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

[Mavimao]

I'm also worrying about the loss of scroll bars. Won't people be confused by a lack of a scroll bar? As in, they won't know there's something below? They're used to using a mouse, clicking on the bar and pulling the mouse down? I don't know. Seems like a bad design choice.

In any case, I think it's best we wait and see what they have to offer us. Maybe this new way of launching apps will actually be cool and we'll ask ourselves how we lived without it.

 

[NickK1066]

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

Why do you need to know if it's running or not?

Unless it's doing a mass of processing (which makes it obvious to the OS that it should not be swapped out). 99% of the time a 'loaded' application is swapped out or idling in the background.

 

[twilson]

Hmm. Seems a little odd to remove the indicator, unless there is a significant change to the way apps handle memory and CPU time. When I'm hard at work with several processor- and memory-intensive tasks running, I often glance at what inessential apps are running and shut them all down to free up resources. Makes a huge difference (on a C2D iMac here).

Figuring out what processor and memory intensive tasks/apps are running is the domain of "Activity Monitor", the little light offers no real indication of that.

e.g. You wouldn't generally class Safari as CPU intensive, but put a few Flash plug-ins on there and it certainly becomes CPU intensive.

At the end of the day managing what apps are running shouldn't concern your every day user. And the geeks that HAVE TO KNOW will probably be able to re-enable the indicator with a "defaults write..." that they will also feel comfortable with.

Most people don't care. Hell, I'm a geek and I don't actually care what's running 95% of the time as it doesn't really affect anything I'm doing. If my fans are being caned to *****, I just load up "Activity Monitor" and stop whatever is maybe unnecessarily gobbling up my CPU.

 

[Bodypainter]

This is really interesting, bring these items together.

Mac OS X developers in future will be expected to spend a lot of time fine tuning applications to make sure that the performance is acceptable. This will have great benefits for the user - as they will really start to see the performance from their computers, rather than have it sucked up by lazy coding of applications that needlessly use too many processor cycles or memory (yes flash plug in, i'm looking directly at you).
g.

when you see that even apple programs like iphoto take about 25 seconds to start up (on my mac book with 4 gb ram!) i can tell you that even apple can't provide you with instant startup of apps.

apps on the iphone run so fast, because they are so small. macs don't run little apps, they run programs like photoshop, indesign, final cut or office.

all those apps take ages to start up, and they use lots and lots of memory space.

and look at the mac book air: 2 gb ram! how many of the above mentioned programs do you think fit into those 2 gb ram if you have an open layout, videofilm and large scan open within the programs?

apple seems to have lost the track. design over function! 4 x 4 pixel light indicator space saved! let's waste this by displaying millions of icons over a blurry desktop so every 28 inch cinemadisplay mac pro is downgraded to a ipad!

whow, this is so cool!

you HAVE to find it's cool, because you won't have any other choice, apple is forcing you to do it that way!

 

[aiqw9182]

No matter which way you switch it as to whether or not you want it there you do not need it there. If apps are frozen and auto resume like Apple says then they will be even less relevant than they already were.

 

[savar]

I definitely want to know what is running! NOT COOL

$ ps aux

 

[Bodypainter]

Figuring out what processor and memory intensive tasks/apps are running is the domain of "Activity Monitor", the little light offers no real indication of that.

e.g. You wouldn't generally class Safari as CPU intensive, but put a few Flash plug-ins on there and it certainly becomes CPU intensive.

At the end of the day managing what apps are running shouldn't concern your every day user. And the geeks that HAVE TO KNOW will probably be able to re-enable the indicator with a "defaults write..." that they will also feel comfortable with.

Most people don't care. Hell, I'm a geek and I don't actually care what's running 95% of the time as it doesn't really affect anything I'm doing. If my fans are being caned to *****, I just load up "Activity Monitor" and stop whatever is maybe unnecessarily gobbling up my CPU.

imagine you have a kitchen and whenever you take something out of your shelf, it will stay on the kitchen desk.

you can not put it back.

i'm sorry, but in my head this creates a very stressfull feeling of not being able to control the situation.

imagine a lightbulb is always switched on, simply because you don't have switches to switch it off.

let's waste energy! why not, it doesn't cost much! who needs to switch off a light?

the new apple way will then be to unscrew the light bulb to switch the program off (kill task).

why a switch, when you can leave the light on all the time?

 

[skunk]

$ ps aux

 

[3282868]

Terminal command to list running apps

 

[skunk]

the new apple way will then be to unscrew the light bulb to switch the program off (kill task).

I've wondered whether the fact that I've often found 10 or 12 apps running on my iP4 has any effect on the speed of the thing: double-tapping the Home button usually brings up a boatload of open apps.

 

[iWolf00]

AMAZING; that is truly why I will keep buying Mac and favor it over a PC. 10.7 promise great changes and I will be one of the first to get it!

 

[skunk]

Terminal command to list running apps

Oh, OK. I find +Tab much quicker for that.

 

[savar]

Hmm. Seems a little odd to remove the indicator, unless there is a significant change to the way apps handle memory and CPU time. When I'm hard at work with several processor- and memory-intensive tasks running, I often glance at what inessential apps are running and shut them all down to free up resources. Makes a huge difference (on a C2D iMac here).

What doesn't make sense to me is that on iOS, each application has one window. So if you're not looking at that Window, the iOS can do whatever it wants to that app -- such as saving its state and quitting it to save memory -- as long as it can reverse the process when the user wants to resume.

But OS X has multiple windows per application, or sometimes zero windows (if you closed all open windows), but that doesn't mean you don't want the application to run. How will OS X know which applications it can suspend and which ones it can't?

So I'm in the camp that doesn't buy into this rumor... this sounds like something that will be be fixed or changed back before it goes GM.

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.

How is that different from what happens now? By taking away the status indicator, all you do is disallow users to tell the OS which apps they want in memory and you force the OS to guess. If users are switching back and forth between apps and the OS keeps paging out one of the apps the user is trying to use, they will get frustrated with the pause that occurs each time they switch apps.

In the current system you can just close open apps that you're done with to free up physical memory.

 

[Bodypainter]

Think how Leopard first looked back in WWDC '06, it looked almost the same as Tiger just with a few Leopard features added, then when the demoed it again in WWDC '07 totally much improved with the new GUI etc. I really think this is just experimental to see how it works, I do like some of the new ideas in Lion, but the light under the icons is very useful, I would like to see whats open, because I dont apps not needed running, even if the machine runs fine. I still prefer to properly close running apps

so this should calm us down?

i actually fear, that it is the other way around: they are getting rid of the "program is running" light indicator, they are removing the scrollbar etc.

guess what: they will go even further. buy an ipad and you'll see the future.

- why do we need a finder?
- why do we need a drop down menu on the top? (verrry confusing!)
- why do we need a title bar on a program?
- why do we need a taskbar on the bottom? (ipads taskbar functions different, so change the mac os x version!)
- why do we need file open dialog boxes?
- why do we need folders?
- why do we need a trashbin?
- why do we need an usb connector?
- why do we need to display a picture fullscreen?

apple is going in a very wrong direction right now. they are forcing the user to give up important functionality, but don't provide you with a replacement for this!

mac is getting more and more illogical. they think they make it easier, but they cause stress to the user that is totally stupid.

many of the people who switched to mac are getting more and more upsette with apples os as they were able to do some things way better in windows!

people are also upsette that apple is raising the prices, wherelse everyone else is lowering the hardware prices.

you can get a very beautiful sony vaio for 599 us$, mac book white starts at 999 us$. these prices simply aren't right that way!

you can also get a very nice imac like 24" vaio with mouse AND touch-display for 999 us$. and it works nicely! touch-display works for many things way better than mouse with multitouch on the head. even in the apple presentation last week this mouse failed in the demos. even the apple own engineers make a swipe gesture and the computer doesn't recognize it!

 

[KnightWRX]

When I'm about to plug my Mac into the network at my office, I need to close down things like Transmission, Skype and MSN. No, I can't leave them running, network security guys will flag my laptop if I do because they actively check for that stuff (even though all the traffic is dropped at the edge firewall... *sigh*...). Not having a visual cue to tell me they are running is bad. I depend on those little lights. No, suspend isn't good enough, if I'm connected, I can't have them suddenly resume by accident.

Same for scrollbars. The visual cue they provide for knowing how much is left up and down or left or right to a document I'm looking at is important. Making them disappear means I lose this visual cue. All for the sake of how many pixels ?

Macs aren't RAM limited and Macs aren't pixel challenged like iOS devices. These changes make no sense and reduce usability. Let's hope there are options or replacements in the coming months for these.

 

[iEdd]

I'm a little skeptical on what this does. If it's just getting rid of the dots, then fine, but I do want to be able to cmd+tab and see stuff to manually quit it or whatever.

I've wondered whether the fact that I've often found 10 or 12 apps running on my iP4 has any effect on the speed of the thing: double-tapping the Home button usually brings up a boatload of open apps.

It shouldn't.

Don't think of the Apps as running per se. They are just apps that have closed with a saved state, and if applicable - background API operations, eg. streaming music or uploading a file.

Generally you would know if they are doing something, eg. streaming music is pretty obvious; you can hear it.

 

[KALLT]

So far, these are just minor interface tweaks that hardly justify an upgrade to Lion. I don't need the Launchpad and couldn't care less about new scroll bars and some improvements to Exposé. The only interesting was the Mac App Store, which isn't really a feature of Lion in the first place.

Apple has missed the chance to present some real interesting features, in my opinion. Especially when you consider that Lion is due to be released in summer 2011.

 

[res1233]

So far, these are just minor interface tweaks that hardly justify an upgrade to Lion. I don't need the Launchpad and couldn't care less about new scroll bars and some improvements to Exposé. The only interesting was the Mac App Store, which isn't really a feature of Lion in the first place.

Apple missed the chance to present some real interesting features, in my opinion. Especially when you consider that Lion is due to be released in summer 2011.

What is wrong with you? "Apple missed the chance"? Apple is going to be releasing more features. They did not miss any chance. There are going to be more events, and at those events, they'll unveil a whole new bunch of Lion features. I'm starting to get tired of all the crying. What they showed wasn't Lion. If Leopard is any evidence, odds are what they showed us are elements of Lion running on Snow Leopard, like they did with Leopard elements running on tiger. I guarantee that you haven't yet seen all that Lion has to offer. Calm down. Until apple finishes announcing all of Lion's features, any judgments are premature.

 

[toxic]

if applications no longer quit in the way they do right now (freeing RAM), then Apple is moving towards storing the state in flash memory, be it a few flash chips on the motherboard or a traditional SSD. if the former, then they have to decide how much is enough, and whatever they choose won't be enough for every user. if the latter, then what happens if you don't have an SSD?

moreover, SSDs are nowhere near RAM in terms of transfer speeds. Barefeats has tested MBA RAM and gotten 4000 MB/s...no SSDs in the near future will be able to do that.

 

[0098386]

I'm really not liking the concept of Lion.

It's all well and good for people with powerful machines, but as a Core2Duo/3gb ram owner I would really like to keep an easy track of whats open and what isn't.
For the first time I think I'll be sticking with an older OSX.

 

[res1233]

if applications no longer quit in the way they do right now (freeing RAM), then Apple is moving towards storing the state in flash memory, be it a few flash chips on the motherboard or a traditional SSD. if the former, then they have to decide how much is enough, which is going to piss someone off. if the latter, then what happens if you don't have an SSD?

moreover, SSDs are nowhere near RAM in terms of transfer speeds. Barefeats has tested MBA RAM and gotten 4000 MB/s...no SSDs in the near future will be able to do that.

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.

I'm really not liking the concept of Lion.

It's all well and good for people with powerful machines, but as a Core2Duo/3gb ram owner I would really like to keep an easy track of whats open and what isn't.
For the first time I think I'll be sticking with an older OSX.

Again, as i've said above, this is not Lion, it most likely is Snow Leopard + a few lion features. We don't know if they have some trick up their sleeves to deal with all this or not. All you can comment on is wether or not you like the currently released features. Steve mentioned that we haven't seen it all yet, so saying "For the first time I think I'll be sticking with an older OSX" is a rather uninformed comment...

 

[harry20larry]

Where as I like the concept of iOS becoming a more complex OS over time, such multitasking, printing, search etc
I don't like the idea of Mac OS X becoming a more dulled down OS over time, such as bastardised apps, iphone like springboard.
Just seems counter intuitive.
I think Lion has got to present some more killer features to turn the heads of people who genuinely use their Mac for work or professional work.
I am confident in that Apple will be able to do this in a year

 

[0098386]

so saying "For the first time I think I'll be sticking with an older OSX" is a rather uninformed comment...

No, it's not. Because I am informed. I have read the information Apple have presented to us and I don't like what I've heard.
For the same reasons I didn't upgrade to Vista and still haven't seen any need to upgrade to Windows 7.

 

[res1233]

Where as I like the concept of iOS becoming a more complex OS over time, such multitasking, printing, search etc
I don't like the idea of Mac OS X becoming a more dulled down OS over time, such as bastardised apps, iphone like springboard.
Just seems counter intuitive.
I think Lion has got to present some more killer features to turn the heads of people who genuinely use their Mac for work or professional work.
I am confident in that Apple will be able to do this in a year

I agree. A year (or a bit less than one) is plenty time for Apple to release a few "WOW" features. I'm expecting apple to do some drastic UI changes, I'm just hoping, like you said, that Mac OS X doesn't end up being dulled down to a pale specter of what it once was. I doubt it'll happen very much, but the signs are saying that it isn't out of the realm of possibility.

No, it's not. Because I am informed. I have read the information Apple have presented to us and I don't like what I've heard.
For the same reasons I didn't upgrade to Vista and still haven't seen any need to upgrade to Windows 7.

No, what i mean is you couldn't possibly judge wether or not you'll be wanting to upgrade to a new OS when you haven't seen all the features yet. So no, unless you work for apple, you're as informed as i am, which is, not very.

 

[apple1990]

No, it's not. Because I am informed. I have read the information Apple have presented to us and I don't like what I've heard.
For the same reasons I didn't upgrade to Vista and still haven't seen any need to upgrade to Windows 7.

Im sticking with snow leopard too, because lion isn't out for another year