First ride with the Lion
Some of my early impressions after a couple of days of Lion taming. All OSX upgrades has been good so far, with Snow Leopard the greatest. Now it is time to take the next leap to the greatest cat in the world, OSX 10.7 Lion (and probably the last cat we see from Apple). So what does Lion bring? Some good, some bad and some confusion.
Bringing the iOS and Mac OSX closer together is good but also the confusing part of Lion. It’s okey when comes to integration, features and multi-touch. Rather confusing when it comes to interfaces. More about that later.
About MacOSX 10.7 Lion
Let me be clear. This is a great and most wanted upgrade of OSX and you should not hesitate to download and install it. It comes with more than 250 new features and you will like, if not all, so at least 90-95 % of them. It is all 64-bit and runs fast and smooth on any Mac up to the standards required. It is the most secure system on the market, so if security concerns, that is a reason alone to upgrade.
Installation
This is the smoothest and easiest upgrade ever. Download from Mac AppStore. Click Install. Done. You are now running the Lion. No hazzle what so ever. Once downloaded the installation process took about 30 minutes (MacBook Air). After rebooting Lion starts with some underlying indexing that made my fans spin heavily. Take a coffee break and let the Lion perform the indexing before you start diving into it.
Will all my apps work in Lion?
No. Lion does not support pre-Intel apps. Rosetta (who made it possible to run PPC-apps in Snow Leopard) is now dropped. Outdated apps are shown with a nonworking mark on their icons. Most of these apps comes in updated versions to reinstall. A complete list of apps compatibility is found here.
Mission Control
Let’s start with the biggest change in working with the Mac – the Mission Control. Apple have merged Exposé and Spaces into a new neat solution. Mission Control is the place where you have full control and navigates to open desktops, apps and documents. I really like the concept, but it has some flaws.
I am used to have 9 Spaces on my laptop, each one with specific functions and apps attached to them. I am used to navigate between the different Spaces using short commands, Ctrl→ or Ctrl 4. I still can use these short commands, but they ignore some of my “Spaces”, the ones with full screen apps.
In Mission Control Desktops (Spaces) and Windows with full screen apps are two different things. To me it is all Spaces. I can’t define or arrange them in a way I am used to. They all seams to float around and dynamically reflects the ones I use most.
The way to handle this is to close all full screen apps, delete all Desktops and start with Desktop 1 only. Open the apps you want to tie in Desktop 1 and set them to be locked to this Desktop. You find the locking in the Dock by right clicking the apps icon in the Dock and under Option choose if the app is going to be locked to this desktop or all desktops or not locked at all.
Then you open a new Desktop 2 and do the same procedure with the apps you want to tie there. Add a third Desktop and so on till you are pleased. Now you know what Desktop number each app has and can easily move to them with Ctrl 2.
If you choose to open any application in full screen view, be aware that it will slide out from the Desktop you were on and create a new window (you can see this happen). This new window has no number and you cannot reach it by any Ctrl + number. You can swipe to it and even use Ctrl→ or reach it from Mission Control, the Dock or Ctrl + Tab. When you go back from full screen view the app will slide back to the Desktop you locked it to.
Cleaner colorless interface
In Lion Apple has adopted the colors and icons as we seen them in iTunes left menus for a while, in Finder and Mail and more places. Some people find them dull and ugly, others think they are great. Learn to live with them, they are here.
Finder
The changes in Finder are rather small. You can now resize your Finder windows from any corner or edge. Fine. In the Finder window there are some new options to sort files. In the Application folder you can choose to sort them by Application Category which puts all your Productivity Apps together, your Video Apps, Music Apps and Utility Apps, and so on, together with a dividing headline. That’s neat. But who is in charge here? I mean, Apples DVD Player is put into the “Video” category, but my VLC App in “Others”.
Where can I edit this? The obvious place would be in the Get Info window, but it isn’t there. I found no way to add or change the category to which the app belongs, and without that, the new view is quite useless. All apps who is hiding inside a folder in your Application folder is treated as “Other”. If you move Pages, KeyNote and Number out of their folder they pop up in the “Productivity” category instead of “Others”. Odd.
Dialogue Box Missing Feature
When you choose to save, open or attach a file, one of Snow Leopards great things has been the ability to drag a file from an open Finder window to the dialogue box. You cannot anymore. Fix this Apple, it will drive me nuts…
Edit: Dragging files from any Finder window into Dialogue window works sometimes, sometimes not…
The Dock
The Dock is much the same with some exceptions. If you are like me, you are used to have the Dock hidden while you work. By dragging the mouse to the bottom edge of the screen it pops up. It works the same way in Lions desktops, but not in windows with apps using the new full screen mode. If you drag the mouse to the bottom, nothing happens. The insane thing is, if you pause for a couple of seconds and then drag it further down, the Dock will pop up. That’s a very stupid interface choice.
Full screen apps
Works well with some apps like iPhoto, Aperture, Final Cut and Mail, worse with others. Here everyone has his own choices and freedom. When full screen is made active the menu bar disappears. It’s still there, just move the cursor to the top edge to revoke it.
Scrolling direction
In Lion Apple introduces a new scrolling direction, opposite from Snow Leopard but the same as used by your fingers in iOS. Instead of pulling the scrolling elevator downwards to reveal more of the page, you push the content upwards or downwards with your fingers. The scroll bars are default hidden when not used. This is logical and easy to get used to for most people. If you find it awkward you can change the direction back and even have the scroll bars showing all the time, in System Preferences.
Autosave, Save as, and Versions
In Lion Apples introduces autosave. That isn’t always a good thing because it normally overwrites the original uncontrolled. Apple has however solved this beautifully by saving versions of any document you work on. You can always go back, in a Time Machinelike view, to any previous version of the document, even to get only a part of it or an image. That is a very neat solution. Each autosave creates a saved version and you can also create a version whenever it feels right.
Many enhancements
You will find many enhancements in Lion, some small and really good. Apple says it has +250 new features (and it will take a while to find and figure them all out).
Security at its best
Lion is a big leap in security by providing full ASLR and sandboxing. I have read security experts claiming that it’s the most secure OS in the market, like a “Windows 7 Plus Plus”. The expert recommended any Mac user that cared about security to immediately upgrade to Lion. It was even his best recommendation to Windows users.
File Vault in Lion is a total rebuild and provides maximun speed and security to all data on your computer. The crashes from earlier versions are not possible anymore. So, give it a second chance.
Spotlight Search improved
It is nice to be able to search, not only the hard drive, but also the Internet and Wikipedia direct from Spotlight. I am overwhelmingly happy with the most in this upgrade. There is one more thing…
Launchpad
As I mentioned in the beginning, there is some things in the Lion that is very confusing. Launchpad is a iPhone and iPad rip off and implemented in Lion for unknown reasons. Launchpad shows all your apps in exactly the same way that iPhone and iPad does. Click and hold the mouse and they start to wiggle and you can drag them, one by one, in the order you prefer, and you can drag them, one by one, onto each other to create “folders”. There is no way to mark a group of apps or shift-click several apps like we are used to do in OSX. Nope, one by one. The “folders” you create in Launch Pad has nothing to do with real Finder folders (why not?).
LaunchPad might work with people having just a few apps to handle. I have hundreds of apps and utility software. Five screens were filled. Beware. I will stick to QuickSilver, Cmd-TAB and the Dock to launch and switch between apps.
Odd App Design
Now, another question that occurs, is why iCal and Address Book has another type of design more like the ones in iPad? Why have they been reduced?
Apple, look, I am working on two big screen monitors with lots of space. I can and want to display the column with all my calendars all the time. I want to see and handle groups, names and personal data in one three-pane view in Address Book. Lots of peolple have big screens and the column view could be a choice in the apps preferences. I mean BIG as in room for more rather than less. The ToDo-list is gone in Calendar, maybe waiting for the new Reminders in iOS 5.
Summary OS X Lion 10.7
Go get it. It is a great beast, worth every penny.
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