Mac OS X Lion Review

Before I begin, I just want to say that I'm not a techie or a person that uses my MacBook Pro (late 2009 model) for heavy creative assignments so this review is coming from a consumer perspective. I also want to point out that depending on what you have on your Mac and what you use it for, you'll probably view Lion differently. Apparently a lot of Adobe creative tools aren't fully compatible with Mac OS X Lion yet.  I was definitely hesitant to make the switch, so much so that I actually made the purchase on July 29th and waited until last night (August 12th) to install it. I heard a lot of bad things about it so I wanted to give it a few weeks to see if developers would make updates, etc. Anyway, after making the switch here are the things that I noticed differently on my computer:

-Runs faster. Not sure what people were talking about regarding the rainbow ball of death aka that color spin wheel that pops up when it's loading something, but my Mac actually brings programs up faster than it did before. No issues thus far and no rainbow ball of death. Sorry to disappoint.

-Spaces is gone, but mission control takes care of that. I really never cared for spaces and I doubt i'll use mission control. I'm a beast at multi-tasking on one screen, which may be insane to some of you but I make it work.

-Launchpad makes my computer look like an iPad by bringing up all the apps. It's basically a shortcut for the Applications folder. Makes life easier I guess. LOL. No real noticeable change there.

-Gestures: this is probably one of the bigger changes. The scrolling can be set to the regular way or how scrolling operates on an iPhone or iPad (I own an iPhone so either one doesn't bother me). If you hate the new scrolling go to system preferences and change it. There's a lot of swiping of three or four fingers going on...lol all shortcut functions. I enjoy the zoom pinch with two fingers or the smart zoom where you tap the trackpad with two fingers. Kinda nice.

-Name in upper right hand corner: not sure what prompted them to do this, but whatever username you're logged into, that will appear in the upper right hand corner next to the time. I don't mind, it makes it easier to get to the login window if you ever want to logout, etc.

-Front row is gone. I tried it once before running Lion and honestly I didn't care much for it, it was just a video viewing function. Whatever.

-Scrollbar disappears just like on the iPhone and iPad. If you have one of these products you won't even notice. Also, there's auto spell check. For those who have apple products, this can be the devil. Just be aware to double check your work when typing because if you spell something the Mac doesn't recognize it will change it but you can always go back or "x" the change spelling and have your Mac learn the spelling.

-iCal, Photo Booth, Mail are different, more efficient in my opinion. I don't use mail on my comp tho, I rather log into gmail directly or get mail on my cell since I'm always on the go. Some people were complaining about photo booth, I just used it, works fine.

-YOUR COMPUTER WILL FEEL HOT WHILE INDEXING. People were going on the App Store trying to scare the crap out of people. Look your comp is indexing. It's trying to organize your life, shut up and put it on a cool surface, perhaps that invention called a table and not on your lap and let it work.

Ultimately, the changes aren't all that significant (if you are an Apple user who has an iPhone or iPad). I don't do heavy gaming or creative stuff so I can't speak on that. I heard that developers are still working on testing compatibility with the new OS so if you are a heavy gaming and creative person, I'd wait until the developers for those products roll out updates or upgrades of the apps and creative suites. Besides that, go ahead and make the upgrade. Make sure you check for updates on your computer BEFORE installing Lion and check afterwards before using anything. I ended up having updates for Photo Booth, iTunes, Skype and Java immediately after downloading Lion but I had to manually check for them.


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