14 DAY TRIAL // No one expects the alpha-grade OS X Yosemite Developer Preview 1 to operate flawlessly, but one user who has discovered how to make it run smoothly is recommending it as a daily OS.
Redditor CompiledSanity writes, “I just turned this setting on, and on my rMBP it's gone from being noticeably lag to buttery smooth like Mavericks. Would highly recommend to make Yosemite more usable as a daily OS!”
He’s referring to a hidden preference in the Accessibility menu that enables the user to “reduce transparency,” one of the dominant UX features touted by Apple upon debuting the new desktop OS.
Without translucency, Yosemite not only looks more like Mavericks but also feels more like the current-selling OS. Tests conducted by Softpedia confirm CompiledSanity’s findings in that reducing transparency greatly eliminates lag between operations and improves responsiveness. The best performance improvement is most noticeable when using Expose.
Our test machine was a mid-2007 iMac, or the absolute lowest requirement to run the software. Starting next year (when OS X 10.11 debuts), this system is likely to be dropped out of the mix completely.
Since it’s such an old Mac, you can imagine how many hiccups we incur in doing the most basic of tasks, such as using Mission Control to move about the system, or simply launch two applications at a time.
On the other hand, reducing transparency makes Yosemite feel less like the advertised product. Unless Apple finds a way to correct the lag until fall, we expect many customers to be greatly disappointed.
As for the recommendation to use Yosemite DP1 as your daily OS, don’t. To the guy’s credit, he was thoughtful enough to relay an interesting finding with fellow Reddit users, and we’re more than happy to spread the word to an even broader audience. However, using any OS X / iOS beta as your main OS is ill advised.
There’s another matter tied to using a beta Apple OS that users may or may not know about. Any iCloud storage allocated to the beta can be erased at any time by Apple without consulting the tester.
Alpha and Beta software are by definition test versions that the company made available solely for testing and development purposes, not to enjoy for day-to-day web surfing, photo editing, music production, etc.
Installing Yosemite as your main OS will almost certainly cripple your Mac, so really just install it in a separate partition somewhere and be ready to format that partition when push comes to shove.