“The first major update to Apple’s Mac operating system in some five years is nearly ready, and what has been removed is as significant as its improvements,” Liam Proven reports for The Register.
“Mac OS X 10.7, known informally as Lion, continues the trend of removing ‘legacy’ components and technologies from OS X with a zeal that would leave Microsoft quivering in terror,” Proven reports.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s formally known as “Lion,” and it’s “OS X,” no “Mac,” at least according to no less an authority than Apple.
“Several components have received iOS-inspired makeovers: Mail and Address Book have new, very iPad-like user interfaces, while the Launchpad is an iOS-style easy app launcher that reminded us of the Dashboard in Ubuntu’s controversial Unity desktop,” Proven writes. “Dashboard, Exposé and Spaces have merged into Mission Control, offering an instant overview of all running apps and applets on all desktops.”
Proven writes, “Mac OS X 10.7 is an impressive upgrade, well worth the wait. For new users, it’s a shoo-in – especially for Windows-based iOS users. Existing Mac users looking to upgrade face quite a few drawbacks, though. Going completely legacy-free could be an expensive exercise – but it will be worth it if there are Intel-native or Universal versions of all your core applications. If you can, though, it looks worth it.”
Read more in the full article here.
5 years?
The Register obviously has trouble counting beyond two.
Yea…..its been about 4 years. 2007 Leopard was released. Snow Leopard was just a patch job and really wasn’t a major release through my eyes.
MDN take says; …. and it’s “OS X,” no “Mac,”
Not entirely true … look at the side panel on this page;
http://developer.apple.com/technologies/mac/whats-new.html
and scroll down to the bottom of this page to the “Developers” link with the picture of the hammer;
http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is/
Or pop open “About This Mac.” That’s about as official as it gets.
@inquisitiveE, So right. Now, will MDN revise their “take?”
Lion isn’t much of an upgrade…. nor was Snow Leopard.
Apple is no longer innovating as they use too – especially in the OS X!
Trolling twat
I guess making the code leaner and more efficient (SL) was not innovative compared to Microsoft’s bloating, cancerous style.
Well yes, Leopard -> Snow Leopard-> Lion are evolutionary steps forward not revolutionary ones.
However, compare that to the backwards travel endured by Windows sufferers: vista/win7 is far more bloated, slower clunker and less stable than XP, which was far more bloated, slower, clunkier and less stable than WIndows-2000 was.
So yeah moving forward, if only at a reasonable steady pace, sounds pretty good compared to going continuously downward and backward in large flops and jerks
It’s just a PC (in a general meaning), and almost a final/mature product. Innovation on this kinda product is basically a tweaking. Like a car, you don’t wanna drive a car with a joystick or anything like that.
used to! use too means use also.
and water is DRY?
Why mess with perfection?
TardTroll.
Unfortunately I’m chained to Rosetta because of an older app I must have for my business until a work-around comes along. Bummer.
Quicken?
In my discussions with Intuit due to the problem of Quicken 2007 running under Rosetta, and not running under Lion, as well as the fact that Quicken Essentials does not support Bill-Pay, and lacks the robust reporting usually found in Quicken products, Intuit stated to me that: “our product development team is working on improving the features of Quicken Essentials for Mac. ”
Hopefully, this means Bill-Pay and Reporting. BUT, when Essentials was initially released, and I spoke with Intuit, they said they were fielding a lot of complaints about Essentials due to not including Bill-Pay and other features, and they would have to incorporate Bill-Pay.
That was February 25th, 2010.
Intuit needs to get on the ball in plain English.
Intuit needs to get on the ball in plain English – right, they do but every time I talk to Intuit, the tech people are talking in English, which is their second language.
I’m running Parallels 5 so I can run some sign-making software and also quicken home and business. I haven’t seen anything on the Mac that has the feature set I use on quicken in one app. I would love to see a Mac version as powerful and inclusive as the Windows one.
Tried to upgrade to Parallels 6 but had some initial problems, so I kept 5 and gave it to another person on my team that needed it (Quickbooks). I hope my Parallels works with Lion! And intuit needs to get its Mac on or maybe it’s got stock in Parallels and VM ware.
Since Intuit has not been prepared for Lion, I had to place two safe bets: a 10.6.8 PPC partition, and I purchased a license for Parallels (v. 6). I’ll run XP under it, and in addition to the photography apps I need to run, it will be my second safe bet in the event I have to migrate to Quicken for XP (yuck!).
Complete PIA!!!
AppleWorks?
Last updated January 2004, EOL’d August 2007. “He’s dead, Jim.”
iWork applications open AppleWorks files, except for database files. Export your database files as tab-delimited, and convert the tab characters to commas; almost anything will import CSV files.
Not having Rosetta and backward compatibility with some of my old apps and games will be a deal breaker for the foreseeable future for me unless a third party supplies that compatibility, which doesn’t seem likely.
@MDN,
Why does it say July 2nd on your homepage? Server in New Zealand?
Apple would be wise to release a full list of software that will be locked out of Lion. A complete compatibility, buyer be aware list.
Hopefully they learned something from the Final Cut X release.
It’s easy to find out on your Mac what apps won’t be supported. Go to “About This Mac”, and in the window that opens up click “More Info…”
In the next window scroll down the left side until you see “Software”, and click the triangle to the left to open it’s contents. Then, click on “Applications”.
The large window on the right will open showing all the apps on your Mac. Scroll to the right, and click on the header “Kind”. That will sort the apps by “Kind” meaning “Classic” (long gone under Mac OS 9), PowerPC (which will not be supported in OS 10.7 (“Lion”), “Intel” (supported under Lion), and “Universal” (supported under Lion).
Rosetta supported PowerPC apps. With Rosetta gone under Lion, PowerPC apps will not run.
For the very few PowerPC apps I need to run (thank you Intuit), I setup a small partition on my hard drive running 10.6.8, and I will run my PowerPC apps from that partition until replacement for my PowerPC apps are released. It’s a pain, though, as I have to re-boot into that partition to run those apps.
here…
http://roaringapps.com/apps:table
No Rosetta
No Lion
No lyin’!
MDN should have warned us about the rest of the article like they usually do with insincere stuff this.
They even made auto saves sound like a negative. A lot of minor stuff made to sound like major drawbacks. Most of those complaints are for PC type of supports that can all be addressed by installing parallels and windows.
NOTE: Because Lion is BETAWARE, and Apple have made no clear statement, we still don’t know if Rosetta IS or IS NOT in Lion. We apparently have to wait until the final version of Lion is released to see if it remains a custom installation.
ALSO: Lion continues to be under an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement). Anyone reporting aspects of Lion that are not public knowledge up on Apple’s website, are BREAKING that NDA. You can bet that Apple are watching.
(Although at this point, late in the beta, Apple may be enjoying the free PR. They clearly have a game changing killer upgrade).
Does anyone know if there is a clean install option?
For all you Quicken users, you may want to look into iBank 4. It seems to do everything Quicken did for me, AND there is a free 30 day trial!
It did look pretty good, but I couldn’t see where it did some of the home and business features (mostly the business part). Otherwise it would appear to be a tremendous replacement for quicken.
Anyone know if my Mac Pro will run Lion or is it time to sell:
3.0 GHz x 2
1.33 GHz Bus Speed
MacPro2,1
Any 64-bit capable Intel Mac will work.
Specifically:
Any Core 2 Mac,
any Core i3, i5, i7 Mac,
any Xeon Mac.
All Mac Pros qualify.
What does NOT qualify:
• Any PPC Mac
• Any Core Solo or Core Duo Mac. IOW:
The first MacBook from May – early Nov 2006;
The first MacBook Pro from Jan – May 2006;
All Mac minis through August 2007.
“continues the trend of removing ‘legacy’ components and technologies from OS X with a zeal that would leave Microsoft quivering in terror,”
Couldn’t have said it better myself. The Mac died with Snow Leopard.