By Loki
I recently upgraded to Lion, despite advising others to wait till 10.7.1 (or 10.7.0.1 or some such release) I decided to go ahead. As I was running out of disk space on my existing setup, I decided to get a new disk and do a nice fresh install on that.
Installation: Doesn't Suck Yet Sucks So Hard It Bends Light Towards It.
Installation was smooth enough. I downloaded the installer from the App Store. Ran it. Selected the disk I wanted (one of the other disks on my Mac Pro). 1 restart, and 20 minutes or so later, hey presto, I have the brand spanking new release from Apple. So far, absolutely doesn't suck.
But wait, there is something that really keeps bothering me. You have to get this via the App Store. You have no other choice. Not as of the time of writing at any rate. That's just wrong. I can't go to a store and get a physical medium. Call me old fashioned, but when I want to pirate an OS on to half a dozen machines I want to use a DVD.
Seriously though, the download is about 4GB. That's no joke, especially not in Bahrain. With most providers that will take a while, or can be very expensive, or both.
First impressions: Welcome to the future.. 1997.
The Finder has a new look. I can't help but think of OS 8 when I see the "new" dialogue boxes. System 8 was released in 1997. That said, I like it. I think the OS has a more uniform look now.
New Features:
The OS has clearly lifted a lot from iOS (no, not the cisco one…). Launchpad is basically the iOS homepage plastered on to a desktop OS. Can't say I'll be using it much, but maybe my 2 year old daughter will, or my great grandmother. I prefer to hit command-space and type the first three letters of the App I want into spotlight. Still, I can see many people using this. It might even keep self destructive noobs from screwing up the Applications Folder.
Then there's Mission Control, Which is basically a combination of Expose´and Spaces rolled into one. I'm undecided if this is unnecessarily clutter or a simplification. I'm leaning towards the former, I quite liked expose and only used keyboard shortcuts for Spaces. That said, Expose´is still there and can be switched on again.
iTunes, Finder, and Mail have all been revamped. The last vestiges of Carbon have been removed and it's all Cocoa goodness from here on out. wohoo…. big deal. Sure that's great for Apple, but does the average user really care? No. Finder is not sufficiently different to be exciting. iTunes now allows you to view and download all previous purchases. A very welcome improvement - Nice.
As usual the OS is littered with tiny seemingly insignificant little changes that you only really appreciate once you are forced to you use an older version of the OS.
Hacksaw: This OS ditched Rosetta, Carbon, Java, and MySQL. Lovely.
Getting rid of the first two is fine, Java is not an issue as the minute you try to run a Java application, the OS asks you if you want to download a JVM. If you click yes, it promptly does that for you and you can go about your Javaesque business. MySQL has been replaced with PostgreSQL. Still, installing MySQL isn't exactly going to be a challenge for those that need it.
Mail:
Mail now features a nifty thread based view of emails. That in itself is a big improvement. If I was cynical (which I am), I would say that feature should have been introduced a long time ago. That feature should have been introduced a long time ago.
Address Book: Address book has had the iOS treatment and looks awful. Just plain awful. It looks like it was designed by my gardner. My gardner has ZERO experience in software development, BTW.
iCal:
My gardner's been busy. This application is almost as ugly as Address Book.
Swipe swipe swipe:
The entire OS seems to be geared around using touch pad as the primary interface. Seeing as the majority of mac users use laptops, this makes sense. As someone who uses a track pad even on my desktop machines, I find this a nice evolution in HCI. 2,3 and even 5 fingered swipe gestures help you navigate your way around with minimum effort. A bold move from apple. I like it.
The Downright Freaking Annoying: There's quite a lot of these so i've made a list:
1. I can't stress this enough. Address Book and iCal are hideous.
2. I find myself having lots of trouble sending emails despite the fact that all my settings are correct. A quick look around the inter webs and I find I'm not the only one with that issue. That said, no one I personally know is complaining of this. Still, this is REALLY annoying.
3. iPhoto - I don't like the new interface. In fairness this has nothing to do with Lion per se but I needed to get that off my chest. The plus button for the albums is gone (really, apple? really?). Also, when you share photos via email, it no longer opens them in Mail, instead it creates an email in iPhoto which, get this.. … DOES NOT RECOGNIZE YOUR ADRESS BOOK DISTRIBUTION LISTS! Wow. APPLE FIX THIS!… please.
4. System Preferences crashed every time I tried to add my .me account. Really, EVERY time. I had to do it via Mail.app instead.
5. Many of my apps in the Applications folder went missing, including iPhoto. Yes, they just disappeared. I had to redownload them from the app store. Just to make matters worse, launchpad thinks i have two copies of those apps. *facepalm of doom*
6. When I finally managed to enter my .me information. Address Book wiped all my contacts on iCloud despite the fact that I specified for iCloud to replace the content on my Mac. Not cool. Luckily I had a backup.
That's about it
Bottom line:
This release has some very good new features and dumps a lot of the bloat, BUT I feel it's still not rock solid. You may want to wait for the next update before taking the plunge. Also, I'm not sure this warrants the name Lion. Perhaps Honey Badger or Aardvark or Pine Martin might have been more apt.
2.5 / 5 samboosas
I recently upgraded to Lion, despite advising others to wait till 10.7.1 (or 10.7.0.1 or some such release) I decided to go ahead. As I was running out of disk space on my existing setup, I decided to get a new disk and do a nice fresh install on that.
Installation: Doesn't Suck Yet Sucks So Hard It Bends Light Towards It.
Installation was smooth enough. I downloaded the installer from the App Store. Ran it. Selected the disk I wanted (one of the other disks on my Mac Pro). 1 restart, and 20 minutes or so later, hey presto, I have the brand spanking new release from Apple. So far, absolutely doesn't suck.
But wait, there is something that really keeps bothering me. You have to get this via the App Store. You have no other choice. Not as of the time of writing at any rate. That's just wrong. I can't go to a store and get a physical medium. Call me old fashioned, but when I want to pirate an OS on to half a dozen machines I want to use a DVD.
Seriously though, the download is about 4GB. That's no joke, especially not in Bahrain. With most providers that will take a while, or can be very expensive, or both.
First impressions: Welcome to the future.. 1997.
The Finder has a new look. I can't help but think of OS 8 when I see the "new" dialogue boxes. System 8 was released in 1997. That said, I like it. I think the OS has a more uniform look now.
New Features:
The OS has clearly lifted a lot from iOS (no, not the cisco one…). Launchpad is basically the iOS homepage plastered on to a desktop OS. Can't say I'll be using it much, but maybe my 2 year old daughter will, or my great grandmother. I prefer to hit command-space and type the first three letters of the App I want into spotlight. Still, I can see many people using this. It might even keep self destructive noobs from screwing up the Applications Folder.
Then there's Mission Control, Which is basically a combination of Expose´and Spaces rolled into one. I'm undecided if this is unnecessarily clutter or a simplification. I'm leaning towards the former, I quite liked expose and only used keyboard shortcuts for Spaces. That said, Expose´is still there and can be switched on again.
iTunes, Finder, and Mail have all been revamped. The last vestiges of Carbon have been removed and it's all Cocoa goodness from here on out. wohoo…. big deal. Sure that's great for Apple, but does the average user really care? No. Finder is not sufficiently different to be exciting. iTunes now allows you to view and download all previous purchases. A very welcome improvement - Nice.
As usual the OS is littered with tiny seemingly insignificant little changes that you only really appreciate once you are forced to you use an older version of the OS.
Hacksaw: This OS ditched Rosetta, Carbon, Java, and MySQL. Lovely.
Getting rid of the first two is fine, Java is not an issue as the minute you try to run a Java application, the OS asks you if you want to download a JVM. If you click yes, it promptly does that for you and you can go about your Javaesque business. MySQL has been replaced with PostgreSQL. Still, installing MySQL isn't exactly going to be a challenge for those that need it.
Mail:
Mail now features a nifty thread based view of emails. That in itself is a big improvement. If I was cynical (which I am), I would say that feature should have been introduced a long time ago. That feature should have been introduced a long time ago.
Address Book: Address book has had the iOS treatment and looks awful. Just plain awful. It looks like it was designed by my gardner. My gardner has ZERO experience in software development, BTW.
iCal:
My gardner's been busy. This application is almost as ugly as Address Book.
Swipe swipe swipe:
The entire OS seems to be geared around using touch pad as the primary interface. Seeing as the majority of mac users use laptops, this makes sense. As someone who uses a track pad even on my desktop machines, I find this a nice evolution in HCI. 2,3 and even 5 fingered swipe gestures help you navigate your way around with minimum effort. A bold move from apple. I like it.
The Downright Freaking Annoying: There's quite a lot of these so i've made a list:
1. I can't stress this enough. Address Book and iCal are hideous.
2. I find myself having lots of trouble sending emails despite the fact that all my settings are correct. A quick look around the inter webs and I find I'm not the only one with that issue. That said, no one I personally know is complaining of this. Still, this is REALLY annoying.
3. iPhoto - I don't like the new interface. In fairness this has nothing to do with Lion per se but I needed to get that off my chest. The plus button for the albums is gone (really, apple? really?). Also, when you share photos via email, it no longer opens them in Mail, instead it creates an email in iPhoto which, get this.. … DOES NOT RECOGNIZE YOUR ADRESS BOOK DISTRIBUTION LISTS! Wow. APPLE FIX THIS!… please.
4. System Preferences crashed every time I tried to add my .me account. Really, EVERY time. I had to do it via Mail.app instead.
5. Many of my apps in the Applications folder went missing, including iPhoto. Yes, they just disappeared. I had to redownload them from the app store. Just to make matters worse, launchpad thinks i have two copies of those apps. *facepalm of doom*
6. When I finally managed to enter my .me information. Address Book wiped all my contacts on iCloud despite the fact that I specified for iCloud to replace the content on my Mac. Not cool. Luckily I had a backup.
That's about it
Bottom line:
This release has some very good new features and dumps a lot of the bloat, BUT I feel it's still not rock solid. You may want to wait for the next update before taking the plunge. Also, I'm not sure this warrants the name Lion. Perhaps Honey Badger or Aardvark or Pine Martin might have been more apt.
2.5 / 5 samboosas
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