 Every year, Apple updates Mac OS X with some new features and usually some design tweaks. And every year, we wonder if we're going to see iOS take over the Mac. And this year, with a release it's calling Yosemite, Apple has brought the two platforms closer together than ever before. But lucky for Mac users, it's making sure they stay distinct. Starting today, up to a million regular people can sign up and download a beta for Yosemite, not just developers. That's the good news. The bad news is that the very best features of this new version are the pieces that make it talk to an iPad or iPhone with iOS 8, which aren't out yet. So you'll have to wait until the fall before you'll be using your Mac for making calls, sending texts, and sharing files directly with your iPhone. Also, this is a beta, so you should not install it on your main computer. But what can you expect if you do download and start using Yosemite? Quite a lot. First and foremost, Yosemite has complete redesign from dock to menu bar and everything in between. It shares a lot of the aesthetic of iOS 8. It's a Johnny Ive-led flattening. Where it used to have gradients, Yosemite has broad expanses of white. Where it used to have thick toolbars with extra information, Yosemite emphasizes thinness and efficiency. There are a lot of corners in OS X, and I keep expecting Apple to miss a little one or two, only to be pleasantly surprised at the attention to every little detail. The so-called stoplight buttons are cleaner and actually work the way you'd expect when going to full screen. Other buttons are less, well, buttony, but not to the extent that they are in iOS. These are still things that you click with a mouse. The icons are bolder, the fonts are updated. There are still a few edges to be smoothed, but not as many as you'd expect on a beta. But the biggest change, and probably the most radical, is all the translucency. In lots of places throughout the Mac, you'll find that different parts are see-through and show you a blurred out version of what's behind the window. Sidebars show you the desktop or the window behind it, menu bars show you the content of what's inside the window as you scroll up, and the notification center appears over the desktop instead of under it. All these blurred out elements are supposed to help give you a sense of place for your windows, or maybe they're just meant to look cool. Mostly I found the effects distracting, and I was constantly glancing at elements on the screen that I'm used to being completely static, and it wasn't too long before I was digging through the settings to turn down the effect. Another big change, and a huge improvement, is with Notification Center. In Yosemite, it's actually finally useful. Not only can you reply to some notifications right there in the pop-up, but you can actually add useful widgets inside the Notification Center. Instead of a basic list of alerts, you can get customized pieces of data, including a daily calendar view that actually makes sense. Third-party widgets are coming too. The Max Universal Search Spotlight also got an upgrade. It now pops up right in the center of your screen, just like the third-party Alfred app, and it's able to give you more search results than just your local files, just like Alfred. Sometimes it works for searching the web, and sometimes it doesn't, but mostly it's a big functional improvement over what we had before. Apple gave a bunch of love to its built-in apps as well. Safari has some new tab and address bar features that finally give Chrome a run for its money, and it seems to be way faster and gentler on your battery. Calendar has a Today view that's actually worth using. Mail has the ability to mark up attachments and store them in the cloud. Most of the important built-in apps have received a fresh coat of semi-translucent white paint. It's all simpler looking, but it's still just as powerful. At the end of the day, the most important thing to remember is that the Mac is still the Mac. Sure, it will be able to hand stuff off to your iPhone, and yeah, it looks more like the apps on your iPad than ever. But Apple isn't taking Mac features away, it's just making them look better, or at least making them look more consistent. And just wait until Yosemite and iOS 8 are out this fall. Apple's not trying to merge your computer and your smartphone, it's just trying to make them all work better together. It's gonna be great. Hey, Doctor, you're on speakerphone via my Mac.