OS X 10.10 Yosemite review

We liked

Continuity is an excellent addition, and the ability to make and receive phone calls from your Mac in particular is something we've been waiting for since the advent of Bluetooth a decade ago.

iCloud Drive is also overdue, particularly for those of us who pay for additional storage, and it's good to see that it's as easy to use as Dropbox or OneDrive. The Today view transforms Notification Centre and we can't wait to see what developers do with Extensions.

We disliked

Apple introduced tags with Mavericks. We didn't like the implementation then, and the way it hijacked colour coding, and we still don't. Handoff, while great, isn't intuitive and it's easy to become frustrated when trying to get it to work.

There seems to be no reason for the removal of Dock preferences from the Apple menu, and while it's a minor irritation, it's an irritation nonetheless. And the ability to AirPlay to, rather than just from, a Mac looks like it must remain on the wish-list for at least another year.

Final verdict

Yosemite is as big a deal for the Mac as iOS 7 was for the iPhone and iPad. Visually it takes a bit of getting used to, and there will no doubt be a period of bedding in as Apple smooths out one or two rough edges. If you were a fan of glassy textures and 3D tropes, you'll be disappointed. For the rest of us, however, the user interface is cleaner, crisper and looks particularly stunning on Retina displays.

User interface aside, the biggest news is the ever-tightening link between Apple's two operating systems. If you're uneasy with being 'locked in' to Apple's universe, prepare to be very uncomfortable.

Apple's mission is clear: it wants to make swapping between iOS and OS X as seamless as possible, while retaining the strengths of each platform. That involves compromises, however, and one of them is using iCloud and an Apple ID for all your stuff. If you can live with that, Yosemite is very good indeed.