Its been a little over a week since Apple officially released OS X Lion to consumers and we’ve gotten a chance to user the new operating system extensively. As many others have stated the general feel of the OS is that it’s moving much more in line with iOS and many of its touch interfaces.
Some of the moves make a lot of sense and add a lot of value to users while a few are a bit frustrating. Below our our initial Likes & Dislikes of the new OS.
Likes
- Windows Sizing – It only took Apple seven versions of their popular operating system to finally fix windows sizing. Before OS X Lion, the only way to increase the size of a window was to click and drag the bottom right corner. Now, with Lion all sides and corners of all windows can be clicked and dragged to increase or decrease the viewing size. This is a great addition that many new PC converts won’t appreciate nearly as much as long time OS X users.
- Spaces Backgrounds – OS X Lion makes it easy to differentiate between your desktop Spaces. Setting a different background for each of your spaces is quick and easy. Now you can not only organize where your apps launch but quickly identify visual which space you’re working in.
- Launchpad – Before Lion, the best way to quickly see which apps you had installed on your Mac was through an Applications folder on your doc. Now, Launchpad is a swipe away on your trackpad. Launchpad displays all the Apps you have in your App folder similar to the layout on your iPhone or iPad. Organizing your apps in sub-folders on the screen is also available.
Dislikes
- Mouse/Trackpad default settings – I really hate it when user interface controls are switched without informing the user or prompting them for their preference during initial install and configuration. With all previous versions of OS X, scrolling a window was in the direction of movement, meaning to move down a page you scrolled down.
Now with Lion, the default mouse setting is to have scrolling be in the direction of finger movement. Move your finger up to scroll the content up, move your finger down to scroll the content down.
It feels inverted to what users are use to.Apple did this to match the user controls of their touch screens and I’m sure makes sense for the long run, but making the change be the default setting for Upgrades will confuse users and make some of them even question if their mouse is broken.
To turn off this default mouse scrolling configuration Open System Preferences >> Mouse >> and uncheck “Move content in the direction of Finger Movement When Scrolling or Navigating”.
- Dashboard – I use Dashboard a lot. To quickly pull up a calculator, check the date, and view the weather forecast. I loved the way it was previously implemented as an overlay to the screen you were looking at. It made it so you could quickly calculate numbers you were looking at in other applications and I believed it to be a great resource.Those days are gone.
Now, with OS X Lion, Dashboard is more like a Space with a bunch of tiny apps running continually. Launching dashboard pushes the Space you’re working into the right and pulls in from the left the collection of small widgets. The background is a default grey and no open Apps can be referenced without jumping back out of Dashboard.I’d love it if Apple made this a user preference instead of forcing us to change the way we used the tool.
Conclusion
Overall OS X Lion has a lot of great new features but it is not without its frustrating updates. What do you love/hate about Apple’s new Operating System?
8 Responses so far.
Jim Proulx
July 29, 2011 at 1:25 pmDashboard still can work the way it used to. System Preferences/Mission Control: Uncheck the first option – Show Dashboard as a space. Thats it.
Jim Proulx
July 29, 2011 at 1:31 pmAlso, it only takes a day to get used to the inverted scrolling, and its worth it to migrate users towards a more universal experience. And like you said – you can switch it back. What I really wanted to see was the ability to sync Safari bookmarks/preferences across multiple computers via an Apple ID. Maybe this feature will be part of iCloud – if so I have missed any announcements.
curtiswalker
July 30, 2011 at 4:31 amI am frustrated with actually getting the software installed. Rural Users are on Satellite (most of us, anyway). You have any idea what it takes to download a huge file like this when you are allocated 500 megs a DAY? I could be a year older (birthday 8-9) before I get it installed. So while not a post about the new stuff, us rural Apple users obviously were not considered in the decision to only have on day one in the Apps store–which otherwise love.
cemlynjones
August 3, 2011 at 1:45 amI'm with you here. I can't get it downloaded either. I live in the Philippines and my connection will not hold long enough to download. I get around 50 to 100 MB and then it hangs. Apple Stores are meant to be able to do this for you but we have no Apple Stores and the resellers are not interested or are not allowed to. I think Apple's App Store is great but not for something this big. There should be a choice.
Michelasso
August 6, 2011 at 4:14 pmThat's why I used a torrent. I couldn't at all download nearly 4 GB in one session. At this point, sorry Steve, but Apple left me no choice.
Phil
August 8, 2011 at 3:01 amOne of the MAJOR issue I have with Lion is the monochrome grey sidebars icons.
Almost every apps now do have a round blue icon, and similar layout with a left sidebar and grey icons list… It becomes even more confusing to know which App we’re focus on.
The worst is in Finder when you were used to have dozen and dozen of “Places” in Snow Leopard, now Favorite Folders, to quickly and easily access to the folders you work. With different icons and colors it was easy… Now it’s impossible. For people who work with files A LOT, it just makes life crazy now!
For this reason I even start a petition you can check here if you want:
http://www.change.org/petitions/apple-give-users-ui-color-appearance-choices-in-os-x-lion-preferences
Phil
Jesse Newell
August 12, 2011 at 9:12 pmI like Lion but to be honest i find out more and more each day how OSX is really the best operating system. The key combinations, services menu, spotlight, folder organization, terminal. Love it! I would say the best things about Lion are, full disk encryption (the tax computer) Auto Save- but i wish the quit with discard worked on every window, launchpad, full screen support well actually too many cool features to list really. The only bummer is i bought the magic trackpad today, it's a little lacking. I can use my mouse so much more efficiently.
As far as the download goes guys just pay a friend in the states to buy it and download for you, put it on a flash drive. Or call Apple and have them ship you out a usb version and then just pay to import it.
Dan
August 12, 2011 at 9:16 pmThanks for your thoughts. With the Magic Trackpad.. it takes a while to get use to. And if you use the gestures a lot than it is a must.
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