Well, the next big cat has a name, and that name is Lion. Here’s is Apple’s introduction of OS X 10.7:
We took our best thinking from Mac OS X and brought it to the iPhone. Then we took our best thinking from the iPhone and brought it to iPad. And now we’re bringing it all back to the Mac with our eighth major release of the world’s most advanced operating system.
While I’ve already discussed one of the big features[1. Although, since it’s coming to Snow Leopard, it’s weird to consider it a feature of 10.7.] of Lion, the Mac App Store, let’s dive into the other things the company outlined today.
Launchpad
Under Snow Leopard, there are three ways to open an application:
- Click the icon in the Dock
- Search for it using Spotlight
- Navigate to the Applications folder and find it
- Set up a Stack for the Applications folder, click on that Stack and find the program
Launchpad is a glorified Stack, really. Here’s Apple’s descripition:
The Launchpad gives you instant access to your apps — iPad style. Just click the Launchpad icon in your Dock. Your open windows fade away, replaced by an elegant, full-screen display of all the apps on your Mac. It takes just a swipe to see multiple pages of apps, and you can arrange apps any way you like by dragging an app icon to a new location or by grouping apps in folders. Downloaded an app from the App Store? Your new app automatically appears on the Launchpad, ready to blast off.
So, in short, click a Dock icon, and get a big grid of your apps.
This is a pretty obvious carryover from the iPad. While it will simplify opening new apps, I’m not sure that it simplifies things radically. Seems like a silly headline feature to me.
Of course, there are those that makes this fear for Finder’s life. Launchpad works outside of any Finder window. Is this one step closer to an Finder-less Mac? iPhoto, iMovie, iCal and other applications already store their data in ways that users can’t directly access. It’s not a small jump to hide regular old documents as well.
iWork on the iPad simply shows you a list of what is available to open, hiding the actual structure. iWork on the Mac uses the Media Palette to pull in photos — this seems like a tiny step in that direction, and while I’m not scared yet, I understand that some people are.
Full-screen Apps
While Apple is touting this is a new-to-Lion feature, it’s really a very old idea that disappeared before OS X even made it to Public Beta stage almost 10 yeas ago.
Full-screen apps take up every pixel on the display — getting rid of the Dock, the Menubar, everything. The only current built-in app that does this on the Mac is Time Machine.
While visually reminiscent of the iPad, single window mode on OS X is drastically different — several apps are still fully running in the background. Instead of doing one task at a time, this lets users simply focus on one task at a time. That’s a critical difference.
Mission Control
This is the biggest UI change Apple has made in years:
Mission Control is a powerful and handy new feature that provides you with a comprehensive view of what’s running on your Mac. It gives you a bird’s-eye view of everything — including Exposé, Spaces, Dashboard, and full-screen apps— all in one place. With a simple swipe gesture, your desktop zooms out to Mission Control. There you can see your open windows grouped by app, thumbnails of your full-screen apps, Dashboard, and even other Spaces, arranged in a unified view. And you can get to anything you see on Mission Control with just one click. Making you the master of all you survey.
I think it’s a change for the better. While it may take some getting used to, I think that Mission Control will be a very handy feature. Spaces and Exposé are easily confused by most users.
Don’t miss the detail that the background for Mission Control is the default image used on the iPad while waiting for UI elements to build in. It is a subtle, but purposeful thing.
“Auto-Save” and “Resume at Launch”
While Apple didn’t give much detail about these features, it will make life easier for many users. It is unclear if these APIs will be available only to App Store programs. I see these features being slow to come to large programs like Microsoft Office — if they come at all. Sadly, Office is the perfect candidate for an auto-save feature.
Final Thoughts
While Apple is touting Lion as “iPad meets Mac,” the melding isn’t as complete as it would seem. Most of the features outlined today are more cosmetic than functional.
However, Lion opens the floodgates when it comes to conversations of Apple more deeply combining iOS and Mac OS X. I think that Lion is just the start of that process, leaving some uneasy.
That said, Apple is a smart company. It knows that there are things that work well on mobile devices that simply don’t make sense on the desktop. Hopefully Apple keeps that in mind as Mac OS X continues to age, and the lines between the desktop and mobile devices continue to blur.