Yosemite Guide

OS X Yosemite Interactive Starter Guide

Looking for a a quick way to get up to speed on all of OS X Yosemite's most outstanding features? Our OS X Yosemite Interactive Starter Guide is a visual tool to help you become quickly acclimated with some of Yosemite’s most notable new additions, improvements, and changes.

Each item showcased includes a hand-crafted video walkthrough with guided voice over. More importantly, it’s designed to be easily digestible.

You may have noticed that over the past few weeks, we've posted excerpts from the guide right here on iDB. In fact, you can read all of its excerpts by visiting the guide's tag page. Of course, you also have the option to buy the OS X Yosemite Interactive Starter Guide directly from the iBooks store for only $0.99. Not only do you get a guide that you can take with you and reference while offline, but you also get to support iDB in the process. It's a win-win scenario. Check inside for more details.

Using the new Today View in OS X Yosemite’s Notification Center

The Notification Center in iOS 8 received a significant revamp, and the same can be said about the Notification Center in Yosemite. New in this year’s OS X revamp is the appearance of the Today View.

The Today View contains pertinent information about your day from your Calendar, Stocks, Weather and more. It even has the ability to host widgets—both stock and third-party—directly within Notification Center. Watch our walkthrough video inside to see what I mean.

How to annotate mail attachments in OS X Yosemite

It is now possible to annotate image attachments in the Mail app on the fly. In previous versions of OS X, you had to go through the time-consuming exercise of opening the image in some sort of editor, perhaps Preview, annotating the image, attaching it to your email, then sending.

With OS X Yosemite, you can annotate the image while the image is attached to the email. This is done via Markup—a new default extension available within Mail. Look inside to see our video walkthrough, which showcases this awesome new OS X Yosemite feature.

Using OS X Yosemite’s revamped Spotlight Search

Spotlight has been improved through and through to be more useful in OS X Yosemite. It has adopted an Alfred-inspired interface that makes working with Spotlight easier and more powerful.

Want to see some of the main differences in action? Have a look at our video walkthrough as we showcase some of the new things that Spotlight has to offer.

Using Extensions in OS X Yosemite

Like iOS 8, OS X Yosemite introduces third-party extensions. Extensions allow you to easily share with social services and perform other functions.

Apple has included a new Extensions manager, accessible via System Preferences → Extensions. From there, you can manage built-in extensions, third-party extensions, and Notification Center Today View widgets from one convenient location.

How to use AirDrop between OS X Yosemite and iOS 8

AirDrop is a file transmission tool that first debuted in OS X Lion. Prior to iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, the AirDrop protocols between Mac and iOS were not compatible. This incompatibility made AirDrop worthless in the eyes of many, as most casual users would prefer to exchange data between a Mac and an iOS device, instead of two Macs.

The AirDrop issue has been solved in iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite. AirDrop now works beautifully between a Mac and an iPhone, or a Mac and an iPad. It’s a great way to make quick transmissions between local devices. Watch our video walkthrough after the break for a demonstration of AirDrop in action.

How to use Handoff in OS X Yosemite

Handoff is one of the flagship features for both iOS and OS X. It allows you to seamlessly continue working where you left off on another device.

In this video tutorial, I'll walk you through making sure that Handoff is enabled for your device, and show you how it can be used. Step inside to learn more.

New in OS X Yosemite: iCloud Drive

iCloud Drive is a new integrated cloud storage solution for Apple devices. It’s available on both iOS devices running iOS 8, and Macs with OS X Yosemite installed.

iCloud Drive taps into your existing iCloud Storage to act as a central hub for all of the files stored in iCloud. Watch our video walkthrough after the jump for additional insight...

The Calendar app gets a new “Day View” for OS X Yosemite

The Calendar app receives a brand new Day view to highlight a full day’s events in OS X Yosemite. Again, this is a feature that originates on iOS, and has found its way back to the Mac.

If you have a lot of appointments scheduled on a daily basis, then the Calendar App’s new Day view could become an instrumental tool for you. It’s a great way to take in the breadth of the current day’s appointments from a single view.

Step inside and watch our hands-on walkthrough, which showcases the new Calendar view in action...

OS X Yosemite ushers in a revamped iTunes

iTunes has been redesigned completely to coincide with OS X Yosemite’s design enhancements. The result is a much flatter and cleaner looking app that’s devoid of many of the shadows and layers present in previous iterations.

Just recently, the iTunes Store, which resides within the iTunes app, received an update to match the flatter appearance. This has resulted in a more consistent look across the entire app.

Check out our video walkthrough after the break, which highlights some of the changes in the latest version of iTunes— iTunes 12.

Using predictive text in OS X Yosemite

The QuickType predictive text functionality found in iOS 8 would be hard to mimic on a desktop interface that uses a physical keyboard, but Apple has come up with a good way to suggest words that you may want to type next in OS X Yosemite. Check out our video walkthrough after the break and see how.

A look at some of the Safari enhancements in OS X Yosemite

Safari has been given a big revamp in OS X Yosemite, and it's one of my favorite new updates to the operating system as a whole. The team working on Safari took a lot of the elements that makes Safari on iOS a success, and incorporated those into the OS X Yosemite version. The result is a much-improved favorite interface, simplified toolbar, and better tab navigation. Safari for OS X Yosemite is a win all the way around. Have a look at our video walkthrough showcasing these new features inside...