Mac OS-X Lion and the stuff I like (and some bits I didn't like)

I got asked: “So what do you think?” Here’s my opinion after 1.5 days of working with it.

Gestures for spaces and etc.

I never used the dashboard, spaces etc. But now its easy. Not an upgraded function key to press, or some key combo, but a nice gesture: a three finger slide to the left, a three finger slide to the right… yeah. Just have a peek at the right most widgets of the dashboard, and release, defaulting to where you were. I like. Switching between Windows in a VM is now also a lot easier: my VM (VirtualBox) disables Cmd+Tab when you enter the VM, as most other key combinations, but the three finger swipe still works.

Not having to think about saving files anymore

It doesn’t work yet for all apps, but its easy to get addicted to I guess: close a text editor and no dialogs anymore asking me whether I wanted to save what i just typed. Actually, this was the primary reason I downloaded the upgrade. I’ve lost too much work during the years. Sadly, it is something that requires an update of the application you’re using, and it seems only to be limited to formats the program (wants to) support(s) natively (i.e. it doesn’t work with XLS opened in Numbers). Still, finally the desktop is catching up with online solutions like Google Docs.

Mail.app just got a little prettier

Conversations is a really nice addition. Search is a much more helpful. Full screen is a bit useless for me (as a real multitasking e-mailer). But I’m a bit sad about the fact that Apple has removed tasks from Mail.app, but see below for that.

And more

And a lots of smaller things. Full screen terminal. And terminal now remembers where you were when opening a new tab (yea, I know, Ubuntu does this for years, goodbye tab script).

All together it was definitely worth the upgrade.

Of course there are also some things that I don’t like

First of all, i was really using iSync a lot. I’ve got an decent phone that works, and I don’t feel like replacing it just yet. And I also still like it a lot as its battery life is definitely better than today’s smart phones. And why sync over the internet when you have a local connection? Waste of resources. But luckily I got it fixed by copying the iSync.app from my brother’s Leopard Mac, thanks Rutger.

Secondly, I was used to creating tasks from mails. And now Apple removed that. Probably there are much better tasks lists available, and it should ‘belong’ in a calendar, but I really liked the simple way of creating tasks right from my mail by selecting a piece of text and hit ‘New task’. That’s gone. The tasks are now over at iCal, where they got a prominent position, but the coupling with the original email message is lost.

Third, I’ve got to get used to the ‘natural’ look of iCal and Address book. Having to turn a page to navigate to another group in the address book… (I still remember Marco Arments (of Instapaper fame) rant about overdoing the real-life interface metaphor)*. On the other hand, finally also iCal has a view displaying all upcoming in a simple list, instead of the fixed format of either day, week or month display.

And next… well, maybe the overuse of grey (everything seems a little disabled when you’re arriving from a more colourful OS), but that’s something I’ll probably get used to. And had to face some compatibility issues with TimeMachine and my (unsupported) DiskStation, but Synology fixed that.

*At least its not like in the old Windows ages where round ‘natural’ interfaces were featuring un-aliased ugliness in its corners.