Developer Preview of Mac OS X Lion announced

barryj · 24-02-2011 01:58PM #1

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/02/24macosx.html

- barry

barryj · 24-02-2011 02:11PM

More details and pictures:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/

- barry

Basq · 24-02-2011 02:13PM

"Max OS"?

What.. was "Extreme OS" taken?

barryj · 24-02-2011 02:17PM

Basq wrote: »

"Max OS"?

What.. was "Extreme OS" taken

Fixed. Was a bit quick off the mark!

Interesting thing - Server and Regular version are now combined.

- barry

Talisman · 24-02-2011 02:35PM

barryj wrote: »

Interesting thing - Server and Regular version are now combined.

There was speculation that it might happen after the XServe got retired in November. It will most likely be an optional install item rather than part of the standard installation because you can seriously screw up your system if you don't know what you're at when you tackle some of the server tools.

24-02-2011 03:26PM

I presume this requires the 99 euro or whatever subscription and not just the free joining option?

Yep obviously have to be a paying developer - wishful thinking on my behalf that a free membership would give you access to a download.

barryj · 24-02-2011 03:29PM

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

I presume this requires the 99 euro or whatever subscription and not just the free joining option?

Correct - you need a subscription. You get a redemption code that's unique to you as a developer which is used on the App Store. Downloading it now.

- barry

Sad Professor · 24-02-2011 09:41PM

For anyone who hasn't already watched this on the Apple site, here's a cool video showing how gestures and animations will work in Lion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fC2JA4GOxA

24-02-2011 09:54PM

I think anything above 2 fingers or maybe three seems ridiculous for everyday usage.

Nice to have in but does anyone actually use 3 finger or rotate (cmd r) on the trackpads never mind five finger pinch in lion - screen corner seems more natural.

Sad Professor · 24-02-2011 10:34PM

AI have some screenshots of the developer preview which show a slightly new look interface for most applications, including the Finder. They have it annoyingly spread across half a dozen pages to increase hits though.

Basq · 24-02-2011 10:45PM

Some of those gestures are quite frankly ridiculous!

Stainless_Steel · 24-02-2011 11:04PM

Anyone hate the lack of colour on the finder side bar?!

They done this with iTunes....I found a way of getting the colour back (config. file) but it is annoying doing that each time iTunes is updated! Probably won't be a fix for re-introducing colour to side bar in Lion's finder :mad:

24-02-2011 11:09PM

Didnt reliase the finder sidebar had colour.

The little icons and names do me - i rarely notice/use finder.

barryj · 25-02-2011 10:13AM

Well, having spent an hour or so trying out Lion, firstly, I'd have to say it feels pretty polished - and Safari is definitely snappier! Using it now to post this.

Installation was a doodle - just used Disk Utility to create a new partition and install took about 15 minutes after that. System was busy for a little while after first boot, as my mail imported and spotlight did its thing.

My first reaction was to scrolling - they've reversed the trackpad scrolling action by default to match that of IOS (drag down -> page moves down). Thankfully a checkbox in the Trackpad panel fixes that.

The little disappearing scrollbars are nice, and give just a little more useable screen estate, and the option is there to show them if you prefer that.

There's an auto-correction feature that works like in IOS, and fixes your spelling after you press space when you're typing - works in Safari anyway, assuming it's system wide. I hated that in IOS at first, but learned to love it, so I'll get to like it in Mac OS too.

Safari is version 5.1, and haven't noticed much different from the current version yet.

Mail definitely looks much nicer now - there's a checkbox to revert to Classic layout if you prefer it. Haven't really played around with it enough to get a feel for the Conversations feature.

A warning to anyone considering buying a 2GB Air (non-upgradeable) - Lion seems to like memory - it's using over 2GB now with just a few Safari tabs and Mail open. Make sure you have at least 4GB. Now I'm guessing this may be a debug build of Lion, or not fully optimized, but don't corner yourself.

As regards the Finder monochrome icons - I'm in two minds as to whether I like them or not. It perhaps looks a little cleaner - I think the overall sidebar looks tidier now, but curiously if you look in the preferences, the section on what to show in the sidebar uses all the traditional colour icons. Don't really like the switch that picks how files are displayed (icons, list, etc).

As regards the gestures, I think I agree with most here that, some of them are a bit crazy. I love two finger scrolling since Snow Leopard, but have not really made use of any 3/4 finger gestures. I've tried a few in Lion and the three and four finger up/down and left/right are OK, but I hate any of the pinching type gestures, and pinching with four fingers just feels wrong - I don't know how any women with long nails are going to deal with that! As long as there are keyboard equivalents for the main ones, I don't really care.

The full screen mode works nicely and left/right swipe works well and flows well between apps that are a mixture of full screen and non full screen mode.

One thing I miss is there seems to be now way to display which Space number you are in in the menu bar. I presume it'll appear in a later release.

Mission Control presents things nicely, a little better than Expose - but to me it's just Expose with a few changes - hardly rocket science.

Anyway, overall am impressed with Lion in the sense that it looks polished and seems stable, for an early release. Haven't investigated the server features yet. Maybe over the weekend.

- barry

silvine · 25-02-2011 07:47PM

Have they implemented tabs in Finder?

barryj · 26-02-2011 10:54AM

silvine wrote: »

Have they implemented tabs in Finder?

No.

Narcissus · 26-02-2011 11:58AM

Thanks for the above barryj. What is the install size of Lion?

barryj · 26-02-2011 12:06PM

I think installer is about 3.5GB. Installed size is about 10GB. Wouldn't pay too much attention to sizes - most likely a lot of it is debug builds.

- barry

alexlyons · 26-02-2011 12:33PM

I'm using it now too.

One really annoying thing that I can't seem to fix is Safari's menu bar is set to auto hide, as if it's always in full screen mode

barryj · 26-02-2011 12:44PM

Works fine for me.

You sure you're not in full-screen mode?

File a bug report if it's not working correctly.

- barry

alexlyons · 26-02-2011 12:55PM

definitely wasn't in full screen, am well used to using OS X! another restart of safari seems to have fixed it for now

26-02-2011 06:10PM

I'm running Lion on my Main computer and I got to say it runs extremely well. I love full screen. I have a full beta blog up on geekofcomedy.com I have the airdrop screen shots and finder too.

Homer · 26-02-2011 06:28PM

Which file is it for the disk image of 10.7? I can't seem to see it in the developer downloads section?

26-02-2011 06:52PM

On the developer section once you registered for $99 click the lion tab. It will give you a redeem code you punch in at the mac app store.

26-02-2011 07:17PM

http://lifehacker.com/#!5770609/screenshot-and-feature-tour-of-mac-os-107-lion

alexlyons · 27-02-2011 10:04AM

I use a Wacom tablet as my input device and to say Lion isn't geared towards that sort of input would be a massive understatement.

It's all gesture based which is the way apple is going, but it doesn't translate easily to something like a tablet which a lot of people use as their input devices so they don't have to keep switching.

It does seem pretty good and I might pull out the Magic mouse and see what t's like when you've got all the gestures, but without some form of gesture input device it seems to be a bit of a pain.

Also, I'm really missing the spaces screen, a row in Mission Control just isn't the same.
They all have there own backgrounds which is nice, but I often used spaces to find myself a free bit of desktop and now each space looks "busy" as it shows you the background in MC, not just a plain blue space.

Just my 2c worth, mainly complaints, but that said I do love the overall feel of it so far.

27-02-2011 02:38PM

The new system info page is cleaner.

But how do you find out deeper info about your ethernet card, burner, hard drive manufacturer, printers, and hardware raid?

From the second I saw mission control I knew it was going to be more awkward to use for people who loved spaces and perhaps easier for new adopters from iOS.

27-02-2011 03:06PM

What is the shortcut for mission control?
You can assign a corner of the screen to bring up mission control?

No you cant use old time expose and spaces.
That is special, spaces are now only in rows.

Does non app store apps work with launchpad and/or mission control.

Opposite scrolling makes no sense on a laptop/desktop.

barryj · 27-02-2011 04:59PM

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

What is the shortcut for mission control?

F3.

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Opposite scrolling makes no sense on a laptop/desktop.

First thing I changed was the scrolling - they need to reverse the default to be the normal is it is now, with the option to change for those who've never used anything other than IOS!

- barry

alexlyons · 27-02-2011 05:08PM

generally I think they like leaving new features like the scrolling set to the new option, so everyone knows it's now possible etc.

Don't necessarily agree with it but IIRC that's why they tend to do it.

pcboy · 01-03-2011 12:25AM

barryj wrote: »

F3.

First thing I changed was the scrolling - they need to reverse the default to be the normal is it is now, with the option to change for those who've never used anything other than IOS!

- barry

I actually already get use with the new reverse-scrolling on Lion

Developer Preview of Mac OS X Lion announced

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