Lion First Impressions
My early thoughts on the all-new Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion - image via Apple), in trademarked bullet-point style:
- I upgraded to a new OS for all of $30 and did not step out of my room. While this appeals to my height of laziness, you have to say that is an impressive way to function. The installation took about 35 minutes in total, not counting download time (a little over an hour).
- (Update) Case in point, it just took me >30 minutes to download the 30MB new VLC.
- I decided to leave the new scrolling as is and test it for a while first. In a couple of hours, the new scrolling is happening a lot more intuitively. I definitely like how full screen apps are being handled - pretty much a separate virtual desktop that you can scroll in and out of easily.
- I'm having am amazing time using Twimbow - or I'd imagine any twitter-like application - scrolling through twitter columns is now identical to using an iPhone.
- Mission Control is a brilliant add-on. Actually it's not so much mission control itself, but the way this has been integrated with the new scrolling and the virtual desktops mode. Very seamless, intuitive to move around and it does what you think it would do. I also like that Dashboard has now setup its own screen on the far left (similar to the search screen on the iOS). It handles dual desktop better than before.
- What remains to be seen is how seamless the change will be between using a Magic Mouse and using the trackpad. At my desk I use an external keyboard and mouse, whereas often during the day or when out, I'm glistening about the trackpad. Now the gestures are a bit different between them for some of the tasks, so it might take more than one try to get it right based on the input device.
