Apple Announces OS X Yosemite With Translucent, Flatter Design, Updated Notification Center And More (Photos)

Credits: Techcrunch

As expected, Apple today announced the next version of the OS X operating system at its WWDC developer conference. It includes the much-rumored flatter look that many expected after Jony Ive took over the responsibility for the look-and-feel of OS X, as well as a wide range of new features.

With this new design, OS X — which now has an install base of about 80 million, including about 40 million on the latest release — now looks a bit more like iOS 7, but there is still quite a bit of depth in this release, too. Indeed, more than flat, the design almost seems to focus more on translucency than anything else.

The first thing users will likely notice when they open the new OS X is the new dock. Apple has done away with the faux-3D shelf look here and has put the icons on a simple translucent background instead.

The update isn’t just about looks, though, Apple also added a large number of new features, too. The Notification Center, for example,  now features an iOS-like Today view, in addition to more interactive notifications from third-party apps. Spotlight in OS X is also getting a bunch of new features and is now universal, meaning it includes the ability to search for people, mails, events and more. For users who don’t like all the white space, Apple is also adding a dark mode. Sidebar apps will get a new look, too.

The other major new feature is Yosemite is the addition of iCloud Drive, a new cloud-storage service from Apple for OS X, iOS, Windows and the Web. This puts Apple into direct competition with the likes of Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft’s OneDrive.

While the look has definitely changed, many of the basics still remain the same: the menu bar will remain at the top of the screen, for example, and the Apple icon continues to grace the top-left corner of the screen. The Finder and the dock also seem to have remained fundamentally unchanged, even though their look is now a bit different.

Virtually every other OS X application from Apple, too, is getting updates. Mail, for example, now includes more features for designing your emails and some built-in image editing features.

Safari is getting an iOS-like ‘share’ button. The browser now also features a Private Browsing mode, as well as WebGL and SPDY support. In addition, Apple says Safari’s JavaScript engine is now significantly faster than Google’s.