The IT Nerd

The first thing that you’re thinking is that this review is a few months late. After all, OS X Lion came out back in July. So why am I only reviewing it now? Simple, I tend to wait until an OS has had a few updates to make it stable enough for me to use. Call it paranoia. In any case, now that we’re up to Lion version 10.7.2, I felt it was time to take the plunge.

First was the installation. It’s disk free as you have to get it from the App Store. You buy it, download almost 4GB of data (It downloads and creates a recovery partition on your Mac), and then it starts the install. At this point I should note if you really must have a physical media to install OS X Lion from, there is a a USB Stick version available for $69 rather than the $29 that it costs to download it. But if I were you, I’d save some cash by downloading it and then use this utility to create your own USB stick. Even better, you should follow these instructions to create a Lion install DVD. Just make sure you read the instructions before you install Lion. Otherwise your chance of making a DVD will be lost. The total install process on my MacBook Pro took almost 40 minutes from start to finish. It was smooth with no issues. After the install process, you get a quick tutorial about the use of the trackpad for gesture based control. This is where I came across something that really ticked me off. Apple inverted multitouch scrolling. Up is down and left is right. They call this “scroll direction: natural.” Sorry Apple, it’s not. I had to disable this to stop myself from going mad. Clearly they got this from iDevices like the iPhone and the iPad. So that behavior to be “natural” for those who own those devices. Having said all of that, once you get the hang of gesture based scrolling, you’ll find it makes navigating through the OS and related apps easier.

New in this version of of OS X are Mission Control and Launchpad. Mission control allows you to see your desktop and all open windows in the center of the screen, each grouped by application with their designated icon. You can also create virtual desktops as well and assign applications to them. You can then flip between windows by either hitting F3 or swiping four fingers to the left or right. Launchpad can be accessed by clicking on the Launchpad button in the dock and it shows you all the applications in your application folder. You can scroll left or right using two fingers on your trackpad. If you press and hold and app, it will start to shake which allows you to delete it. You can also create folders in Launchpad by dragging one app onto another. A gray area will appear on the screen, allowing you to add more apps. Once created, the folder will appear as its own icon. If all of that sounds familiar, it mean you’re a user of an iDevice.

So clearly there’s been a major change to the user Interface. The good news is that it’s good aside from some quirks.The next part of this review will cover the built in applications.

This entry was posted on October 17, 2011 at 10:30 am and is filed under Products with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.