Apple's WWDC 2015 on Monday marks one year since developers first got to try out iOS 8, since then the iPhone and iPad operating system has reached iOS 8.3.

Registered Apple developers are ahead of everyone else, poking holes in the iOS 8.4 beta and awaiting iOS 9 beta, hopefully launching next week, with even more new features.

The most important changes in iOS 8.3 include fixes to aggravating Wi-Fi and battery drain problems, which reared their ugly head when the initial upgrade happened in September of last year.

Smaller tweaks can be spotted in the iPhone keyboard, which got a larger space bar, squeezing in on the "." button's prime real estate. It also adds more diversity to its emoji with 300 new characters.

You probably wouldn't know it, but CarPlay was given a boost thanks to the addition of wireless iPhone support and, finally, Siri learned more languages, as did the dictation tool.

iOS 8.4 release date and features

Venturing beyond this stable version of the software, iOS 8.4 beta is gearing up for a new song streaming service, allegedly called Apple Music, to incorporate the company's Beats Music acquisition.

Apple is said to be rolling out an artist-driven social network in conjunction with the latest version of iOS. Musicians can connect with followers and post track samples, photos, videos and concert updates.

With some of these features already in beta, we expect the iOS 8.4 release date to happen at or right after Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference keynote on June 8.

iOS 9 may be announced, too, finally adding public transit directions, a tweaked keyboard and legacy support older hardware. But it'll likely launch in September for everyone, but developers with early access.

iOS 8.2 and earlier

iOS 8 through iOS 8.2 brought a new look and features, rounding out the flat iOS 7 design, even if you didn't upgrade to iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and an Apple Watch container app.

As we mentioned in our full iOS 8 review, instead of a dramatic redesign, this year's mobile operating system update ties everything together with the overarching theme of "convergence."

In October, iOS 8.1 released with features like tighter Mac OS X Yosemite integration while further loosening the restrictions on Apple's Touch ID fingerprint sensor for the same-day Apple Pay launch.

New software kits also bring once fragmented health gadgets together, which has been ideal for bridging the gap between the phone and new Apple Watch for fitness trackers.

Compatibility

When it comes to iOS 8.3 and iOS 8 compatibility in general, Apple requires an iPhone 4S or newer and iPad 2 or newer to update to the latest software. Only the iPhone 4 is cut from the list.

Both the iPads mini and iPad mini 2 tablets and the forever alone iPod touch 5th generation also work with the new iOS, just like they did with iOS 7. No one besides 2010's iPhone 4 gets left behind.

That's not to say that every device worked flawlessly from the beginning. iOS 8 had been running slowly on the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 given the older hardware specs.

These older devices should be running more smoothly as of December's iOS 8.1.1. Release notes detail a minor update, but one that give these two older devices a much-needed performance bump.

iOS 8 updates fix problems

iOS 8.3, especially iOS 8.1.3, fixed some of those nasty Wi-Fi and battery drain problems that resulted in a lot of negative "feedback" for Apple.

It also introduces Apple Pay to iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus owners in the US. Now you can link up for credit or debit card to Apple's digital wallet if your bank is one of the 500 that support the NFC-like feature.

There are still plenty of iPhone users complaining about connectivity issues on Apple's support forum, but a more WiFi and Bluetooth-focused patch come with iOS 8.4 eventually.

OS X Yosemite gets the most out of iOS 8.1 and above thanks to the new Continuity feature. Mac computers can now send and receive phone calls, texts and AirDrops from Apple mobile devices.

This is a major upgrade over iOS 8.0.2 and iOS 8.0.1. Yes, they populated the App Store with fitness and nutrition apps that tie into Apple's Health app, but it was of no use if they broke your phone.

Touch ID for all

Apple's fingerprint scanner has been limited to bypassing the lockscreen and buying iTunes Store content, but iOS 8 changes all of that as app developers get access to the five-digit login tool.

All sorts of apps can use the biometric scanning home button instead of pesky passwords. It only applies to the Touch ID-enabled iPhone 5S, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. But the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 are rumored to include the sensor.

At WWDC, personal financial management Mint.com illustrated how third-party Touch ID use will expand beyond its iOS 7 lockscreen and iTunes confines. 1Password uses the same home button authentication the easier password management.

PayPal sent its developers to Apple's Touch ID session at the conference, meaning all of your eBay and e-commerce transactions may be complete with the touch of the home button when upgrading to iOS 8.

While PayPal doesn't think highly of Apple Pay, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus digital wallet idea is likely to be ready for iOS 8.1 in October in the US and in 2015 in the UK.

In due time, "Forget password" will become a thing of the past, replaced by the pores in your fingertips. It should act as a much more unique method of protecting your valuable data.

This Touch ID convenience is on top of the fact that iOS 8 Apple Pay system of scanning credit cards via an iPhone or iPad camera and automatically filling in the details to make shopping easier.

Of course, Apple went out of its way to say that even though you trust many app developers with your bank account data, they won't have access to your biometric information. It's locked away in the A7 and new A8 processor.

iOS 8 camera time-lapse mode

Believe it or not, the iPhone is consistently the most used camera in the world. It's in so many hands and so easy to use. In iOS 8, the camera app is going to get even better.

Apple added a time-lapse camera mode to iOS 8 beta 1 in order to help users capture extended moments and automatically speed up the video with a higher frame rate. It's a stripped-down rival to Hyperlapse.

Condensing everything road trips to candles burning down to their wick to just a few seconds in demoed in the YouTube video above.

iOS 8's time-lapse mode is basically the opposite of the slow motion video recording option at 120 frames per second that Apple added to iOS 7 last year and Slow Mo 240fps in iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

SMS and phone calls on Mac

iMessages has been a wonderful cross-compatible tool for chatting on iOS devices and Macs - at least until you try to leave your iPhone behind for an Android.

Apple deserters, however, may be lured back to iOS 8 with SMS and voice calls being folded into iPads and Macs, just like blue iMessages currently pop up on Apple tablets and computers.

It's a pain to have to fetch your phone for a single SMS from an Android user, especially when you're sitting in front of a 13-inch MacBook Air screen and full keyboard capable of handling simple texts and phone calls.

f course, enabling text messages and phone calls to a Mac requires upgrading OS X Yosemite, but that's a piece of cake since it'll be free today and iOS 8.1 come out on Monday.

Handoff and WiFi hotspot

iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite are going to be joined at the hip with the Handoff feature that lets you pick up where you left off between devices.

Starting a project or email on an iPad or iPhone will let you finish the task on a Mac with no annoying overlap. There's no need to reopen windows or rewrite text on the computer. And it goes the other way, too, from a Mac to a an iOS 8 device.

What if you don't have access to the internet on your computer or iPad to get the job done? That's where the Instant HotSpot feature will come into play, easing the messy personal hotspot setup of iOS 7.

The one problem with this joint iOS 8-Yosemite feature is that it may require you to own a fairly new Mac. Handoff has been tipped to be not be compatible with Apple computers that pre-date Bluetooth 4.0.

Group messages with voice and video

Group messages is also enhanced for iOS 8 thanks to new features. You're able to add and drop people from conversations and silence non-stop incoming message annoyances via a group-specific Do Not Disturb toggle.

Sharing your current location on a map one time or persistent location for a set period of time is also a part of iMessages, tying in the concept from Apple's underused Friend My Friends app.

ocation sharing, when it was part of the standalone app, was ideal for meeting up in a crowded location like a baseball stadium or concert, and now it'll get more use within iMessages.

Multimedia within iOS 8's iMessages app should be more useful too. Inline voice and video messages with Snapchat-like clips that self-destruct are coming to this mobile OS update.

Interactive notifications

For the times when you do actually respond to texts and calendar reminders on your phone instead of a Mac computer, iOS 8 adds convenient interactive notifications.

Like OS X Mavericks, these notifications can be dealt with in a few simple taps thanks to inline responses. There's no need to mess with the lock screen in order to take action right away.

iOS notifications have come a long way from taking up the entire middle of our phone screens, and iOS 8 makes them feel like even less of a nuisance.

Quicktype keyboard

Apple claims its iOS 8 keyboard is its "smartest keyboard ever," and there's no reason to doubt that since its Quicktype feature adds highly-requested predictive texting that's akin to SwiftKey and Swype.

The candidate row appears above the keyboard with three word-finishing suggestions and then next-word best guesses. It even varies depending on the app that's open to match your tone for each, from casual iMessages to formal emails.

If someone asks you a question, Quicktype also automatically offers choices like "Yes" and "No" and, optionally, learns your contacts to spell everyone's name correctly.

Better yet, the more-open-than-ever Apple doesn't limit users to its pre-installed keyboard via developer "extensions."

iOS 8 extensions

Extensions open up iOS 8 to Android's best input methods: Swype is here and SwiftKey breaks free of its SwiftKey Note standalone app confines. Fleksy and Minuum also give you control over keyboard sizes.

Other third-party extensions let users tinker with the default sharing options, photo editing tools, custom actions and notification center widgets.

The 1Password extension goes as far as opening up the company's powerful password manager to you without the need to exit the app to open its standalone app. It simply uses Touch ID to get the job done.

Before, you had to close the app that required a password you forgot, open up 1Password's standalone app, copy the password, go back into the original app and paste in the password.

There's always a lot of potential when a platform as large as Apple's opens up its ecosystem to outside developers. Look at what it did to the App Store.

Extensions by forward-thinking developers may be long overdue, but it'll finally be here thanks to iOS 8.

iCloud may actually be useful

Prior to today, there was very little reason to use the ridiculously small 5GB of free space Apple included with iCloud. It was always easier to use a more capable and less expensive Dropbox account.

That all changes when iOS 8 launches alongside iCloud Drive, Apple's new rival to Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, Microsoft OneDrive and the dozens of other file-sharing services.

It still costs money over the 5GB limit, but at least more file types can be stored and synced. This includes documents, presentations, spreadsheets, PDFs and images. Plus it's the best method of backing up your iPhone and iPad.

What's really cool about the forthcoming iCloud-enabled iOS Photos app is that every picture and every edit is saved across all of your Apple devices automatically. Better yet, there are new tools and filters in iOS 8 and it'll work on the web.

iOS 8 Family Sharing

Maybe you'll be more willing to buy into iCloud Drive knowing that you're going to save money thanks to Apple's new Family Sharing feature that's part of iOS 8.

All iTunes, iBooks and App Store purchases on the same credit card can be shared among a total of six people in your family. That beats having to sneakily exchange passwords.

New parental controls force kids to ask your permission before aimlessly downloading expensive apps. This "Ask to Buy" feature beams a message to your device, so you don't need to be the fun-depriving "bad guy" in person.

Other Family Sharing perks include collaborative photo albums, calendars and optional locating sharing. You can find your mom or dad and that iPhone they always misplace with this extension of Find My Friends and Find My iPhone.

'Send Last Location' for Find My iPhone

iOS 8 expands the geolocation capabilities of Find My iPhone with Family Sharing and Find My Friends by integrating it into iMessages, but in true Apple fashion, "that's not all."

A "Send Last Location" feature is being added so that your GPS coordinates are backed up to iCloud whenever your battery life is critical.

Right before your iPhone or iPad battery shuts off, the last thing the device does is pinpoint where you left it, whether it's between the couch cushions or still in the car.

This handy iOS 8 setting joins the real-time tracking, sonar-like ringing, message sending, device locking and, as a last resort, iPhone-wiping features of Find My iPhone.

Health app

Apple didn't announce an iWatch-tied Healthbook app at WWDC, but it did unveil a more plainly named Health app and the developer-focused HealthKit API.

It's intended to bring together all of the fragmented health and fitness gadgets into one secure location, whether the fitness device deals with your heart rate, calories burned, blood sugar and cholesterol.

Even without a separate fitness device, Apple's M8 and M7 co-processorcalculates steps and distance traveled. There's also nutritional tracking and, for extra protection, there's an emergency Medical ID card accessible from the lock screen.

Jawbone Up, Withings and other fitness firms are on board with iOS Health in order to deposit their stats into the centralized app, though Fitbit has so far refused Apple's advances.

The more that existing products like the Fitbit Force and Jawbone Up24 join this initiative, the more iOS 8 users will find this to be the health equivalent to Apple's coupon and ticket stub-collecting Passbook.

HomeKit

Apple also plans to tie together smart home electronics with its HomeKit framework for connected devices so that you control everything without getting up off the couch.

Locking doors, turning off lights, adjusting the thermostat and shutting the garage won't even require tapping your iPhone touchscreen, it turns out.

Instead, these actions can be triggered with Siri voice commands as simple as saying "Siri, I'm going to bed" in order for the computerized assistant to put you into something of a human "safe mode." We're still waiting for Apple to see this feature through post-iOS 8 launch.

Siri and Spotlight updates

Siri does more than look after the house and save you on your electricity bill. Apple's voice assistant is going to start responding to "Hey Siri" if your iOS 8 device is plugged in.

This safer, hands-free way of activating Siri is joined by the service's ability to identify songs using Shazam's recognition software, purchase iTunes content and recognize up to 22 languages.

Siri is also going to become a better listener with iOS 8 thanks to streaming voice recognition. Now the wavy lines and words that appear on screen will match what you're saying in near-real-time.

When voice search isn't feasible in a loud environment, you can turn to the more reliable iOS 8 Spotlight. Like its OS X Yosemite counterpart, it searches Wikipedia, the news, nearby places, the App Store and more.

Finding things, whether it's via Siri or Spotlight, shouldn't be a problem in iOS 8, as Apple is finally taking on Google's handy voice search.

Location-based lock screen apps

If you're anything like us you have hundreds of apps, but finding the right one at the right time can sometimes mean sifting through folders and that's if you even remember it exists. But with iOS 8 certain apps will appear in the bottom left corner of the lock screen based on where you are at a particular time.

Early examples people have found include apps for the Apple Store, Starbucks and train stations, when near each of those things. You can then get quick access to those apps by simply swiping them upwards.

It seems that it can also make you aware of new apps as sometimes the icon will be for an app that you don't have and will instead take you to its page on the App Store. It's a minor feature perhaps, but one which could save time and help users make purchases and access location-specific information.

iOS 8 split-screen mode in the code

Apple didn't announce the rumored split-screen functionality when introducing iOS 8 in June, but it may be saving the unveiling as a "One more thing" for iOS 8.1 future firmware updates.

iOS 8 beta 3 code points to true multitasking on an iPad, according to leaks from developers. Apps can run side-by-side in 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 sizes.

There's no telling whether or not a split-screen mode will end up in iOS 8 eventually, but Apple certainly appears to be toying with the big idea given the new iPhone 6 sizes.

After all, its competitors have had the feature up-and-running for some time. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S has multi-window mode and Microsoft Surface 3 has snap mode. Like copy-and-paste a few years ago, iOS users are left envying others.

Features being saved for iOS 9?

There's a lot going on with iOS 8, but chief among the changes Apple failed to implement officially is true split-screen multitasking, which Samsung and LG have offered on their Android tablets and larger phones.

Public transit directions via Apple Maps is missing in action as well, and Google Maps is benefiting the most from this. Hopefully its implementation was delayed to iOS 8.1 instead of next year's iOS 9.

Apps for photo previews and a TextEdit application, also previously rumored for WWDC 2014, didn't make an appearance either, and the status of Game Center is still unknown. Apple hasn't killed it off just yet.

That's every single new feature of this year's iOS update, though some features are waiting for you to download iOS 8.4 after WWDC 2015.

Coupled with iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch, iOS 8 is enough to keep Apple users from defecting to Android, even with those fancy, new Android Wear watches.

Source : techradar

Researchers at Disney and Carnegie Mellon University have invented a new type of accessory - for your phone and other gadgets - they call "Acoustruments."

Their official definition reads like a lawyer wrote it: "low-cost, passive, and powerless mechanisms, made from plastic, that can bring rich, tangible functionality to handheld devices."

Translation? Acoustruments turn your touch and grip gestures into sound waves that phones, toys and more devices can interpret.

The "smart case" the researchers demonstrate in the video below shows a lightweight plastic piping that extends from an iPhone's speaker, around its edges, and back to its microphone.

Touching the plastic railing alters the ultrasonic signals being sent from the speaker to the mic, alerting the phone to new variables its sensors can't pick up natively - like when you're gripping it with one hand or holding it up to take a photo.

In other examples the accessory extends outward from the phone's bottom, making room for new external buttons.

It's a cool idea, and the researchers also showed it being implemented in toy cars, dolls and alarm clocks. The obvious (and even cooler) idea is to implement this functionality directly into a phone's chassis to enable a whole new range of controls.

There's no guarantee that will ever happen, but it's a neat idea nonetheless.

Last summer, Apple surprised almost everyone at WWDC with the announcement of Swift, a new programming language for iOS and Mac development.

The language feels like something Apple would invent. Like several of the languages currently popular in web development, it has a concise, readable syntax that’s easier to pick up than Apple’s older language, Objective-C. It was engineered by Apple’s compiler experts, so in addition to being compatible with existing code and Cocoa libraries, it’s also faster by some metrics.

But even though Apple’s tagline for the language is that it “lets everyone build amazing apps,” no novice is going to pick up Swift and get to coding full-on iOS or Mac apps without some guidance.

To that end, Apple and its developer community have done a heck of a job getting lessons out there. The same week Swift was announced, Apple released a version of Xcode with support for the language, released a free book detailing the syntax and launched a blog with posts detailing updates and best practices. Even the beloved Stanford iOS course shifted from Objective-C to Swift.

For those just starting their journey into the world of coding, however, those resources are still intimidating to jump into. Enter Swifty, an app that provides an interactive set of tutorials that gradually guide you through the basics of Swift on your iPhone or iPad.

There are more than 200 tutorials in Swifty, starting with the very basics of variables and data types and progressing to the essentials of object-oriented programming. Obviously the iPhone keyboard isn’t the best tool for cranking out lines of code (especially if you’re just starting out), so creator Johannes Berger came up with an interesting interface that looks and feels like coding while actually acting more like an interactive quiz.

Each tutorial in Swifty starts with a one-to-three-sentence explanation of a new concept or an important aspect of a concept previously covered. Below, you’re shown a few lines of pre-written code, with a blank field where some vital name, type or value is missing. When you tap it, it lets you choose from several options. If you choose one of the correct options (sometimes it gives you several that work to demonstrate different output), it “runs” the code and shows the result.

Now, the output from the “console” at the bottom of the screen is pre-written — you’re not actually writing working code in the app. But the format quickly gets you comfortable with the look of Swift code and things like naming and accepted styles for creating blocks of code in functions or classes. While it might be a bit difficult for me to judge given my prior experience with the language and coding in general, I think most novices could jump into Xcode’s “Playgrounds” and muck around with simple text-based projects after an hour or two of using Swifty.

It’s clear that a lot of work went into making Swifty as accessible as possible, and that the app is worth the $2.99 to unlock every lesson if you spend some time on public transit that you’d like to use to become more familiar with Swift. If you’re not sure about the app (or even learning the language itself), you can make your way through the app’s first 13 tutorials for free.

Apple Stores tend to get overrun during the launch of new products, but the company has a plan to keep things civil when the Apple Watch arrives in April.

The retail stores' employees are undergoing training sessions in the lead-up to April 10, when they'll open "try-on stations" where shoppers will get 15 minutes each to speak with staff and try the Watch on, reports 9to5Mac.

The site's sources said customers will not be required to have an appointment to try the Apple Watch on, but will be able to make a pick-up appointment for a specific time on April 24 when the wearable goes on sale.

Staff will reportedly be divided into try-on helpers, sales associates, question-answerers, and Apple Watch Edition "experts" to help the nearly 40% of adult iPhone owners who are, according to a poll conducted by Reuters and market research firm Ipsos, "interested" in buying the wearable.

"Interested" certainly doesn't mean "rushing out on day one to buy an Apple Watch," and there's no guarantee the gadget won't flop, despite Apple's strong powers of persuasion.

But of the more than 2,400 people surveyed - of whom 788 were iPhone owners - 44% said they think smartwatches will soon be as essential and common as smartphones, and more than half of the iPhone users said the same.

Now that will be something to see.

Update: More evidence has emerged to suggest that Android Wear and iOS are not as incompatible as you might think.

A developer who goes by MohammadAG has created a workaround that lets Android Wear users receive notifications and answer calls from their iOS devices on their smartwatches, according to Android Authority.

Even more interesting, though, is what the developer later tweeted: that Android Wear version 4.4 contains "iOS related code," which in his mind "confirms they're working on it."

This is still no indication that either Apple or Google has any interest in playing nice with one another in the wearables space, but the mounting evidence is something to keep in mind nonetheless.

Original story below…

If you wanted to take some of the wind out of the Apple Watch launch, what would you do? Why, make your own smartwatch platform compatible with iPhones, that's what.

French tech website 01net reckons that's exactly what Google is plotting. The site isn't well-known outside of France, but it has hit the mark with a couple of rumours in the past. Insiders seem to think an announcement could be made at Google I/O in May.

It's not the first time the possibility has been aired, either. Last year, Android Wear Product Manager Jeff Chang dropped a few hints that he'd like to see the software made available to as many people as possible - and that includes those running iOS on their smartphones.

Over to you, Apple

As Chang pointed out at the time though, it's not just down to Google: Apple would have to approve the app and has full control over the APIs and other protocols that paired devices can access. Would Tim Cook be willing to let Android Wear work with iOS?

The new Microsoft Band works with iOS, as does the Pebble range, so it's not completely out of the question that Android Wear could join them. Google already has plenty of iOS apps in its collection as well.

For now, it's nothing more than an unsubstantiated rumour, but it's an interesting prospect in the run up to the Apple Watch launch. We can be certain that Apple's timepiece will never support Android, but there seems more than a chance that the opposite could happen.

Yosemite is the second version of OS X since its reboot last year, when Apple switched from naming its annual OS X updates after big cats to places in California. It also neatly side-stepped the problem of where to go after 10.9 by avoiding the use of numbers altogether (although they do still exist in the geekier parts of the OS like System Information, where Yosemite is referred to as OS X 10.10).

So, what's new? Quite a lot, actually, and nearly all of it in the name of greater consistency between OS X and iOS. That's not to say that Apple is gradually merging the two operating systems – there's no evidence at all that's on the agenda. Nevertheless, several alterations and additions in Yosemite do tie OS X more closely with iOS 8.

Even in the early days of its tenure, Yosemite can already be counted as a success in one way. According to metrics company Net Applications, Yosemite accounted for 36.6% of all instances of OS X, setting a new Mac adoption record in the process. Like OS X 10.9 Mavericks that came before it, Yosemite was made available as a free download, racing out of the traps on October 16. In comparison, Mavericks, which hit the App Store on October 22, 2013, gained a Mac-only user share of 32% after its first month of availability.

The current version of OS X Yosemite is 10.10.2, and Apple begun seeding the fourth OS X 10.10.3 Beta to developers and public Beta testers in March. It includes Photos, a new photography app for Mac, and support for new Force Touch APIs which allow developers to program interactive commands for use with the new Force Touch TrackPad in Apple's new MacBook and MacBook Pro with Retina laptops.

Interface

The most obvious change, visually at least, is the new interface. Yosemite does to the Mac what iOS 7 did to the iPhone and iPad. Its user interface is flatter – though not flat, there are still drop shadows and other nods to the third dimension, it's just that now they exist for a purpose rather than being merely eye candy. No more glassy textures.

There's more translucency in Yosemite than its predecessor, Mavericks. Where once it was limited to the Finder's menu bar, it now pops up in lots of places, including Finder menus and the sidebar of Finder windows. It's been tweaked so that the underlying image is blurred and less distracting than in Mavericks, but we suspect it will still be a love it or hate it feature. If you do hate it, you can 'reduce' it in the Accessibility pane of System Preferences.

Perhaps the most controversial change in Yosemite's user interface, however, is the switch in font from Lucida Grande to Helvetica Neue – another alignment with iOS. It takes a bit of getting used to, and for some it will never be right, but we found ourselves warming to it over time.

Some of OS X's application icons have changed to resemble their iOS counterparts. iTunes, for example, now has a red icon instead of a blue one.

Finder

Not a huge amount has changed here, but there is one key addition: iCloud Drive. Your iCloud storage drive now shows up in the Finder and you can drag and drop files and folders to it just like any other location. It also displays the files you've opted to store there from apps like Pages, Numbers, and Text Edit.

Folders are now a brighter blue, but Apple hasn't taken the opportunity to rethink its confusing implementation of tags, which is a great disappointment. For those of us who used to mark Finder files and folders with a specific colour to indicate action that needed to be taken, for example, the tagging system is an irritation more than an aid.

Dock

The shelf has gone, which will be a great relief to many, and the Dock has now reverted back to its original format, a rectangle. Not so good is the loss of the Dock preferences from the Apple menu – to change things like magnification or show/hide, you must now pay a visit to System Preferences. However, on the plus side, the dock is fairly customisable using a free app called cDock, which allows you to change the dock's theme, add spacers, show only active apps and more.

Windows and buttons

The traffic light buttons at the top left of windows have, like everything else in Yosemite, lost their glassy texture and are now flat matte red, amber, and green. But there's a more significant change – the green button now acts, by default, as the full-screen switch in apps that support full-screen use. The arrows at the top right corner of windows are gone. In apps that don't support full-screen operation, the green button reverts to its regular duty of maximising windows. Holding down the Option (Alt) key also switches the green button from full-screen to maximise.

Dark Mode

Brand new in Yosemite is Dark Mode, which turns some aspects of the OS a much darker shade of grey, to make it more comfortable to use your Mac in dim lighting. These include the Finder menu bar, Dock, and application switcher. During the beta period some elements of Dark Mode, such as Finder menus, were poorly implemented, and it remains to be seen whether they have been fixed in time for the full release.

Notification Centre

Hands up if you used Notification Centre in Mavericks? No, us neither. But Yosemite makes it much more interesting by adding a Today panel that works in a similar way to iOS 8's Notification Centre. It displays your Calendar appointments, the weather, world clock, and other elements you choose. And it supports third party widgets too. Oh, and it's another OS X element to be given the translucent treatment.

Spotlight

Spotlight in Yosemite is unrecognisable from its predecessors. Where once it slid almost apologetically into view underneath the magnifying glass on the menu bar, it now leaps into action in the centre of the screen. It looks, and operates, much more like a launcher such as Launch Bar, Quicksilver, or Alfred, than Spotlight of yore.

There's a good reason for the change, however; Spotlight is now much more useful than it used to be. It hooks into online data sources to pull out information and display it on-screen. Type in the name of a movie, for example, and you'll get a thumbnail image and a plot summary with credits courtesy of Wikipedia. Type in the name of a restaurant or hotel, and Spotlight will display a snippet of a map, along with details of the establishment and reviews from Yelp.

For local files, it displays inline previews of documents and, as before, can be used in lieu of a calculator when you're in a hurry. It might just be enough to tempt you away from your favourite launcher.

Safari

The first impression Safari makes when launched is that it's smaller and lighter than it used to be. Apple has reduced the height of the menu bar and the result is the loss of toolbar favourites. They no longer display by default, though you can switch them back on again from the Bookmarks menu.

New tabs now open with a display of tabs from the Favourites folder, rather than Top Sites. And those Favourites tabs appear again when you start to type in the address bar. A new tab switcher, accessed by pressing a button on the menu bar which is identical to the tab switcher in iOS, displays open tabs from all the devices connected to your iCloud account in the main window. You can navigate to any open tab, or close tabs on other devices.

The only other items on the sparse toolbar are a share icon, again identical to the iOS 8 share button, navigation arrows, and a button to show or hide the left-hand pane which displays Bookmarks, Reading List, and Shared Links. There's no Home button.

The address bar is now even smarter, though, and works similarly to Spotlight. Movie titles display snippets from Wikipedia under the address bar, and hotels and restaurants show the same details as Spotlight. Click once and you're given a more detailed preview, click again and you're taken to the relevant website.

iTunes

Besides the new icon, iTunes has had its interface overhauled. The Albums view looks even smarter than it did before, with better use of album covers' predominant colours for backgrounds. And the Artists view now gets a similar treatment to Albums.

Navigation has been made less intrusive. There are only three options at the top of the window now: My Music, Playlists, and iTunes Store. View options are now in a dropdown menu on the right, and Movies and TV Programmes, along with other content, have been moved from a dropdown menu to icons on the toolbar. By default, only music, movies, and TV shows are shown, but an Extras menu item allows you to add more.

The iTunes Store has had an overhaul too, and is now as clean and crisp as everything else in Yosemite. Here too, navigation has changed, though not necessarily for the better. It took us a bit of poking around to find out how to get to the App Store, for example. It turned out that it's hidden by default and you need to enable it from the same Extras menu that you use in the Library to view additional content there.

It seems as though Apple has deprecated the App Store in iTunes, at least in terms of making it easy to access, perhaps in recognition that many of us now buy iOS apps directly from the iOS App Store rather than iTunes.

There's still no sign of iTunes Radio in the UK.

Mail

At first glance, very little has changed in Mail, aside from the user interface. It handles threaded messages slightly differently, displaying the first name and initial of everyone in the thread in the preview, rather than just that of the most recent sender.

There are, however, two important new features. The first is Mail Drop, which allows you to send multi-gigabyte attachments (up to 5GB) by first sending them to iCloud and then allowing the recipient to download them at their leisure.

The second new feature is a poster child for Yosemite's Extensions, a feature which allows third parties to add functionality to Yosemite apps and features, in a similar way to iOS 8's Extensions. This one's called Markup and allows you to annotate image attachments from within Mail.

Photo

No - you haven't spotted a typo - Photo is OS X Yosemite's new application for photos that is set to replace iPhoto in Yosemite. iPhoto is currently the default app for photo management, but Photo, which was introduced in the OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 beta in February, is expected to replace it when the update is pushed out to users. Photo showcases a much more streamlined view of your snaps and allows you to push your full-resolution photos to iCloud, making them available on every Apple device. In addition to viewing imags, Photo has Aperture-like editing capabilities that are likely to appeal to starting out photographers.

Messages and FaceTime

Messages gets the same flat speech bubbles as iOS 8. That, however, is the least significant change. You can now send SMS messages directly from Messages to any phone, as long as you have an iPhone connected to your iCloud account on the same Wi-Fi network.

Likewise, FaceTime now allows you to make and receive telephone calls on your Mac, using your iPhone as a proxy.

In Messages, you can now remove yourself from busy threads, switch on Do Not Disturb to mute notifications, and send audio snippets as well as text or images.

Calendar

Day view in Calendar now uses the right-hand side of the window to display details about any event or appointment you click on, with the left-hand side showing the full day, hour by hour. It looks great and is very useful, but comes at the expense of the multi-day appointment display that used to inhabit the left-hand side of Day view.

Continuity

The ability to use Messages and FaceTime for SMS messages and phone calls is part of what Apple calls Continuity. The theory is that you should be able to use whichever device – Mac, iPhone, or iPad – you want at any time, and accomplish anything on one you could do on another.

Handoff is another aspect of Continuity. The idea is that you could, say, start typing an email on your Mac, and then pick it up on your iPhone and carry on, without ever having to close or save it, or think about how to do this.

It works like this: whenever you have a handoff compatible app open on an iOS device nearby (hardware and software compatibility allowing), the app's icon appears to the left of the Dock. Click on it and you open the OS X equivalent app and continue working on the open document. The other way round, the icon appears on iOS 8's Lock screen or at the very left of the app switcher and you tap it to call up the document.

It's a very clever and very useful feature, but does some nifty behind the scenes work that uses both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. So to use it, and other Continuity features, you'll need a device and a Mac that supports the latest version of Bluetooth. That means an iPhone 5 or later, iPad 4 or later, including the iPad mini, or an iPod touch 5th generation. Apple started introducing Bluetooth 4 in the Mac on the mid-2011 MacBook Air – but you'll need to check if your specific Mac supports it.

We tested it using the public beta of Yosemite with iOS 8.0.2 on a Retina MacBook Pro and it worked pretty well both ways round. It did take a bit of fiddling to get it to work the first time, and trying to figure out where the icon on iOS had gone after the Lock screen disappeared took a few minutes (it's to the left of the current app in the app switcher, so obscured when you initially invoke the switcher), but nevertheless, it worked.

The other aspect of Continuity is AirDrop. Where previously you could AirDrop files between Macs or between iOS devices, you can now swap them between Mac and iOS devices.

AirPlay

Yosemite allows Mac users to 'mirror' the Mac's audio and video output to an Apple TV without either being on a Wi-Fi network. The two devices can create a peer-to-peer network to connect with each other. However, you'll have to have the most recent Apple TV, released in March 2013, as older models don't support the feature. And you still can't mirror an iOS device on a Mac's display in order to, for example, watch video stored on your iPad on your iMac screen.

We liked

Continuity is an excellent addition, and the ability to make and receive phone calls from your Mac in particular is something we've been waiting for since the advent of Bluetooth a decade ago.

iCloud Drive is also overdue, particularly for those of us who pay for additional storage, and it's good to see that it's as easy to use as Dropbox or OneDrive. The Today view transforms Notification Centre and we can't wait to see what developers do with Extensions.

We disliked

Apple introduced tags with Mavericks. We didn't like the implementation then, and the way it hijacked colour coding, and we still don't. Handoff, while great, isn't intuitive and it's easy to become frustrated when trying to get it to work.

There seems to be no reason for the removal of Dock preferences from the Apple menu, and while it's a minor irritation, it's an irritation nonetheless. And the ability to AirPlay to, rather than just from, a Mac looks like it must remain on the wish-list for at least another year.

Final verdict

Yosemite is as big a deal for the Mac as iOS 7 was for the iPhone and iPad. Visually it takes a bit of getting used to, and there will no doubt be a period of bedding in as Apple smooths out one or two rough edges. If you were a fan of glassy textures and 3D tropes, you'll be disappointed. For the rest of us, however, the user interface is cleaner, crisper and looks particularly stunning on Retina displays.

User interface aside, the biggest news is the ever-tightening link between Apple's two operating systems. If you're uneasy with being 'locked in' to Apple's universe, prepare to be very uncomfortable.

Apple's mission is clear: it wants to make swapping between iOS and OS X as seamless as possible, while retaining the strengths of each platform. That involves compromises, however, and one of them is using iCloud and an Apple ID for all your stuff. If you can live with that, Yosemite is very good indeed.