Yosemite

How to get a 3D dock on OS X Yosemite

Do you miss OS X's 3D dock? OS X Yosemite finally did away with the 3D dock that's been present since the release of OS X Leopard, but you can get it back by using a simple application called cDock.

cDock includes, among a host of other features, the ability to theme the dock with over a dozen built-in themes. There are night themes, fullscreen themes, pink themes, and, of course, 3D themes. If you've been reminiscing about the "good ol' days", then you can easily relive the past with this handy little application.

New security update is available for OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 users

Thursday, Apple issued a new security update for Mac users running OS X Yosemite 10.10.2. The update, titled 'Security Update 2015-003 1.0,' is available right now through the Updates tab of the Mac App Store and is recommended for all users as it improves the security of OS X.

If you're running a public beta of OS X Yosemite 10.10.3, you won't see this update because the stable OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 release is bound to include contents of today's security update.

Yosemite 10.10.3 beta with Photos for Mac now available via OS X Public Beta program

The first beta of the forthcoming OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 software update which contains the long-expected Photos for Mac application, is now available via the AppleSeed Public Beta service.

Participants in the OS X Public Beta program can download the software update right now via the Updates tab of the Mac App Store. The public beta carries a build number of 14D87, the same like the second 10.10.3 beta that the company seeded to its registered Mac developers a week ago.

How to quickly toggle dark mode using a keyboard shortcut on Mac

Dark mode is one of the more popular features of OS X Yosemite, because it allows you to add a dark tint to both the dock and the menu bar on Mac. The standard way to enable dark mode involves venturing to System Preferences, opening the General section, and clicking on the enable dark mode option. But wouldn't it be cool if you could toggle dark mode using a simple keyboard shortcut?

How to make third-party menu bar icons look better with dark mode on Mac

OS X Yosemite introduced a new dark mode option to change the tint color of both the menu bar and the dock in OS X. While I'm a big fan of dark mode, some of the third-party apps that I use have not been updated to play nice with dark mode. This results in menu bar icons that look weird with dark mode enabled, because they don't invert after toggling dark mode on.

If you're someone who always uses dark mode and never switches to regular mode, there is a way to force these menu bar icons to look better with dark mode enabled...

With UXKit, Apple has devs jumping with joy

Photos for OS X, releasing this Spring, could quietly signal a much welcomed change in direction for Mac development. That is, if Apple decides to let programmers access the same private framework it tapped in constructing the clean and elegant user interface seen in a developer beta of Photos for Mac.

As SixColors pointed out, several prominent developers took to Twitter to share their excitement about the framework Photos for Mac uses, currently available only to Apple. It's called UXKit and appears to be an OS X version of the UIKit framework on iOS.

What does this have to do with you? Read on...

Apple seeds OS X 10.10.3 beta with new Photos app

The death of iPhoto is here, as Apple has begun rolling out OS X 10.10.3 to beta testers on Thursday with the all-new Photos app found within the pre-release software.

Developers can grab the OS X 10.10.3 software from the Mac App Store software update tool or through the Developer Center. 

Slow UI animations on Yosemite? Try this simple tip

I currently have two machines running Yosemite: one is a brand new Retina iMac, and the other is an older MacBook Air. Both these machines have been feeling incredibly slow in regards to general animations of the User Interface. One obvious way to test this is to bring up Exposé, which then turns both my Macs into stuttering slugs. While I can kind of understand why my old MacBook Air would behave like this, there is absolutely no excuse for my iMac to. Talking about this issue with someone at the Apple Store, I was offered an original workaround.

Second Yosemite update looms: Wi-Fi fixes, iCloud Drive in Time Machine and more

Despite all the talk of a problematic decline in software quality, Apple is feeling your pain and isn't standing still.

Currently in testing, a second update to OS X Yosemite is due later this week. First of all, Mac OS X 10.10.2 apparently squashes that annoying bug which manifests itself annoyingly as intermittent Wi-Fi issues.

Another one resolves a bug preventing your Mac from reconnecting to a Wi-Fi network after waking from sleep, causing you to manually disable and re-enable Wi-Fi, which gets old fast.

Next, iCloud Drive should be now accessible directly in Time Machine, including the ability to track changes to files and documents.

Moreover, 10.10.2 prevents the so-called ‘Thunderstrike’ hardware exploit which targets Macs equipped with high-bandwidth Thunderbolt ports and also includes other important fixes.

Apple seeds new OS X 10.10.2 beta to developers

Apple has seeded a new beta of its upcoming OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 this afternoon. The update, labeled build 14C94b, is available through the Update tab in the Mac App Store and the Dev Center for all registered Mac developers.

Today’s release comes a few weeks after the previous OS X 10.10.2 beta, and Apple has once again asked developers to focus their testing efforts on Wi-Fi connectivity—a long-standing Yosemite issue—as well as Mail and VoiceOver.