Mac OS X Lion Notes: iOS Scroll Bars, Any Corner Resizing, Dock Changes

[holmesf]

I meant they made it proprietary instead of buying a traditional enclosure SSD from Kingston, OWC, etc. I even said earlier that Apple bought flash memory chips individually. So yea, let's not kid ourselves here.

You said that after I began typing my response. My statement still stands: the flash drive is likely not competitive with high end SSDs such as those from OWC or OCZ.

From barefeats:

The 128GB flash storage measured 209MB/s READ and 193MB/s WRITE for large sequential transfers. That's slower than the best SSDs we've tested like the OCZ Vertex 2 and OWC Mercury Extreme (272MB/s), but twice as fast as any notebook 7200rpm HDD (100MB/s). Ditto for small random transfers -- at 90MB/s, it was faster than HDDs but slower than SSDs. Overall, respectable performance and a good move by Apple to provide flash memory as standard equipment.

So yeah, it's a regular old SSD. It's pretty damn good for the price point, but it's in no way superior to what's currently on the market.

 

[superspacie]

Scroll bars

So quick question: If Lion is going to have the new scroll bars, this must mean that they actually posted images of Snow Leopard on the Lion page:
http://www.apple.com/mac/app-store/

Looks very aqua to me...

EDIT: Sorry, I didn't see that the Lion page redirected me to an operating system unrelated App Store page. So this is the app store in SL...

 

[-=XX=-Nephilim]

Nothing to complain about...

But I truly hope they have PLENTY of aces up their sleeves including some "killer features" for the release version of 10.7...

Things so far are just OK at very best :s

 

[beg_ne]

One situation where the dots come in very handy is to make sure Mail.app is running. It's good to see at a glance that it's still running so I'm not missing incoming mail. It's easy to accidentally hit CMD+Q instead of CMD+W sometimes.

Furthermore it would be handy if iOS showed a dot in the background apps tray for apps that are actively running in the background instead of just suspended.

It would make finding and killing battery hog apps a lot easier than just guessing and shutting down 20 different apps to find the bad app (*cough*Skype*cough*)

 

[David G.]

I just swiped four fingers and got access to all of my applications. I just command-tabbed and got to all of my applications. Again, you do not need to see your running applications at all times. So keep it simple and clean, stupid.

What harm is there done in having the open applications shown if it is done in a really efficient way? I may not need to see that I have Mail open in another space while I'm typing away a paper in Pages, but I don't need to do anything as it stands now to make sure that it is. My computer doesn't allow me to do four finger swipes and my desk setup doesn't always include me having a keyboard at the ready. This may be for example when I'm taking a GUI web test and I want maximum room on my desk. All I will have will be my monitor, textbooks, notes, and my mouse.

All I'm asking for from Apple is that we have a choice. If you want to see the Dock with the lights underneath showing what's open, excellent. That's all I'm after.

If you want to see the dock but without those blue lights and are ok with a keystroke or multitouch swipe, and would like to gain a few extra rows of pixels, spectacular.

If you want the dock to autohide, magnificent.

Some people drink Pepsi, some people drink coke. Others like root beer. We all got our own preferences on everything. If Apple can make something that pleases us all, that'll be superlative. It shouldn't be very hard in this instance to add an option or two more into system preferences regarding this possible issue to make both you and I happy. We'll see.

 

[Bolteh]

So quick question: If Lion is going to have the new scroll bars, this must mean that they actually posted images of Snow Leopard on the Lion page:
http://www.apple.com/mac/app-store/

Looks very aqua to me...

App Store is being released for Snow Leopard first. That's the "Coming Soon" page of App Store, so the screenshot is obviously taken in Snow Leopard (also indicated by the lights in the dock.

If you go here: http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/, you'll see that the Window is missing the scrollbar (because the iOS scrollbar disappears when no movement occurs) and that there's no lights in the dock.

 

[skate71290]

will we be seeing a Beta anytime soon?

 

[wizard]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

I don't. The feature has existed for many many years. It's called swapping. The problem is that your computer grinds to a halt if it swaps a lot so you want to minimize swapping - not the other way around.

Nope it's not. Not swapping in RAM, but swapping in the proprietary SSD (MBA one) that Apple will put in future Macs. It's like a stick of RAM remember? SSD will essentially become "RAM". Or rather, when you exit the app it will save it's current state to a cache file of some sort onto the SSD or HD. Then when it is opened again, it will start from that cache. Before, you wanted to minimize swapping because flash was expensive as heck. Now, prices are dropping but Apple's proprietary SSD is even cheaper due to lack of certain components found in traditional SSDs. I think Apple will have their special SSD that is currently in the MBAs in all the Macs. Transfer speeds will be as fast as RAM and most of your data will be stored in the cloud in iDisk or something similar to that.

There are lots of problems with what you are saying. First Flash is nothing like RAM. The speed and method of access are completely different.

Second your position that this approach is going to be faster than swapping is very dependent on just what exactly the apps do and the overall load on the system. Swap can actualy be very fast because swapping in doesn't always require everything be brought back into RAM. With the arrival of speedy SSDs, swap is not the big drag on performance it is with old magnetic drives.

Now I don't want to poo poo the idea of saving app state completely. There may be apps and usages that this sort of behavior makes sense. However for many users traditional app closing behavior makes more sense. It depends very much upon the user and the app.

For example a calendar app is one item I seldom want to have open to the last place I was. Text editors and mail apps are other programs that I seldom want to open to the last thing I was looking at. Frankly for most of the things I do this would be terrible app behavior. If iPhone is any example i would not call this a positive development for Mac OS.

IMDb is an example program, on the iPhone, that is very frustrating due to its saving the last position you where in in the program. It really isnt useful at all. That is just one example, there are many iPhone programs that I have to wonder why they even bothered to add the complexity to the app.

I just don't see the big draw in this feature though I do like many other things seen in Lion.

 

[mabaker]

What difference does it make? I open my computer to get work done. Why should I worry or even have to think about what is running and what not? If the OS can handle seamlessly resource management and it doesn't slow down anything then why not? One less geeky thing to worry about.

Mac OS X is TERRIBLE with RAM handling. Unless you have a SSD installed, it will be a pain to load and reload apps and it’s not possible that they will be starting cached off the RAM - considering the astronomical Apple RAM prices.

The removal of the running app indicator is a bad thing and hope it’ll be corrected in further revisions.

 

[Gibsonuk]

Black is back

Anyone else noticed that facetime and QuickTime x have both gone to a boarderless black UI. Could this follow through on all apps?
Also MobileMe apps are becoming a direct replica of iPad apps. I guess this will follow through too. Eg. Three column views in mail, etc.

 

[-=XX=-Nephilim]

What harm is there done in having the open applications shown if it is done in a really efficient way? I may not need to see that I have Mail open in another space while I'm typing away a paper in Pages, but I don't need to do anything as it stands now to make sure that it is. My computer doesn't allow me to do four finger swipes and my desk setup doesn't always include me having a keyboard at the ready. This may be for example when I'm taking a GUI web test and I want maximum room on my desk. All I will have will be my monitor, textbooks, notes, and my mouse.

All I'm asking for from Apple is that we have a choice. If you want to see the Dock with the lights underneath showing what's open, excellent. That's all I'm after.

If you want to see the dock but without those blue lights and are ok with a keystroke or multitouch swipe, and would like to gain a few extra rows of pixels, spectacular.

If you want the dock to autohide, magnificent.

Some people drink Pepsi, some people drink coke. Others like root beer. We all got our own preferences on everything. If Apple can make something that pleases us all, that'll be superlative. It shouldn't be very hard in this instance to add an option or two more into system preferences regarding this possible issue to make both you and I happy. We'll see.

Yes, but forget it when it comes down to Apple...

They don't like to give you choices recently :s

I mean your posts sounds like: "All I want from Apple is to give me an OPTION to install Flash player on iOS devices"

All fair and logical but I wouldn't bet on it...

 

[iSamurai]

Seems like when MS puts the same dock feature onto their taskbar, apple wants to change their own regardless of whether it's more user-friendly or more fiddly.

but if this actually does happen the next best unambiguous method is to remove all shortcuts in the dock so that the stuff you see are only the launched (or presumably "paused" or "running in the background" applications).

 

[ImperialX]

wouldn't that be confusing? Not knowing what's running at a glance?

I love multitasking on my iPhone and it doesn't have indicators.

 

[PCMA]

Question: Can a lion and a mouse play nicely together?

With Lion's heavy use (or reliance?) on multi-touch gestures... what future is there for the mouse on desktop Macs?

I can't really see Magic Mouse (or a successor) performing as well as a trackpad on Lion.

Apple introduced the mouse to the world with the original Mac in 1984 (or Lisa in 1983)... maybe the mouse is about to go the same way as 3.5" floppies, SCSI, ADB, Firewire on iPods and trackballs?

 

[Nord]

Seeing this, I believe the dock is to disappear entirely very soon. What's its purpose now that their's LaunchPad ?
And what about minimize windows ? They use Mission Control (that name sucks ) to see what's open and minimized, so the dock is of no more use fundamentally.

However, having said that, it's not the first time Apple enables multiples ways of doing things.

 

[res1233]

With Lion's heavy use (or reliance?) on multi-touch gestures... what future is there for the mouse on desktop Macs?

I can't really see Magic Mouse (or a successor) performing as well as a trackpad on Lion.

Apple introduced the mouse to the world with the original Mac in 1984 (or Lisa in 1983)... maybe the mouse is about to go the same way as 3.5" floppies, SCSI, ADB, Firewire on iPods and trackballs?

It sounds like, yes, a trackpad is going to be a more convenient method of interacting with Lion's UI, but the magic mouse seemed to get the job done. The mouse will always exist because gaming on a trackpad just doesn't work. I've tried. There are times when you have to hold both mouse buttons down in certain games. Something you can't do on a trackpad. Switching from the right to left click on a trackpad also isn't as quick as it is on a mouse.

 

[3282868]

They're just picture files. If you're handy with Terminal it's no big deal to change them to something more noticable. I went with black arrows like previous osx versions had.

Since Leopard, I changed the Dock itself to a black glass. The indicators stand right out. I do it for any of my clients. It boggles my mind why Apple made the indicators almost the SAME color as the Dock.

 

[rmwebs]

Hmm...so far not too impressed with 10.7

- All-Corner Resizing: Should have been done 20 years ago - not a major 'feature'.

- Mission Control / Launchpad / We have a problem / Whatever - just a re-factored bunch of existing features...nothing really new or groundbreaking.

- Dock (lack of 'open' pips) - really cant comment on this. From what we've seen so far it looks stupid but I'm sure theres more to it.

- iOS scrollbars - yes....because we really needed them. If it aint broke...

Not exactly a fantastic set of features there. Still, we've got at least a year to go yet so we can only hope things get better.

 

[3282868]

LightPeak. An Apple idea, being developed by intel by request of Apple. You're right, they don't often do much hardware-level innovation, but in this case, they sure did.

And if they release a new Mac Pro next year with Lightpeak and USB 3 I'll be as I just upgraded from a '08 3,1 8-core to the 6-core Westmere. Watch, Sandybridge Lightpeak USB 3.0 FireWire 1600 Mac Pro's announced by the holidays.

 

[Bodypainter]

What difference does it make? I open my computer to get work done. Why should I worry or even have to think about what is running and what not? If the OS can handle seamlessly resource management and it doesn't slow down anything then why not? One less geeky thing to worry about.

is your question seriously or sarcastic?

the more programs run, the slower your computer gets. the more programs run, the more memory is used.

so if you want your computer to be fast (as i guess everyone wants) you close unnecessary programs!

also notice that programs take some time to start up. if your photo is running it will start in 1 second, wherelse if it is not running, it will take (on some users mac) 20 seconds. so in the future you obvioulsly don't know anymore how long it will take until you have the program open. is it running? will it start from start? will you wait 1 second or 20?

this is a stupid situation. there are many more things apple could make easier, THIS one is not something that needs fixing, especially considering how small the light indicators are.

but isn't it funny? fullscreen, resizeable on every corner, program-start in a fullscreen... mac is turning into windows! congratulations steve jobs! you told us for years how bad all those things are, and now YOU sell it to us as new features!

 

[ventro]

Getting rid of the indicators is a brilliant idea.

I find myself forgetting to close out of programs once i've closed out of the app windows running within them. Right now I've had Photoshop open for a few hours, with no documents open. Its awesome that OSX will realize that and quit out of apps I'm not using automatically.

When I go see my dad's computer, I notice that he has a ton of apps open, because he forgot to quit out of them during his workflow. This will solve the problem of us leaving programs open by accident and we won't have to be memory managers anymore.

 

[Fraaaa]

wouldn't that be confusing? Not knowing what's running at a glance?

What was wrong with the light indicator? If it ain't broke....

I definitely want to know what is running! NOT COOL

I guess that Lion would manage applications by storing data in the Virtual Memory instead of the RAM, "freeze" them would not affect the performance of your computer.

This is what is happening:
The OS manage your application and the computer performances and you don't have to worry about it.

This is what you think is happening:
The OS will not manage your application in the way you think it should manage, will affect perfomance. The only thing the OS does is just not telling you that is keep using as much resources as it would by running and you want to quit them.

 

[Bodypainter]

but if this actually does happen the next best unambiguous method is to remove all shortcuts in the dock so that the stuff you see are only the launched (or presumably "paused" or "running in the background" applications).

very cool! then your mac turns even more into a microsoft windows xp machine, because what you descrive is the "bad microsoft" taskbar!

apple had a much better solution - according to apple.

and then they change it to microsoft? i am scared of 10.7. maybe it's time to switch to some other platform.

 

[belltree]

Whatever was seen in the OS X demo should be taken with a giant rock of salt. I imagine that was being run entirely on a custom build of Snow Leopard or a very early test build of Lion.

 

[3282868]

Oi

C'mon fellow nerds, can we stop with the "I'm right and you're wrong" pissing contest? This is all supposition, and some are throwing ideas out as they're excited and it's fun to see creativity. Insulting each other over a topic that isn't even fact yet is moot, why not simply give credit to an interesting idea and work from it instead of always trying to shoot it down?

Whatever was seen in the OS X demo should be taken with a giant rock of salt. I imagine that was being run entirely on a custom build of Snow Leopard or a very early test build of Lion.

It was probably iOS 10.7 running on an iPad