Open Radar

 
Summary:
On OS X Yosemite, NSTextFields appear filled in although they haven't been filled in yet. This is because the placeholder text color is exactly as dark as regular text. Only after a NSTextField has input focus the placeholder text changes to a light gray color indicating that it is only a placeholder.
While probably aesthetically pleasing, from a user's perspective this is definitely very counter intuitive. To experience the problem for yourself please take a look at Xcode's Attributes Inspector, for example: In the attached screen shot, there is no way telling if the "Title" or the "Placeholder" fields have been filled in. In fact, the former has while the latter hasn't, yet they look exactly the same.
Please imagine applications (or even a simple address form on a web page displayed in Safari) where the user has to type in information into a several NSTextFields. At the moment, the placeholder text feature is useless, even irritating, on OS X Yosemite.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create a new OS X app in Xcode with a NSTextField on a window and assign a placeholder string to the text field
2. Put a second NSTextField below the first
3. Build and run the app
4. In the second text field, type in the placeholder text of the first text field
5. Compare both text fields and let someone other guess which of the two is displaying its placeholder text and which one has been filled in

Expected Results:
Even a person who hasn't observed you typing should be able to point out the empty and the filled in text fields immediately.

Actual Results:
Well, take the test.

Version:
OS X 10.10 / 14A314h