Yosemite Beta 2 Review: A step forward, but it's not enough yet

In my previous post How to Install Yosemite Beta 1 with VirtualBox (plus a sneak peek of Yosemite Beta 2) I showed you a sneak peek of Yosemite Beta 2.

I've created a VirtualBox virtual machine for this purpose, but neither audio nor Adobe Flash were supported.

For these reasons I've decided to install Yosemite Beta on a physical partition of my hard drive, called "Yosemite test".

 


Steps

1. Create a new partition with Disk Utility: Select your hard drive (not Macintosh HD but the item above it) and click Partition. You'll be shown all currently active partitions and, from here, you can create a new one by clicking the "+" button. You can assign the new partition a size by dragging it with your mouse or by entering a value in the Size field. In my case, I've created a 100 GB partition.
2. Install Yosemite Beta 1 on the test partition: I've launched Install Yosemite Beta.app and I've chosen to install it on Yosemite test. 

Review 

Yosemite Beta 2 is a definite step forward confronted with the Beta 1, but it's still a work in progress.

It ran smoothly on my test partition and looks much more stable and reliable (running it on a physical partition makes this testing more trustworthy).

New look 

One of the most evident differences with the Beta 1 are the new icons.

iTunes 12 has been released along with the Beta 2 and its icon now is red, after being blue for ever.

Several testers weren't happy at all about the new volume changer because now it's 2D and no longer 3D, like it was so far.

In my opinion this is no biggie and the real deal is the Dock, because I really dislike its new look.

The dark option for Dock and menu has been confirmed in this new release.

Improvements

The Beta 2 boots much faster, works better than the previous release and solved several issues.

Some users complained that Maps crashed when entering directions, but the application worked smoothly in my testing.

Apple reintroduced the Do Not Disturb functionality in Notification Center, allowing users to disable automated alerts and banners for a certain time range.

Issues 

• At the moment Flash Player doesn't support the Beta: I could solve this problem only by using the YouTube ALL HTML5 add-on. The add-on worked on a physical partition, while I couldn't get to install it inside a VirtualBox VM.
• Safari, as a default, doesn't show the full URL of the page: The new version of the Apple browser doesn't display any longer the full URL of the page in the address bar. This is annoying for the average user and can turn out to be a serious security flaw. In fact, if a user clicks inadvertently a link embedded in a spam email, it may end up on a site looking legit, while it's been created by hackers to steal information and there's no way to understand it if is impossible to check the URL. You can get Safari back to the past behavior by opening Preferences/Advanced and selecting Show full website address. 

Wrap-up

Yosemite Beta 2 is a definite step forward confronted with the previous release, but it's not enough yet.

It's much more stable and reliable and has solved several bugs and errors (a bug in Maps that caused the application to crash when entering directions, the boot time has definitely improved, the Do Not Disturb functionality has been reintroduced and icons have been restyled, looking a little less hideous than the Beta 1, etc).

Some issues have still to be addressed, especially the lacking Flash support and the new default functionality of Safari.

Yosemite Beta 2 has done progress but not enough for you to adopt it as a physical OS on a production computer (Apple doesn't recommend this solution).

I'm confident that these problems and doubts will be solved by the coming official release, due by 2015.