Unlike iOS 8, the adoption rate of Apple’s new desktop operating system – OS X Yosemite – is on the higher side. There are some early problems with the OS though. We have here highlighted a few of them.
In less than two months of its official release, OS X Yosemite has crossed 38% adoption rate among Mac-users worldwide. If the same time-frame is considered, the adoption of Yosemite has been higher than that of its predecessor, OS X Mavericks. To put matters in further perspective, it took more than two years for the Windows 8 operating system to cross a pitiful 20% adoption rate. Last week, OS X 10.10.2 was released after its beta version was seeded to and tested by developers. Apple’s new OS version is not without its share of bugs and apparent glitches though. Here are a few problems that you might have faced:
- Audio problems – Strangely enough, OS X 10.10 does not seem to be able to detect all types of connected headphones and speakers. As a result, listening to audio files can be a bit of a problem. If you have faced this issue, you need to select the ‘Internal Speakers’ option, under System Preferences → Sound → Sound Effects. The time when you had plugged in the headset can also be a factor.
- Wi-fi connectivity bug – The inaugural version of Yosemite had this bug, and it has not been properly rectified in the 10.10.1 upgrade patch. Home users as well as iPhone app companies using Mac systems at workplaces – there have been complaints from all types of users regarding the frequent connection losses on Yosemite systems. At times, connecting to a network becomes a problem as well. Hopefully, the new upgrade has finally got rid of the wifi bug.
- Faster battery drains – There had been a bit of a panic among Macbook Air-users, regarding the faster battery drainage after upgrading to OS X Yosemite. This ain’t really a bug though – since after doing any major OS upgrade, the battery gets fully recalibrated, while the Spotlight also gets reindexed. This causes a higher-than-normal battery juice consumption for the first couple of days after doing the upgrade. Within 3-4 days at maximum, battery life should be back to regular levels.
- Bluetooth connectivity problems – Okay, this one is more serious. After upgrading to OS X Yosemite, many users have reported a significant audio lag in Bluetooth – and there have been cases of no sound as well. Some people have also found their system simply locks up whenever a Bluetooth headphone is plugged in. It is not the easiest task to connect to a paired device either. The developers at Apple need to look into this issue soon.
- System lags – It has been a common refrain from general users as well as app development experts that systems running on Yosemite take significantly longer to ‘wake up’ than previous versions of OS X. According to a solution to this posted on Reddit, this happens due to unfinished automatic system updates. Turning off these auto-updates is one option, while Notebook users can simply down the lid for a minute and then check if the welcome screen is visible. Repeated download popups for iTunes 12 can be an irritation too. If you are seeing these, go for a manual download from the official website.
- Crashes during video playback – Not much was heard about this after the release of OS X 10.10, but after people upgraded to 10.10.1 – this problem started to crop up. According to home-users and professional app developers reporting this problem, an error message is flashed before any video starts playing. There have been several instances of total browser crashes (Safari), whenever a video is played. To be fair, at least for YouTube videos – this might not be an issue with OS X, and might be occurring due to a bug in the streaming process.
- Older Macs tend to slow down after the upgrade – Prior to its release, a lot of talk had been about how Yosemite would be a much faster OS than Mavericks. Well, that has been proved to be true – but only on the new Macs. Most older systems do not have the capacity to handle all the new features, layouts and widgets of Yosemite. This, in turn, has affected the overall system speeds. Thankfully, there are ways to tone down the new effects of Yosemite (for instance, turning off the Notifications Widgets), which can help older Macs upgraded to Yosemite work at satisfactory speeds.
- Incomplete booting – In addition to the dark or blank screens that are displayed after ‘waking up’ a Yosemite system, upgraded Mac-s can develop snags during the booting process. In particular, when the system is connected to the Ethernet (as is the case at web and mobile app development companies), the bar either fills up too slowly, or simply freezes halfway. System experts feel that unplugging the Ethernet and booting the Mac first is a way to work around this problem. After the release of 10.10.1, booting problems have become way less frequent though.
- Surprisingly slow Safari browser – Given the promise of enhanced browsing speeds that Yosemite comes with, this problem has come as a shocker to many. However, the lag in Safari (much like the battery drainage problem) is likely to be a temporary one. The slowness is generally caused due to the initial disk-encryption, that takes a huge share of the total processing capacity of the system. You can also speed up the browser (and the web apps) by deleting the cache/moving the Cache.db file to Trash.
- Mail accounts becoming inaccessible – Arguably the most common and troublesome bug in OS X Yosemite, after the wifi and Bluetooth connectivity issues. Several users have reported that they are not being able to send/receive emails over SMTP. You need to make sure that the ‘Automatically detect and maintain account settings’ option is not checked. Removing and setting up your email account(s) might also be necessary – particularly if you are not being able to access Gmail via IMAP. In most cases, this mail bug temporarily goes away once the accounts are re-added. From time to time, check whether the account provider settings are okay or have got automatically changed.
- Issues with Spotlight – Mac-fans and iOS app developers have unanimously voiced their approval of the revamped Spotlight feature on OS X 10.10. However, there is a glitch in it as well – the Bing searches work only when the selected location and language are matched. In other words, Spotlight would work only at the geographical locations where it is available. In addition, some reports have come in from people who are in countries that are supported, that Spotlight is not working properly. Once again, we hope that Apple would fix this issue soon.
- MacBook does not shut down – Recently upgraded your MacBook Pro or MacBook Air to OS X Yosemite? You might find that the device is simply refusing to shut down, and understandably, consider this to be another bug. However, chances are that this is happening due to the FireVault encryption process that takes place after the upgrade. It can take upto 48 hours for the encryption to be complete – and after that, your MacBook should start behaving normally once again.
- Problems in mobile integration – The much-vaunted ‘Handoff’ feature in the new Apple desktop OS has been a bit of a letdown for some users. Even at mobile software and app development agencies, professionals have had trouble to work simultaneously on their iPhones and iMacs. The most common problem has been with text forwarding, and the only way (till now) to tackle this is the tried-and-tested method of disabling/re-enabling the SMS functionality. For getting ‘Handoff’ to work properly, resetting iCloud and/or Bluetooth might also be necessary.
- Possible bug in the system graphics? – For most full-time graphics and UI/UX designers, using Photoshop on Yosemite has been nothing short of a nightmare. This is rather remarkable, since there had never been any issue related to working with Adobe Photoshop on Mac systems earlier. In general too, graphic designers have reported that strange shapes and colors often appear on the screen, when any photo-editing software is launched. All of this hints to a minor problem in the graphics card detection process on Yosemite.
According to regular users – professional and otherwise – the new Apple desktop OS has compatibility issues with Logitech mouse as well as keyboards. None of the above problems are really serious, and it is expected that Apple would iron them out soon. A couple of them, in fact, are not bugs at all (as mentioned in the discussion). OS X Yosemite is probably the best desktop operating system from Apple till date, and we would really like these flaws to be removed as soon as possible.
Have you experienced any of these problems while using Yosemite?
Hussain Fakhruddin
CEO at Teknowledge Software
Hussain Fakhruddin is the founder/CEO of Teknowledge mobile apps company. He heads a large team of app developers, and has overseen the creation of nearly 600 applications. Apart from app development, his interests include reading, traveling and online blogging.
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