Installed the Lion upgrade on my iMac this morning, though not without difficulty

Installed the Lion upgrade on my iMac this morning, though not without difficulty ... the download crashed the App Store application!

My initial thoughts are mixed. Safari seems much improved, and the left/right swipe action there is brilliant. I'm already used to the "reversed" scrolling, but I re-enabled the always-visible scroll bar ... it makes no sense at all to have that disappear on a desktop device. Launchpad is useless for anyone with more than a handful of apps, and since I don't use Spaces I don't really like the new look of Mission Control. Mail seems more solid, though I went back to the classic UI there.

There's a lot of serious ugliness in the UI, especially for a design-conscious company like Apple. The Finder and Mail went way too far towards the monochrome look ... the font choices, spacing, and graphic layout all suck. On the other hand, Apple went too far in the other direction in the Address Book and iCal, sacrificing usability and good UI in favor of perceived cuteness.

Overall, I'm less thrilled than I'd hoped I would be. But I'll adapt.

Comments

  1. Chris VreelandJuly 21, 2011 at 9:24 AM

    Have you read the Ars Technica write-up? Siracusa doesn't have much good to say about Address Book or iCal, either. BUT - there's a ton of new stuff in there. I'm holding off on the MacBook because I need it for CS5, and apparently, it's not playing well so far, but man, the auto-save and versioning sound great. I'm curious to see how the wifi file sharing works, too.

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  2. David AJuly 21, 2011 at 9:28 AM

    From that review, I'll stick with Snow Leopard. I've seen the swiping thing, though, and that looks cool. But all these other things don't sound too hot. I also heard Google Chrome isn't compatible with it. I'm sure Google will fix that quickly though. I wonder what will be next. Cheetah? They are running out of cats. ;)

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  3. David AJuly 21, 2011 at 9:42 AM

    Oh, good, Chrome works. Someone told me it didn't .

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  4. Mark HufstetlerJuly 21, 2011 at 4:39 PM

    Chris Vreeland I'll look at the Ars review tonight ... they're always the best ones available, but I feel like I need to block several hours of my life to read one! As for CS5, I've played with photoshop a bit and it seems to work well for at least my minimal needs. I definitely agree that the versioning and auto-save will be extremely useful, when the third-party apps support it.

    David A I'm actually betting there won't be too many more cats ... in a couple years, OS X and iOS will become one, under a new name. I'm not sure if I like that thought. :/

    I've actually mostly switched over to Google's calendar and contacts list, partly because of my Android phone and partly because I never trusted MobileMe. That's probably what I'll keep doing for now.

    Primary impression after a day working with Lion: I really like the new Mail app!!

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  5. David AJuly 21, 2011 at 4:57 PM

    Huh? I know we have OS X but what is iOS? And yeah, I don't use iCal because... Why? I use Yahoo Calendar (I like it better than Googles calendar, actually- more features). I have it sinked with iCal but I never open it. What's the point? I like just sticking with one calendar and I can access Yahoos anywhere. I also sink Yahoos with the calendar on my iTouch. So unless I'm out of wifi range, which is kinda rare these days, I don't need a local calendar on my computer. I really use Yahoo calendar a lot with my crazy schedule too. And mail, same reason but also that Yahoo won't interface with Apple mail unless you pay for upgraded mail from Yahoo- which I would never do. I wonder WHO even does? The free version is unlimited mail storage. Who needs it to download to a client with the availablility of wifi these days to just view the webpage. So in conclusion, and I can't even remember what the hell the point of this reply was, hahaha, I prefer online versus local.

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  6. Mark HufstetlerJuly 21, 2011 at 5:14 PM

    David A iOS is the operating system for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV. :)

    Don't know why, but I've never been a fan of Yahoo, at all. I definitely agree that having all that stuff in the cloud is the only way to go ... for a long time, I had my Mac's calendar and address book sync-ed with the Google equivilants. That worked great in theory, but I ended up getting errors every now and then (which seemed to be Apple's fault). So Google by itself works for me, and it's a low-stress solution.

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  7. David AJuly 21, 2011 at 6:55 PM

    You should check out Yahoo calendar. Much prettier and more flexibility than google calendar and more useful. :)

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  8. Mark HufstetlerJuly 21, 2011 at 8:34 PM

    David A - Not if you have an Android phone! :)

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  9. David AJuly 21, 2011 at 9:45 PM

    I don't have one of those fancy schmancy phones Mark! Just an iPod touch. ;)

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  10. David AJuly 22, 2011 at 6:22 AM

    Why? It works fine and does everything.

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  11. Mark HufstetlerJuly 22, 2011 at 6:33 AM

    I have to agree with Dave B. on this one. I'd bet that in a couple more years, Yahoo won't even exist anymore ...

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  12. David AJuly 22, 2011 at 6:37 AM

    Oh, that's crazy talk. :)

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  13. David AJuly 22, 2011 at 6:37 AM

    Google mail is annoying with it's thread display. Sooooooooooo annoying! I like Yahoo with it's one at a time view.

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  14. Mark HufstetlerJuly 22, 2011 at 7:22 AM

    Dave Barker -- Exactly. After all, I hear that there are still some people out there using Windows, thinking it suits their needs! As long as they're happy, I suppose ...

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  15. David AJuly 22, 2011 at 7:25 AM

    sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! LOL... I do use Mac so I do have a brain... I fucking hate windows. I just prefer Yahoo mail over gmail. I only got a gmail to use this thing... Mail is mail. Everyone recieves it, everyone sends it. But the thread shit on gmail IS really confusing. It's like one long text message to read it all. I've found that if you read this comment in a monotone voice you get the best results. Make the sigh realllllllllly long too. Makes it more dramatic I've found.

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  16. David AJuly 22, 2011 at 12:06 PM

    It syncs with my iCal on my i Touch and also iCal on my Mac.

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