OS X 10.10 Yosemite: The Ars Technica Review by John Siracusa
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I have read every one of Siracusa’s epic OS X reviews since 10.5 on. Lately they provide my feature overview before I get around to installing the actual update; this year is no different. One of the best values he brings to these is his history with Macs – he can connect the past and present like few other Apple observers.
This review’s section on Extensions, with callbacks to the Classic era, was interesting because of my own fond and frustrating memories dealing with extension conflicts on System 7 through Mac OS 9. The absolute highlight of this review, and I say this in part as a computer scientist, is his overview of the new Swift programming language, and how it fits into the Apple ecosystem and developer toolchain. The technical detail he gets into with intermediate languages and type systems is fascinating. The future in that regard is particularly exciting, and I hope to find time to work in Swift myself soon.
I read the iBooks version of the review, but I would recommend the Ars Technica web version for a couple of reasons. First, John himself considers that the canonical version. Second, it has better image layout and some dynamic content demonstrating the various interface changes. Third, the reference links provide important context, and are easier to jump out to on the web than leaving the iBooks app on an iPad (especially on a poor A5-powered mini that likes to swap the book out of memory as soon as you open a link in Safari). I read the web version up until last year’s Mavericks review, but now I see that the iBooks experience, while an easy purchase, is an inferior read of (almost) the same content.
Obviously I am a Siracusa fan, so I’m predisposed to like his analytical style, but I also appreciate his Mac cultural references sprinkled throughout, like titling his conclusion using a quote from the “1984” commercial for the original Macintosh. If you are interesting in exactly what you are getting by upgrading your Mac’s operating system this year, read this.
