(This is off topic, but I at least yanked it out of the Ulysses thread, where it kind of didn't belong.)

I did, indeed, bite the bullet and have updated both my four-year-old MacBook and my one-year-old MacBook Air to Yosemite and, so far, have not had any nasty surprises. I am prompted to do this in anticipation of the upcoming Ulysses release.

Thanks to you folks who reported that Yosemite was (mostly) working fine.

Steve Z.

I'm not sure whether to congratulate you or commiserate with you, Steve! Anyway, I very much hope that your experience is free of the problems that you reported with Mavericks a year or so back. Personally, I'm not really convinced of the value of what seems like relentless operating-system upgrading: I dislike the aesthetics of the new version - when I visited Yosemite-the-place, I thought it was one of the most spectacular sites on Earth, but I never saw lurid pinks and reds - the operating system seems to impose additional demands that slow down my two Apple machines, and I'm unlikely to make use of new features such as Handoff (because the applications I use don't use it.) But I upgraded simply in order to be able to launch the latest versions.

So I hope the next version of OS X is one of those that actually speeds up the system. Like Snow Leopard - or was it Mountain Lion? (Mind you, I also feel the same about Windows - no one seems to argue now that Vista was not a disaster, but in my limited experience, 7 seems to have been a lot preferable to 8. It just goes to show that progress isn't necessarily always forward.)

I couldn't agree more, Hugh, that these "major" operating system upgrades should not be necessary. Just fix what doesn't work right, tighten up the code (or whatever it is programmers do) to speed things up. They must have been referring to Yosemite Sam, not the National Park. I suspect all the aesthetic changes are just a smoke screen so that we don't focus too closely on the fact that Apple continues to tighten the noose around users and developers, making it more and more difficult to run anything on Macs that Apple doesn't get a piece of the pie from. (Not sure I have a solid footing for making that claim, just a suspicion.)

Rant out of the way, maybe some of the new functions of Yosemite and iOS 8 will become more valuable as apps that take advantage of them work their way into my workflow.

Another question for veteran Yosemite users: Is there any value in using iCloud Drive? I've been reading about it, and it doesn't seem like it is worth activating it, but I'm probably missing something?

Thanks.

Steve Z.

The little I know about iCloud Drive is that it broadens the functionality of iCloud. In particular, I have read - but this may be incorrect - that whereas files on iCloud can only be read by the application that created them, files on iCloud Drive can be read and manipulated by any application that is equipped to do so - making iCloud Drive more like Dropbox, in other words. And so I suppose that it may be necessary for sync-ing (what we must now call) Ulysses 2 on the Mac and Ulysses 2 on the iPhone and iPad. That at least is my deduction (but I could again be wrong).

A less charitable interpretation would be that iCloud use was losing ground to Dropbox and other rivals in the "cloud", and needed a marketing boost.

In any case I've signed up for it, just to keep an eye on it.

I don't use iCloud (nor do I use Onedrive). Sorry, Franz

Apple's track record with cloud services is spotty, so I avoid iCloud Drive and iCloud Photo LIbrary. Yosemite tosses frequent warnings about being unable to connect to iCloud Drive -- and the subfolders appear and disappear with regularity over here. So, if I have files on iOS that I want to access on the desktop, I go with iOS apps that are not solely dependent on iCloud Drive. iCloud drive stuffs documents in weird locations on the drive -- mostly hidden from view. I'm more comfortable with Box, Dropbox, OneDrive, etc., or my own WebDAV server -- locations that are transparent and not hidden in some sub-basement in the system areas of the drive.

Thanks for the responses, Hugh, Franz and Paul. Think I'll hold off activating iCloud Drive for the time being.

Steve Z.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I couldn't agree more, Hugh, that these "major" operating system
upgrades should not be necessary. Just fix what doesn't work right,
tighten up the code (or whatever it is programmers do) to speed things
up. They must have been referring to Yosemite Sam, not the National
Park. I suspect all the aesthetic changes are just a smoke screen so
that we don't focus too closely on the fact that Apple continues to
tighten the noose around users and developers, making it more and more
difficult to run anything on Macs that Apple doesn't get a piece of the
pie from. (Not sure I have a solid footing for making that claim, just a
suspicion.)

Rant out of the way, maybe some of the new functions of Yosemite and iOS
8 will become more valuable as apps that take advantage of them work
their way into my workflow.

Another question for veteran Yosemite users: Is there any value in using
iCloud Drive? I've been reading about it, and it doesn't seem like it is
worth activating it, but I'm probably missing something?

Thanks.

Steve Z.

Based presumably on inside knowledge, Mark Gurman is forecasting a "Snow Leopard moment" (i.e. involving optimisation and performance like that OS X version, rather than bags more functionality) for the next iOS upgrade, iOS9: http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/09/apples-ios-9-to-have-huge-stability-and-optimization-focus-after-years-of-feature-additions/ (as quoted by David Sparks of MacSparky).

If that's true, let's hope that Apple applies the same logic to OS 10.11. Perhaps we'll learn to appreciate a "Death Valley moment"? We shall see.

Okay. I need to eat a little crow here. I am finding that I actually like the new look and feel of Yosemite. Not exactly sure why. The colors are pleasing to me. The simple graphics sort of get out of the way... or don't call attention to themselves, I guess. Anyway, I just had to acknowledge this after writing what I did earlier (see below).

Steve Z.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I couldn't agree more, Hugh, that these "major" operating system
upgrades should not be necessary. Just fix what doesn't work right,
tighten up the code (or whatever it is programmers do) to speed things
up. They must have been referring to Yosemite Sam, not the National
Park. I suspect all the aesthetic changes are just a smoke screen so
that we don't focus too closely on the fact that Apple continues to
tighten the noose around users and developers, making it more and more
difficult to run anything on Macs that Apple doesn't get a piece of the
pie from. (Not sure I have a solid footing for making that claim, just a
suspicion.)

Rant out of the way, maybe some of the new functions of Yosemite and iOS
8 will become more valuable as apps that take advantage of them work
their way into my workflow.

Another question for veteran Yosemite users: Is there any value in using
iCloud Drive? I've been reading about it, and it doesn't seem like it is
worth activating it, but I'm probably missing something?

Thanks.

Steve Z.