's Applications folder and sort by file size, chances are Apple's applications will be among the largest. This is an issue particularly if your Mac relies on costly, limited SSD storage. Xcode, for example, is huge, weighing in at 5.17 GB. Perhaps that's unavoidable, due to all the documentation and other apps within Xcode, but it's still unwieldy. Other big apps: iMovie (2.95 GB), iPhoto (1.7 GB), GarageBand (1.16 GB), iBooks Author (627.2 MB), Keynote (615.7 MB), Pages (467.6 MB), Numbers (354.5 MB), and iTunes (332.2 MB). When you look at top-notch third-party apps that aren't bloated, such as Transmit (63.4 MB) or Pixelmator (70.8 MB), you have to wonder whether Apple couldn't do better. 

6. Siri
Apple's Siri personal assistant deserves a shot at being more useful. Since August, there's been speculation that Apple intends to bring Siri to Mac OS X, based on a patent filing. If that happens in OS X Yosemite or a future version of OS X, it will be a welcome addition. Siri, in combination with the scriptability of OS X, could be a valuable way to launch apps, navigate, configure interface elements, and automate actions such as moving files from an iOS device to an OS X device.

7. Bootable backups
Carbon Copy Cloner lets you create a bootable copy of a Mac OS X volume over a network. Apple should buy Carbon Copy Cloner and build this functionality into OS X. Having a bootable backup is far more convenient than reinstalling the operating system and then restoring backed up files.

8. OS-agnostic parental controls
Mavericks has a great set of parental controls. But schools might not provide kids with Macs, which makes controlling usage more challenging, at least from a technical standpoint. The Mac OS X AirPort Utility provides timed access via MAC address, but it would be helpful if Apple could offer more granular network controls.

9. Gesture event support
There are a variety of ways now to track gestures and turn them into system events: Leap Motion, Kinect, and Myo, for example. Apple should integrate motion tracking sensors into its hardware and add support in software. Gesturing to scroll pages might turn out to be better than using a mouse.

10. Update iPhoto
iPhoto is okay, but it doesn't sync through iTunes or interact with iOS Photos. Apple is planning a new OS X version of Photos that's designed around multi-device usage. It's intended to replace iPhoto and, apparently, Aperture. It won't be ready until next year, and that's a good thing. Apple can't afford to have OS X Photos beset by the problems that accompanied the launch of iOS 7 Maps.

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