Connect with us

Apple

OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 Release: What’s New

Published

on

OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 was released yesterday. Here’s what’s new in the latest version of OS X.

The OS X 10.10.4 update got lost quickly amongst the hype for iOS 8.4, which was also released yesterday by Apple, which comes with the company’s new music streaming service, making iOS 8.4 one of the biggest minor updates that iOS has ever gotten, so it’s no surprise that OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 took a back seat yesterday.

As with most minor updates to OS X in the past, this update isn’t a huge one by any means, but it does come with some notable improvements and new features that users should be aware of.

This update arrives after Apple unveiled OS X El Capitan earlier last month, which keeps the same overall look and feel from OS X Yosemite, but adds a handful of new features that users will enjoy, including improvements to Spotlight Search, the Mail app, Safari, and some enhancements to Finder.

OS X El Capitan won’t release until some point in the fall, but in the meantime you can take advantage of this new OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 update right now. Here’s what’s new in the latest update.

TRIM for 3rd-Party SSDs

If you’re familiar with TRIM, it’s essentially a feature that solid-state drives can take advantage of that more or less improves performance for the drive. It gets a bit more complicated than that, but I’ll spare you the details for now.

install-ssd

However, OS X hasn’t included native TRIM support until now. While Apple doesn’t mention it in the update, Ars Technica has discovered that you can enable TRIM in OS X Yosemite via the OS X Terminal.

If your Mac came with flash storage out of the box like most newer MacBooks do, then you don’t need to worry about this feature. However, if you bought a Mac that included a regular hard drive, but you swapped it out for a solid-state drive, you’ll want to enable TRIM for it in order to get the best performance out of it. And now, you no longer need to install third-party software to make that happen.

WiFi Problems Fixed

Are constant WiFi issues on your Mac the bane of your existence? Hopefully that will no longer be the case with this latest OS X update.

OS-X-Yosemite-setup

It seems that with every new OS X update, Apple attempts to fix WiFi problems, but users still end up having all sorts of issues with their WiFi. However, it looks like Apple has finally fixed the problem.

The 10.10.4 update replaces “discoveryd” with “mDNSResponder” when it comes to handling DNS on your Mac. discoveryd was known for creating all sorts of problems that could affect WiFi connections. Instead of Apple fixing it, they went back to the basics to something that has been proven to work on older versions of OS X.

Essentially what this means is that you shouldn’t have any more problems with your WiFi, at least not any major problems on Apple’s end.

iCloud Photo Library Improvements

Have you noticed that syncing photos across your iOS devices and your Mac leaves something to be desired? You’re not alone, and it looks like Apple has improved that with the latest OS X update.

import-photos-mac-1

I’ve been a witness to iCloud Photo Library problems before, and photos simply sync very slowly for me, which means when I take a photo on my iPhone, it takes a little while for it to show up on my Mac in the Photos app, even with a strong and fast internet connection.

However, this seems to be a performance issue with iCloud Photo Library, and Apple has focused its efforts on improving that for the 10.10.4 update this time around. OS X 10.10.3 included the introduction of the new Photos app earlier this year, so it’s still a fairly new piece of software, but hopefully the improvements that Apple made to iCloud Photo Library will make the experience even better.

2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. oscar mesa

    07/02/2015 at 7:30 am

    wifi stoped working after update

  2. John M Holmes Jr

    07/06/2015 at 5:51 am

    WiFi problems still persist even on brand new 2015 MBP 15″ after the update. Every once in a while it just locks up if not connected to an Apple router (i.e. hotels where I spend a majority of my year because of work travel). Also left side USB port suddenly will not charge an iPad after the update. They hosed this one.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.