OSX Lion is the latest major release of Apple’s operating system for Mac computers and shows how Apple is moving away from the typical operating system style towards the iOS (iPhone/iPad) style.
Described by Apple as “the world’s most advanced desktop operating system,” this new operating system contains about 250 new features. Even with such a massive list of changes and improvements, this is hardly an explosive upgrade and feels more like an evolutionary upgrade rather than revolutionary.
Starting with the installation process, this is definitely a big plus. It’s a very simple and quick process as the installation is almost completely automated.
Perhaps the most talked about change in this new OS is reverse scrolling. Most of us are used to scroll the mouse wheels down to scroll pages down. In OSX Lion, this has now been replaced with reverse scrolling. Right goes left, and down goes up – and vice versa.
This change was implemented to emulate the iPhone/iPad style of scrolling when using touch input. Some people welcomed this change, while some railed against it on various online communities.
Without a doubt, multi-touch gestures are a core element of this upgrade. Apple has integrated them more heavily into both the Finder and many of its proprietary apps. While in the Finder, for example, swiping three fingers from left to right brings up the Dashboard.
Aesthetically, there is no big difference between Snow Leopard and Lion. The notification buttons now default to a rectangular shape, progress bars are a bit flatter in appearance, and scroll bars are now dark grey lines that disappear when not in use.
Apple borrowed some animations from iOS as well, such as the familiar rubber band bounce that snaps a page back into frame when you’ve scrolled to the end. Additions like this are small indeed, but they definitely add to the overall experience.
When it comes to performance, there were no noticeable improvements. In fact, on some online benchmarks, there was actually a slight performance decrease on some machines. These decreases are however hardly noticeable.
Reception was overall good, but some users experienced problems with this upgrade. Some users also reported sluggish performance, severe software incompatibilities with Adobe software, and dropped wifi problems.
Some issues have already been ironed out with a software update that was released a few days ago, so if you have taken the plunge with OSX Lion, a trip to the software update section is a must.
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