Massive Damage

My Random Thoughts on OS X Lion

So I said that I wanted to make more list-based posts from here on out. And then I promptly disappeared for about a month. Chalk it up to my laziness, I suppose. Making list-based posts is a lot more difficult than making regular paragraphs (as I eluded to in my first post). At any rate, it is more difficult for me. It forces me to collect my thoughts, and it forces me to only write about something that I have a solid grasp on.

Which brings me to OS X Lion. I’ve been using it since the day it came out, and seeing how I’m on my MacBook Pro for the better part of each day at the lab, I have had quite a bit of time to delve into it and get a feel for a lot of its features. I have also had the opportunity to look over some of its glaring omissions. So let’s get on with it, shall we?

Positives

1) Trackpad gestures to move between Spaces: This is a feature that I have been waiting for since I first brought my MacBook Pro home almost two years ago. It annoyed me to no end how four-fingered side swipes in Snow Leopard would provide the same functionality that you can achieve with a simple command+tab. Meanwhile, moving between Spaces wasn’t inconvenient by any stretch, but when you have a navigation system as effortless as a multi-touch trackpad, any amount of extra exertion feels disruptive. I’m glad that gestures can finally be used for Spaces, even if we had to sacrifice some other Spaces-related functionality on the way (more on that later).

2) Mission Control: I probably don’t have to say a whole lot about Mission Control at this point. Most of you have had ample time to mess around with it and determine for yourselves whether it’s a positive or negative for the operating system (and I’ve heard compelling arguments for both ends of the spectrum. For myself, it feels like a natural evolution of Exposé. Application windows are now put together as they should be, their icons easily denote which windows belong to which applications, and moving windows between Spaces can now be accomplished without having to switch to a different mode. I also like having the Dashboard as a separate space, and it has even resulted in me using the Dashboard more often. I can’t quite put my finger on why that is, but as a person who likes to use sticky notes (both digital and physical), I’m perfectly satisfied.

3) Launchpad: I appear to be the only person on the face of the Earth who believes that this is a cool feature. It seems like reactions range between complete indifference and unjustified hostility towards the admittedly iOS-like feature creeping into a desktop operating system. I’ve taken a rather extreme approach with Lion, and I’ve actually decided to clear most of the icons out of my dock. In fact, the only icons to remain upon startup are the Finder, the Launchpad, and Alfred (which continues to be great in so many ways). Now if I need to look at the applications that I use on a regular basis, they can all be found on the first page of the Launchpad. Being able to throw applications into “folders” (or perhaps we should call them pseudo-folders) is nice as well, as I can now throw all of my Office applications in one “folder”. The same goes for all Adobe CS and iWork applications. It’s a feature that you don’t have to use if you don’t want to, and so I can’t say that I really understand all of the hostility (or perhaps I have just misread all of the reviews and impressions of the past few weeks, and perhaps the hostility isn’t truly hostility at all).

4) System Information is nicer: Kinda stupid unless you’re a dork like me, but I recently upgraded the RAM in my MacBook Pro (from 4 GB to 8 GB), and I must say that the cleaner look of System Information is welcomed with open arms as far as I’m concerned. It gives you the info that you want up front, and you can always drill down further if you feel the need.

Negatives

1) No more fine volume adjustments: This is one that I really cannot understand. For those of you unfamiliar with the feature back in the Leopard/Snow Leopard days, let me give you a brief rundown. In past releases, you could hold down the option and shift buttons while adjusting the volume, and this would give you more precision over the system volume. This was quite nice when listening to music in iTunes, as it allowed you to deal with those all too familiar situations in which four bars was too quiet and five bars was too loud. It was a feature that didn’t get in the way of anything (obviously not, since many people were unaware of its existence), and so I really don’t know how its removal from Lion is justified.

2) Neutered application-specific gestures: The programs that made good use of three-fingered gestures were few and far between, but some of the application-specific gestures managed to be genuinely useful. Using three fingers to scroll through articles in Reeder was a personal favourite of mine, as was using three fingers to hide and reveal the side-panel in Sparrow. For better or worse, Apple has now decided to reclaim three-fingered gestures for OS functions (such as Mission Control and Spaces, as previously mentioned), and so the only way that you can have application-specific functionality back is to hold down the option key while performing your gestures. Pinching gestures are still in thankfully, but that’s small comfort when thinking about what we used to have. Hopefully the developers can find some way to compensate (perhaps two fingers sideways, like what Safari does?).

3) No GMail label support in Apple Mail: Not a huge deal for those of us who have already switched over to Sparrow, but it’s worth mentioning nonetheless. I understand that Apple probably doesn’t want to mess up their clean user interface with something that most other mail services cannot utilize, but for me this feature is an absolute deal-breaker, and it is the biggest reason why I’ll be sticking with Sparrow mail.

4) All My Files is ridiculous: Seriously, what the hell was Apple thinking when they dropped this turd on us? Unless you use your Mac in the same way that you use an iPad, this view is completely worthless. Actually, it’s worse than useless, because it brought my porn collection into plain view while I was at work. With thumbnails and everything! Thankfully nobody was standing behind me at the time. I have since removed the view from the Finder’s sidebar, and I have reconfigured the Finder to view my home directory upon its invoking. Good grief…

5) Cannot move Spaces around in Mission Control: This is what I was eluding to earlier. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s always jarring when you lose functionality from one OS release to the next. The same applies for the fact that Spaces no longer wrap around, and so reaching the end of the line causes the ever familiar elastic-band effect when trying to move further.

Overall I’m quite happy with Lion. Most of its features range from being genuinely useful to being innocently benign. Obviously Apple is trying to achieve some sort of unity between what iOS does and what OS X does, and there’s no telling what the final destination is going to look like. Either way, things are definitely staying interesting if you’re a Mac user.