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Apple OSX Yosemite

Discussion in 'Software' started by Guinevere, 17 Oct 2014.

  1. Guinevere

    Guinevere Mega Mom

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    As my work machines are all Apple I thought I'd give a report on Yosemite which has been released today. This isn't a 'review' just a few notes on my experience in case anyone is thinking of upgrading.

    Install on Machine 1
    2009 Dual Core 13" 8GB SSD MBP.
    This is my spare work machine and has been used for Xcode and graphics work throughout Yosemite's public Betas without any problems at all. Each install has gone perfectly. BTW this machine has gone from Leopard > Snow Leopard > Lion > Mountain Lion > Mavericks and now Yosemite all on the upgrade process.

    Install on Machine 2
    2012 2.7Ghz i7 16GB MBPr
    Because I've already been using the release code on the above machine I was happy to install the OS on my main machine on day 1. Full backups were made of course :)

    Other than picking my portrait external screen for the "Installing..." progress window and ignoring it's rotation the install was smooth. During the install I unplugged the external displays and the progress window switched to the internal screen without a hitch. Install was about 30mins in total. I think it would have been quicker if I didn't have so much stuff installed!

    What existing apps didn't work 'out of the box'?
    None of them. Everything worked smoothly. So far, everything is nice and snappy and noticeably quicker than Mavericks. All settings remained intact from external screen layouts, UPS configurations to development certificates.

    What about the new features?

    Continuity / Handoff:
    Seems totally unreliable so far. I only get partial handoff from Mac to iOS and nothing at all from iOS back to the Mac. Hmmmm maybe it's one of those things that'll work better after a reboot. I've only tested it on my 6 plus. Sometimes it doesn't work, at other times it doesn't work and gives me a "LSContinuityErrorDomain error -105" A Microsoft level of useless information if there ever was one.
    I'll test it on something else tomorrow.

    iCloud Drive:
    Seems to work as advertised. I won't rely on it for mission critical stuff though. Not until it's possible to see if everything is in sync. Yes Apple, we know it's clever to have things 'just work' and files to magically transfer but we're grown-ups and would like to be able to see when it's transferring, what is transferring, how fast and when it's done. Only tested it on a couple of small new files and it works, but seemed to be far from instantaneous and slower than say dropbox.

    I'll be keeping with Dropbox for now for the serious stuff, and reserve iCloud (just as now) for calendars, notes, reminders etc.

    Phone calling & messaging from the desktop:
    All greyed out at the moment. Tied into FaceTime? Not enabled on my carrier? Who knows... another one for tomorrow.

    Summary
    Handoff is one of things that'll probably work after a reboot or require a fix from Apple. Will be nice when it works but for now it's pants.

    Everything else is great. Half hour of update time and I'm back working again.
     
    Last edited: 17 Oct 2014
  2. Votick

    Votick My CPU's hot but my core runs cold.

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    Nice so far, Unfortunately the Mac I'm using is 2010 and can't do hand off due to no Bluetooth LE 4.0.

    Sad times :(
     
  3. jinq-sea

    jinq-sea 'write that down in your copy book' Super Moderator

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    I am loathe to upgrade because, knowing the way that audio plugins work, I'll have to wait for updates for all of them... :duh:

    I have only just gone Mavericks on my main production machine!
     
  4. Cei

    Cei pew pew pew

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    I'll be switching the rMBP (2012) over next weekend, might do the 27" iMac this weekend (2011). They should all run it fine, though the HD based iMac is starting to annoy me with how slow the HD is compared to everything else being SSD.
     
  5. Guinevere

    Guinevere Mega Mom

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    Handoff update:

    Testing handoff again this time with my 5S along side my 6 Plus. My experience is that I've seen it work correctly on the 5S, where I've yet to get it to complete one handoff correctly on the 6 Plus.

    I want to prove to myself this works reliably before I start using day to day. I don't want to risk losing something important by discovering failed handoffs delete documents from iCloud or some such thing.

    I'm testing for my self, but writing it down her because you know... bit-tech.

    From Mac to 5S

    When the handoff icon appears I can use it to open said page / email / document and carry on as advertised, with a few giant caveats:

    - When handing off email it will error if the email you're reading isn't on the other device. If you don't use push email then you can't handoff to a device and expect it to download the email you're reading. It's spout some baloney about the connection being interrupted.

    - When handing off a document it will only work if iCloud is perfectly in sync between devices. If you're document creation skills are quicker than the slow speed of iCloud transfers then forget it. Unlike mail you won't get a bogus error. The desired app will open and sit there at the document screen as it can't open a document that doesn't exist.

    From mac to 6 Plus or iPad Air
    Doesn't work. Ever. Not for me.

    From 5S or 6 Plus to Mac, 5S or 6 Plus
    Works perfectly for a while (with the above caveats about push email).. and then stops working for no reason. The handoff icon goes from being quick to appear and reliable to never appearing.

    So in summary. My experience is that it just doesn't work reliably. Far from it.

    Maybe I'll decide to perform a more scientific test to see if I track down when and why it fails. There's certainly no point raising an Apple radar bug report without such research.

    Until then I'll carry on the old fashion way. As I finish this post and keep testing on the sides all handoff ability has completely stopped. I get not icons or opportunity to handoff at all.

    *sigh*

    Footnote: I do have a lot of Apple devices here. I could test by switching some of them off to create a clean scientific environment. I sure could do that. I won't... but I could.
     
  6. Cei

    Cei pew pew pew

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    As an aside, are you having any WiFi problems with the 6+? Mine seems to hang every now and then, requiring me to flick the phone in and out of airplane mode to force a reconnection. On an Apple AirPort 5Ghz network.
     
  7. Guinevere

    Guinevere Mega Mom

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    Well...

    Yes, I've once seen the 6+ loses wi-fi at home when I thought it should have it. But then I've seen my 5S and iPad Air do this too and my 1st gen iPad mini is a little sod. It's only been when I've been at the very edge of wi-fi range, but MBPs there are fine. I've got two routers and one is ideally located for where it needs to be used, the other not so...

    I've got my Airport Extreme on the very top of my Ikea Wardrobe desk, but it's got a box of old archive DVDs to the right of it, and a box full of mechanical HDDs to the left. It's kind of tucked inside it's own little faraday cage, especially as the walls are impervious to radio signals too.

    It's a perfectly strong signal in the office, and I do get wi-fi outside but the signal strength falls off a cliff within about 5m.

    I'm going to move the router at some point. If I take it out of the 'cage' and position it above the door I should get just as good signal back to the desk but it should also propagate around a bit more to other rooms.

    Until then, I have to put up with a usable wi-fi signal that comes and goes occasionally if I'm in a iffy spot. I think iOS devices are just susceptible to this. If they have an iffy signal they'll flip-flop between reporting it as 2 or 3 bars and then losing it completely. Gits.

    My MBPs etc are always fine everywhere, and I don't have any issues when using the primary router that has a more freedom to fill the space it needs to.

    I too do the flight mode flick. It does seem to be enough to bring it back some of the time, but I think it's just resetting something so it will grab hold of the weak signal again. If I move closer the router and wait it comes back too.

    On a side side note. The other thing I experience from time to time is intermittent routing over a stable connection, but I'm sure this is BTs fault as the only thing that fixes it is resetting their stupid fibre modem.
     
  8. Guinevere

    Guinevere Mega Mom

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    Update

    Handoff now working perfectly fine on my 6 Plus. But only after I switched on FaceTime and went through another Bluetooth 'switch it off and switch it on again' all encompassing wonder-fix.

    I don't use FaceTime and I don't need FaceTime but it would seem Handoff is lost without it.

    Whatever
     
  9. Votick

    Votick My CPU's hot but my core runs cold.

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    I'm going to grab a replacement wifi card for my 2010 MBP and let you know how it goes thanks to a guide Jinq-sea found. Joys of working for the company that makes them.. maybe there's a spare kicking around ;P
     
  10. jinq-sea

    jinq-sea 'write that down in your copy book' Super Moderator

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    http://www.macrumors.com/2014/10/23/continuity-activation-tool/

    For anyone interested :thumb:
     

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