Mac OS X Lion Review

There are many new features in Mac OS X Lion. In this review, I’m going to go over most of them and tell you what I like and don’t like about them. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below.

First is Mail 5. It’s my favorite new feature of Lion. Apple completely redesigned the mail app. It looks quite similar to Mail for iPad. In the previous version of mail, when you opened an email, it opened in a new window. Now, it opens in the right side. In the center, you have a list of messages from the inbox selected. Lastly, on the left, you have the main folders, and then all the gmail subfolders. I used to not use mail at all because it was just, well horrible. Now, I use it all the time.

Next is All My Files. It’s the first thing you see when you open Finder. It organizes every file on your mac into sections like Images, Movies, Documents, Presentations, etc. It’s excellent if you’re trying to find a missing picture/document or just index everything you have.

Another feature I really like is AirDrop. It’s a great, easy way to transfer files between macs on the same network. All you do is open AirDrop on at least two macs on the same network, and drop a file onto the other’s icon. It’s also a great feature for school. You can easily send your friend a document or if you have like a class iMac, you can, just send the file via AirDrop instead of printing/emailing it to the teacher.

A smaller new feature in Mac OS X Lion is called system information. It replaces system profiler. The version I’m talking about is accessed through “About This Mac,” then “More Info…” Instead of having a long confusing list, everything is simplified into four panels. The first one gives you basic info about your computer. The second gives you information about your display, or displays plugged in. The third shows you a graphic of how your hard drive is divided up. It’s quite similar to how your iPhone looks when you plug it into iTunes. Lastly, the fourth panel shows you how much memory you have installed, how it’s divided in the slots, and has a link with instructions on how to upgrade it. I really like how they did this. It’s very simple and a lot easier to navigate through than system profiler.

A feature that was added but kind of already in Mac OS X is full screen apps. Before, there were still full screen apps, but each application had it’s own way to access it. For example, Google Chrome was Command + Shift + F. Now, there’s a universal button. Also, there’s a gesture to move between full screen apps. It’s a four finger swipe to either the left or right. I really like it becauseIt makes it incredibly simple to navigate around your mac.

Another one of my favorite new features is Mission Control. If you have a lot of windows open, it’s a great way to navigate to the window you want. You can access it by swiping up with four fingers. All your windows are organized into separate piles based on apps. If you want to move a certain app to a new desktop, you just drag the icon to the top right corner and it creates a new one. You can also easily navigate between the desktops using the four finger swipe I talked about earlier.

An interesting new feature of Lion is called resume. What it does is when you restart your computer, it will reopen everything you had open when it reboots. I used to only reboot my computer for software updates once I was completely done because I didn’t want to bookmark all the pages I had open and stuff like that, but now I don’t mind rebooting at all. If you wanted the video above, you can see that everything I had open reopened as soon as the computer started up.

These two features mainly have to do with programs like Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. First is Auto Save. In Mac OS X Lion, programs like pages automatically save. Before this, I always hit Command + S like every second just incase the power went out or Pages quit unexpectedly. Now, you no longer have to do anything, pages continuously saves your document so you don’t have to. The next feature is Versions. It would have been very helpful a few months ago back when I had school. I made a keynote, saved it, quit, and opened it back up the next day. I then realized that I hated the change I made. I had to delete what I changed and tried to make it look like it did before. Versions works like Time Machine and saves changes that you make to your document. If you want to go back to a previous version, you just open versions, and click on the version of the document you want to go back to.

The last feature I’m going to talk about is Launchpad. I like the concept, but I think Apple still has a lot more to do with it. You can open Launchpad by pinching with your thumb and three fingers. It looks very similar to Apple’s iPad home screen. You have all your apps and folders and you can move things around and sort them how you want. The problem that I see is you can do the same thing in the applications folder,which is accessible anywhere on the mac through the dock. I think that if Apple let you use launchpad as a home screen, it would be a much better feature. Hopefully, Apple will take more advantage of Launchpad in a future update because I see a lot of potential in it.