Little annoyances in Lion (and how to mitigate them)

First, the hiding scroll bars are no-no right from apple's design guidelines that we've been working to since 1984. I can understand it on a tiny screen like the iPhone, but not a computer. - easily fixed

Backwards scrolling: This may be fine and we can adapt to it, especially if the user only uses a mac, but for those of us who work on multiple OS's, it's pure insanity. - easily fixed

The applications folder is still a mess - There's more apple apps than ever sprinkled around at the root level of this directory. Lion makes it harder than ever to move them. fortunately "su" and "mv" still do the trick. I know, I know, I'm not supposed to move apps, but with the exception of system preferences, it doesn't cause any problems , and I move them back when I run software update.

The workspace indicator of spaces is MIA in Mission Control. Workspaces have to be horizontal, 2D grids are right out.

Launcher is a joke.

The great desktop pattern of the installer isn't in the system wallpapers.

Lion wasn't sold on removable media - soon to change, but should be on media from day one

Lion refuses connections on any AFP server that doesn't support DHX2. And there's no switch to change that in preferences. You have to fix it with defaults changes.




In general, I don't like the desktop to act like my phone OS, there's a reason desktops have evolved the way they did, and finger OSs evolved the way they did (although iOS4 hasn't evolved as much as I would have liked in four versions).

The Finder now defaults to a view called "All My Files," in which finding anything is impossible. What were they thinking? Fortunately it is easy to restore your old favorite default view to Finder. It's in Finder Preferences->General, just like before.

What about the copy of DigitalColor Meter (Leopard Version) over the Lion version??? If I try by Time Machine or by copying it, Lion tells me that I can move or erase the actual version of DigitalColor Meter.
Please, let me know how u did the trick!!! ;-)
I NEED HEX COLORS!!!

Thanks!

Uh, what? That works perfectly well in Lion. Just use it.


That's because it's the backdrop of the OS at the fundamental level. People would get visually confused if they could use linen or any of its color variations as their Desktop image.


Why.


You realize that Apple's transitioning to a multitouch desktop OS, right? That's why Lion's like this.

You had to do that in Snow Leopard for it to work, too!

Other little annoyances in Lion:

1)
There used to be a diagonal line pattern ("resize handler") in the right bottom corner of a resizable window. In Lion you don't have any notion if a window can be resized or not.
You need to move your mouse all the way to the bottom corner to find if it does (cursor changes). There is absolutely no good reason removing this handle bar. A step back.

2)
"correct spelling as you type" makes sense on an iPad but not on desktop. It's quite annoying to see your text being changed all the time. Although it can be turned off, it should have been turned off by default. (Even the iPad version sucks; you expect suggestions to be applied if you select the floating suggestion icon above the word, instead it does the opposite).
An OS where need to revert a lot of default settings in order to be usable is not a good sign.

Because you can resize from ANYWHERE ON THE WINDOW. The handler existed because that was the only place you could resize before.


Except the one I just mentioned.


If you typed words correctly, this wouldn't be a problem.

That is true, on the other hand it could have served exact the same purpose in Lion as it was on Snow Leopard. On Windows (where they have a similar handle bar at the right bottom of the window) the handle bar communicates "hey! you can resize this window", and not so much "you can resize the window if you drag me right here".
In Lion, there is no way you know if a window is resizable or not, and that is bad user interface design in my book. I call it a lack of feed forward. Same with scroll bars - it makes much more sense to have classic scrollbars instead of the iOS ones on a desktop OS, since you're dealing with a radical different design.

Again, my personal opinion is that Apple tries to create a rather forced marriage between their touch products and desktop users. Ending up somewhere in the middle does not make sense. A schizo OS. Either change MacOSX into iOS, or focus on desktop users, not both.


Again, true, but if we all were able to type without mistakes, we probably don't need correct-spelling-as-you-type at all :-)

LOL they're taking their sweet time. I expected a MacBook or MacBook Pro with a screen that could swivel around, fold back over the keyboard, and be used as a touchscreen...to come out in like 2008. I mean after they saw how iPhone was taking off...c'mon Apple get in on this! Haven't PC laptops like this been out for over a half a decade?

Lion looks fugly. On the other hand, AutoSave makes it worth the price alone, just like Time Machine did for Leopard. Of course, Resolution Independence would've been the best feature, if they'd managed to include it. I guess making iCal look stupid was more important.

Autosave and versions is brilliant and is one of these things where you think "why hasn't this been done earlier?".

iCal is fugly.

So is AddressBook

The reason many of us seem upset with Lion (which is a step backwards in usability in many ways) has to do with Apple forcing us to use it. In my case my newest computer is like 6 months old, but the next Mac I buy will force me into using Lion or whatever dumbed down cat is next.

I also agree that having to change a ton of defaults to get to a usable state is a bad sign of things to come. I love the mac hardware, and OsX is pretty good, but not exactly what I want. But it's miles ahead of Linux and Windows for my use patterns.

This has never been a problem nor complaint with any release of OS X ever. It has actually been one of Apple's stronger points.





I'm guessing you'll be the first signatory of the "Save The Mouse Foundation" when multitouch desktops finally come out and Apple gives up the mouse and cursor paradigm for good, huh.

I was using multi-touch mice (using USB overdrive in the dark days of OS9) when apple said that one button was all you'd ever need, and a scroll wheel was not important. Now look, they have indirectly said they were wrong all those years ago.

I think you'll be surprised to see a lot of push-back on the mouse front by people who actually do work on their computers, and use the likes of Photoshop, Illustrator, Pro-E, SolidWorks etc. The fat sausage of a finger isn't the most precise pointing device around, and it's not see-through to know where you touched until it's too late.

The iPhone is great, but that doesn't mean the all computing should be done iPhone style.


Sheldon

That's idiotic. Apple is not forcing you to use anything. You chose to upgrade. And every computer sold comes with the newest OS.

Secondly, it's not a "step backward" at all. You're expressing nothing but a misguided and unsupported opinion.

OS X is "pretty good."

Not on my version of Lion it doesn't.

Previously you could bring up the dictionary definition of a word from the right click menu, now that just highlights the word in yellow... so you then have to click the word again... which brings up an annoying popup window with some of the definition visible... if you then select the word AGAIN in this popup... you can finally bring up the proper dictionary window like you had in SL.

It's really annoying.


...oh, yeah and what the hell were they thinking making the traffic light buttons into tiny little dots?

They looked great before, an iconic part of the interface... now they are ugly... I feel like I'm using Linux.

This could be true long ago but not anymore. And it is not Apple but the general technological evolution forcing you to upgrade. You cannot keep a computer for five years or more and expect it to run flawlessly under any situation like it did in the begninning. The most notable example is the ubiquitous internet. It taxes more and more the CPUs and on top of that, it may need software that will never be available for older Mac OS X versions.

I have a black Macbook which is now trhee and a half years old and it can painfully keep up with the internet CPU demand. In youtube the CPU temperature will skyrocket in no time, while more recent Macs go happily through it. Or, scripts running behind the scenes in some web pages may bring it to its knees, especially when paging out starts (and it has 4 GB of RAM).

So, yes, you are forced to upgrade, although not by Apple.

There's one version of Lion. Your install went badly, then.


Nope, that brings up the definition at the same time.


Given that they left the hit boxes for them the same size, they were thinking about aesthetics.

You can re-enable key repeating again with this:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false


I thought I was going nuts trying to comment some code I'm writing and not having my characters repeat.


Sheldon

I know there is only one version of Lion. I was being sarcastic.


Yeah the problem is, on my Macbook at least, there is a long delay while the system tries to format the dictionary text into that annoying pointless popup that is attached to the word. On SL it would instantly open a new window with the full definition, wikipedia articles etc. You can still get this on Lion, but you have to open it from the popup definition that appears by the word. Basically the whole thing seems like a kludge. Lion forces you to jump through hoops to get to something that was instant on SL.


Well personally, as a graphic designer myself, I think the aesthetics are worse now, than the previous version.

You realize that that's NOT what is going on by ANY stretch of the imagination, right? You realize that your hard drive is spinning up to access where the Dictionary application information is stored, so it takes a while because that's not an oft-accessed part of the OS, right? Rendering the box is a fifty nanosecond job.


Yes, that 'new window' was the Dictionary application itself, which took even more time to open than either pop-up on either OS.

You are talking about something totally different. There was no real reason we had to upgrade to Lion. It's not new hardware. It offers nothing we MUST have.

But the point is still valid. For the last 11 years, you could buy a new PC and put XP on it, whether that pc was purchased in 2004 or 2011.

I have a 2010 macbook pro, and I can't put tiger on it. Can the newest macbook air's run snow leopard? I seriously doubt it. This is by Apple design, not any technological reason.

So if I buy a new mac, I am forced into Lion, not recommended that I run it, FORCED. So whether I put it on voluntarily now or am forced to with the next generation of hardware, it's just a matter of when, not if. That's why I am bothered by the changes. If I could stay at snow leopard for years, then I wouldn't care so much. But the minute I upgrade hardware, I have to make the jump.

And you'd be correct.


So what's your point? Tech changes; get over it. You're acting like you still want to be running System 7 today. In 2011. TWENTY years later.

Lion's great. If you have old (read: Rosetta) software, you'll want to be running it on old hardware, anyway, so there's no issue.

That is your opinion. I disagree.

The stuff they added I don't want and the stuff they took away I do want.

Lion might be nice for some people, but not me. There are a few defaults write hacks that can help but I still have issues with auto save and versions in particular. I work with a lot of big files and save to various network storages and I don't want things being auto saved to my hard drive or making versions like time machine unless I specifically and deliberately execute that command. Unfortunately those "features" are so deeply intertwined into the OS there is probably never going to be a defaults write command to turn it off. I'll stick with SL on my professional machines as long as possible thank you. I have Lion on my MBP but that is not a critical machine.

OK Autosave and Versioning for Keynote is cool but I gotta disable it. Not responsive enough.

This guy articulates it better than I. I destructively edit all the time.

http://www.blueboxmoon.com/wordpress/?p=281

I like the idea of auto-save in the same way I like the idea of automated backups but Apple's implementations just don't work very well.

Auto-save doesn't have to replace standard saving methods but supplement them. If you start on some creative streak in Photoshop and it hangs or crashes after an hour of work, it's gone. That really sucks and auto-save features are great to help you recover data but being able to manually define save points is almost essential.

I guess it's meant to be like source code versioning in which case you only ever have one copy and the version control software maintains your commits and you can checkout the code at various stages. The problem with Apple applying this to any kind of save file is that they don't have this checkout ability in the way it needs to be implemented.

In the example of the reusable template, you can't go back to a blank slate from a single file and fill the document in again and save another state, nor can you prevent others seeing certain versions.

It just seems like another of those marketing things they can put on a billboard but won't see much practical use. How often do people use the flashy back-in-time Time Machine interface?

If they'd even offered a solution to auto-save open documents in any app to a central database, that would be worth it. Kind of like "Adobe can't be bothered putting auto-save in some of their apps. Don't worry, Apple's got your back and we kept a backup for you". That kind of auto-save would be worth it. The kind they made is the kind you want to find workarounds for and that's entirely wrong.

There are also limits to auto-save of course, which is why Adobe can't put it in all the apps or it would be saving hundreds of MBs to disk and would go really slowly but there's bound to be a happy medium somewhere.

AutoSave needs a lot of work. It's way to slow for my Keynote file with a lot of slides, videos and graphics. Doesn't help that many slides were imported from PowerPoint files. Don't get me wrong, Keynote is still surprisingly responsive on Lion, but the AutoSave Revert To Version Space-Flying Interface Thingy is very, very slow for significant Keynote files.

Other than that, honestly I'm liking Lion a lot and can't see myself going back to anything else. I don't even want to touch Windows 7 nowadays, it just feels so hideous.

The Magic Mouse was the first multi-touch mouse. You mean "multi-button" mouse. Apple has still never had a multi-button mouse, unless you count the ball on the Mighty Mouse.

Thanks, stratokaster! You've got a great idea here, and it's already helped me better my Lion knowledge and speed up my work.

My gripe is about uncontrolled scrolling.

When I have Mail's new 3 pane look open, and the list of messages (thousands) in the middle, there's a tiny little scroll bar available just to the right of that middle window.

When I try to scroll through these 2-line previewed messages, either nothing happens or I scroll thru 5,000 instantly. There's no fine granularity to the scroll bar movement, it's all or nothing. Very frustrating and really shows a lack of attention & detail.

It reminds me of Excel in Office 2001. Trying to scroll thru a spreadsheet, I would start on Row 1 but was immediately transported to Row 26457! Or whatever. Just no control. M$FT eventually fixed this freak out.

This has nothing to do with natural or synthetic scrolling. This is all about speed & stability, using the mouse pointer on the scroll bar control. Any scroll in that middle window, regardless of direction, moves messages at the speed of light.

So I head off to the Apple Store because of course, I have nothing better to do with my time than devote all of it to a machine. Surprisingly, the Genius at the Apple Store couldn't help me. He said that the team there hadn't been given time by Apple to study Lion, and he didn't know the OS's in's & out's. He tried to control a scroll in that middle window on my computer, and zipped through 2 weeks of email messages, rather than moving only 1 or 2 up, which was his goal. His main suggestion was to send feedback to Apple.

So, I got back to the office and started playing around with the scroll bar in the middle Mail pane, using the mouse pointer (I don't like using finger gestures on my computer, I usually just use them when somebody cuts me off on the highway :-).

I discovered through goofing around that if you HOLD DOWN the OPTION KEY while moving the mouse pointer, you can scroll with great granularity in the middle message window, very slowly. You can vertically move in pixels at a time if you like. This is a temporary solution, I think; I'd dislike having to use two hands all the time to review the hundreds of email I receive nearly every day. But it works.

The Genius did tell me that I should learn to use my fingers (I thought I was a big boy now & could use my entrenching tools :-) instead of the mouse pointer because Apple is making OS X more like the iPhone. He didn't like it when I told him I didn't want my $2500+ computer acting like a $29 cellphone...

I think this bug or lack of attention has more to do with the length of the data in the window than the window or application itself. I do not think there was much effort paid to this by Apple (duh). When I was filing a report with Apple in Safari, I had pixel-pinpoint control using the scroll bar & moving the data in the window vertically... UNTIL I copied & pasted a large hardware report under my bug report text. At that point, the window's vertical size grew substantially, scrolling behavior changed abruptly and became wildly uncontrollable. So, it's not just Mail, it's scrolling using the mouse pointer on the scroll bar controller in 10.7 inside lengthy windows. Hopefully, they'll fix this in .1 or .2.

Anyway, a discovered work-around for those out there who are also struggling with this wild scrolling behavior. Enjoy!

Matt, I'm not sure I follow you. Two-finger scrolling on the trackpad is fine for me in Mail and everywhere in Lion. Dragging the thingy on the scroll bar also seems alright. About 2,000 messages in one mailbox for example.

My Logitech external mouse scrolls fine.

Is the issue with an external mouse? What brand? I take it you've tried to adjust the scrolling speed in System Preferences?

Updated to 10.7.1?