Here’s what our readers think of OS X Yosemite

The public beta of OS X El Capitan might be out now, but plenty of users will continue using OS X Yosemite through the fall and beyond. And at first glance that’s just fine: In our own review we called Yosemite “a solid update for Mac users” that offered a “clean new design” and close integration with iOS devices. However, quite a few of our readers disagreed. Almost 30 of you chimed in on Yosemite’s product database page to give this iteration of OS X a user score of 4.8 out of 10, possibly making it the most contentious product on our site. What is it about Yosemite that makes it more shaky than solid for many users?

“Slapping a new coat of bright paint and changing the system font to Helvetica does not constitute a major OS release.” — emgbeeker

Yosemite didn’t leave a good first impression on many. Abiewasabi had a different take than ours about the clean design, calling the graphics “childish, garish and simplistic.” Emgbeeker says the updated user interface “suffers from many bad usability decisions,” with vedmant specifically calling out the bright colors and hard-to-read text as being “a huge step back for Apple” that distorts the reasons for switching to a flat design. Even mindfreek, who thinks Yosemite looks “very nice,” called it impractical and lacking the boldness of the previous version of OS X, Mavericks.

In performance, Yosemite didn’t shine either, with altergeist complaining of “GPU panics, hard crashes, freezes and lower performance in benchmarks than Mavericks,” commenting that even Windows Vista was “fundamentally more stable and reliable than Yosemite.” Sydneystufff said, “I have wasted countless hours of my time force quitting, re-starting, re-installing on a daily/hourly basis” and GeeboH calls Yosemite “the most unstable version of OS X I’ve used since 2001.”

Even when it’s not constantly rebooting itself on our readers, many reported that Yosemite felt slow. Pim1987 noted “extreme slow-downs” even after a clean install, and a user unabashedly named “ihateosyosemite” compared it to ’90s dial-up speeds. Sydneystufff says, “The wheel spins and spins and spins,” and ultimately for them, “productivity is at an all-time ZERO!” But these problems varied by user, with steenbag actually finding it “fast and responsive,” while Matmania says it runs “much faster than Mavericks” on his 2012 MacBook Pro.

Another major particular point of contention users had with Yosemite was its WiFi performance, with sydneystufff calling it “a disaster” and evey77 constantly force-quitting her laptop due to connection problems. Applebol notes the WiFi is “less stable than on Mavericks,” while mindfreek even decided to switch back to the previous OS due to the wireless issues.

“The iPhone sharing stuff means nothing to me, as I use an Android phone and have no plans of switching.” — OftHated

Downgrading back to Mavericks was a refrain for quite a few users, with emgbeeker and evey77 also vowing to switch back, while Mot12 calls Yosemite “a most unwanted upgrade.” The switch to Yosemite did work out for a small handful like alecbuck, who had a smattering of issues, but said, “At least it is better than Mavericks.” However, for most users, upgrading Yosemite seemed to remind them of the worst of Windows. Lwj says Yosemite made their Mac act just like a PC, and the spinning wheel of death gave OftHated “awful flashbacks to the Vista days.” Mot12 says that Yosemite is “Apple’s way of becoming a Microsoft-type klutzy product,” and sydneystufff feels that it’s the work of “Gen Y designers who don’t use the system for anything but Facebook.” In the end, mudguy simply says that the folks at Apple “can dump their Yosemite into the Grand Canyon.”

Was your experience with Yosemite also down in the pits? Or did you have a more uplifting take on it? Feel free to write your own review, for good or ill, on the Yosemite product page.

Filed under: Software, Apple

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