This may sound silly. In fact you may laugh at this but I have to share it anyways. Recently as some of you know I had to send my laptop back to Apple because the video card in it went kaput. It just quit working and was making the computer constantly shutdown. When I got it back I found out they had completely wiped the hard drive. I was going to have to start completely over setting up my environment. Oh the pain. All the work I’d done configuring multiple versions of PHP and my local development tools. Oh well, the screen looked amazing and the video card was working.

I decided as long as I was having to start fresh I might as well download the latest release of OS X and play around with Yosemite. I had previously watched the keynote when Yosemite was announced and I must admit I wasn’t taken by anything spectacular. Nothing made me catch my breath or decide I had to have it (obviously as I hadn’t downloaded it before). But now that I was starting fresh I had nothing to lose. So off I went to download the beta.

The Search Command

While I still don’t see huge change or differences which make me really amazed there are a few things which I have found I absolutely love. I’ll share two very quickly. First for those that know how I work I am always on the keyboard. I rarely use the mouse and try to do as much as I can without moving my hands from my keyboard. As a result the CMD+Space shortcut to launch search and then type the program I want to use is a huge favorite of mine. It’s almost second nature to hit the key combo and look to the top right to begin typing the app name. Well, with Yosemite they’ve brought this feature front and center - literally. Now I can look in much larger font and much more detail as I enter the program name. It’s pretty cool.

The Context Menu

The second feature is much more subtle. It’s incorporated in several different layouts but I notice it most when using the right click. I think they’ve called it the frosted glass look. It’s subtle, but I love it. Something about the semi-transparent nature of the context menu just feels right. I don’t know quite how to describe it or quite what I would say is the reason for my love. But I enjoy it. Now I admit I don’t see it much because I use the keyboard mostly (refer to the point above), but when I do find myself using it I like it.

Yosemite and You

If you have the opportunity to try Yosemite take a look at these features and see for yourself. Sometimes the little UI treats are the most important. I think that’s a great lesson to take away. It’s not the next game changing operating system and it doesn’t do something completely revolutionary, but the little things matter. The little touches which make something stand apart are critically important. Remember this as you’re working on your next project. What is your frosted glass moment? What can you add to make your users’ experience unlike anything else?