89
Criteria
Comments
Rating
- Ease of use No comments
- Speed Scrolling and LaunchPad folders used to stutter through animation, but it's all much much better now.
- Configurability This ain't Windows or Linux, but all new features appear to have escape hatches.
- Ecosystem (apps, drivers, etc.) Whether you love or hate the idea of the Mac App Store, it is most certainly an ecosystem full of newly exposed developer content.
- Openness Mac App Store aside, you now have to pay (a small nominal fee) for Xcode, and information on security updates isn't easily available as for competing OSes.
Detailed review
OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was the first version of OS X that I found to be visually comfortable. Whether because of shoddy folder icons, gaudy brushed metal window trim, or wretched window management abilities, all previous versions of the OS drove me nuts in small ways, for one reason or another.
Lion introduces some really tiny improvements that go a long way, like the ability to resize any window from any edge or corner! Hell yes. Dock icons now also track recently opened files, so that the contextual popup on a right-click gives you the ability to launch the app with the file you want to open.
iOS scrolling is a bit wonky right at first, because both the vertical and horizontal axes are inverted to mimic the pull-and-drag sensation one would expect from a touch-screen device. It's not hard to learn, but it's certainly kooky right at first.
Launchpad and Spaces are now nicely integrated with touch gestures, bring the same pull-and-drag motions to touch control. Mission Control (Exposé + Spaces) is greatly improved, and I expect the Linux community will attempt to imitate the niceness of the improvement before too long.
The bottom line: current OS X users will get a splash of cold water on their faces as they adjust to new features, but will likely just embrace them or turn them off (like inverted scrolling), and new users will find that OS X is maturing into a product that matches the polish that Apple pursues in iOS.
Lion introduces some really tiny improvements that go a long way, like the ability to resize any window from any edge or corner! Hell yes. Dock icons now also track recently opened files, so that the contextual popup on a right-click gives you the ability to launch the app with the file you want to open.
iOS scrolling is a bit wonky right at first, because both the vertical and horizontal axes are inverted to mimic the pull-and-drag sensation one would expect from a touch-screen device. It's not hard to learn, but it's certainly kooky right at first.
Launchpad and Spaces are now nicely integrated with touch gestures, bring the same pull-and-drag motions to touch control. Mission Control (Exposé + Spaces) is greatly improved, and I expect the Linux community will attempt to imitate the niceness of the improvement before too long.
The bottom line: current OS X users will get a splash of cold water on their faces as they adjust to new features, but will likely just embrace them or turn them off (like inverted scrolling), and new users will find that OS X is maturing into a product that matches the polish that Apple pursues in iOS.
good review!
4 people find this review helpful
review history
- 2011-06-23
-
Speed rating changed from 4 to 5
Edited comment on Speed
Updated detailed review