OS X Lion from a noob perspective

Thanks for sharing. You are right there is a lot of negative posts about Lion. I am holding off a bit as a result. Good to see that some are enjoying the update.

Welcome to Macintosh!

There are some nice lists in this forum, if you search you can find some nice software that can make your Mac even more enjoyable.
Almost anything you can think of can be done with a Mac.
with Virtual Machines and Emulators you can run plenty of vintage OS, games and software.

I got my iMac when the last refresh happened before lion came out. I got used to SL pretty quick with just a few things I had to get used to mainly by losing my PC ways. I'll admit SL was easier to learn but since I've gotten used to Lion I love it even more than SL. I love the many desktops. I also love Launchpad I use to launch my main apps now instead of the dock. It's was glitching in the past but seems better with the update. To launch others I use Quicksilver. I love having my dock just with the basics and the running apps only. I use BetterTouchTool to make things smoother and easier with my magic mouse. I seem to, so far, have no use to get a Trackpad since I can program my magic mouse to do most anything a Trackpad would do. I only have a few gestures I use. Simple and sweet I say.

Most come on here to complain. So using this site to judge consensus is not practical. Most with problems are far few and probably with older computers. Some of you just need to upgrade hardware to enjoy the software the way it was designed to work.

Some just complain at the smallest things and don't even look for a better route to do things. I've noticed that newly switched users from PC to MAC are just not going deep enough to learn the system. At first I was slow at opening things, such as using a Launcher. Quicksilver was daunting to me at first but now I don't know why I didn't figure it out faster. It's actually quite simple if you just don't mess with it too much and set up a shortcut to fit your flow.

The flowing workflow in using multiple desktops and Mission Control are essentially designed with Trackpad and Magic Mouse in mind. If I were using a regular mouse I might not understand how good it really is.

So many ways to launch an app now and I see so many complain about the redundancy. Options of opening something is user specific and it's nice that apple seems to understand that an effective way of doing something is not going to be the same path for everyone. Similar to using Photoshop. Many ways of getting to the desired result, and some prefer a method which may not be the most popular. But always nice to have options.

I also keep the Applications folder on my Dock as an easy way to remove an app without having to open finder.

One of my favorite things about being a mac owner is that their is such a vast selection of QUALITY apps which are FREE. Sure PC may have an abundance of selection of free programs, but quantity does NOT mean quality.

Oh and the headache of A virus scanner and defrag? Thank god those days are over. I have a good free virus scanner for "just in case" instances, but it's just about pointless honestly.

Things running a little slow for any reason? Just fix the parameters and it's all good again! No restart needed. No restart to do most things. Unlike PC world where you constantly have to restart to do just about anything it seems. PC running slow? Virus scan, spyware scan, defrag, clean up computer, updates (all the freaking time) etc. All this takes forever to do on a regular basis. Hours and maybe days really especially if you really care about your privacy and computer. I left my old PC alone for just a couple weeks without daily maintenance once I got my mac and it pretty much died. I could have fixed it myself. Wasn't worth the headache.

My mom is ALWAYS has issues with her laptop. I keep telling her to get a mac, even before I could get mine. "I don't want a Mac! Too expensive for the same thing!" Needless to say my mom is just plain ignorant. She always is screwing up her PC and asking me for help because a stupid driver stops working or some trojan or virus becomes an issue. Now at least I just tell her, I don't know Windows 7. Ask someone who knows at your work or something. Her main problem is that she doesn't know HOW to correctly maintain a PC. Whereas a Mac the maintenance is pretty much automatic and never a burden. It just does it quietly without you even knowing. At first I didn't even know it DID automatic maintenance and you can change it to work to your liking, but it's best to just leave alone if you are new to macs.

All those apps like Clean My Mac and such are just a big gimmick. And they usually will CAUSE damage. TOO THROUGH. So many free things out their to expand system settings to be easy to activate as apposed to using Terminal. The ones I use such as Secrets or Onyx I barely utilize as most options are needn't necessary. Again with having MANY options!

The Mac OS is setup straight out of the box so that the average user is UNABLE to screw things up on accident. So those who are NOT power users should just stick to what Mac offers. Otherwise play it safe and ALWAYS backup before messing with any 'hidden' options.

I'm the user who is kind of a perfectionist to having the system look like MINE. So I love tinkering with it without going too far I think. Changing Icon's, Mission Control background and Dashboard. Clanging the stacks background in the dock, changing Launchpad background and the color of the folders in launchpad as well as the inside of the folder of launchpad. Doing these things on a mac is fun and easy, doing these things on a PC is a pain and can easily cause BIG headaches.

To get back to what I started out saying, I LOVE LION.

ZBoater said:

I am new to Macs, been a Windows user all my life. I did tech support so I was pretty familiar with the ini files, the registry, skipped Vista, and thoroughly enjoyed Windows 7. For reasons that belong on another post, I took the plunge and bought a MacBook Air that came with Lion.

I don't have any exposure to Snow Leopard or any other Mac feline, I had no Mac applications to migrate, no system to upgrade. I just had a brand new Mac with Lion. I gotta tell you, this OS is AMAZING!

Everything from gestures, to the Launchpad (very familiar as an avid iPad user), Mission Control and spaces, the dock, everything is just amazing and fantastic. Thought I'd share since I have read so much negative stuff about Lion. Yes, I realize this is a forum where people come to ask for help, and thus a bit biased, but from a noob perspective Apple got this one right. I don't have any lockups, any weirdness, any lag, any nothing. It just works. For me. Obviously, YMMV.

FYI I run Windows 7 in Bootcamp, also run Parallels 7, run Microsoft Office (Mac and Windows versions), and a number of other basic apps (on Mac I run Pixelmator, Chrome, eWallet, Civ 4, Jedi Knight 2, and a ton of little apps and utilities, and on Windows I run Quicken, DVD Profiler, Escort Radar Updater). I don't do rocket science or statistical equations, although I do run a Windows 98 VM and a DOS VM so I can play Zork once in a while. So I guess I lucked out jumping on the Mac bandwagon with Lion and not having anything to migrate.

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Good to hear your happy with the transition. Your post is exactly what Apple was shooting for when it came to transitioning from Windows. I've been around since Leopard and have to say that I like Lion(minus a few bugs) and its possibilities the best so far. I think once iCloud is integrated with iOS 5 and Lion, its gonna be great!

If you have not been using Snow Leopard, then Lion would look like a really good OS. If you have...then unfortunately Snow Leopard is better, with less compromises.

Jenni8 said:

All those apps like Clean My Mac and such are just a big gimmick. And they usually will CAUSE damage. TOO THROUGH. So many free things out their to expand system settings to be easy to activate as apposed to using Terminal. The ones I use such as Secrets or Onyx I barely utilize as most options are needn't necessary. Again with having MANY options!

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Clean my Mac is complete garbage. For simple cleaning like history & cache, CCleaner is the way to go and 99% safer. I used it for years with Windows and recently started using it on OSX.

You MUST get BetterTouchTool.

Just had to tell ya (even though I think someone mentioned it earlier in the thread)

the 2011 air is the best machine to run Lion on.

Smoother. Good graphics drivers.

I'm coming from Snow Leopard and I'm not having any problem using Lion. The only bug, that really bugs me (HA!). Is when in Safari going though the forums; If I goto in the message thread and use the back button, it doesn't mark it read. It still marks it as unread, it doesn't refresh the page. I hope that makes since.

It's the only bug I've encountered, and that isn't even an OS bug. It's an App bug. They need to fix more bugs in Safari.

Hugh

mrmister said:

If you have not been using Snow Leopard, then Lion would look like a really good OS. If you have...then unfortunately Snow Leopard is better, with less compromises.

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That is not my experience. Lion is a very stable OS. A few bugs. But then so did Snow Leopard and Leopard before that when they were first released. Lion will only get better. In my opinion Lion exceeds what Snow Leopard could do in a lot of areas. Security is probably the biggest one.

mrmister said:

If you have not been using Snow Leopard, then Lion would look like a really good OS. If you have...then unfortunately Snow Leopard is better, with less compromises.

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I completely disagree!

S-

"In my opinion Lion exceeds what Snow Leopard could do in a lot of areas. Security is probably the biggest one."

Yes, I've been having some huge security issues with my Mac systems. Thank goodness.