First Look: Apple's new Mac OS X 10.7 Lion - Page 2

Mac/iPad convergence: I'm hoping the iPad is a prototype of Apple's future MacBookPro. Slim form, virtual keyboard, portrait or landscape view orientation, multi-touch. Imagine an MBP15/17 with all the necessary ports on the side but with no lid or physical keyboard. Everything the iPad and the Macbook are now - all in one device.

Evolving a physical product line (and their respective OS) across various form-factors is what Apple does so well, so why not: iphone - iTouch - iPad - iMacBookPro?

PS: A note on conventional laptop/desktop touch-screens. HP tried touch access on vertical desktop screens in the '80s and it resulted in "Gorilla arm" - after a day of interacting with apps by reaching out & pointing at the screen, your biceps were the size of your thighs.

Maybe I'm forgetting how long they hyped Leopard before releasing it, but Lion won't be available until next summer?? Seems a little preliminary to start demoing. I'd imagine significant changes will take place before it's actual release. Which may or may not allow for refinements to Mission Control, which just looks messy to me. I like to keep my screen a little tidier than that.

IIRC, the lead times have been about 18 months, I think, for the more modern demos. First they do a preview demo, then there a bunch of private betas to select devs, then the real demo (unfortunately its mostly rehashing the stuff we already saw), then betas to all Mac devs.

The benefit here is that they mostly seem to only be changing the UI this time. Last time it was mostly the underpinnngs. A Tik Tok method á la Intel. This has the benefit of focusing on a major area, but in this case it can mean a a faster time to market since older apps shouldntbe affected by the UI change much (if at all) if the underpinnings are staying in place this time around.

If were talking the end of August, that is about 9 months until this goes Gold Master. Pretty short for a modern and mature desktop OS, IMO.

I do think having both Launchpad and the Doc is redundant but there is a reason why the OS is not shipping till next summer. I'm sure Apple will be fine tuning and making Lion clutter free, one could hope anyway.

Freudian slip?

Not really, people just don't understand what the Dock is for. It's a quick launcher for apps you use a lot. Some people just dump every single app on their computer into it. The application stack works pretty well. I don't like the Launch Pad idea. I'd much rather they just made stacks more flexible so rather than it being a folder, it's a group of items. This way you can have a single app grouped beside project files or you can have the office suite in one stack and the CS Suite in another and it would allow you to choose which icon contained in the stack to use for the Dock icon.


In some ways this can be useful but in others it's still going to be inconsistent. iTunes has always been the worst here because it shrinks the window to a small player. The only way to fix it would be clicking alt-+ to make it make a minimal player or use the lozenge for this.

I personally think the window controls need to be rethought. I would rather they were hidden entirely on all except the active window and appear on background windows when hovered over and rather than the +/- buttons, have active states on the right hand side that are ordered by window dimension, like this:



Left-most state when clicked minimises, right-most goes full-screen. Middle ones can do lozenge actions. You can define up to a certain number of states, say 5 and hovering over them can show a help as to what they do or they can be colour coded. Separating states from close means you don't accidentally minimise when closing and vice-versa.


Horrible name - are they getting their kids to name these now? They should have called it Exposé and just said it integrated the other features. Even Dashboard would have been fine and the keyboard icon is nicer.

I don't like that Dashboard will come into view using Exposé as it always hiccups. The more content to render, the slower it goes. That's why I turned off Top Sites in Safari after a couple of days. Multiple desktops with Spaces was always going to be a specialised feature almost no one would use so this change is good IMO but the functionality it offered is removed for the odd few that used it as it looks like you only get a choice of each individual app in full-screen or all windowed apps together.

Concerning the Mac App Store, I don't get how the 70/30 split will work. If a games company sells a $50 game, are they going to give Apple $15 for every sale? I think what's going to happen is that they fill the Mac Store with free demos and get people to buy the full app direct from their site and keep the whole amount. Can you imagine Adobe giving away $600 for a CS Suite sale or Autodesk?

I reckon Apple needs to cap that ratio. For example 70/30 split up to a maximum of $50 going to Apple per sale. they are only providing bandwidth and foot-traffic. $50 for every purchase is plenty. Even if the split drops the higher value the item is.

The proverbial "you" that is.

I find it interesting that so many here have criticized the implementation the new more iOS style features as being useless, since they don't work for them.

In fact, I think the interesting thing about these ideas is that they're totally voluntary. If you don't want to use mission control- DON'T. If you don't want to buy apps through the appStore- DON'T. If launchpad seems like a Mickey Mouse way to view your applications- DON'T USE IT!

Keep using your mac the way you are. Buy your software how you want.

I think what Apple might have tweaked onto over the last 4 years since the iPhone came out, is that there is a GREAT MANY people who still feel daunted by the average computer experience. Anyone who finds themselves acting as impromptu tech support for friends and family can attest to this fact. "Where are my files?". "What do you mean it didn't save?". Moreover, the success of the iPad for people who've never used a computer before only further illustrates that we still haven't reached the intuitive and consumer oriented paradigm that probably 80% of people are looking for.

So imagine the benefits for Apple if they can bring a truly accessible OS to market. An OS that services people of DIFFERENT skill levels. For those who want a simple and clean experience, the layer is there to make personal computing a pleasant and less frustrating one, but if you're in a pro oriented field, or have the depth of knowledge and want to dig deeper, the more traditional paradigm is there. This could mean a HUGE opportunity for Apple to seize market-share from a group that's looking for a decidedly non-techie computing experience.

it's very much a parallel to the comments I see about the Air. People in various groups decrying the machines deficiencies- when they're not deficiencies! It's called specialization! As a pro editor, the Air ain't for me. But I can certainly imagine a group looking for an ultralight portable that's NOT a netbook; with a nice display and full size keyboard. It's not for 3D animation. It's not for a video pro like myself. It's probably not the world's best gaming machine. It is what it is, and if what it is ain't for you, that's not the Air's problem, and it shouldn't be yours!

They may be giving up 30% of revenue at the point of sale, but think of all the things they're saving on: packaging, shipping, advertising. When you buy a product in the store, do you really think that the company that made it is getting 100% of that retail price?

As to your second point- let's be clear, you're not going to see apps like CS Suite, Final Cut Studio or 3D Studio Max on the appStore. Inherently, these expensive software packages are LARGE installs containing gigs of data, that would be impractical to download electronically. So the point is sort of moot.

Very well said! I'm thinking the same thing here. I don't have any use for a Mac Pro, but I don't go to the Mac Pro News and trash the product. I just don't buy it!

Today's announcement indicated that Apple envisioned an App Store for Mac titles (facilitating easy shopping, software updates, and simple installation). Unfortunately they've already demonstrated their unwillingness to offer ongoing support for their current resource for Mac users to keep up to date on the latest offerings for Apple Macs:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/

This site is frequently ignored for days or weeks at a time, whereas MacUpdate provides daily releases of information regarding new additions to the plethora of software developed or improved upon for Apple Macs.

Doesn't provide much confidence in the reliability of today's proposed AppStore.

I'm thinking all the changes make perfect sense. Apple clearly sees the Mac market expanding due to interest in its iOS platform. There were 25 million iOS devices in the last quarter alone, compared with almost 4 million Macs. Apple probably thinks they'll be able to get many of these iOS users to move to Macs. The best way to accomplish that would be to give them an interface that somewhat resembles an experience they're already used to. That's exactly what was demonstrated today, in fact, they were they only features shown off today. Everything was somewhat related to the look and feel of the iPad.

However, the thing is, Apple can make Mac OS X more iPad-like and still keep it completely open. Just as they have a completely self sufficient graphical interface sitting on top an underlying POSIX Unix system. Having an optional higher-level GUI for users coming from iOS devices doesn't have to take away anything from current users.

The alarmist reactions coming from some people is completely unfounded and furthermore a bit naive. The Mac platform has always been and always will be an open development platform. iOS platform is an end user, consumer platform and as such doesn't need to be completely open to all things.

They might change it.

I'm not trying to say I'm a genius or get a pat on the back, smart-ass. What I'm saying is I correctly predicted the change from the zoom-window button to a fullscreen button. Whether that offends you or not doesn't matter, it's true. I said I wanted such a feature because I've seen many a novice user get confused by the zoom button. Apple are all about ease-of-use, usually, that's why they did it. They saw the light, and not just to please ex-windows users, but all users - bar those who detest change.

Maybe the Hide Dock function could include such and option.

App store needs a bit of a UI overhaul. It looks pretty ugly (the frame not the contents). And we need explicit guarantees that it will never become the only way to buy software on a mac.

Contrary to common opinion on these forums (I don't mean yours), I don't say this stuff to get a pat on the back. I'm grateful it's noticed - but that's not the reason I bring it up. I say it because I mean it, and I think you do to.

I saw the poor guy was shaking like a leaf and probably sweating profusely too which wasn't helping the track pad.

Check out my signature for the last week. It's still the same.

They could make a large iPad though.

No. It should auto-hide when viewing the iPad-style home screen. With perhaps text reading: "press esc key to exit". And arrows for viewing other home screens. It's nice to have gestures, but no one wants to be forced to use them.

How would you hold it?

Totally agree. I'd go so far as to say, even if they did that latter part, us mouse users would still out-use them.

I can see why you'd think that, but how else do you do a home screen on the Mac? Which is probably needed when you have a App Store experience.

The thing I find really confusing -besides M.C. - is having both a dock and the launcher around together. Why should the dock exist when there's a launcher? Not that I dislike the dock, it's just confusing. The dock is a launcher, so why do we need two launchers?

Excellent post.

You wouldn't, it would be on a stand. I keep seeing a large screen lying down like a keyboard and able to run Final Cut etc. I agree it needs to be almost horizontal. Imagine one large enough to display a piano keyboard!

Actually, what he said was that he wished he had time to "show more". This could have meant simply going into greater detail for the features they quickly went through during the demo.

He the ends this part by saying Lion is due of the summer of 2011 and then says, "So that is OS X Lion."

In short, based on what he said, there is no way to tell if other major features will be included in Lion or if he touched on all of them but just didn't go into detail. It is not a stretch to think that Apple may go the same way with Lion that they did with Snow Leopard, a low priced OS upgrade with not a lot of new features.

Personally, I don't think Apple will ever have another major updates to OS X. From here on out the push will be to convert their computers over to the iOS platform.

-kpluck

I chuckled at the full screen apps thing.

This all seems very impressive and sensible of Apple though. I'm impressed. Too bad I just bought a house and can't justify buying any of these new toys

HP has a touchscreen desktop computer and it's amazing. I am shocked Apple has decided to not follow HP into this segment.

I spoke to the only guy whp owns one in Florida and he says he loves it, and would buy another one if he could only find it.

Well even if they didn't have time to go over everything at this event, there's nothing stopping them from posting detailed documentation online. I think you're correct in your assessment.

I am all for user options ... That's what prefs are for. So why not give the option to have it your way or another way? That seems reasonable wouldn't you agree?

I am sure the developers will get to see far more very soon and then it will start to leak out.

OMG a house buyer? I thought you were all extinct!

This sounds great, but I do have a question. I like Exposé the way it is right now, but how can I avoid using the Mission Control mess since in Lion Exposé basically IS the Mission Control?

Did anyone else notice during the Lion demo that the Dock no longer had glowing circles beneath the icons of running apps (even Finder)?

I figure that it probably has something to do with the automatic application suspend/resume behavior that they're bringing in from iOS. Maybe the definition of a "running" app in MacOS X will change.

mmm ... Don't upgrade? But seriously it may not be a mess on release. I think it was made to look worse that it maybe was by a very nervous presenter. There will be key combos to do the same as the swipes too no doubt.

Nope, I missed that.

Everything about it including the name is horrible.

No. Do it right or don't bother. Settings are what makes things confusing.

That 's one of the good ideas.

I really didn't feel we saw enough to be totally dogmatic and as I said before the poor guy was shaking so hard he could hardly use a track pad so it was a terrible demo. We have no idea what level of customization will be available by release date either. So not sure what the point is in being completely entrenched for or against at present.