Skip to main content

Apple announces OS X 10.10 Yosemite with redesigned user interface

Live from the WWDC keynote presentation, Apple just unveiled the next version of of the Mac OS X and with it introduced some big changes for the operating system including a significantly redesigned user interface. The new release is called OS X Yosemite.

In the months leading up to today’s event, we exclusively detailed many of the enhancements Apple showed off today on stage including the redesigned interface that introduces a sharper and flatter look making it more similar to iOS than any previous versions of the Mac operating system. That includes sharper window corners, redesigned icons, and a new color palette with redesigned UI elements carried throughout almost the entire OS.

Apple spent time talking about refined toolbars and redesigned window construction with new iOS-like translucency, which carries over to the the redesigned dock and menus. OS X Yosemite also includes a “Dark Mode” that minimizes the translucency effect and introduces a darker color palette that is also applied throughout apps.

Also on show today: A redesigned Notification Center that adds an extended view with widgets, a completely revamped Spotlight feature for searching locally and online, as well as a revamped apps such as Maps, Calendar, Messages, and much more. Here’s a look at Apple’s redesigned Messages app, Notification Center, and Spotlight:

In addition, Apple took some time to show off a new Mail application for Yosemite that includes the ability to seamlessly attach files up to 5GB using the cloud. It also demoed a brand new Safari app with a new sleek design, and performance improvements that Apple says can provide up to two hours extra battery life when streaming 1080p video from a Macbook. Here’s a look at the two:

Yesterday, banners were spotted around the Moscone West venue leading to speculation that the release would be named Yosemite or El Capitan, two of the California themed names Apple is rumored to have trademarked.

Apple is releasing OS X Yosemite for developers today, a public beta for everyone this summer, and a public release this fall. The update will be free for all users.

Apple Announces OS X Yosemite

Introduces Refined New Design, Powerful Apps & Amazing New Continuity Features

SAN FRANCISCO―June 2, 2014―Apple® today announced OS X® Yosemite, a powerful new version of OS X redesigned and refined with a fresh, modern look, powerful new apps and amazing new continuity features that make working across your Mac® and iOS devices more fluid than ever. The new Today view in Notification Center gives you a quick look at everything you need to know, all in one place; iCloud Drive™ is located within the Finder and can store files of any type; and Safari® has a new streamlined design that puts the most important controls at your fingertips. Mail makes editing and sending attachments easier than ever; Handoff lets you start an activity on one device and pass it to the other; and Instant Hotspot makes using your iPhone’s hotspot as easy as connecting to a Wi-Fi network. Yosemite even gives you the ability to make iPhone® calls on your Mac.

“Yosemite is the future of OS X with its incredible new design and amazing new apps, all engineered to work beautifully with iOS,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “We engineer our platforms, services and devices together, so we are able to create a seamless experience for our users across all our products that is unparalleled in the industry. It’s something only Apple can deliver.”

With Yosemite, OS X has been redesigned and refined with a fresh modern look where controls are clearer, smarter and easier to understand, and streamlined toolbars put the focus on your content without compromising functionality. Translucent elements reveal additional content in your app window, provide a hint at what’s hidden behind and take on the look of your desktop. App icons have a clean, consistent design and an updated system font improves readability.

The new Today view in Notification Center gives you a quick look at everything you need to know with widgets for Calendar, Weather, Stocks, Reminders, World Clock and social networks. You can even download additional widgets from the Mac App Store℠ to customize your Today view. Spotlight® now appears front and center on your desktop and adds new categories of results, so you can view rich suggestions from Wikipedia, Maps, Bing, App Store, iTunes Store®, iBooks Store™, top websites, news and movie showtimes.

Built right into the Finder, iCloud Drive stores files of any type in iCloud®. iCloud Drive works like any other folder on your Mac, so you can drag documents into it, organize them with folders and Tags and search for them using Spotlight. With iCloud Drive, you can access all your files in iCloud from your Mac, iPhone, iPad® or even a Windows PC.

Safari has a new streamlined design that puts the most important controls at your fingertips. A new Favorites view gives you quick access to your favorite websites, and a powerful new Tabs view displays thumbnails of all your open web pages in one window. Safari also gives you more control over your privacy, with separate Private Browsing windows and built-in support for DuckDuckGo, a search engine that doesn’t track users. When you search for popular or common terms, new Spotlight Suggestions appear along with the suggestions from your search provider. Safari supports the latest web standards, including WebGL and SPDY, and with support for HTML5 Premium Video Extensions, you can watch Netflix HD videos for up to two hours longer.¹ Powered by the Nitro JavaScript engine, Safari is over six times faster than Firefox and over five times faster than Chrome when executing JavaScript found in typical websites.²

Mail makes editing and sending attachments easier than ever. With Markup you can quickly fill out and sign forms and even annotate images and PDFs from within Mail. Mail Drop allows you to easily send large videos, images or files up to 5GB from the Mail app to any email address. Messages has a new look and delivers even more options for communicating with friends and family. Now you can add titles to ongoing message threads so they are easy to find, add new contacts to ongoing conversations, or leave those conversations you no longer want to follow. With Soundbites you can create, send and listen to audio clips right in Messages.

Continuity features in Yosemite make your Mac and iOS device perfect companions. When your iPhone or iPad is near your Mac, Handoff lets you start an activity on one device and pass it to the other. Instant Hotspot makes using your iPhone’s hotspot as easy as connecting to a Wi-Fi network.³ Now the SMS and MMS messages that previously only appeared on your iPhone appear in Messages on all your devices. You can even send SMS or MMS messages directly from your Mac and make or receive iPhone calls using your Mac as a speakerphone.⁴

Yosemite delivers platform technologies that make it easier for developers to create amazing new Mac apps. SpriteKit makes it easier to incorporate realistic motion, physics and lighting in games, and integrates with SceneKit to bring 3D casual gaming within reach of any developer. Storyboards for Yosemite and Xcode® 6 take advantage of the new View Controller APIs in AppKit to make it easier to build apps that navigate between multiple views of data. New APIs allow developers to integrate Handoff into their own apps and create Today view widgets for distribution through the Mac App Store. Share Menu extensions add new destinations to the Share Menu, and new APIs let developers create custom Share Sheets.

The developer preview of Yosemite is available to Mac Developer Program members starting today. To help make OS X even better, Apple is introducing the OS X Beta Program, which gives customers early access to Yosemite and invites them to try out the release and submit their feedback. Mac users can participate in the OS X Beta Program for Yosemite this summer and download the final version for free from the Mac App Store this fall. Customers interested in signing up can visit www.apple.com/osx/preview for more details.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.

¹ Testing conducted by Apple in May 2014 using 1.4GHz Intel Core i5 MacBook Air with 4GB of RAM, prerelease OS X v10.10, and prerelease OS X v10.9.3. Prerelease Safari 8.0 tested with HD 1080p Netflix content; prerelease Safari 7.0.4 and Silverlight plug-in v5.1.30317.0 tested with HD 720p Netflix content. Systems tested with WPA2 Wi-Fi network connection while running on battery power.
² Testing conducted by Apple in May 2014 using JSBench Suite 2013.1 JavaScript performance benchmark on 1.4GHz Intel Core i5 MacBook Air with 4GB of RAM and prerelease OS X v10.10. Tested with prerelease Safari 8.0, Chrome v34.0.1847.137, and Firefox v29.0.1.
³ Check with your carrier for hotspot availability.
⁴ Cellular data charges may apply.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

You’re reading 9to5Mac — experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

Comments

  1. Is a holly crap.

  2. Oh f**k …. there are now officially 0 new desktop and mobile operating systems I’d want to adopt. OSX 10.9 will be held onto for years to come… and on the phone front, who the hell knows but I do care less about UI on mobile than I do on desktop.

  3. webgyver (@webgyver) - 10 years ago

    As much as I dislike repeating stale statements, “The only thing in life that will remain constant is Change.”

  4. Any word on what the compatibility will be? Mac aged 2010 forward I bet.

    • Seems it will be even better. According to it’s wikipedia page all the Macs capable of running ML and Mavericks are compatible.

      • Trouble is, even performance on some Macs capable of running Mavericks is terrible. I mean, I installed Mavericks on a Mid-2007 iMac and a Mid-2009 MacBook. Big mistake. The MacBook was almost unusable. The iMac was barely usable.

  5. scumbolt2014 - 10 years ago

    Let the whining begun! Losers

  6. André Hedegaard Petersen - 10 years ago

    Sigh, its looking more and more like iOS7 UI design :(
    Terrible icon colours. Sigh sigh sigh.
    Oh well, guess we don’t have a choice.

    And that translucent menu bar thing, you know, Microsoft made this on Vista in 2006. Thats 8 years ago.
    Apple should have done this years and years ago but only now are they waking up.

    Tim was more cheerful and delightful than before, not so boring as previous presentations. Thats a good improvement, well done Tim.

    Am glad they dropped the ever so uninformative and boring “we opened xx amount of stores this year, here are the videos”, but I suppose that will come in September alongside the iPhone release.

  7. Apple Deaf News - 10 years ago

    Reblogged this on Apple Deaf News.

  8. Christopher Rene - 10 years ago

    Will the OS X Yosemite preview have frequent beta updates like iOS does?

  9. Yosemite Will Be Great! Looking forward to is uses.

Author

Avatar for Jordan Kahn Jordan Kahn

Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac, & contributes to 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, & Electrek.co. He also co-authors 9to5Mac’s Logic Pros series.