Warning! This is a rant. So please stop the "if you don't like it, don't use it" replies!
I'm a great fan of MacOSX and I've been using it for years. Every release has been an improvement of the previous version. Lion is the first OS that I find a step back, mainly usability wise.
Also note that I realize that most of this can be turned off or altered, but I think when you need to alter a zillion of things, there must be something wrong. I also understand that a lot might be unwillingness to change to something new, but my rant is just an opinion that the changes are a step back.
Here goes...
Removed - "Expose in the dock"
This was by far my personal favorite of Snow Leopard. With much open, I quickly learned to press and hold my mouse on an app, and select a window being part of the app. It was a natural evolution of Expose and I used it everyday. Just one release later they removed the feature altogether for "Mission Control", something that takes care of window management but does it on a "global level", not on app-level. How can I get this feature back?
"Mission control"
A great idea in the sense it combines Spaces and Expose, but the execution is flawed. Expose was about giving you a total overview over your open apps and windows. It aligned them in a grid, in smart way. What they've done now, is that windows are grouped together with the app.
They now friggin overlap! Yes, they overlap! And sometimes small windows are even totally overlapped by others! So it's a totally useless "Expose" in my book. Meh.
"Natural scrolling"
First of all consider the naming: "natural". Does it mean Apple has forced us using "unnatural scrolling" the past 30 years? Didn't think so.
The developer at Apple who managed to put this in should be kicked in the buttocks. I do understand the philosophy behind it, but it's wrong. Why?
*Scrolling is not the same as touch-and-dragging*. It makes sense that when you stick your finger on a touch device and move it up, the contents move up as well.
But as soon as I yank the scroll wheel on my mouse downwards - which is a different input device and not 'content - I expect content to go downwards as well, not upwards! Even an usability intern at Apple can see the difference between dragging and scrolling.
"Navigation column"
Now featuring ugly large fonts and grey icons. This way it cannot only contain fewer items, it's also harder to find the right icon in a glance. Well done, Apple.
They also managed to remove filters as "yesterday" and "photos". I thought they wanted to move away from the file system where it made sense? Some of these filters are handy, but they removed them. Instead, they keep folders as "Pictures" and "Music", folders that usually contain iTunes libraries and iPhoto libraries, not something a user should be able to access and potentially destroy or remove. It would have made more sense hiding those folder instead!
"Launchpad"
Is for wussies. We don't need a third way to open apps. I have the dock for my often used apps, and the Finder for when I need more. And now, when I download something from the app store, Launchpad interferes with my work by opening automatically. Hurray. In Snow Leopard they were added to the dock automatically. If I didn't like it, I dragged them out of the dock. Sigh.
"Mail"
Grouping by conversation is smart, but it's hard to get an overview and easy to lose track of a discussion. The problem is that Mail makes wrong assumptions on what is actually a conversation. I froze when I saw that I replied something to a client of our company on something that was meant for my colleague. Fortunately when I disabled conversations I noticed I was wrong (phew!). I think in order for this to work, Mail as a format should change so it becomes more "chat-ish". Now, Mail needs to interpret messages making assumptions and sometimes failing to do so.
"Auto resume"
Flawed! Flawed! On iOS I think auto-resume works like a charm. It's brilliant.
Only on MacOSX it doesn't work. When I boot the OS, all my previously apps start booting to "auto-resume". This doesn't make sense on an operating system designed to run multi-tasking stuff. Also most of the apps just boot up when I log in, but don't exactly revert to the previous state. Lame! I want my OS to be clean when I boot, I don't want memory-eating apps slowing don't the boot process and having me to close them.
On iOS it makes sense because you have focus on one app only. And when you boot iOS, all the previously running apps don't "boot", you just get to the main menu screen. Only when you switch to an app, it auto-resumes. So basically Apple tries to close a gap between iOS and MacOSX, but instead widens it. It now differs even more than before.
"iCal"
Fugly.
"Finder - show all my files"
Great, another view no one is going to use. Hey, let's view all my 405939229 files using a Coverflow-ish view, that will come in handy! Grouping files, e.g by size or type is a neat feature though!
I'm a great fan of MacOSX and I've been using it for years. Every release has been an improvement of the previous version. Lion is the first OS that I find a step back, mainly usability wise.
Also note that I realize that most of this can be turned off or altered, but I think when you need to alter a zillion of things, there must be something wrong. I also understand that a lot might be unwillingness to change to something new, but my rant is just an opinion that the changes are a step back.
Here goes...
Removed - "Expose in the dock"
This was by far my personal favorite of Snow Leopard. With much open, I quickly learned to press and hold my mouse on an app, and select a window being part of the app. It was a natural evolution of Expose and I used it everyday. Just one release later they removed the feature altogether for "Mission Control", something that takes care of window management but does it on a "global level", not on app-level. How can I get this feature back?
"Mission control"
A great idea in the sense it combines Spaces and Expose, but the execution is flawed. Expose was about giving you a total overview over your open apps and windows. It aligned them in a grid, in smart way. What they've done now, is that windows are grouped together with the app.
They now friggin overlap! Yes, they overlap! And sometimes small windows are even totally overlapped by others! So it's a totally useless "Expose" in my book. Meh.
"Natural scrolling"
First of all consider the naming: "natural". Does it mean Apple has forced us using "unnatural scrolling" the past 30 years? Didn't think so.
The developer at Apple who managed to put this in should be kicked in the buttocks. I do understand the philosophy behind it, but it's wrong. Why?
*Scrolling is not the same as touch-and-dragging*. It makes sense that when you stick your finger on a touch device and move it up, the contents move up as well.
But as soon as I yank the scroll wheel on my mouse downwards - which is a different input device and not 'content - I expect content to go downwards as well, not upwards! Even an usability intern at Apple can see the difference between dragging and scrolling.
"Navigation column"
Now featuring ugly large fonts and grey icons. This way it cannot only contain fewer items, it's also harder to find the right icon in a glance. Well done, Apple.
They also managed to remove filters as "yesterday" and "photos". I thought they wanted to move away from the file system where it made sense? Some of these filters are handy, but they removed them. Instead, they keep folders as "Pictures" and "Music", folders that usually contain iTunes libraries and iPhoto libraries, not something a user should be able to access and potentially destroy or remove. It would have made more sense hiding those folder instead!
"Launchpad"
Is for wussies. We don't need a third way to open apps. I have the dock for my often used apps, and the Finder for when I need more. And now, when I download something from the app store, Launchpad interferes with my work by opening automatically. Hurray. In Snow Leopard they were added to the dock automatically. If I didn't like it, I dragged them out of the dock. Sigh.
"Mail"
Grouping by conversation is smart, but it's hard to get an overview and easy to lose track of a discussion. The problem is that Mail makes wrong assumptions on what is actually a conversation. I froze when I saw that I replied something to a client of our company on something that was meant for my colleague. Fortunately when I disabled conversations I noticed I was wrong (phew!). I think in order for this to work, Mail as a format should change so it becomes more "chat-ish". Now, Mail needs to interpret messages making assumptions and sometimes failing to do so.
"Auto resume"
Flawed! Flawed! On iOS I think auto-resume works like a charm. It's brilliant.
Only on MacOSX it doesn't work. When I boot the OS, all my previously apps start booting to "auto-resume". This doesn't make sense on an operating system designed to run multi-tasking stuff. Also most of the apps just boot up when I log in, but don't exactly revert to the previous state. Lame! I want my OS to be clean when I boot, I don't want memory-eating apps slowing don't the boot process and having me to close them.
On iOS it makes sense because you have focus on one app only. And when you boot iOS, all the previously running apps don't "boot", you just get to the main menu screen. Only when you switch to an app, it auto-resumes. So basically Apple tries to close a gap between iOS and MacOSX, but instead widens it. It now differs even more than before.
"iCal"
Fugly.
"Finder - show all my files"
Great, another view no one is going to use. Hey, let's view all my 405939229 files using a Coverflow-ish view, that will come in handy! Grouping files, e.g by size or type is a neat feature though!
