Viewed in isolation, Yosemite provides a graphical refresh accompanied by a few interesting features and several new technologies whose benefits are mostly speculative, depending heavily on how eagerly they’re adopted by third-party developers. But Apple no longer views the Mac in isolation, and neither should you. OS X is finally a full-fledged peer to iOS; all aspects of sibling rivalry have been banished.
-John Siracusa, “OS X 10.10 Yosemite: The Ars Technica Review”
John Siracusa has mentioned on a number of occasion that this may be his last review of OS X, as he started writing them at Developer Preview 2 and I have to say, I think this one is his best yet. I have been reading them since Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and so they generally hold a special place in my heart, but this year was different for me, so my laud of the review might be a bit biased.
In previous years, I read the review as a technologist and interested consumer, often skipping the technical overviews that had nothing to do with my daily work. This year, I was reading it as a system administrator, deeply interested in the under the hood changes that have been made in this release, which includes the not insignificant introduction of the Swift programming language.
No matter what the filter through which I see the Yosemite review, however, I quoted the above paragraph due to both its power of insight as well as its ability to be a good send off for Siracusa should this actually be his last OS X review for Ars Technica. If you read nothing else about OS X Yosemite, read the last “page” this review, which includes the Recommendations and Conclusions sections.
Thank you for your work, sir.
Posted: October 20, 2014
In 2022, I am participating in two leadership training programs. This should be a social experience, so I am writing about it. Check out the full list of posts in the series here.