I Don't Think Lion Is Very Cool..

Rubydoppler · Mar 23, 2011

Here are my thoughts....
Lion is a whole new OS but from using it for 3 weeks now (and finally reinstalling SL) I am not really sure what the big deal is here.

1.) It seems to not have a great many new or cool features to make it a whole new OS.. there is a newer finder, slightly different spotlight... There is Airdrop... new way to view apps and the dashboard... but I mean that isn't really enough to warrant a whole new OS?

2.) could there be other features coming and or something major not in the dev preview??

a redone mail app with fullscreen capabilities and some new scroll bars don't seem like enough for me to be amazed at this.

GoCubsGo · Mar 23, 2011

Any chance you're missing something in the background? Such as, the way it runs, handles files, memory, cpu load etc? Are you a dev or did you just get your hands on a dev copy?

Rubydoppler · Mar 23, 2011

jessica. said:
Any chance you're missing something in the background? Such as, the way it runs, handles files, memory, cpu load etc? Are you a dev or did you just get your hands on a dev copy?

In terms of memory and CPU management it's been atrocious. SL i generally use about .3 - .5 gigs when doing general safari browsing and other little things. Never use a whole gig unless I am gaming or using iMovie.

2GB doesn't seem like much but I never seem to use close to half of it on SL.
In Lion, doing the same general surfing and tinkering, I was using 1.5GB on average. CPU usage was also quite atrocious. I understand this is a preview, but I am not impressed by under the hood stuff so far.

That combined with only a handful of somewhat useful and cool features... I don't understand what the point of a new OS is.. Certainly new scroll bars and full screen apps could have been implemented into SL with an update.

I hope something much more remarkable happens with it before the final release. I will get it either way obviously, but right now I am just less than thrilled.

sniffies · Mar 23, 2011

Lion is not "a whole new OS".

In fact, it's been the same OS since 1984 known as Macintosh Operating System. Lion is just a major update. I think that's what you meant to say, right?

Anyway, pedantry aside, it is a developer preview after all. Any groundbreaking features will likely remain hidden until the public release.

In your opinion, what kinda features could warrant "a major update"? Just curious.

MattInOz · Mar 23, 2011

Ummm.... It would be fairer to say "It's been the same OS since 1989 Known as NeXTSTEP, that (for a brief while) has a compatibility layer for the OS formally known as Mac OS".

Still It's been around longer than many of the posters here. Plus is likely to be around for a while yet.

MikhailT · Mar 23, 2011

Lion is the front end upgrade (interface, apps, stuff we see) from Leopard where Snow Leopard was the backend upgrade (gcd, opencl, under the hood overhaul).

We haven't seen anything that Lion has to offer. This is just the first DP that's based on several months old code. Apple wasn't going to offer the most recent compiled code as the first DP, they branched off from months ago and spend a month or two to make sure that it's stable enough to run for everybody to test their applications against.

The next seed update should be coming out soon which will be more recent with more optimizations.

baryon · Mar 24, 2011

That's what a new OS is. It's got some new features and loads of things that will change the way you use your computer.

What's the difference between Windows XP and Windows 7, two OS versions apart from each other, after almost 10 years? It's basically the same thing with a new UI and some new features, just less compatible with everything.

Rubydoppler · Mar 24, 2011

Windows 7 from Vista brought a slew of things. Much needed reliability and under the hood improvements, along with practical things like snapping. A whole new taskbar, built in ISO buring... lots of stuff. It feels like there were significant improvements.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/compare/versions.aspx
explains a lot of them

Lion all I see is some redone apps, new scroll bars and iOS like dashboard and apps. Airdrop is there too along with a different finder.

CPU and memory usage I'm sure will improve greatly I'm not worried about that. But man I don't see why what we have seen so far out of Lion warrants a new .1 addition in the 10. family.

Opinion

baryon · Mar 24, 2011

http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/

Here's a list of new stuff in Lion. Add to that all the things talked about on these forums, and voila, you have enough new features. What feature do you specifically wish Lion had that it doesn't have?

ufkdo · Mar 24, 2011

1. Trim support for SSDs
2. Full disk encryption

This two things will be enough for me to upgrade to lion.

yly3 · Mar 24, 2011

Autosave is for me the best feature. I'm a student who writes a lot on my 11" MBA. To be honest, I don't know if you can actually get it done already with some plug-in or something.

kuwisdelu · Mar 24, 2011

yly3 said:
Autosave is for me the best feature. I'm a student who writes a lot on my 11" MBA. To be honest, I don't know if you can actually get it done already with some plug-in or something.

I don't care about autosave in the least, but on a related note, Versions will make it worth it for me.

Thunderbird · Mar 24, 2011

PBF said:
... it is a developer preview after all. Any groundbreaking features will likely remain hidden until the public release.
.

Do groundbreaking features usually get added as late as the public release? Don't they need to be beta tested by devs for a while?

Dr McKay · Mar 25, 2011

I don't think its fair to judge Lion on what isnt even a beta, its a developer preview. Of course its going to use more memory, it isnt optimized yet.

Of course it looks the same, looks are one of the last things to change.

That'd be like judging Windows 7 on its first Beta.

sniffies · Mar 25, 2011

Thunderbird said:
Do groundbreaking features usually get added as late as the public release? Don't they need to be beta tested by devs for a while?

I guess it all depends on the kind of groundbreaking new feature. As someone has already mentioned, none of the iLife or iWork apps has ever got tested. Plus, for the sake of secrecy, any groundbreaking new feature could easily get tested internally.

HEB · Mar 25, 2011

The Lion Dev Preview is merely a frame of the full-length motion picture that 10.7 will really be. You can't say Apple hasn't included enough features (App Store, Launchpad, FullScreen, Mission Control, more Gestures, Autosave, Versions, Resume, Mail 5, AirDrop, New FileVault, Lion Server, and New UI & animation tweaks) to render as a new 10.x release if the launch date is planned in the summer (which, knowing Apple, actually means very late august or early september). After all, did you notice any major changes at first with 10.6? To the naked eye, it seemed like Leopard with a new default wallpaper. And, as stated above, it was an under-the-hood change, while Lion is an over-the-hood change, if you will. You can't judge whether this OS will fully live up to its name until the public release.

JKK photography · Mar 26, 2011

I don't think that you can state that Lion isn't "very cool" until it is launched.

Technically, the current build is only for devs to test out their apps on. Not normal consumers to play around in, and judge things.

That is all.

Branskins · Mar 26, 2011

My only problem was that it didn't feel very "cohesive" or consistent. Expose/Mission Control just has very odd behavior to me. But that could be because it feels a lot different than SL. I'm always awkward adjusting to change, but in the end I usually like it!

*LTD* · Mar 26, 2011

Branskins said:
My only problem was that it didn't feel very "cohesive" or consistent. Expose/Mission Control just has very odd behavior to me. But that could be because it feels a lot different than SL. I'm always awkward adjusting to change, but in the end I usually like it!

It'll feel cohesive and consistent upon release.

Apple is kinda focused on making things cohesive and consistent, as in, pretty much the only ones in tech that are really concerned about cohesiveness and consistency.

You'll like it.

RaceTripper · Mar 26, 2011

Judging a software product based solely on a developer preview seems pretty idiotic to me.

Why not wait for the customer release before being so dismissive?

SuperCachetes · Mar 26, 2011

rmbrown09 said:
Windows 7 from Vista brought a slew of things. Much needed reliability and under the hood improvements, along with practical things like snapping. A whole new taskbar, built in ISO buring... lots of stuff. It feels like there were significant improvements.

That doesn't really seem like a fair comparison, since the Windows upgrade was practically do-or-die for Microsoft. Vista sucked and was getting soundly thrashed by just about everybody - if it hadn't felt like "significant improvements" that could've been really bad. OTOH, it wouldn't have taken much in Win7 to feel like an improvement over the previous version.

Not that it would excuse a mediocre upgrade, Apple is under no such pressure. 10.6 is still viable, stable, and has more features than I'll ever find. I'm looking forward to 10.7, just because I'm distracted by shiny, new things - but I'll withhold judgment until I have the retail version in my hands.

Rubydoppler · Mar 27, 2011

SuperCachetes said:
That doesn't really seem like a fair comparison, since the Windows upgrade was practically do-or-die for Microsoft. Vista sucked and was getting soundly thrashed by just about everybody - if it hadn't felt like "significant improvements" that could've been really bad. OTOH, it wouldn't have taken much in Win7 to feel like an improvement over the previous version.

Not that it would excuse a mediocre upgrade, Apple is under no such pressure. 10.6 is still viable, stable, and has more features than I'll ever find. I'm looking forward to 10.7, just because I'm distracted by shiny, new things - but I'll withhold judgment until I have the retail version in my hands.

I feel that the argument that Apple doesn't need to do anything remarkable with Lion because 10.6 is so good is a problem. Just because 10.6 is great doesn't mean play it safe with 10.7.

Glumpfner · Mar 27, 2011

Lion is still part of the Mac OS X (10) series (Lion being 10.7).

I am sure they will come up with a new ground breaking OS when Mac OS 11 gets released.

Especially now that rumor has it that Windows 8 will be totally different with each program running in a sandbox, Apple needs to come up with something major as well.

Shorties · Mar 27, 2011

For me what I love the most about Lion, is the new way it handles spaces/expose/fullscreen apps. Especially while utilizing the multitouch gestures. Using my computer on 10.7 with my Magic Trackpad has felt like conducting a symphony as I four finger swipe through my fullscreen apps. I gave iTunes its own space so that it can act like a fullscreen app as well, since it does not have that support yet. And swiping down allows you to see all the apps and spaces so quickly. That revamp to expose/mission control has not only gotten me to actually start using spaces and expose in my daily routine, but increased my productivity noticeably.

EDIT: Also one of the other major features of Lion is going to be how it handles and manages multitasking, but a lot of that requires developers to implement new API's into their applications to make it work.

maflynn · Mar 27, 2011

The thing that bothers me the most about Lion is this fact.

We more or less accepted the small (read almost no) changes in Snow Leopard as the real updates were under the hood. Because of that many of us had thought that apple would be pulling out the stops for Lion but so far that's not the case.

The File system is aging and needs to be replaced with a modern file system.
Resolution independence is something that's we've been holding out hope for years. Instead of seeing some meaty changes we get the ipadifcation of OSX.

I Don't Think Lion Is Very Cool..

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