Wednesday, June 4, 2014

My thoughts on iOS 8 and Yosemite so far....

Hey guys been a few days but I have one heck of a post for you. So I was going to make this into a video but figured I would make a blog post about and perhaps make a video tomorrow stating some of the similar things I am going to state now. Lets first start with Yosemite. The day of the announcement of the new OS, I downloaded it. I really like the layout more than I had anticipated. It is different. I do however feel like they made a much larger deal about the transparency issue. Yes there is a transparency in a lot of the windows that you use, but it is nothing crazy to make you think to much of a different. It does however have more of a iOS feel to it. Although I am not a strict fan of iOS 7 (I say 8 too mainly because its the same as far as the looks go) it does however fit well into my Macbook. Needless to say I enjoy it. Keep in mind that this is a beta (both iOS 8 and Yosemite) but for a beta it operates pretty nicely. I don't have a problem with using it as a daily driver until the next beta. One of the main things I was/am looking forward to in the new OS and iOS is the ability to make phone calls and receive them. Unfortunately that is not happening right now. I imagine this is mainly due because it is a beta (both of them). When I get a call it just goes straight to my iPhone and does not show up anywhere near my MBP. I am also unable to make calls using my MBP. Upon doing so I get the tab in the upper right hand corner that says using iPhone (as if it was about to start the call) and it never calls. I tried several different numbers. I tried doing FaceTime audio even and that does not work either. So that is unsuccessful in these betas. Also they showed the wifi hotspot capibility where your supposed to go up to the wifi settings on your mac and see your iPhone and connect to the internet via your iPhone's data connection. Unfortunately I have no idea how that will work since I cannot find my iPhone anywhere in the wifi. Now on to the whole "Contuinity" thing of Apple wanting you to use your devices in sync with each other at all times. In the WWDC they showed where you can be on Safari on your Mac and go to your iPhone and have the little Safari symbol show up and open it right where you left off. There have been on several occasions so far where that has worked and it was handy....downside is usually 80/20 and the 20 being that it will actually work....and if you have a lock screen on the iPhone than you can just basically forget about that feature for the mean time. Having a lock screen will cause the phone to freeze. iOS 8 is not a horrible update. If you like 7 than you won't have a problem with 8. However if you don't have a Mac (or iPad) than being in a rush to have iOS 8 is kind of pointless, seeing that the main updates to iOS 8 is really the ability to connect with your other Apple products. It is a good move by Apple (as long as it works but in the betas nothing is really working as stated) so that they can have a customer want to purchase multiple Apple products instead of just an iPhone or a Mac. Its smart and overall I would be very very very pleased with it if it works as it is supposed to. Hopefully within the next few beta releases those issues get addressed. Now if you are interested in getting the betas you can find them practically anywhere. Be careful there are several steps you have to follow in order to get the beta for iOS 8. Getting Yosemite is fairly easy.