Lion is a big deal for small screens. Using gestures to jump between apps is a huge productivity boost. The new user level features are not such a big deal if you have a 27" screen. No more windows for most apps is the right way to go. Lets see Microsoft try to copy that...
Been reading the review and analysis over at anandtech
Based on what I've read, the upgrade seems pretty lackluster. However, at $29, it is a tempting offer. I'm somewhat concerned with the direction Apple is taking OS X; it seems they're only 1 step away from completely obscuring the file system and restricting software to only App store purchases. Great for grandma, but definitely not something I look forward to on a desktop OS.
I does have several usability issues. e.g scrolling in reverse direction makes no sense for mouse users. If you scroll your mouse wheel down, the page should flow down. It's not an iPad, it's a desktop. It's just bad usability and just because Apple things we should all go down the "post-PC" road. Which makes sense, for non-PC devices, not for desktops.
Also the grey icons everywhere as first seen in iTunes is terrible, absolutely terrible. Colors help you find the right icon in no time, and now you really have to scan all objects. It's bad usability.
And iCal, have you seen that hideous leather design? Why? It's not that I feel more comforable "because it just feels like my leather agenda from the year 1815".
The OS also feels slightly more sluggish. I hope their next release goes beyond OSX, because it's getting old. A complete rewrite and simplification (like iOS) would be really ground-breaking.
There's much to praise, but it's not a great upgrade IMO...
Trackpad settings in System Prefs has a check box for scroll direction.
So the problem is that Apple have made a change to trackpad scrolling that makes the trackpad more natural, but the scroll wheel backwards? They forgot that they are different !
I does have several usability issues. e.g scrolling in reverse direction makes no sense for mouse users. If you scroll your mouse wheel down, the page should flow down. It's not an iPad, it's a desktop. It's just bad usability and just because Apple things we should all go down the "post-PC" road. Which makes sense, for non-PC devices, not for desktops.
Also the grey icons everywhere as first seen in iTunes is terrible, absolutely terrible. Colors help you find the right icon in no time, and now you really have to scan all objects. It's bad usability.
And iCal, have you seen that hideous leather design? Why? It's not that I feel more comforable "because it just feels like my leather agenda from the year 1815".
The OS also feels slightly more sluggish. I hope their next release goes beyond OSX, because it's getting old. A complete rewrite and simplification (like iOS) would be really ground-breaking.
There's much to praise, but it's not a great upgrade IMO...
1. The scrolling direction can be put back if you don't like it
2. Don't you think Apple will be using more touch technology in their Mac OS X devices soon? What use would they be if the software wasn't ready for it?
3. "Slightly more sluggish" OS - doing more things takes more time. that's a short term problem and nothing says that future lion updates won't improve performance. I haven't noticed a difference.
4. iOS was not a complete rewrite. I would say for the amount of things that Mac OS X can do the performance is excellent. Snow Leopard brought a big performance boost and Lion is still a lot snappier than Leopard was.
Not to be too much of a negative nelly, but Lion doesn't impress me very much so far.
It's slower than Snow Leopard for me by a noticeable amount and I think it's the UI animations that do it. Not that they actually slow things down because of the resources they use as in the old days, but waiting for the transitions to complete is adding all kinds of delays into my regular routine.
When you open a folder with a double-click, there is now a noticeable half-second before the animation starts. At least there is on my machine. Both together, means that now it takes something just over a second to open a folder when previously the whole process only took a half second.
Changing between desktops, (which used to be very smooth), is now jerky because the desktop appears first and then almost a full second later, the icons pop in. I find this most disconcerting and very distracting to the eye. Previously, the entire desktop moved as a static image, icons included.
This, on an 8 core Xeon with 14GB or RAM and an ATI Radeon HD 5770.
I can only hope that there is some kind of new video card driver in the wings that will return me to the fast lane, but so far Lion is annoyingly slow here.
I have great doubt in your statements. I'm running Lion on last years 1.6Ghz 11.6" MBA and I have no speed problems whatsoever.
Been reading the review and analysis over at anandtech
Based on what I've read, the upgrade seems pretty lackluster. However, at $29, it is a tempting offer. I'm somewhat concerned with the direction Apple is taking OS X; it seems they're only 1 step away from completely obscuring the file system and restricting software to only App store purchases. Great for grandma, but definitely not something I look forward to on a desktop OS.
Absolutely not. You can install Java. Just like before you can drag apps into the applications folder. Nothing new here. Just that App Store makes your life easier, a click and you've got the app downloaded to your folder, added to Launchpad, ready to go. Updates, you're covered. Don't have to find and manage serial numbers, etc.
God, what's with everyone's ridiculous panicking? Are you all trolls trying to give Lion a bad rep. As a developer I've been using it long enough and I'd never want to go back. It's bad enough having to touch a Windows laptop without two finger scroll!
There's much to praise, but it's not a great upgrade IMO...
The real problem is you are not particularly educated about the changes Lion brings. You are just one of the many who parrot comments about the UI changes and then leave it at that. Do you even know about File Coordination and how it brings stateful editing and versioning of documents ? Do you know anything about the new sandboxing built in? How about the memory management of apps?
All of those are significant additions to a desktop OS,but if you don't even know what was added in Lion it's hardly surprising you would comment that it isn't significant.
"For instance, the removal of Rosetta, which allows pre-Intel software to run on newer Macs, may affect some users, especially those who rely on Quicken software."
Screw Quicken. They obviously don't care about Mac Users. I have used it virtually since ver 1 but, switched to my bank's online bill pay which is free and works incredibly well. Should have canned Quicken long ago.
Couldn't agree more. I can't believe that people still rely on such pathetic old software produced by lazy tech companies who just can't shake their condescending 'Macs are for amateurs' worldview. These are totally uncool companies.
And even if he did, I don't want a home screen of app icons always on my desktop. This is not an iOS device, and Apple happily recognizes that.
Yeah, at first I thought that was really stupid, but now that I think about it, it would really depend on how Apple implemented it. For example, I'd hate it if my desktop/homescreen constantly had launchpad up. BUT if Apple made it like dashboard in mission control, it could be pretty convenient.
The only issue I had was that it took Safari forever to open web pages for about the 1st 10 minutes after install. After that, everything seems just as snappy as SL did before it. I did notice one other glitch. With "three finger drag" turned on, I get a single hesitation when swiping back and forth between the pages of apps in Launchpad view. Upon turning it (three finger drag) off, it returns to smooth swiping. Otherwise, I'm very satisfied. And for $29.99, it's a no-brainer.
These work nice. In MC I removed Dashboard, and messed with the settings. I set both of these to a hot corner, and now they're even better.
Gestures
Trackpad gestures are better than Magic Mouse not just cause there are more, they just make a little more sense. I'm a personal fan of MM, but for those who have the wireless trackpad with their Macs, you will have a better time.
AutoSave / Resume
This is just fantastic to have on the desktop. Version is pretty damn cool. When you are working with a file in an app, you get the same expectation you would get on your iPad, which is when you launch the app, everything is just as you left.
Windows
The maximizing animation is fluid, but it's too animated in my opinion. I wish my app would quickly fade and reappear in full screen mode, now that would be awesome, but oh well. Speaking of Full Screen, browsing the iTunes Store with full window mode, and and full screen mode together is pretty dam cool. Scrollbars? I wish they'd be a bitter wider. Screen sizing from any side of a window? FINALLY!!
New App Looks
New Mail is pretty sleek. I did encounter a small bug where I added an account with flagged emails, then removed the account, and the flag counter still showed a value. A quick restart of Mail refreshed everything correctly. iCal, I'm not sure about the orange leather. It's an okay look, but atleast the new functionality they've added is worth having.
Overall
For $30 its worth the hop. Maybe that's Apple's strategy. We'll just keep saying "it's worth the money". Hah. Overall, I'm a satisfied Mac user, not everything is perfect but I don't expect perfect, I expect GOOD, which Lion really is.
Also, I doubt 10.8 is around the corner, as it looks like Apple plans to update 10.7 for quite a while. Plus, what cat comes after Lion? They'd need a new naming convention and a move to 11.x.
I would think the next name is obvious. Mountain Lion or Cougar (the cat, not the older woman).
For $30 its worth the hop. Maybe that's Apple's strategy. We'll just keep saying "it's worth the money". Hah. Overall, I'm a satisfied Mac user, not everything is perfect but I don't expect perfect, I expect GOOD, which Lion really is.
I would have to agree with you on the value there. Now, if Apple would just drop the price on the new TB monitor to about $200 I'd be the first in line to pick one up.
As it stands right now, I'm just going to have to figure out how to squeeze a grand out of the budget to pony up for one of those.
I was about to pull the trigger last night, but then I realized that I'm running Word v.x! As I'm the midst of a post-grad class now, I need to buy Office 2011 first...which I've been planning to do anyway.
The old version was...uh...acquired from a friend many years ago. When 2004 and 2008 came out, I played with the trials and concluded I hated them (for one thing, they deliberately didn't include the ribbon interface on 2008...which is the one thing I've liked about M$ software on a PC in the last decade). '11 looks much improved, and I need to be able to open and work with .docx files.
So, it looks like my upgrade will be about $130 in total, not $29.99.
is the lack of backwards compatibility - with all this computing power, would it REALLY be that difficult to support older apps? Bring back Rosetta (I'm sure SOMEBODY will), and make the Power PC era apps useful again. Very Micro****-like for Apple to have done this.
Aside from that, so far I LOVE Lion! Wish that wi-fi booted a little faster - that's the ONLY thing that has remained as slow as it was in Snow Leopard.
Nice one, Apple! Fix those problems I've listed, and you'll have a truly GREAT OS!
Sorry, tried Lion and was thoroughly disappointed. To me this is Apple's Vista. I don't share their personal computing vision either, do I'm staying with SL until my hardware is too outdated. At that point it's back to square one, and most likely Apple will not be one of the contenders for my next upgrade cycle.
Comments
Based on what I've read, the upgrade seems pretty lackluster. However, at $29, it is a tempting offer. I'm somewhat concerned with the direction Apple is taking OS X; it seems they're only 1 step away from completely obscuring the file system and restricting software to only App store purchases. Great for grandma, but definitely not something I look forward to on a desktop OS.
Nothing ground breaking.
I does have several usability issues. e.g scrolling in reverse direction makes no sense for mouse users. If you scroll your mouse wheel down, the page should flow down. It's not an iPad, it's a desktop. It's just bad usability and just because Apple things we should all go down the "post-PC" road. Which makes sense, for non-PC devices, not for desktops.
Also the grey icons everywhere as first seen in iTunes is terrible, absolutely terrible. Colors help you find the right icon in no time, and now you really have to scan all objects. It's bad usability.
And iCal, have you seen that hideous leather design? Why? It's not that I feel more comforable "because it just feels like my leather agenda from the year 1815".
The OS also feels slightly more sluggish. I hope their next release goes beyond OSX, because it's getting old. A complete rewrite and simplification (like iOS) would be really ground-breaking.
There's much to praise, but it's not a great upgrade IMO...
Trackpad settings in System Prefs has a check box for scroll direction.
So the problem is that Apple have made a change to trackpad scrolling that makes the trackpad more natural, but the scroll wheel backwards? They forgot that they are different !
I wish that Apple would sweat the details.
Lion is nice but over-hyped.
Nothing ground breaking.
I does have several usability issues. e.g scrolling in reverse direction makes no sense for mouse users. If you scroll your mouse wheel down, the page should flow down. It's not an iPad, it's a desktop. It's just bad usability and just because Apple things we should all go down the "post-PC" road. Which makes sense, for non-PC devices, not for desktops.
Also the grey icons everywhere as first seen in iTunes is terrible, absolutely terrible. Colors help you find the right icon in no time, and now you really have to scan all objects. It's bad usability.
And iCal, have you seen that hideous leather design? Why? It's not that I feel more comforable "because it just feels like my leather agenda from the year 1815".
The OS also feels slightly more sluggish. I hope their next release goes beyond OSX, because it's getting old. A complete rewrite and simplification (like iOS) would be really ground-breaking.
There's much to praise, but it's not a great upgrade IMO...
1. The scrolling direction can be put back if you don't like it
2. Don't you think Apple will be using more touch technology in their Mac OS X devices soon? What use would they be if the software wasn't ready for it?
3. "Slightly more sluggish" OS - doing more things takes more time. that's a short term problem and nothing says that future lion updates won't improve performance. I haven't noticed a difference.
4. iOS was not a complete rewrite. I would say for the amount of things that Mac OS X can do the performance is excellent. Snow Leopard brought a big performance boost and Lion is still a lot snappier than Leopard was.
Not to be too much of a negative nelly, but Lion doesn't impress me very much so far.
It's slower than Snow Leopard for me by a noticeable amount and I think it's the UI animations that do it. Not that they actually slow things down because of the resources they use as in the old days, but waiting for the transitions to complete is adding all kinds of delays into my regular routine.
When you open a folder with a double-click, there is now a noticeable half-second before the animation starts. At least there is on my machine. Both together, means that now it takes something just over a second to open a folder when previously the whole process only took a half second.
Changing between desktops, (which used to be very smooth), is now jerky because the desktop appears first and then almost a full second later, the icons pop in. I find this most disconcerting and very distracting to the eye. Previously, the entire desktop moved as a static image, icons included.
This, on an 8 core Xeon with 14GB or RAM and an ATI Radeon HD 5770.
I can only hope that there is some kind of new video card driver in the wings that will return me to the fast lane, but so far Lion is annoyingly slow here.
I have great doubt in your statements. I'm running Lion on last years 1.6Ghz 11.6" MBA and I have no speed problems whatsoever.
Been reading the review and analysis over at anandtech
Based on what I've read, the upgrade seems pretty lackluster. However, at $29, it is a tempting offer. I'm somewhat concerned with the direction Apple is taking OS X; it seems they're only 1 step away from completely obscuring the file system and restricting software to only App store purchases. Great for grandma, but definitely not something I look forward to on a desktop OS.
Absolutely not. You can install Java. Just like before you can drag apps into the applications folder. Nothing new here. Just that App Store makes your life easier, a click and you've got the app downloaded to your folder, added to Launchpad, ready to go. Updates, you're covered. Don't have to find and manage serial numbers, etc.
God, what's with everyone's ridiculous panicking? Are you all trolls trying to give Lion a bad rep. As a developer I've been using it long enough and I'd never want to go back. It's bad enough having to touch a Windows laptop without two finger scroll!
Funny, but my guess is he meant they aren't there constantly like on an iPad or iPhone.
And even if he did, I don't want a home screen of app icons always on my desktop. This is not an iOS device, and Apple happily recognizes that.
Lion is nice but over-hyped.
Nothing ground breaking.
...
There's much to praise, but it's not a great upgrade IMO...
The real problem is you are not particularly educated about the changes Lion brings. You are just one of the many who parrot comments about the UI changes and then leave it at that. Do you even know about File Coordination and how it brings stateful editing and versioning of documents ? Do you know anything about the new sandboxing built in? How about the memory management of apps?
All of those are significant additions to a desktop OS,but if you don't even know what was added in Lion it's hardly surprising you would comment that it isn't significant.
I haven't gotten to test out Lion yet because I'm on a small Island in an undisclosed foreign country .......
So they finally got you, huh......
"For instance, the removal of Rosetta, which allows pre-Intel software to run on newer Macs, may affect some users, especially those who rely on Quicken software."
Screw Quicken. They obviously don't care about Mac Users. I have used it virtually since ver 1 but, switched to my bank's online bill pay which is free and works incredibly well. Should have canned Quicken long ago.
Couldn't agree more. I can't believe that people still rely on such pathetic old software produced by lazy tech companies who just can't shake their condescending 'Macs are for amateurs' worldview. These are totally uncool companies.
I am sure they must all still use Wordstar too.
And even if he did, I don't want a home screen of app icons always on my desktop. This is not an iOS device, and Apple happily recognizes that.
Yeah, at first I thought that was really stupid, but now that I think about it, it would really depend on how Apple implemented it. For example, I'd hate it if my desktop/homescreen constantly had launchpad up. BUT if Apple made it like dashboard in mission control, it could be pretty convenient.
These work nice. In MC I removed Dashboard, and messed with the settings. I set both of these to a hot corner, and now they're even better.
Gestures
Trackpad gestures are better than Magic Mouse not just cause there are more, they just make a little more sense. I'm a personal fan of MM, but for those who have the wireless trackpad with their Macs, you will have a better time.
AutoSave / Resume
This is just fantastic to have on the desktop. Version is pretty damn cool. When you are working with a file in an app, you get the same expectation you would get on your iPad, which is when you launch the app, everything is just as you left.
Windows
The maximizing animation is fluid, but it's too animated in my opinion. I wish my app would quickly fade and reappear in full screen mode, now that would be awesome, but oh well. Speaking of Full Screen, browsing the iTunes Store with full window mode, and and full screen mode together is pretty dam cool. Scrollbars? I wish they'd be a bitter wider. Screen sizing from any side of a window? FINALLY!!
New App Looks
New Mail is pretty sleek. I did encounter a small bug where I added an account with flagged emails, then removed the account, and the flag counter still showed a value. A quick restart of Mail refreshed everything correctly. iCal, I'm not sure about the orange leather. It's an okay look, but atleast the new functionality they've added is worth having.
Overall
For $30 its worth the hop. Maybe that's Apple's strategy. We'll just keep saying "it's worth the money". Hah. Overall, I'm a satisfied Mac user, not everything is perfect but I don't expect perfect, I expect GOOD, which Lion really is.
Also, I doubt 10.8 is around the corner, as it looks like Apple plans to update 10.7 for quite a while. Plus, what cat comes after Lion? They'd need a new naming convention and a move to 11.x.
I would think the next name is obvious. Mountain Lion or Cougar (the cat, not the older woman).
Overall
For $30 its worth the hop. Maybe that's Apple's strategy. We'll just keep saying "it's worth the money". Hah. Overall, I'm a satisfied Mac user, not everything is perfect but I don't expect perfect, I expect GOOD, which Lion really is.
I would have to agree with you on the value there. Now, if Apple would just drop the price on the new TB monitor to about $200 I'd be the first in line to pick one up.
As it stands right now, I'm just going to have to figure out how to squeeze a grand out of the budget to pony up for one of those.
The old version was...uh...acquired from a friend many years ago. When 2004 and 2008 came out, I played with the trials and concluded I hated them (for one thing, they deliberately didn't include the ribbon interface on 2008...which is the one thing I've liked about M$ software on a PC in the last decade). '11 looks much improved, and I need to be able to open and work with .docx files.
So, it looks like my upgrade will be about $130 in total, not $29.99.
Aside from that, so far I LOVE Lion! Wish that wi-fi booted a little faster - that's the ONLY thing that has remained as slow as it was in Snow Leopard.
Nice one, Apple! Fix those problems I've listed, and you'll have a truly GREAT OS!
Cheers,
Cameron
Mac's since 1999
And what up with inverting the mouse wheel scrolling. I am not all that impressed yet.
So it you haven't upgraded yet, don't waste your money, wait until they put out something more worth while.