2 os x yosemite: the missing manual
The Mac Becomes
an iPad
Two things made the iPad the fastest-selling electronic gadget in history. First, it’s
so simple. No overlapping windows; every app runs full screen. No Save command;
everything is autosaved. No files or folders. No menus. All your apps are in one place,
the Home screen. To beginners, technophobes, and even old-timers, the iPad’s software
represents a refreshing decluttering of the modern computer.
The second huge iPad sales point is that multitouch screen. You operate the whole
thing by touching or dragging your fingers on the glass. For example, you cycle through
screens by swiping. You zoom out on a map, photo, or Web page by pinching two
fingers. You rotate a photo by twisting two fingers, and so on. Everything feels like
you’re more directly manipulating the objects in your digital world.
So, Apple thought, if simplicity and touch gestures made the iPad a megahit, why
can’t we do the same for the Mac?
And it set out to bring as many of the iPad’s features and as much of its personality
to your Mac as possible. Today’s OS X features like Full Screen mode, Auto Save, and
Launchpad are total iPad rip-offs; if Apple hadn’t stolen these features from itself, it
would be suing for copyright infringement. In the last couple of years, even the Mac’s
app names have changed to match iOS: Reminders, Notes, Notification Center, Game
Center, and so on. And perfect clones of some of iOS’s apps, like iBooks and Maps,
made their way to the Mac, too.
And now, in Yosemite, the other shoe has dropped: OS X has been redesigned, top to
bottom, to look more like iOS 8. Same font schemes, color schemes, design conven-
tions. Out with photographic “materials” like leather, felt, paper, and brushed metal;
in with flat, solid colors.
Upside-Down Scrolling
If you haven’t upgraded OS X in a couple of years, you might
discover something alarming when you try to scroll using
your laptop’s trackpad: When you slide your fingers upward,
the page scrolls down. That’s backward, isn’t it?
For your entire computing career so far, you’ve always
dragged the scroll bar down to move the contents of the
page up—and now Apple has swapped the directions. Why
would Apple throw such a monkey wrench into your life?
The main reason is (what else?) to make the Mac match the
iPad, where you drag your finger up to move the page up.
Anyway, you have two choices: You can spend a couple of
days getting used to the new arrangement—or you can put
things back to the way they’ve always been. (To do that, open
System Preferences. For a trackpad: Click Trackpad, click
Scroll & Zoom, and then turn off “Scroll direction: natural.”
For a Magic Mouse: Click Mouse, click Point & Click, and
then turn off “Scroll direction: natural.”)
Note: If you have a non-Apple mouse that has a scroll wheel,
the Mouse pane may not offer this scroll-direction option.
You can still reverse the scroll-direction logic, though, if
you’re handy in Terminal (OS X’s command-line program).
Just open Terminal and type defaults write ~/Library/Prefer-
ences/.GlobalPreferences com.apple.swipescrolldirection
-bool false. When you press Return and log out, you’ll find
that the time-honored scroll directions have been restored.
UP TO SPEED