Note: The successor to OS X 10.10 Yosemite, can be downloaded from the Mac App store. It introduces a ton of new features including a split-screen view, Spaces Bar and under-the-hood performance improvements. Not sure if you want to upgrade? Check out our. If you're interested in what might be coming after El Capitan, here is everything we know about, which is likely to be unveiled at WWDC 201 in June.
Mac OS 10.10 'Yosemite' was released in 2014 and was replaced by 10.11 'El Capitan' in September 2015. That puts the operating system at a little over three years old. The 10 Best Switch Games. Aug 6, 2018 - If you want to play the latest games on your Mac, you have no choice but to. OS X is POSIX-compliant, too (it's Unix underneath all of Apple's gleam, after. Wine doesn't work with all games, so your best bet is for you to start.
Original review follows. 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. 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 that came before it, Yosemite was made available as a, 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. Apple has released an update to Yosemite, bringing the operating system to version.
The new update brings a number of performance improvements, bug fixes, enterprise features, support for the new Force Touch touchpad, a new Photos app, improvements to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth performance and more racial diversity with emoji. Additionally, 10.10.3 expands the number of supported Macs that can use 4K, 5K and Ultra HD TVs.
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. The interface has seen some of the biggest changes There's more translucency in Yosemite than its predecessor,. 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. Want to get more out of OS X? Check out these from Mac Life!
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. Nothing has been done about those confusing tags 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, 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.
Atari 2600 The Atari 2600 was one of the very first home game machines you could buy, and it was pretty basic. The games are simple but playable and hugely enjoyable. The emulator you will need to play 2600 games is. One of the most interesting parts of this emulator is a spookily accurate simulation of fuzzy old TV sets for the full retro gaming experience. To turn this on, click the “Options - Video Settings - TV Effects” and choose “Bad Adjust.” To set up the joystick, click “Options - Input Settings - Emul.
Events” and scroll down to set the up, down, left, right and fire of your chosen stick. Atari joysticks were spartan rubber affairs, but you can get an adapter and fit a real Atari joystick or rotary controller paddle, although both are quite rare now. A much cheaper option is to use the the occasionally available USB replica sticks like. Sinclair Spectrum The emulator for Mac which runs Spectrum games is called. You can configure your virtual Spectrum to be an original 48k one, 128k, and every other version in between including the Timex versions. The benefits of the later machines were good sound and faster processors. To set up your chosen machine, choose “Preferences - Machine” and click the Check button.
To rig up your USB game controller, choose “Preferences - Joystick - setup” and configure the buttons and orientation of your stick. For authenticity, try to find a Kempston joystick replica with USB. So keep an eye out for one of those on eBay. This is also a good stick for playing the Commodore 64.
Commodore 64 The current favourite Commodore emulator is or Versatile Commodore Emulator featuring additional emulators for C64, Pet and VIC20. It’s quite easy to set up, but being a computer rather than a console, there are some technical things you need to know. To load tapes, you have to type. LOAD '.'
, 8 and any “disk” in the “drive” will load. If you have an old C64 which no longer works, you can hook the actual keyboard via USB to your Mac using this. Nintendo NES and SNES To emulate the Nintendo Entertainment System and Super NES, you need the Nestopia and SNES9x emulators. Get Nestopia and get SNES9x. Nestopia is another emulator which features great simulation of crappy TVs. Go to “Preferences - Emulator” and check “Simulate NTSC video artifacts.” Then go to “Preferences - Joysticks” to set all the buttons and pads of your joystick. In SNES9x, you can configure the video look by going to “Preferences - Graphics - OpenGL TV Mode.” You can even warp the screen to imitate a CRT screen curvature.
The somewhat more complex SNES controllers can be configured by clicking the Config menu and going to Configure Controllers. For the full Nintendo experience, you will need either or superb replica USB controllers.
Playstation One PS1 (or PSX) is at the top end of what can be played smoothly on a Mac. The best emulator to run on Yosemite is. Unfortunately, to get things running, you will need a copy of the proprietary BIOS chips, the operating system of the console. You can get the files, called SCPH-7502 and so on, with a Google search for Playstation BIOS. Either get a USB PS1/PS2 controller adapter, or if you want to go wireless, you can actually hook up your PS3 controller to your Mac by Bluetooth:. Simply plug the PS3 controller into your Mac with a USB lead, go to the Bluetooth menu and “Open Bluetooth Preferences.” Press the centre PS button to wake up the controller. If charged, it should now be a discoverable device on the Mac. Pull the USB lead out and configure the controller in your emulator.
Nintendo N64 Also at the top end of what’s possible on an average Mac, the emulator of choice for the N64 games for Yosemite is called. To set up your USB stick, go to “Preferences - controller preferences - gamepad.” Of course, the N64 controller had an analogue stick and various additional buttons making it quite difficult to use a regular gamepad. You actually can’t play a few N64 games without a proper USB controller, but that was half the fun of N64, quirky hard to learn controls. Finding Games Whether the games were disc or cartridge or tape, the generic name for game images is ROM. To find game ROMs for all the above systems, do a Google search for “ ROMs” so for example “Atari 2600 ROMs” will send you in the right direction.
Watch yourself on these sites, though, because game ROM sites are fraught with browser malware and annoying pop-up advertising. Be careful what you click on.
Also, looking at legal issues, downloading and playing games that you don’t own is illegal. So what are you favourite retro game machines? Are you looking for a specific emulator not mentioned here? Let us know in the comments below, and perhaps shortly we’ll compile them into a new feature.