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I guess this really comes down to whether or not someone enjoys freedom and flexibility--to use their machine the way they want to--or wants a simple, idiot-proof, don't-look-behind-the-curtains interface. Currently, I like the way Mac OS is powerful and elegant. If it is only eye candy and lacks openness, user-customization and full user control, then it is no longer useful...it's just pretty.
 
I think this is a furthering of the "instant on" the macbook air is manifesting with its instant wake from sleep. MBA does it with the os and last used program. I think we are headed for this with any recently used program. I am sure it will work poorly on my iMac5,1 when it does arrive. I imagine heavy progs will be inconsistent. Stupid things will happen in the os (and the forums). Lamentations will arise. It will be great.
 
This is why Apple gradually changes the Mac OS GUI

Almost 450 comments already after barely 12 hours. On a post about a few tiny detail changes in Lion's GUI. This shows how devout Mac users can be ultra-conservative reactionaries when it comes to changes in the Mac OS look-and-feel.

I don't think change for change's sake is a good idea in desktop computer OSes. (Just look at how badly Microsoft screwed up Vista for no good reason.) But I think it's essential for Apple to leverage the iOS ease-of-use in Mac OS X and in Mac OS 11 and beyond. Applying just a little iOS GUI goodness, where appropriate, could boost Mac desktop and laptop sales.

And that's the key here. Apple wants to increase Mac desktop and laptop growth rates even more, and that means penetrating the non-techie market they way iOS devices have. One of the steps toward achieving that goal is improving ease-of-use, and the less the user has to think about "What's running right now and how do I manage it all" the better the ease-of-use.

I think in about 3 or 4 years, Finder itself will be optional. Mac OS apps will know where all their files are, so the user won't need to be exposed to the file system. That's the biggest advance in iOS. There's no Finder to get between the user and their apps + data.

Oh, if if you want to see what apps are running, in a big bold icons, just type <command> <tab>.
 
and I think that the dock dots just "fell off" while they are reworking this slide from "is it On? is it Off?" to "Ready". Maybe they will screw them back on in the next eight months.
 
I think the important thing here is that Apple would not change something like this without a plan for how it will work. Also, those few mins if footage mean nothing.. It could just mean they have new running icons in the works. Or a multi-page dock - one page launchbar one page running apps.

They could also just have a togglable option for users who want it. There are many things in the OS that give you options.. Why does everyone assume the worst? Most users I know would benefit from a totally automatic system like this.. I'd like more control and to be able to see what's running at a glance.. Id want the easier option to be default though to help the users that need it most.
 
My favorite thing about this is everybody saying "well duh of course!" after criticizing Android for doing exactly the same thing in the past.

What is OSX doing that Android has done in the past? Not sure what you're getting at. Most folks here are praising or complaining about some of the OSX user interface features being replaced by iOS user interface features (i.e.: mobile features from Apple coming to Apple's desktop). Please be specific on which Android feature you are referring to as you did not reply/quote anybody.
 
Because Microsoft still has a huge marketing budget

... Why is MacRumors so packed with trolls lately?

Microsoft needs to do something. Anything. And paying people to shill and/or troll is cheap and easy.

Windows is burdened with backward compatibility because of all those legacy enterprise customers. They are highly profitable now, but they are also a boat anchor holding Microsoft back from innovating in the Windows + Office space. They would have happily continued using XP if Microsoft had let them.

So what do you do if you're Ballmer? You're deathly afraid of doing anything to hurt your Windows + Office business, and you got your butt kicked when you tried to "innovate" with Vista. You blew five years and billions of $$$ on Vista, then were forced into a crash program to fix as much of it as possible in Windows 7.

So you try to trash the competition. Yes, Apple's market share is 1/10th that of generic pee cees. But they're gaining, and Windows + Office is all you have left. You need to spread FUD, try to prevent people from switching to Mac, and do anything you can to slow down the Mac's accelerating adoption rate. Hence the trolls.

P.S. Vista is ranked #2 of Tech's all-time 25 flops by InfoWorld, no less:
http://www.infoworld.com/t/platforms/techs-all-time-top-25-flops-558?page=0,6
 
What exactly do you mean? Apps will still free RAM when they quit. They'll probably just, on quit, save everything in the app's RAM to disk. It's that simple. I'm not sure what all that stuff you're talking about is referring to, but as far as i can tell, they could pull this off with 5400 RPM hard drives if they wanted to. I think you're either overcomplicating it, or misunderstanding it.

if apps are going to save their state, the state must be saved somewhere. if the memory is freed, that means it must be saved somewhere else, and that somewhere else must be flash-based...if it's saved to a hard disk, relaunch won't be anywhere near instant.
 
With the introduction of Launch Pad, the dock should only house open applications. If it's not in the dock, it's not open. If it's not open, it's in Launch Pad. It's literally like iOS... the Dock in OSX = the multitasking bar in iOS. Launch Pad in OSX = your homescreens from iOS. Very simple. Very intuitive. I don't know people have a difficult time understanding this...
 
Taking away the open application indicators gains you... nothing. Nothing at all. Sure some people wont miss them, but I think it's a negative. No space has been gained and it can't be said that it's neater.

Why not show what apps are open at a glance? Why should I need to press anything just to see that? Are we going to have to press a button to check the time in the future?
 
Are you serious? The OS knows better than the user?

If I have Photoshop batch processing 5000 RAW image files, Logic processing some multi-track audio, and Final Cut encoding a few hours of HD video, how does the OS determine which one the boss wants completed first?

That's not a relevant example. You can't prioritize that right now either. So it doesn't have anything to do with Lion's features.

That being said, I wish Mac OS X had some kind of priority management utility for situations exactly like that. When I play a game, and also encode a video at the same time, the encoder usually takes 7.5 cores and leaves the game 0.5 cores, which makes the game unplayable. And the game only needs a single core, so with a utility like that I'd be able to play the game and encode the video at the same time.
 
With the introduction of Launch Pad, the dock should only house open applications. If it's not in the dock, it's not open. If it's not open, it's in Launch Pad. It's literally like iOS... the Dock in OSX = the multitasking bar in iOS. Launch Pad in OSX = your homescreens from iOS. Very simple. Very intuitive. I don't know people have a difficult time understanding this...
Understood...but not so sure it's the right model for the desktop. Additionally, your description introduces an inconsistency between OS X and iOS. In iOS there is also a Dock which holds your 4 favorite apps, the multitasking bar serves a different purpose. If :apple: is attempting to create a recognizable paradigm across the two systems, the 3 "app holders" should behave in the same way.

This is why I posted upthread that perhaps the Dock is becoming a relic of the past as a UI element. If it's not needed to either launch or indicate open applications, then why is it taking up space on my screen? It probably needs to evolve or be reimagined. I'm thinking a hybrid of the iOS multitasking bar and the +Widget bar in Dashboard, extending all the way across the screen, with LaunchPad always in Slot #1 and the most "active" or "recent" applications sliding and remaining to the left.
 
Way To Fix

There will be many utility updates and a few terminal commands found in the days after its release. One will be to restore the icons back.
 
The left? Why? If you're going to put it somewhere by default, move it to the right since most people are right handed. (That's where mine is, just like it was in NeXTSTEP.

The reason NeXT had the dock on the right wasn't due to most people being right handed. It had to do with the left-side vertical menu system and giving one as much vertical screen real estate as possible to work.

The scroll bar was on the left-side of the window view and the up/down[left/right] in the lower left corner. The cross hair corners lower-left and lower-right for resizing a view also with the minimize in the upper left corner of the window view and the close in the upper right corner of a view, in case one might accidentally click the wrong action.

It was ergonomically designed for one to do the least amount of repetitive movement and cut down on mouse distance.
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone Dark: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8A306)

Weird. I like knowing what's running, too.

So does FaceTime replace iChat?

I have wondered the same thing and I wouldn't be surprised. But it will probably a couple years down the road after Apple implements other features like texting, etc.

If it does replace iChat they better add the cool features like backgrounds and effects and iChat theater and screen sharing! I really like those features in iChat!

Command Tab is irrelevant. Mac's philosophy of seamless integration and no unnecessary steps is the reason it's products are so seamlessly designed. Having to command tab to see what's running is the windows equivalent of 'Are you sure you want to run this' that we were poking at when Vista first launched.

Not that it matters. It's probably just a build step. I'm sure something better is in the pipeline.

I noticed this during the keynote and I thought it was odd, but if Apple is taking the lights away I'm sure they have a much more grand scheme in mind that takes into account the big picture!

I am excited to see more of Lion. They will probably give us another glimpse at whatever event they have early next year! :D
 
Yeah, I won't be updating if they take out those lights on the dock. I don't care if Apple thinks I should just be able to open apps whenever because of autosave ... I want to use the computer the way I want.
 
if apps are going to save their state, the state must be saved somewhere. if the memory is freed, that means it must be saved somewhere else, and that somewhere else must be flash-based...if it's saved to a hard disk, relaunch won't be anywhere near instant.

Exactly, it won't be instant. Just as it is not instant today when memory is being paged in/out. Actually, you can test the new behavior now, just don't close any of your applications. This is what it will be like.

Also, I don't understand why everyone thinks Apple can develop some kind of magic system that manages resources in the best possible way. A system that knows everything about your usage patterns, future activities, priorities, and can read your mind. Apple has never been good at managing resources: iTunes is a resource hog, md worker threads/spotlight unnecessarily block the system, OS X's scheduler is crappy, paging is slow, their data management is slow (XML parsing, CoreData)...

They're good at making nice looking interfaces, but they're not particularly good at algorithms. Besides, the most intelligent yet complex algorithms often fail when applied to real data. Java comes to mind... in theory more efficient than C/C++ because the compiler can learn and adapt while the program is being run... yeah right. And it produces the best UI because of its advanced automatic layouting algorithms... fail.
 
If you still arguing about the light under the icons I recommend you to watch the keynote again and understand how mission control works.

Swipe, and you'll see all the apps that are opened, then select and close the apps that you don't want to be open.

Otherwise cmd - tab I'm sure will work as always.

Now stop bitching about it.
 
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