This being said, Apple has moved their flagship OS in this direction as well. Taking cues from the success of iOS, Lion has taken on so many of the features that we find on an iPad and iPhone. Apple is trying to capitalize on the huge consumer base that they’ve built with iOS and have those same people start buying Mac computer hardware. Since OSX was first launched as a Beta in 1999, Apple has slowly been adding features on top of their previous point releases. With the launch of Lion, it feels like they threw this paradigm out of the window by totally redoing some old features and adding in iOS features on top.

Mission Control is not an upgrade over the old Exposé and Spaces. The grid system of Spaces worked a lot better for power users who used more than 8 spaces at a time. The new linear way of moving between spaces just makes it harder to navigate large amounts of programs in multiple spaces. I understand the need for Apple to move to a linear line in order to successfully use the swipe left and right as navigation between spaces while reserving the up and down for other gestures but this was not an “upgrade” to what they had before. One other major omission by Apple is the ability to switch around the order of the Desktops when the app is in Full Screen View.  I really like the Mail app in full screen mode but I also like it directly to the right of my first Desktop. If I put it in full screen mode it’ll be all the way to the right of the last Desktop.

The only way around this that I’ve found is to not use the full screen mode for any apps and instead just maximize them in separate desktops.  Right now I have Safari, Twitter, Adium in Desktop 1, Mail in Desktop 2, iCal in Desktop 3, and Aperture and Final Cut X in Desktop 4.

The next baffling “feature” that Lion has set by default is reverse scrolling. You can turn this function off, which I’ve done, but it’s curious that Apple has set this as the default. The reason reverse scrolling works on an iPhone and iPad is that it physically feels like you’re touching the page when you flick up and down, left and right. The reason it doesn’t work in Lion is that you’re just touching a trackpad and not the screen itself. But at the same time, my mind is really confused when I scroll left and right sometimes and I end up doing it reverse. John Gruber has tweeted to try it for a week and see but I just can’t.

Since Spaces came on the scene in 10.4, I always ran Mail and iCal maximized in their own space. That’s why the ability for full screen apps intrigued me when first hearing about it in the Keynote. The integration of full screen apps into OSX came from the success and ease of use of the iPad, which (in)famously only allows one app to be on the screen at a time. I enjoyed my time using Mail and iCal full screen. It’s more immersive and gives you focus to the single task at hand. The inability to move full screen apps around in Mission Control has ended that experiment for me.

The Mail app itself has been a huge bright spot for me. The upgrades here are true upgrades and improve my work flow. In the past, I had to use Mail hacks such as Letterbox in order to get the 3 pane look that just more efficient for wide screen monitors. Each point release had the ability to break the plugin though so it was always hit or miss. The new Mail app is, by default, 3 panes with the ability to hide it down to 2 panes. This just makes reading email much more efficient. Another feature I’ve found very useful is the ability to segment out your search variables in the search bar itself. It make it easy to find specific emails with multiple variables very quickly. The overall look of the Mail app has improved as well. It looks cleaner, less cluttered, but more powerful all at the same time.

I haven’t seen much a performance difference with Lion versus Snow Leopard. I’m sure the benchmarks will bear it out that Lion performs better, especially with the addition of OpenCL but in real world testing, but I haven’t seen much of a change. There are a few small bugs here and there that I’ve found that will need to be addressed in 10.7.1.

Overall, the upgrade to Lion has been a Zero Sum Game for me and I feel for consumers as a whole. Power users will lament the loss of certain features while the average consumer will gain from the familiarity of using iOS. In the end, Apple is the true winner as their market share and profitability continues to grow at a staggering pace.

Pros

1. The iPhone4 has always felt delicate, the bumper makes it feel a lot more solid and impact resistant
2. The case is designed by Apple and you can tell, it’s more polished and fits the industrial design a lot better than other cases
3. The rubberized edges keep the iPhone from slipping and sliding when on a desk or other surfaces
4. I have a car holder from Proclip and they have a new iPhone4 holder that accomodates the bumper.

Cons

1. Attracts lint around the edges of the case which drives me crazy since I’m a bit OCD about my technology
2. Harder to put in and pull out of the pocket because of the rubberized edges
3. Doesn’t fit the iPhone4 dock that I bought

- I liken the iPad to the 1st Gen iPhone.  If you think back to how the 1st Gen iPhone was and what the 3GS is now, there was a ton of growth both from Apple and from 3rd party developers.  I think the iPad has a ton of room to grow as far as productivity and usability.

- They hit it right on with the price.  $499 entry for this device silenced a lot of the haters.  Usually it’s the innovation and design that drives Apple to sell units but this time it’s going to be the price.

- The iPad won’t replace your computer.  Hell it won’t even replace a laptop.  Unless you own a desktop and have no laptop, I can’t see the iPad replacing my Macbook Pro.  You still have to sync this to a computer to get the full functionality of it.

- The iPad would be amazing for photographers and videographers to bring around to client meetings.  Being able to show your portfolio on this beautiful device would add to the selling of your services.

- I think the hackintosh community will end up making the OS even better for techies to use.  Let the competition begin for who can make the best 3rd party iPad OS.

- The iPad would make a great travel companion.  If you’re going on a trip you can just activate the $30/month 3G plan just for that month then deactivate it when you’re done traveling.  They even offer a SD card reader to dock connector adapter so you can upload your camera’s photos onto your iPad and then onto Flickr.  Probably won’t be able to read RAW files just yet though.

- The Amazon Kindle is in a world of hurt right now.  $260 for a monocrome E-book reader?  Or $499 for something that can do infinitely more.

In addition to announcing the new 3G iPhone, Apple announce an upgrade to .Mac which they’re now calling “Mobile Me.” I’m actually seriously considering purchasing the service and forwarding all my email addresses to it. Right now I have 5 different email address that I check. I could consolidate it down to 2 with Mobile Me with just a work exchange account and then have all my other personal addresses forward to enoch@me.com. The only downside would be having to pay another annual fee, but I feel the service just might be worth it.

Someone tried to insert a mini DVD into the slot loading tray of an iMac. I had to take it apart to get it out.

Setting up a Mac Mini Test Server environment to test out Leopard Server.

A new 8 core Mac Pro came out this morning. Since a lot of people ask me for advice about when to buy a Mac, I found this site to be very useful. It has the previous release dates of all the Apple hardware products and whether or not it is a favorable time to buy that product. It also has data on average days between new product releases. I’m looking to upgrade my Macbook Pro and according to the site, it’s been 162 days since the last Macbook Pro update and 182 day average between updates. Hopefully they’ll release one 20 days from now .

June can’t come fast enough. I’ve been waiting for this to come out for a while now. Hopefully the camera phone has good optics. Thanks Apple.

Personally I’m not going to switch to an Intel Mac til they get the Pro Applications (Final Cut Pro, Motion, Aperture) all ready to run natively on Intel. Supposedly that will not come til March which is fine by me. My prediction about the performance of these programs is that they will run beautifully on the new Intel Core Duos. With an upgraded video card and dual core processors, Motion will run very well and Final Cut Pro render times will shrink.

From a work standpoint, this switch to Intel is a nightmare waiting to happen. I can just see a proud professor holding his shiny new MacBook Pro and asking me to set up everything just like he had it on his Powerbook, only to find that his File Maker Pro and his specialized statistics software won’t run well in Rosetta. He’ll curse at me and rant and rave about how much he paid for this thing and why won’t it run the programs he needs. Blah blah blah….sigh. I really hope all the companies release their universal binaries soon. For the sake of my job.

All in all, I think the switch to Intel was needed and will be vital in growing Apple’s market share. I just feel this transition year will not be as fun for me as it should be.

[/rant]