Playing With Lion

Last week Apple announced the upcoming release of their next version of OS X, 10.7 Lion. I am very excited about this release and wanted to share some of the coming changes to the system with all of you.

In my opinion, the biggest change is that this release will not be available on conventional optical media, but will instead only be available through the App Store. This seems to effectively lock out anyone not running 10.6 from upgrading to Lion.

I have seen websites with instructions on how to burn the Lion installer to a DVD to enable installation on other computers. It’s unclear, however, whether or not this will work with the final release, as the only version available now is Developer Preview 4. The server version of Lion will also be available through the App Store as a separate download. Server is also seeing a huge change in that it will be available for around $50, rather than several hundred.

Down to the nitty gritty: Lion boasts over 250 changes over its predecessor. I was able to take a very quick look at the Developer Preview a short time before writing this article and I can tell you that while it’s definitely still OS X, there are noticeable changes in almost every aspect of the system. I’m not going to release any information that isn’t already available so don’t get your hopes up for major spoilers. I will say this, however: it’s cleaner, slicker and more refined.

My favorite is Launchpad. This brings the iOS home screen to your Mac. If you have an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch then you’re well familiar with the home screen. On your Mac Launchpad will be a resting place of links to all your applications.

Click on Launchpad in your dock, or use multitouch gestures, and your dock, menubar and desktop icons fade away leaving a frosted surface over your desktop with all your application icons lined up neatly across your screen. You can move them and organize them into folders as you would in iOS. From what I hear, deleting them is a trifle annoying as the OS will ask you to confirm deletion with each app.

Another biggie is what Apple is terming Resume. This also takes a cue from iOS. When you shut down your machine, the state of every application running is saved. This way when you restart your machine you are brought back to where you were when you shut down.

The third take from iOS is Mail. I really like Mail. Again, if you’re familiar with the version of Mail on the iPad you’ll be familiar with what Lion will be like. You can see some images of Mail on Apple’s website. It’s much easier to navigate through multiple mailboxes, so if you’re like I am and have several email addresses, it’s much easier to get through it all.

Do you have multiple Macs in your home? Have you ever tried to transfer files between them? Apple has always made it easy to network Macs together but now they’ve made it even easier. Now you don’t even need a network. As long as each Mac is able to run the AirDrop software (requires Lion), the computers will discover each other as long as they are close enough and allow you to drag and drop files between them.

There are many other changes, but to me, these are the largest. While these changes are really amazing, it’s the little details that make Lion such an awesome upgrade. If you wait with bated breath over the release of Lion, you will not be disappointed.