Apple releases developer preview of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Apple on Thursday released a developer preview of Mac OS X Lion, which takes some of the best ideas the company has conceived for the iPad and brings them back to the Mac for the eighth major release of the flagship operating system due this summer. The beta also reveals a handful of previously undisclosed features such as AirDrop and FileVault



Among Lion's core features are:



Mission Control: a powerful, entirely new feature that unifies Exposé, Dashboard, Spaces, and full screen apps to give you a bird?s eye view of every app and window running on your Mac. With a simple swipe, your desktop zooms out to display your open windows grouped by app, thumbnails of your full screen apps as well as your Dashboard, and allows you to instantly navigate anywhere with a click.



Launchpad: makes it easier than ever to find and launch any app. With a single click, Launchpad displays all your Mac apps in a stunning full screen layout where you can launch, re-order or organize apps into folders. You can also arrange apps into multiple pages and swipe between them.



Full screen apps: Lion brings the full screen experience that iPad users love to the Mac. With one click, your application window goes full screen, taking advantage of your Mac?s brilliant display. You can swipe from one full screen window to another and even back to your Desktop or Dashboard.



New Multi-Touch gestures: New Multi-Touch gestures and fluid animations give you a natural and intuitive way to interact with your Mac. New gestures include pinching your fingers to zoom in on a web page or image, swiping left or right to turn a page or switch between full screen apps and swiping up to enter Mission Control.



The Mac App Store: Apple's new online store that allows you discover, install and automatically update Mac apps.



Additional features in Lion include:

A new version of Mail, with an elegant, widescreen layout inspired by the iPad; Conversations, which automatically groups related messages into one easy to read timeline; more powerful search; and support for Microsoft Exchange 2010;

AirDrop, a remarkably simple way to copy files wirelessly from one Mac to another with no setup;

Versions, which automatically saves successive versions of your document as you create it, and gives you an easy way to browse, edit and even revert to previous versions;

Resume, which conveniently brings your apps back exactly how you left them when you restart your Mac or quit and relaunch an app;

Auto Save, which automatically saves your documents as you work;

The all new FileVault, that provides high performance full disk encryption for local and external drives, and the ability to wipe data from your Mac instantaneously; and

Mac OS X Lion Server, which makes setting up a server easier than ever and adds support for managing Mac OS X Lion, iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices.

?The iPad has inspired a new generation of innovative features in Lion,? said Philip Schiller, Apple?s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. ?Developers are going to love Mission Control and Launchpad, and can now start adding great new Lion features like full screen, gestures, Versions and Auto Save to their own apps.?







Availability



The Lion preview is available to Mac Developer Program members through the Mac App Store today, and the final version of Lion will ship to customers this summer.



Update: Sources familiar with this first beta of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion have just provided AppleInsider will a detailed run down of feature enhancements.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 109
    stuffestuffe Posts: 394member
    Much more interested in this than bumped hardware, much as Thunderbolt looks cool.



    Wonder if they have fixed it so Time Machine plays nice with FileVault and only backs up changes at a block level rather than the whole file...
  • Reply 2 of 109
    This OS sounds vastly superior to snow leopard already. The autosave, versions, airdrop and filevault features all sound incredibly useful. Here's to hoping this, and much more pans out. Really think I want some kind of visual refresh tho
  • Reply 3 of 109
    The saving and versioning features sound interesting but the big one for me is the inclusion of Server. That will certainly make my setup far more interesting and versatile.



    Only concern maybe the cost with Server included, are we going to see >$200 pricing? What is it now, $500 for SL Server?
  • Reply 4 of 109
    Software can be found here for registered developers: http://developer.apple.com/devcenter...lion/index.php
  • Reply 5 of 109
    stuffestuffe Posts: 394member
    The full screen stuff provides opportunity for giving the UI a serious tweak, can't wait to try it - no matter how much I understand the reasons for the (imho broken) maximise (I know I know, but it's habit) button not actually maximising for many apps, I never liked it, I don't like even when it does maximise that it leave a sliver at the bottom to stop the app windows overlapping with teh dock too much...I don't maximise my apps because I need them to take advantage of the extra space, I usually do it to remove distration from a dozen other partial windows showing in the background.



    Laundry list of wished for improvements would include (for a top 5 anyway):

    1) Fixing Time Machine to backup at block level to speed up backups and take up less space on the backup drive

    2) Fixing ToDo list items in iCal and Mail to actually be useful

    3) Some sort of file sychronisation daemon that you can use to automatically shuffle selected files to your iDisk or another Mac (using this new Airdrop perhaps?) as and when changes are detected, sort of like Time Machine but for syncs.

    4) Integrated file tagging within the filesytem/finder, improved tag searching in Spotlight, perhaps with auto-labelling (Label Red if tag is Bills etc)

    5) Agent services that are actually useful - What does iTunes Helper do? It should sit there and make my itunes library available without having to start itunes, then my apple TV can stream from it automatically, using WOL without any interaction from me. Same goes for iPhoto libraries.



    OK, some of those are iLife requests, and others MobileMe, but I consider it all a part of my OS as I use it all.
  • Reply 6 of 109
    blastdoorblastdoor Posts: 3,255member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by bigdaddyguido View Post


    This OS sounds vastly superior to snow leopard already. The autosave, versions, airdrop and filevault features all sound incredibly useful. Here's to hoping this, and much more pans out. Really think I want some kind of visual refresh tho



    I agree -- very exciting. What's particularly appealing to me about these features is that they are "pro" features, not consumer features. The filevault thing in particular is a really big deal for anyone who wants to use a Mac in a business/government setting with stringent security requirements. This has the potential to get the Mac into places it's had a hard time going before.



    The autosave and versions features are also really useful for anyone doing "real work".



    Clearly Lion is about more than just a pretty face -- this cat has teeth!
  • Reply 7 of 109
    asciiascii Posts: 5,936member
    Full-disk encryption - quite a few people have wanted that one. I am looking forward to seeing the new Mail app - the iPad mail app is very nice.
  • Reply 8 of 109
    I'm not seeing anything good about Lion. A new file vault, what's wrong with the old one? Oh , that is right, it was never secure, but they sold it to you, and now they want to resell it again. The mobileme thing is crap. Back in the days when I had OS 9, iTools came with it, sort of like mac.com. Apple giveth and Apple taketh away, now they want to sell a free service that was included with OS 9. Let me know when Apple finally brings something new to the table, because all of this regurgitated CRAP is old already. I really see no reason to buy Lion , the same way I saw no reason to buy Snow Leopard. Apple wants my money like Microsoft, but they aren't offering anything really new.
  • Reply 9 of 109
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by stuffe View Post


    3) Some sort of file sychronisation daemon that you can use to automatically shuffle selected files to your iDisk or another Mac (using this new Airdrop perhaps?) as and when changes are detected, sort of like Time Machine but for syncs.



    This would be near the top of my list too. I am using ChronoSync right now but something integrated with the OS would be a great help. CS works (although it did corrupt my iPhoto database a while back and that is no fun to fix) but just feels, well, off! Right now the scheduler is flashing at me as my other machine is off and it cannot run. Something in the OS would be a lot better at dealing with these cases (well you would hope anyway).



    As for Airdrop, I hope they create a plugin for Windows too (I know but my work machine has to be a PC). It would be great to take a work file, drop it to my mac to work on, then drop it back once done. My work machine is a laptop and editing large XL or Word docs on my mac would be much easier.
  • Reply 10 of 109
    stuffestuffe Posts: 394member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by zgriffin View Post


    This would be near the top of my list too. I am using ChronoSync right now but something integrated with the OS would be a great help. CS works (although it did corrupt my iPhoto database a while back and that is no fun to fix) but just feels, well, off! Right now the scheduler is flashing at me as my other machine is off and it cannot run. Something in the OS would be a lot better at dealing with these cases (well you would hope anyway).



    As for Airdrop, I hope they create a plugin for Windows too (I know but my work machine has to be a PC). It would be great to take a work file, drop it to my mac to work on, then drop it back once done. My work machine is a laptop and editing large XL or Word docs on my mac would be much easier.



    And would it be too much to ask if Airdrop and perhaps a syncing agent could also interact with iOS devices... Dear me how I long to cut that USB cable to iTunes!
  • Reply 11 of 109
    any news on aqua scroll bars??
  • Reply 12 of 109
    irelandireland Posts: 17,798member
    Looks like Ireland did not his "decent native mouse-tracking software". Not good.



    But I certainly expect to get "AirPlay built into QuickTime". That will be a very sad day if it doesn't happen.
  • Reply 13 of 109
    stuffestuffe Posts: 394member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Intellihence View Post


    I'm not seeing anything good about Lion. A new file vault, what's wrong with the old one? Oh , that is right, it was never secure, but they sold it to you, and now they want to resell it again. The mobileme thing is crap. Back in the days when I had OS 9, iTools came with it, sort of like mac.com. Apple giveth and Apple taketh away, now they want to sell a free service that was included with OS 9. Let me know when Apple finally brings something new to the table, because all of this regurgitated CRAP is old already. I really see no reason to buy Lion , the same way I saw no reason to buy Snow Leopard. Apple wants my money like Microsoft, but they aren't offering anything really new.



    Sure would be nice to talk about what's new rather than to complain about what's old, especially from someone who clearly doesn't use it.
  • Reply 14 of 109
    jnjnjnjnjnjn Posts: 588member
    Seems excellent.

    Any improvements under the hood?



    J.
  • Reply 15 of 109
    asciiascii Posts: 5,936member
    Imagine a beginner sitting down to a Mac with all those gestures enabled. They're just trying to learn the trackpad and they'll be having things flying left right and centre and not understanding why. They will freak out.
  • Reply 16 of 109
    asciiascii Posts: 5,936member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jonnyboy View Post


    any news on aqua scroll bars??



    You can see on the full screen apps here http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/ that there are no scroll bars visible. They must be iPad style ones that hide when you're not scrolling.
  • Reply 17 of 109
    asciiascii Posts: 5,936member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jnjnjn View Post


    Seems excellent.

    Any improvements under the hood?



    J.



    Under the hood info (not much detail):

    http://developer.apple.com/technolog...whats-new.html
  • Reply 18 of 109
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ascii View Post


    Imagine a beginner sitting down to a Mac with all those gestures enabled. They're just trying to learn the trackpad and they'll be having things flying left right and centre and not understanding why. They will freak out.



    Track pads aren't exactly new fangled tech.



    Seeing as the gestures are MULTI-TOUCH, I don't think it'll be the massive problem you are making out.



    After all, general mouse usage is single finger.



    One finger = mouse move.

    Two finger = Scrolling / Zooming

    Three finger = Fancy new gestures.



    That'll be some accident to constantly use three fingers.
  • Reply 19 of 109
    stuffestuffe Posts: 394member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ascii View Post


    Imagine a beginner sitting down to a Mac with all those gestures enabled. They're just trying to learn the trackpad and they'll be having things flying left right and centre and not understanding why. They will freak out.



    I imagine a lot will be turned off by default, even 2 finger right click and 1 finger tap are not on by default, always does *my* head in when I perform a fresh install anywhere!
  • Reply 20 of 109
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Intellihence View Post


    I'm not seeing anything good about Lion.



    Nothing looks 'gotta have' to me either. Versions/resume/autosave could be useful, not not exactly earthshattering.



    I'm concerned how many of these new features contain the word 'swipe'. How do you swipe with the mouse? (sorry, the new trackpads are just annoying and I won't be getting one...)
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