Sources reveal Apple's new-look interface for Mac OS X Lion's Finder, Mail, and other apps - Page 3

Nope, it is, quite frankly, impossible for current apps. iOS apps are compiled for ARM processors, so without recompiling their would need to be an emulation layer, and the state of the Android SDK shows exactly how good ARM emulation is at simulating the hardware found in smartphones - ie, pretty terrible. I suppose Apple could change the iOS SDK to make the Simulator more transparent (in development you compile apps to x86 to test in the simulator, then to ARM to put on the device), but they'd rather have people developing real Mac apps like they'd rather have people developing iPad apps, etc.

Where is the color?

Just like the icons in iTunes, Apple seems to be taking a step back by draining the color out of all of the icons. I just don't get it. Are we suddenly back to the days of the original Macintosh that only has a monochrome display? Doesn't Apple realize that making everything gray makes things actually harder to see? I just don't get it.

I'm also not a huge fan of "borrowing' the UI from iOS. That makes zero sense to me. iOS was designed for a device that ONLY used a touchscreen for it primary interface. It needs to be different to accommodate that. Taking that unique interface and slapping it on to an OS--Mac OS X--that was always designed with a mouse in mind, just doesn't make sense. I understand that MacBooks have touchpads. That's great. Not all of use have touchpads. I understand borrowing a few UI elements, but what Apple is doing just seems strange to me.

Amen to that!

i think.... i think.... i think.... redmond gonna copy (again) SOME of these features innovated by cupertino....

redmond 8 <---- cupertino 10.7

I know. Address Book. Seriously? Looks like something from a children's program.

One problem I have had with all tech is the lack of a fluid ecosystem. Even with Apple’s ecosystem being the best, by far, it’s still lacking in many ways.

For instance, I run Beejive, Mail with push, and other things on my iPhone (which is great), but I don’t want these to keep sending me a message when I’m on my Mac and going in to turn all these off can be tedious.

I’d like a setting in my iPhone and Mac OS X Lion that would do be set by a new API that would auto stop and start these apps on my iPhone when they are a set distance from my Mac or on a different network (I.e., devices on the same WiFi network).

That is the ecosystem I’d like Apple to push toward. I want more info with less fiddling with settings. Hopefully that screenshot of the location in Lion will lead to something like that.

Apple hasn't used skyhook since April (iOS greater then 3.2.2) last year and extremely doubtful they I'll use it for Lion.

Absolutely will not happen.

Forgot about that, but the same logic still holds since they use their own system for determining location via IP address.

it even goes against their human interface guidelines... I really like almost all of the new lion's feautures, but this is just atrocious, I sure hope the smarten up and change it...

I could. People who do serious typing love the IBM Model M keyboards because of the heavy keys and the loud tactile feedback they provide. The current trend in keyboards, the laptop-style island keyboard, looks nice and works well, but nothing will ever beat a good Model M keyboard. Models built in the 1980s are still in use today.

I guess it's fair, considering that Apple completely ripped off Shadow Copies in Lion and called it "Versions."

Because, you know, it's completely fine when Apple copies from Microsoft but the worst thing in humanity when the inverse occurs.

Or maybe we could come to the realization that by copying from each other, it's we the consumers who get better products in the end.

From the few hours I've been using it, it's been quite stable. Haven't experienced any kernel panics, crashes or anything of the sort. Obviously, some things are missing, others are broken, but for me, it's actually good enough now to use on a day-to-day basis.

Oddly enough, going into Appearance shows there isn't even a Graphite color setting anymore. The drop-down list is still there, though, implying it will come back. Maybe they just didn't get around to fixing all the grayscale widgets yet?

Because putting it on the left with the other traffic lights would make the window look cluttered. The green traffic light now seems to make the window fill all additional screen real estate not taken up by the Dock and menu bar, while the other button in the upper right makes it truly a fullscreen app.

Any idea if iCal will get a more robust event details window? The current version is pretty pathetic in that regard and quite annoying to use if you've used any other calendar application.

They are removing as many UI elements as they can, making other visible only when you use them (scrollbars, Quicktime X), and what's left they are coloring grey to de-emphasize. It is all part of a pattern.

I have noticed this and I do like it. An operating system, in my opinion, should provide only the necessary chrome and little else. This is why I will always be partial to the GUI of Win9x, the System x days, GNOME, NeXTstep and any other GUI that doesn't flaunt color and tons of eye candy.

The problem I had with Aqua in its later iterations was that it was still using shiny, glossy widgets that were designed for hardware from the early 2000s that reflected the same style. But from the mid 2000s on, Apple has clearly moved to more matte, darker colors. And while I'm glad that Lion is now finally going to reflect this to an extent, it's just so odd it took this long.

I also find Quick Look becoming a nearly opaque white window a bit odd, too, but hey, I'll get used to it.

Like I said, for most users.

I just had the same idea as this. And I think it's a super one. The "shapes" would work perfectly with this method, also.

Guys, it looks awesome. If you're going to be pissed that's hardly the right direction.

Blah!! Bland. I would like to see a black interface throughout the UI like can be seen on Snow Leopard's dock.

Yeah, Ive been wondering about the same thing. I would really hate to lose Spaces. Anyone have confirmation on this?

Hi

Lion looks very promising. I have not read all the posts, but my first thought was that many of the new Lion features will work well on the iPad.

Mission control will give a great overview. My view is that the next iOS for the iPad is very close to Lion, just without the finder and applications in window mode.

This will also make the iPad a Mac switcher device.

I have for the last 2-3 years been thinking how Apple can make iPhone/iPods and iPads much more valuable then any other device, simply by utilizing how they work together with Mac OS X. The OS have all that is needed, fat binaries and the UI layers for the different devices.

Lion is the final part to make it all possible. With the Mac app store Apple will be able to give the developers the option to make a fat binary and fat UI version of an application. So you can say carry Pages, Numbers and Keynote on your iPad 2 and work on it. When at work you plugin the Thunderbolt and the Mac will let you login with your credentials and use youriPad/iPhone 5 as your home directory. You might have a safetybox via mobileme in the cloud so that all those files to take up space on your iPad. The using Pages on the Mac it will be using the intel exe code and Mac UI but load from the iPad/iPhone.

So you can use any Mac. You don't need to make a guest login. You will not have access to any part of the Mac just your iPad/iPhone 5 as a disk and cloud services/applications.

This will offcause be copied by MS and Google, but first in the standard 2 years time.

Regards
Michael

Hard to believe it's now been well over 12 hours and still nobody out there can tell me which Macs can run Lion. Doesn't every developer release have a Read Me that says what machines are supported?

Specifically: does it require a 64-bit CPU? does it require 64-bit EFI?

uh... that's how all tabs always have been. Look at Safari's current tabs...

Core2Duo and up.

The Web part of parental controls, will it now support regular expressions or wild cards?

Currently, if you limit your child to something like www.foo.com and this site has sub sites, e.g. images.foo.com for images or communicty.foo.com for social web, you need to mention these separately (and they are often difficult to find as something 'just doesn't work' and you have to look in the page source to find out.

hello Chris,

Not everyone is having a private secretary updating their contacts. Apple has integrated facebook in iPhoto allready. I do hope a similar partnership concerning addressbook will materialise. It is a tripple win to Apple, facebook and the end user.

Regarding your business contacts. Apple could approach linkedin …

Whatever Apple plans to do. I hope they make the Addressbook more dynamic. Leave it as a standalone app, but don't limit yourself to fancy eye candy!

Most likely it'll just be the case you press 'esc' and it cancels the correction. Apple will definitely NOT force you to switch to the mouse and back for this, as it doesn't make any sense and it would be overly burdensome.

Don't panic!

Just wanted to add my 2 cents in that I TOO am increasingly disappointed at the loss of color from the sidebar and main UI elements throughout the OS. It kept me from upgrading to iTunes 10 for a long time. Guess I'll just get used to it, cause it seems that is surely one of their new directions. Seems the majority of users aren't too happy about this. Just glad I'm not alone.

They're both still there. The Expose key invokes mission control by default, though.

You're saying there's an option to change it back to regular old dashboard/expose combo? YESS!!

This is actually more sensible interface design. Highlight what is selected, not what isn't.

I may finally have to replace my white 17" iMac (Core Duo). Hopefully they'll put a Thunderbolt port on the iMac that ships with 10.7.

"two-finger scrolling is reversed: to scroll down on a webpage in Safari, users must push up with their fingers, which is the opposite of how it works in Snow Leopard, but the same directly as scrolling on the iPad."

When I got an iPod touch, I found myself scrolling "backwards" on my Macs. While I like the option, it'll make moving from machine to machine confusing. Not sure how often people do that, though.

- Jasen.

iPad style mail? Try Outlook style mail, only with a lot less features. Good try.

If that screenshot of iCal is showing that you view calendar events in List view on the Mac then that's actually a functional feature they have moved into OSX. Hurray!

But the Address Book is just eye-candy, ignoring issues like the fact that you have to read the *content* of your address book fields in order to know what type of data you are looking at.
The only way to know if you are looking at an email address versus say a website URL is to visually parse the data, rather than have a sensible icon next to it that tells you what you are looking at.

Or how about to create business addresses, then person contacts, then say that that person works for that business without duplicating all the head office info? You know, all the grown-up stuff.

What people are those? People who learned to type on non-electric typewriters and are afraid to try anything new?

Apple's current lineup of keyboards are the best I've ever used, exactly because they are the exact opposite of those old clunkers. I find the claim that, "people who do serious typing," prefer to push big, heavy, noisy keys all day somewhat incredible.

I've typed on pretty much everything from this,

,

to this,

,

and there is no way in hell I would ever go back to this clunker,

.

Unlike in Outlook for Windows, or office in general, Mac OS X still has a menu bar.

I also don't like excessive shininess and overdone GUI. Windows 7 in particular gets up my nose. I went to the trouble of setting up an OS 7 emulator just to play with that GUI, even though I have no OS 7 apps I need to run.

Apple will still have eye candy in future but it will be in the form of animations instead of bright colors.

You're suggesting this is a good thing?

I'm saying it's something to take into consideration.