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Lion
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John Siricusa for Ars Technica:
...this is the most significant release of Mac OS X in many years?perhaps the most significant release ever. Though the number of new APIs introduced in Lion may fall short of the landmark Tiger and Leopard releases, the most important changes in Lion are radical accelerations of past trends. Apple appears tired of dragging people kicking and screaming into the future; with Lion, it has simply decided to leave without us.
Apple has taken a hatchet to decades of conventional wisdom about desktop operating systems…
In the same way that Mac OS X so clearly showed the rest of the industry what user interfaces would look like in the years to come, Apple?s own iOS has now done the same for its decade-old desktop operating system,? Siracusa writes. ?Over the past decade, better technology has simply reduced the number of things that we need to care about. Lion is better technology. It marks the point where Mac OS X releases stop being defined by what?s been added. From now on, Mac OS X should be judged by what?s been removed.
Emphasis added.
[ Edited: 20 July 2011 05:57 PM by FalKirk ] -
This latest feline is a beautiful finger-friendly operating system that is, pardon the pun, truly worth lionizing.
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Absolutely seamless upgrade. I checked my “About this mac” listing of apps before upgrading. Very surprised just how few PPC apps were left. I’ll have to replace just two things: Photoshop Elements 3 and SoundStudio. Oh wait, I already have available replacements. Everything else is Intel or Universal. No driver wonkiness detected yet. Saw a couple GUI glitches in the System Preferences (missing lock icon for one) and that app doesn’t perfectly comply with the new global UI. Full screen apps - I’m sold. Especially when using the four-finger swipe. I had a love-hate relationship with spaces, but that’s now solved. Mission Control is fine if you get lost in your workflow (difficult I’m sure for this disciplined crowd). Concur with the comment about taking stuff away. And you know what? I don’t even miss it. Snappier, cleaner, future proofed, more fun. Best $29.99 I’ve ever spent. Really!
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David Nelson
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I agree, this is one of the best upgrades in a while.
I really like the unification of window management via Mission Control. Previously, I think that Expose, Spaces and Dashboard were all kind of confusing to basic users, who didn’t use them because they didn’t understand how they worked. (“They all make my programs fly around, but I don’t know what they’re for or which one to use when…”)
The initial version seems very solid. I’ve been running the GM ever since it was released to developers (yes, I have an account, I didn’t pirate it
[ Edited: 20 July 2011 10:43 PM by David Nelson ]
) and I can’t think of a single problem I’ve had since upgrading. -
I work at a small, mostly Mac company (we do software development). We are “power users”, so to speak. Most of us have several VMs open for development simultaneously, run Eclipse IDE all the time for coding/debugging, have either MySQL or SQL Server running in the background, have multiple Terminal windows open for command line, etc, on top of the “normal” OS apps like Mail, iChat, MS Office, etc.
And today, before the day was over, about 5 of us had upgraded to Lion. Except for the “reverse scroll” thing, which is a bit annoying, everything went flawlessly. We were able to continue working without issues after installation, not a single problem. I also installed it at home on my Mac Pro, also flawless.
That is almost unheard of for a major OS upgrade. Really impressive. Kudos to the Apple OS dev team.
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That is almost unheard of for a major OS upgrade. Really impressive. Kudos to the Apple OS dev team.
That is a great anecdote.
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mjuarez,
You know the reverse scrolling thing can be turned off right? At least with the Trackpad. I am seeing if I get used to it. So far, I am very impressed with Lion.
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I think Siracusa is right about giving the scrolling thing a chance. The old metaphor was the one that was backwards. I’m still ‘not holding it right’ myself though. If anyone knows how to change the dog ugly leather color at the top of iCal I’d love to hear about it. I didn’t follow anything about Lion development nor read the reviews nor watch any instructional video’s so I’m coming into this as I believe most would. So far so simple.
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I think Siracusa is right about giving the scrolling thing a chance.
Gruber says the same. Give it a chance. Your mind will quickly adjust.
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I think Siracusa is right about giving the scrolling thing a chance.
Gruber says the same. Give it a chance. Your mind will quickly adjust.
I do know it can be turned off, but I’m trying it for a few days. At this point, I think I’m 75% “convinced”, after not even one day of using it. Office workload is light, so it’s perfect timing for upgrades and/or changes.
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Hmm, I just found this:
This seems… weird. Is Front Row’s disappearance in Lion related to what TC said were “interesting things” (paraphrasing) coming to iTunes?
I know Front Row wasn’t used at all by most people, so it might just have gotten EOL’ed in Lion. But maybe there is some audio/video/iTunes related new product in the pipeline? Maybe related to Apple TV?
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One day, I _will_ find my way to Quicken Essentials from friggin’ Quicken 2002…somehow. Maybe in a few months?
Once that works, it’s off to Lion for me. iCloud is the future and I can’t see myself missing out on it for too long.
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Thanks, Steve. -
Apple?s Lion Brings PCs Into Tablet Era
Walt Mossberg
The past two major computer operating system releases, Windows 7 and Snow Leopard, were incremental. Lion is very different. It?s a big leap, and gives the Mac a much more modern look and feel for a world of tablets and smartphones. If you are willing to adjust, it?s the best computer operating system out there.
Wow. Walt’s take surprises me. “...the best computer operating system out there.” Impressive.
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Before Lion came out, every discussion I read talked about how it was pretty incremental - a lot of nice window dressing, but no major improvements. Now that it’s out, I’m getting a very, very different impression.
I think part of the difference can be explained by John Siricusa’s take:
(Lion) marks the point where Mac OS X releases stop being defined by what?s been added. From now on, Mac OS X should be judged by what?s been removed.
Apple has always been out ahead of us all. They know where computing should be, but they’ve had to impatiently wait for us to catch up with their vision. Siracusa again:
Apple appears tired of dragging people kicking and screaming into the future; with Lion, it has simply decided to leave without us.
Apple is no longer a niche company doing what they have to in order to survive. They are the 900 pound gorilla; the IBM of their day. People now buy Apple as a matter of course. Apple no longer has to worry about competing with Microsoft’s Windows OS. Windows is irrelevant to them. Apple makes the very best as fast as they can and you hesitate to follow at your own peril.
Lion is the beginning of the end of OS X. There will be no more big cat names. How can one top “Lion”, the king of the jungle? Perhaps OS X will just be called iOS, I don’t know.
But naming conventions aside, everyone who is reviewing Lion says this does not feel like a step along the path or even a step in a new direction - it feels like a new beginning. Lion is the end of the big cats and the beginning of something new. Step back from the trees and take a look at the forrest (or, if you’d rather, the “jungle”).
Apple is re-inventing the computer all over again. Lion breaks the desktop metaphor. iOS 5 breaks our reliance on connecting to our desktop computers via wires or at all. The new Mac Mini and MacBook Air breaks our reliance on physical media. iCloud breaks our reliance on the file system and folders and syncing. It’s all just done in the background. Quietly. Seamlessly. Automatically. Once again, Apple re-thinks how the computer should work so that we don’t have to. Apple absorbs the complexity of the computer’s administrative functions so that we can focus on our work instead of focusing on how our computers work.
This is just the beginning. Apple is now the largest tech company in the world and soon they will be the largest company in the world. They have more money than God (who invested heavily in sub-prime mortgages). They have the best management in the world. They have the best reputation and the most fanatically loyal customers in the world. They have their supply chain “ducks” all lined up. Their retail stores are the finest in the world. Apple can do what it wants.
And what it wants now is to tie all the pieces together and create many products that seem like one. The iPod is irrelevant. The Touch and the iPhone and the iPad and the Mac are all just extensions of one another, different versions of the same thing. Pushed from below by a single OS and pulled from above by iCloud, the Mac “platform” is about to soar.
Lion is the end and the beginning. Lion isn’t about creating a new operating system. It’s about getting us to forget that the operating systems even exists.
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And today, before the day was over, about 5 of us had upgraded to Lion. Except for the “reverse scroll” thing, which is a bit annoying, everything went flawlessly. We were able to continue working without issues after installation, not a single problem. I also installed it at home on my Mac Pro, also flawless.
That is almost unheard of for a major OS upgrade. Really impressive. Kudos to the Apple OS dev team.
The scrolling direction is a bit of an adjustment. One can switch it back in Lion (in System Preferences), but I’m going to give it another week.
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At least one balanced view about Lion from Jesus Diaz
http://gizmodo.com/5819418/mac-os-x-lion-this-is-not-the-future-we-were-hoping-for
