Developers will leverage translucency to make their apps look better than ever

Jun 12, 2014 08:55 GMT  ·  By

OS X Yosemite is poised to reinvent the desktop experience with a heavy focus on translucency, as demonstrated by Apple with its various marketing materials at the Worldwide Developers Conference.

Now visual artists are drawing inspiration from those images, creating new versions of existing popular tools and applications used by Mac owners worldwide, such as Twitter, Dropbox, 1Password, and many others.

Aggregated from Dribbble, the one-stop-shop for drawing excellence, these are just a few examples of what your favorite apps will look like under OS X 10.10 aka Yosemite.

Note that these are not designs made by the actual developers of these applications. Rather, they are artist renditions based on the existing interfaces coupled with Apple’s new design direction.

“Over the years, OS X has changed in many ways,” Apple says on the marketing pages of OS X Yosemite. “But the principles that define it haven’t: power, simplicity, beauty.”

“So when we set out to create OS X Yosemite, we wanted to make it more powerful and easier to use, while maintaining the elements essential to Mac. It’s the next natural step in the evolution of OS X. Not just because of how it looks. But because of what it empowers you to do,” the Mac maker notes.

OS X Yosemite Twitter
OS X Yosemite Twitter
The “traffic light” buttons are not only bigger and better-looking, they also hold the full-screen function now, which frees up the application toolbars. Everything is cleaner, simpler, and spaced out properly.
OS X Yosemite 1Password
OS X Yosemite 1Password
“In OS X Yosemite, we’ve streamlined the toolbars in some of your favorite apps without losing their capabilities,” Apple continues.

“In OS X Yosemite, we’ve redesigned these controls to make the Mac experience feel cleaner and more refined throughout the system. And we’ve made them smarter as well,” it adds.

OS X Yosemite Instagram widget
OS X Yosemite Instagram widget
It could be a while before all developers revamp their offerings, but we can predict these early birds right off the bat: AgileBits (with their 1Password form filler and password manager), Ukraine’s MacPaw (which sells the popular CleanMyMac utility, as well as other nifty utilities), all the major Twitter client vendors, Instagram, Spotify, and others.
OS X Yosemite Dropbox widget
OS X Yosemite Dropbox widget
These and other Apple-adoring developers will be among the first to bless Yosemite with their translucent designs, so keep an eye out for those receiving updates this fall.
OS X Yosemite application icons
OS X Yosemite application icons
OS X Yosemite is currently in the hands of registered Apple developers, while regular users will soon be able to apply for a beta copy to test the OS at home for free. The Cupertino giant has capped the public testing initiative at 1 million users.

Photo Gallery (6 Images)

OS X Yosemite Calculator
OS X Yosemite TwitterOS X Yosemite 1Password
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