Mac OSX Lion

In a typical grand fashion this year, Steve Jobs launched its 7th installment of Mac Operating System code-named Lion (10.7). It is suppose to be the world’s most advanced desktop operating system adding more than 250 features to the previous version. The fact is undeniable that Lion OSX has started to look more like the iOS, changing the desktop behavior to imitate that of an iPad.

Lion comes with a reasonable price of $29 that can be bought directly from the Mac App store and can be installed on top of Snow Leopard. It will also be available in a more pricey $69 version as an installable flash drive. The installation takes just a few clicks to upgrade the older version to the new version. The process is completely hassle free and takes closer to 25 minutes to finish.

One significant change which is noticeable is the iOS inspired inverted multi-touch scrolling which seems a bit awkward to work with. Saving grace is that we still have the option to revert back to the old style of scrolling. There have been plenty of additions and tweaks but without a doubt the muti-touch gestures are the highlight of this build. For eg. swiping three fingers from left to right brings up the dashboard. Look-wise nothing have changed much though the notification buttons are rectangular in shape, progress bars are flatter and scroll bars disappears when not in use and can be brought back with the scrolling gesture. A full-screen feature has also been added to view any application in a stand-alone mode minus all the unnecessary bars and notifications. Flicking with three fingers generally scroll though the full-screens of running apps giving a feel of switching spaces.

The search functionality has again been re-modified to accommodate top results from the web with the system search. The search results can be drag and dropped from the Spotlight list to the Desktop for easy access. Addition of Mission Control & Launchpad has made the Desktop behave like a plane cockpit from where you can control everything. In Launchpad the screen gets populated with apps just like iPad. Even the folders in the Launchpad looks exactly like the iOS folder imitating the iPad gestures of moving, deletion etc. Whereas Mission Control shows all the running apps with all of their screens open, from where you can navigate to the desired app. The Mail, Address Book and Calendar app also went through major changes to look and feel like the iOS counterparts.

OSX Lion finally comes with the Resume, Auto-save & Versions feature. Resumes saves apps automatically and opening them as it is, where it was left off. This feature is highly useful during app crashes and system shutdowns. Auto-save saves the work at regular interval of 5 minutes to avoid loss of data due to crashes whereas Versions helps you to revert back to the previous version of the data saved. Lion also comes with the Airdrop feature where you can share files amongst Mac systems in the range of 30 feet with a Wi-Fi.

Performance of the OSX Lion is better as compared to the Snow Leopard with the same hardware configuration. It is much faster and responsive though the apps loading & shutting down takes a bit of time in comparison. The Lion is built for Intel systems only so the old PowerPC is no longer supported. With the price far competitive, features far extensive and performance far superior than MS Windows, it is becoming a force to reckon with in the Desktop OS market.