Mac OS X Lion is out!

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So that is a thing. I'm most excited about being able to re-size windows from all sides. I'll install tonight and post some of my thoughts. Anyone else have it yet?

I would like to install it, but my Mac would not boot for more than 5min.

I'm sorta interested.. also the New Macbook Air's were announced.. with backlight keyboards (yeah!) and even crappier graphics than before.. (boo!) Apple continues the battle to ensure that no-gaming will happen on their machines.

TheGameguru wrote:

I'm sorta interested.. also the New Macbook Air's were announced.. with backlight keyboards (yeah!) and even crappier graphics than before.. (boo!) Apple continues the battle to ensure that no-gaming will happen on their machines.

Yeah, its strange that their mobile stuff is on the bleeding edge gaming wise, and their desktop stuff sucks. Strange.

I've been running the developer beta for several months. Apple is definitely not afraid to change things. Overall all the experience is very good, but just be prepared for changes.

The Good:
--Full Screen Apps
--pervasive productive gestures
--full disk encryption w/ no noticeable slowdown.
--Resumes your apps where you left them if you shut down
--Automatic versioning of your files (only used by some apps right now, but supported in the OS)
--Autosaving documents
--The sum of these is you just stop worrying about your computer.

The Bad:
--several features clearly designed with portable in mind instead of a desktop
--lack of scroll bars looks nice, but can be confusing because you can't just glance at a window to see if more is there.
--iCal is now ugly, Address book not far behind.

The Wha?:
--The new scrolling direction takes a while to get used too. Took me almost a week.

If you primarily run OS X on a laptop, do not hesitate to pick this up. It is awesome. Swiping between full screen apps is a dream, and the whole OS seems to be designed with a trackpad in mind.

booty wrote:

The Wha?:
--The new scrolling direction takes a while to get used too. Took me almost a week.

This can be turned off. I'm about to install now and that's the first thing I'm going to do.

There's also apparently a setting to make scrollbars always visible. That was a really bad change on Apple's part. If they ever take that preference out, I think I'll stop updating right then and there. Scrollbars are important. And reverse scrolling? What the f*ck are they thinking?

I really liked what Siracusa said about some of the built-in apps... the graphics are writing checks the interface can't cash. There's a lot of extraneous eye candy that doesn't do anything... in fact, it can be argued that it actively impairs the functionality of the apps.

If you're going to invest a bunch of effort into making the calendar program look like a notebook, then you need to make it WORK like a notebook... the pages need to turn, and the bookmark should do something, not just sit there and take up useless space.

On the whole, it looks interesting, and with the preferences settings to reverse the worst of the stupidity, it might be a nice upgrade.

Malor wrote:

And reverse scrolling? What the f*ck are they thinking?

They're likely responding to user feedback. I can't tell you how many students I deal with who have bought MacBooks because they love their iPhones and iPads who ask if there's a way to reverse the trackpad so that it scrolls like one of the touchscreen devices.

Ohhhh, I see. That makes more sense. They're thinking it like grabbing a piece of paper and sliding it around.

For some reason I thought the reversed scrolling was on mousewheels, which makes no sense at all.

Malor wrote:

Ohhhh, I see. That makes more sense. They're thinking it like grabbing a piece of paper and sliding it around.

For some reason I thought the reversed scrolling was on mousewheels, which makes no sense at all.

It probably is on mousewheels. It makes sense when you are actually touching the document to scroll (like on an ipad) but when you're using a touchpad it's just stupid.

I just finished installing Lion and a few application updates without any issues.

The good: I'm liking the Mail layout and glad that I held off on purchasing Postbox.

The OK: The new style expose is ok but I'm not liking the app icon under each window.

The new scrolling isn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I'm sure I'll adjust by the end of the day.

Quicksilver is lagging bad and it makes me sad.

The ugly: I think Launchpad is pretty useless.

Other than that, I haven't really played with the updated Safari as I prefer Chrome. The Address Book and Calendar apps are ugly as hell and seem completely out of place with the rest of the UI style.

Currently using a MBP 2.5C2D and not noticing any significant performance gains.

Put in an order for the new 2.5 mini so hopefully it'll arrive before the weekend so I can start consolidating the iTunes and iPhoto accounts on my work laptop and wife's laptop.

And just noticed that Time Machine isn't playing nice with our NAS. Awesome.

Going to install as soon as I get home, but tonight's my late shift. So I spent the whole work day reading Siracusa's review and the comments.

In the category "Thing I vaguely understand but sounds like it will be a huge benefit though in practice probably won't ever be noticed", Automatic Termination sounds like a lock to win. Still neat though.

I imagine I'll un-reverse the scrolling on my iMac since that's just how mice work, like my work mouse for instance; but leave it reversed on my wife's MacBook with its trackpad where it might be a delightful surprise.

I didn't see the point of Launchpad since I just use Spotlight, until Siracusa reminded me of what it's like when I tell my mom to launch a program and say, "Just use Spotlight". Ah yes. He's right. For many users Launchpad will be a Godsend (unfortunately, not my mom, still rocking an iBook).

After reading Siracusa's review, I want to try it out. But I never upgraded from Word 2004 and whatever version of EndNote was current five years ago, so I won't be in a position to seriously use Lion until I've finished the project I'm currently working on and/or received an unexpected windfall of several hundred dollars to buy current-version software with.

Now, for future projects, I wouldn't mind alternatives, but that probably belongs in another thread.

iaintgotnopants wrote:
Malor wrote:

Ohhhh, I see. That makes more sense. They're thinking it like grabbing a piece of paper and sliding it around.

For some reason I thought the reversed scrolling was on mousewheels, which makes no sense at all.

It probably is on mousewheels. It makes sense when you are actually touching the document to scroll (like on an ipad) but when you're using a touchpad it's just stupid.

You know, I would totally agree with you initially iaintgotnopants, but now that I think about it, reverse scroll on a touchpad makes sense if you are thinking of it like a touchscreen. It's sort of like the inverted argument with a gamepad. I always play inverted because I used to play flight sims with a joystick when I was a kid. It makes more sense to me, and that's what I'm used to. To other people, it doesn't make sense.

Anyways, bottom line, as long as the option for either way is there, it's not a big deal.

I found this helpful, especially the bit about getting forward/back gestures back in Chrome/Firefox.

http://lifehacker.com/5823050/the-os-x-lion-survival-guide?popular=true

I'm also still on Office 2004 so I will be sticking with Snow Leopard for the foreseeable future. Especially if there is no notable performance boost.

I miss the three finger slide up gesture to go to the top of the page in FireFox

Have they fixed task switching yet? Can I alt (cmd, whatever) + tab between multiple windows of the same program finally? It's really annoying when I want to switch between Word documents or PDFs and have to switch using the mouse to search out the proper window.

McChuck wrote:

Have they fixed task switching yet? Can I alt (cmd, whatever) + tab between multiple windows of the same program finally? It's really annoying when I want to switch between Word documents or PDFs and have to switch using the mouse to search out the proper window.

You've always been able to do that. It's Cmd+`.

Threaded for observation... don't want to pull the trigger yet.

Gravey wrote:
McChuck wrote:

Have they fixed task switching yet? Can I alt (cmd, whatever) + tab between multiple windows of the same program finally? It's really annoying when I want to switch between Word documents or PDFs and have to switch using the mouse to search out the proper window.

You've always been able to do that. It's Cmd+`.

Seriously? Just ... ugh, seriously? Still would prefer to use cmd + tab and have everything separate and not grouped.

Wish I could upgrade my iMac but it's an ancient 32 bit one. I guess it'll have to wait until the mythical day when I quit the day job and become an indy iOS developer

iTunes wrote:

A new full-screen button takes an app window full screen.

So, when I couldn't figure out how to full screen windows on my new Apple, it wasn't because I was {ableist slur}? And now I can get this functionality? In the year 2011? What?

McChuck wrote:

Seriously? Just ... ugh, seriously? Still would prefer to use cmd + tab and have everything separate and not grouped.

If you're that tied to command+tab, you can command+tab to the application of interest, press up (or down) arrow , and then choose the window you want with the arrows.

Besides muscle memory, I don't get the hate of command+tab vs command+` .

Am I the only one who never uses full screen for windows? Even in Windows?

Danjo Olivaw wrote:
iTunes wrote:

A new full-screen button takes an app window full screen.

So, when I couldn't figure out how to full screen windows on my new Apple, it wasn't because I was {ableist slur}? And now I can get this functionality? In the year 2011? What?

It's not quite the same as a full screen on windows. By default it puts the window into it's own virtual desktop/space, and hides the menu bar. Apps can elect to provide a custom UI as well knowing they have the entire screen to themselves.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Am I the only one who never uses full screen for windows? Even in Windows?

Strangely, I rarely do it on a desktop, but on a Lion laptop I do it all the freakin' time. The extra screen real estate is worth it, and switching between multiples spaces of full screen apps with swipe gestures on the trackpad works so smoothly it quickly becomes second nature.

booty wrote:

It's not quite the same as a full screen on windows. By default it puts the window into it's own virtual desktop/space, and hides the menu bar. Apps can elect to provide a custom UI as well knowing they have the entire screen to themselves.

In other words, it lets the desktop apps pretend they're iPad apps.

It seems like a lot of the changes in Lion are about bridging the gap between OS X and iOS.

Reverse scrolling on a trackpad was not a delightful surprise. And I lasted about a minute with the scroll wheel, each window performing a jittery dance before I got it moving in the right direction. Now maybe there's the argument that over time I'll get used to it. But I never had to get used to it on the iPhone, I just did it and it made sense without even thinking about it. On a touchscreen, I'm manipulating the actual document/page/whatever itself, hands on the screen and everything. But on my desktop or even the laptop, I'm manipulating the controls: basically, the scroll wheel or two-finger scrolling is a shortcut for grabbing and moving the scrollbar (even the last Dell or VAIO I used only let you scroll using the clearly marked right and bottom edges of the trackpad, mimicking the window). The scrollbar tracks in the same direction I want to move the document—that doesn't make sense moving in the opposite direction.

Also, what up with iCal: the icon looks like a physical thing, to represent the program which looks like software. Now the program looks like a physical thing, but a different physical thing from the icon. Don't want to change the icon, fine, then make the program look like the calendar the icon looks like. Yeesh, amirite?

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Am I the only one who never uses full screen for windows? Even in Windows?

I never do, even in Windows. I love OS X's maximize, contra full screen. With a 21.5" widescreen, and a multitasking OS, why fill up the screen with a single program? Even at work with 19" and multiple programs I never full screen (instead manually resizing everything). Seeing somebody's browser window full screen, with miles of white space on either side—or worse, their email client with a single line of text traveling half the width of their desk—makes me groan.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Am I the only one who never uses full screen for windows? Even in Windows?

Yes.

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