MAC OSX Lion – my first impression

 

The new OS from Apple is now available in the Apple App Store, as mentioned in my previous post. I had a chance to play around a bit and would like to share some of my experience. First thing first the new OS looks fantastic. The upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion toke a while, but I had no problem to install the new OS even on a MacBook from June 2009.

But let us talk about some of the new features. I will try to keep it short and will list just mention a few such as Mail, Address Book, iCal, Gesture and Mission Control.

The new Mail
Apple learned of course allot from the iPad and iPhone as well. I heard before Lion was released, that new Mail would look a bit like that. So I opened Mail and was checking it out. Nice feature is that you can “Hide” and “Show” all your Mailboxes. In the next column I have all my Emails listed and the last column has a preview of the Email I selected. But now there is one very cool feature I would like to mention here. It is called “related messages” this allows you to read your Email as an entire conversation. So let say I send an Email to you, you reply to that Email and than I reply back. I can see all those 3 Emails in order. Even better, if you send an Email to a group of people and one of them replies and than another one and so on. You can see all that Email conversation in a very nice and clean way. Good job Apple, I like your new Mail allot. But there is one more feature I would like to mention. I always liked MS Outlook and I am not talking about Outlook Express, no I mean the real MS Outlook with the calendar, task manager and so on. Since the 2007 version Outlook has a great way to sort Emails. The Flags in Outlook made so much more sense to me than in Mail from Apple. So a feature I missed with the previous Mail was to have my Flagged Emails in one easy to find place. Because there is a reason why I flagged them in a first place, right? So the new Mail has that and I am very happy.

Address Book
Looks now like a “real” Address Book. First I hoped to be able to change it back the way it was, but after some minutes playing around with it I started to like it. Contacts and Groups are now on two pages. So you can “turn the page” from your individual contacts to a group and back to your contacts. First I thought this is just a gimmick that I don’t really need, until I had to add a new contact and put that into a group. Yes there are now more steps involved, but also less mistakes you can make. I remember that I had the problem that a contact went into the wrong group. Since those two things are separated it eliminate the error. Also I can see my contacts in a nice list, without having all the Groups in another column. I think many user will have the same feeling like I did. First sceptical and than liking it.

iCal
The new iCal is from the design like Address Book, so you have the “feeling” using a “real” Calendar. The new iCal doesn’t  has the side column anymore, so you can see the entire week very nicely (or day/month/year). What I don’t like is that you can not, like in the new Mail, “Hide” and “Show” your different Calendars. Instead you have a Button in the top left where you can see the calendars you had. To add a new Calendar you have to go to the Menu Bar and select “File” and than “New Calendar” to subscribe to a Calendar you have to “Calander” in the Menu Bar and than select “Subscribe” that is maybe not a big deal, because how often are you doing that? But why not having a little “Hide” and “Show” slider column like in Mail?

Gesture
I am using the Magic Mouse for a long time now and like it allot. So Gesture was a feature I was really looking forward too. In your System Preferences you can configure your Mouse and you will have two Tabs. In the first one, “Point & Click”, you will find “Scroll direction”, “Secondary click” and “Smart zoom” also a Bar to adjust the “Tracking” of your Mouse. In the second Tab “More Gesture” you will find “Swipe between pages”, “Swipe between full-screen apps” and “Mission Control”. Now let me go over some features really quick. As mention I am using the Magic Mouse for quite a while now. So “swiping” is a concept I am familiar with, and something I use allot, when I surf the web. My Main Browser is Firefox and I noticed that I can not “swipe” anymore. I tried it with Safari and it works fine, but unfortunately not with Firefox, at least not now. The “Swipe between Apps” is something I do like also the “Double-tap with two fingers” to activate “Mission Control” is very useful.

Mission Control
I was very happy with Expose, but have to admit that Mission Control is even better. So let say you open a Browser, than a text document and now you have to do something else and you need a second desktop… Mission Control… OK, now you have to get one window from Desktop 1 to Desktop 2… No Problem, Mission Control (simple Drag and Drop)… You have to check what is going on, what kind of application are running where? …Mission Control… and with the “Double-tap with two finger” Gesture it is soo easy to open … Mission Control … Yes, I use it allot

My overall first impression of the new MAC OSX is very good. You can find lot’s of great new features in Lion. Some may need a bit time to get use too and some may change in the next couple weeks a bit. Also some none Apple application have to “adjust” a bit to the new concept, but I think Apple did a great Job with the new MAC OSX Lion.

This weekend I will test Lion a bit more and will hopefully have another Post for you ready on Monday.