Apple today released a developer preview of Mac OS X Lion, which takes some of the best ideas from iPad and brings them back to the Mac for the eighth major release of the world’s most advanced operating system. Lion features Mission Control, an innovative new view of everything running on your Mac; Launchpad, a new home for all your Mac apps; full screen apps that use the entire Mac display; and new Multi-Touch™ gestures. Lion also includes the Mac App Store, the best place to discover, install and automatically update Mac apps. The Lion preview is available to Mac Developer Program members through the Mac App Store today, and the final version of Lion will ship to customers this summer.
“The iPad has inspired a new generation of innovative features in Lion,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, in the press release. “Developers are going to love Mission Control and Launchpad, and can now start adding great new Lion features like full screen, gestures, Versions and Auto Save to their own apps.”
Mission Control is a powerful, entirely new feature that unifies Exposé, Dashboard, Spaces, and full screen apps to give you a bird’s eye view of every app and window running on your Mac. With a simple swipe, your desktop zooms out to display your open windows grouped by app, thumbnails of your full screen apps as well as your Dashboard, and allows you to instantly navigate anywhere with a click.
Launchpad makes it easier than ever to find and launch any app. With a single click, Launchpad displays all your Mac apps in a stunning full screen layout where you can launch, re-order or organize apps into folders. You can also arrange apps into multiple pages and swipe between them.
Lion brings the full screen experience that iPad users love to the Mac. With one click, your application window goes full screen, taking advantage of your Mac’s brilliant display. You can swipe from one full screen window to another and even back to your Desktop or Dashboard.
New Multi-Touch gestures and fluid animations give you a natural and intuitive way to interact with your Mac. New gestures include pinching your fingers to zoom in on a web page or image, swiping left or right to turn a page or switch between full screen apps and swiping up to enter Mission Control.
Lion also includes the Mac App Store, where you can find great new apps, buy them with your iTunes® account, and download and install them in just one step. Apps purchased from the Mac App Store are installed directly into Launchpad.
Additional features in Lion include:
• a new version of Mail, with an elegant, widescreen layout inspired by the iPad;
• Conversations, which automatically groups related messages into one easy to read timeline;
• more powerful search; and support for Microsoft Exchange 2010;
• AirDrop, a remarkably simple way to copy files wirelessly from one Mac to another with no setup;
• Versions, which automatically saves successive versions of your document as you create it, and gives you an easy way to browse, edit and even revert to previous versions;
• Resume, which conveniently brings your apps back exactly how you left them when you restart your Mac or quit and relaunch an app;
• Auto Save, which automatically saves your documents as you work;
• the all new FileVault, that provides high performance full disk encryption for local and external drives, and the ability to wipe data from your Mac instantaneously; and
• Mac OS X Lion Server, which makes setting up a server easier than ever and adds support for managing Mac OS X Lion, iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices.
Apple’s Mac OS X Lion preview is here.
Source: Apple Inc.
sounds realy cool
especially versions and airdrop
but….
why are they making all the windows bigger, with fullscreen and the bigger apple mail etc. That’s an M$ windows thing :/
It’s more of an iPad thing in this case.
Available through the Mac App Store… Awesome!
wait… how do you get a recovery disk then?
The store will remember your purchases just like the iTunes store.
Awesome.
Confused – Is Lion Server built into the normal Lion so there will be no more separate Server version?
Looks like it.
Oooh, versions.
Digital had that on their minicomputers in the 70s. AFAIK, they were the only company to have that in their OS.
As someone who has been in computers since the Apple ][, I remember when word processors would create a .BAK file of the previous existing version of the document when you saved when you saved in your word processor. A good idea that has been missing for close to two decades now.
iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad iPad
Awesome.
For (most likely) $129, you get OS X Lion (Server).
Can’t wait to see the next Windows versions (home, home premium, business, executive suite, professional, godlike, home-server, premium server, …..)
@QCA
Yes, this is nothing new, but it will be interesting to see how the versions are accessed and how the changes are viewed. When I use SolidWorks, it creates a backup file of the session, but the confusion is when you want to revert to a previous version and have to open each file to view it, and make sure by opening the backup that you don’t create a backup of the backup. The names of the previous files can be successive, etc, but it would be nice to be able to roll through the versions within the app. I cant wait to see how Apple handles this.
The UI and experience is going to be up to developers, not Apple persay.
Apple is just providing the capability.
Actually it looks like the UI will look like Time Machine.
Downloading now…
So are everything sounds good.
However, there are three features my former windows clients are really hoping to see in Lion.
1. SAVE WINDOW POSITION. Everyone of my former windows clients misses the ability to have an application open maximized automatically. (Application opens full screen except the dock is still visible.) A maximized screen focuses the user on the task at hand but allows quick application switching via the dock.
Full screen mode is nice for those with a small screen. However, if you have a large screen, why take an extra step to make the dock visible if have have the screen space available for the dock.
The user should have the option to either have full screen or have the operating system remember the users preferred window size and location.
2. Mouse pointer size – my clients with 27 inch iMacs really wish Apple would give the user two additional mouse pointer sizes – medium and large. Currently you can scale the mouse pointer size but the pointer becomes jagged very quickly.
3. Magic Mouse control – None of my iMac clients like the speed of the Magic Mouse. The slow movements are too slow and the fast movements are too fast. Clients like the Magic Mouse under Bootcamp but not in Snow Leopard. Maybe Apple should allow the user to adjust the non accelerated movement speed and separately adjust the acceleration factor.
Overall I think my clients will be fairly pleased with what Apple will introduce with 10.7.
So what My droid does flash……..J/K I thought I’d say it before one of the Android douchebags
Where’s OS support for solid state drives (SSD)?
Apple sells SSD’s in their stores. It’s high time that OS X support them as more than just another drive.
How should they support them?
I’m no expert, but I thought Windows has a way to speed up application booting by putting the most used apps on the SSD and leaving the less-used ones on the HD. It does this automatically.
Or something like that.
Windows doesn’t do that automatically. In any OS using multiple types of drives You have to make sure you install your stuff on the preferred drive/ filesystem/mount point and you are good to go.
Actually, Windows 7 DOES do this automatically. It’s called ReadyBoost. If you have a fairly fast SSD or flash-based drive, it’ll gather information about what programs you use most frequently and cache them to your SSD. Even if you point to the icon that refers to your C: drive, it’ll refer to the ReadyBoost cache and it’ll load faster.
It’s basically the same concept as Seagate’s hybrid SSD drive, only a bit easier to implement for the end user (because they don’t have to replace their hard drive).
I’m glad I stopped using windows at v5 (xp) it looks like it really went down hill since then first there was unneeded strain on the cpu from non hardware execrated effects, then the lying about the version number (“7” is really 6.1)
but now it moves your files around onto removable disks!?!?
that’s retarded, if I use it allot /I/ will put my app file onto an ssd, I don’t want the os screwing around with my stuff like that
wow microsoft never ceases to amaze (neither does apple but they amaze me very differently)
UM no… Caching frequently used files and installing entire applications on a thumb drive are 2 entirely different things…..
Maybe because this is a transitional technology that only works on hybrid SSD/HD systems, Apple doesn’t see the value to implementing it? Perhaps, Apple thinks computer systems will go all SSD very quickly?
Homer, interesting that SolidWorks creates a backup file of the previous version.
I use SolidWorks but never realized that feature existed. I don’t try to learn “everything” and just do my design work to get the job done. I ought to read up more.
Instead I wind up using a, b, c and so-on suffixes, every time I want to progress to a new stage of the design. That way, I KNOW what is saved and when and what version I can go back to. It is not unusual to go into an exploratory design change and realize it is a bust and drop back a couple suffixes and start the change over a different way.
It seems that the imminent release of Lion 10.7 won’t give 10.6.7 much of a lifetime.
As for me, the Big Question is: does it break Eudora?
No doubt, it’ll be a monster of an OS. Pity Apple couldn’t hire Lion Cheney to do the adverts.