Apple OS X 10.10 Yosemite review

OS X YOSEMITE IPHONE AND IPAD INTEGRATION

While OS X Yosemite might take some of its visual cues from iOS, Apple has worked hard to make its mobile and desktop operating systems work together better. It does this using a system Continuity.

One of the best Continuity features is that you can now make and receive real phone calls on your Mac. Provided your iPhone is on the same network, all incoming calls make your Mac ring; however, you can also initiate an outgoing call, using the FaceTime app. In other words there’s no reason to ever miss a call while your phone is on charge.

Recent updates have seen a similar feature enabled for text messages. While OS X has been capable of sending and receiving Apple’s iMessages, you can now do the same thing with regular text messages. By joining your iPhone and Mac using a simple setup procedure, all of your SMS messages are synchronised via the cloud to all of your devices. 

See how to use iOS 8 continuity for full instructions on how to use the new feature

Hand-off is yet another handy feature, letting you start a task on device and then finish it on another. For example, you can start writing an email on your iPhone and then continue writing it on your Mac, or start editing a Pages document on your Mac and then finish off on your iPad. It all works smoothly, with your Mac displaying a new icon to the left of the Dock, showing you which apps you can take over from your other devices. For security, Handoff only lets you view the current app that’s open on your iPhone or iPad, so it won’t let you view all running tasks.

Cleverly, Handoff uses your default browser settings. So, if you open up a website on your iPhone and your Mac’s browser is set to use Chrome, Handoff will open up the iPhone’s current page in Chrome. There’s one point to look out for: if you don’t have the same email accounts set up on all of your devices, the system doesn’t work perfectly. For example, send an email you’re writing from your Mac to your iPhone and it will come over, but the iPhone is unable to send the message as it doesn’t have the outgoing server details.

It won’t work on all Macs, as you need to have Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) on your Mac and iOS device, and have Wi-Fi enabled. Bluetooth LE has been available on mobile since the iPhone 4S, and on the MacBook Pro and iMac since mid-2012, while the MacBook Air has included the hardware since 2011.

OS X YOSEMITE AIRDROP

AirDrop is Apple’s technology for wirelessly sharing data between devices (web links, photos, files and so on). Previously AirDrop only worked between Macs or between iOS devices. Now, AirDrop works between all Apple devices, letting you share seamlessly between them. To share between Mac and iOS, you need a 2012 Mac or later and a device running iOS 7 or higher.

When it works, it’s brilliant, giving you a quick and simple way to beam content between your computer and phone, but it’s still a little flaky. We found that our phone wouldn’t always find our Mac (and vice versa), and it wasn’t obvious why. It’s a little frustrating that it’s not more reliable, but you can see the seeds of a better system there, and we’re sure that further system updates will improve things.