In addition to the comprehensive redesign, OS X Yosemite could have made a significant change to how the Mac operating system functioned since it originally shipped just over thirty years ago. The above image from a source shows a March build of OS X Yosemite that featured a Control Center panel. The panel did not end up shipping in the first beta of Yosemite and was not announced on the WWDC stage last week, but Apple definitely considered including it.
In fact, developers have located numerous code strings in the first Yosemite build that confirms Apple’s testing of an OS X variant of Control Center:
The Control Center feature was first introduced as a slide up settings menu in iOS 7. While, in iOS, Control Center is simple a handy feature for accessing commonly used toggles quickly, OS X’s variant would have represented a massive shift in the Mac’s fundamentals. According to sources and developers who have located OS X Control Center references in the current beta, the feature was designed to replace the iconic Apple Menu in the Menu Bar. The Apple Menu is currently home to buttons to access About this Mac, System Preferences, logging out, rebooting, and shutting down the Mac.
Instead, OS X Yosemite could have placed all of those options in a slide out Control Center panel. Symmetrical to the new OS X Notification Center, Control Center would have slid out via a gesture on the trackpad or by the click of the Apple logo in the still-existing Menu Bar. Alongside features like Continuity and Handoff, Control Center in Yosemite would have brought increased feature parity with iOS and made it simpler for Apple customers to transition between devices. Control Center on the Mac would even have toggles for Airplane Mode, Bluetooth, AirPlay, and Do Not Disturb, like on iOS.
Speaking of Do Not Disturb, it seems that the preferences for that feature indicates that Apple removed Control Center from Yosemite fairly late in development. A switch for activating or deactivating Do Not Disturb does not exist in the current build of OS X Yosemite, so perhaps Apple was relying on Control Center (as shown in the top image) for that function. To activate Do Not Disturb on the current Yosemite build, users have to use the unintuitive “Option + Click Notification Center icon” command. It is uncertain if Apple plans to re-implement Control Center on the Mac, but as iOS and OS X continue to adopt similarities, it is likely that Mac users will see the functionality at some point in the near future.
