“Apple’s latest release of Mac OS, called OS X Lion, went on sale today in the Mac App Store. I had an opportunity to use Lion before today’s release, and I can say that this major release is well worth the $29.99 upgrade fee,” Michael Gartenberg reports for Computerworld.
“One of the hallmarks of Lion is how Apple delivers evolutionary change that adds up to a revolutionary experience. It has taken many cues from iOS, the operating system used on the iPhone and iPad. Users of those two popular devices will feel very much at home with Lion,” Gartenberg reports. “In fact, if you’re partial to swiping to scroll and pinching to zoom in but you’re a Mac desktop user, you might want to invest in an Apple Magic Trackpad to get the full Lion experience. Meanwhile, notebook users will discover that their trackpads have taken on new functionality.”
Advertisement: OS X Lion. The world’s most advanced desktop OS advances even further. Just $29.99 at Mac App Store.
Gartenberg reports, “As much as I appreciate what Apple has done with Lion, I don’t expect Microsoft to be surrendering its huge market-share advantage anytime soon? Nonetheless, Lion will only contribute to Apple’s expanding mind-share. And little by little, that mind-share will have an effect even on companies’ decisions about operating system deployment. IT is learning to listen to users (that’s the only reason the iPhone has been able to enter so many enterprises), and increasingly, mind-share does indeed lead to market share.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As the old guard IT doofuses retire and die off, young Apple-centric IT people take their place and the slowly creeping tide becomes a tsunami.
Related articles:
MSNBC reviews Mac OS X Lion: ‘Worth the upgrade’ – July 20, 2011
USA Today’s Baig reviews Mac OS X Lion: ‘Truly worth lionizing’ – July 20, 2011
Ars Technica reviews Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: ‘Better technology’ – July 20, 2011
” effect even on companies’ decision … mind-share does indeed lead to market share.”
not only that, in a hyper competitive environment if you don’t deploy the best equipement you will be killed. Competitive adantages leads to market share gains as well.
A real estate guy using an iPhone, iPad as he shows clients properties (clicking on photos of similar properties, checking mortgage rates etc) has a huge advantage over a rival struggling with a blackberry…
I noticed a number of smaller companies predominately using macs now: stability resulting in lower upkeep costs makes macs competitive. Cheaper software with direct downloads will help as well.
. . . and they look really cool! That’s so important.
Speaking of mind-share, has anyone seen a computer on a TV show in the last year that didn’t have the Apple logo in full view? No one in the public eye wants to be seen as backward enough to still use Windows.
Just think how many times a day Windows users are having the Apple logo shoved in their face. Eventually they will have to admit there is a better way and it’s time to switch. I say welcome aboard!
Great point about the Macs on the tube ……. One by one the crowd is changing their opinion …… I expect Mac sales to go 20-25 percent up year over year here soon …. Verses the 14% we just saw …..
I agree, ansel. The 14% rise we just saw would have been (WILL BE) much bigger now that the spectacular MacBook Air (MBA) has been released! Many of my friends were waiting on the refresh . . . and now–for them and millions of others–it’s “Katy, bar the door!”
The bad guys often have Windows PCs. 🙂
Actually I have seen a different kind of computer than an Apple on TV shows lately but its obviously because Microsoft has given the show a boat load of cash? Why you say? Because the laptops other than Apple I’ve seen have a glowing Windows logo instead of an Apple logo. We all know there are no laptops made with a glowing Windows logo because Microsoft doesn’t make laptops. They only sell shit software to put on PC hardware………but they have to try and stop the Apple train somehow right? So why not do it with fake laptop models?
How stupid do they think we are?
Just inside the cover of the current (Aug. 2011) issue of Conde Nast Traveler magazine is a four-page ad for Celebrity Cruises. Among the nine photos of the usual subjects (sun, fun, ships, food) is one showing six laptops on a table. From the text block: “Celebrity iLounge featuring MacBook Pro workstations and a staff of experts.” As you note, J. Scott, “welcome aboard.”
“Bones” uses Macs for smart human work, Dells for dumb instrument controllers. The as conspicuously show the Apple logo as the Dell logo.
“As the old guard IT doofuses retire and die off, young Apple-centric IT people take their place and the slowly creeping tide becomes a tsunami.”
I really wish that were true MDN, having suffered from the active obstruction of IT depts for many years. Sadly, the IT world is still dominated by Windoze-centric doofuses with minds shut as tight as a fish’s fundament, and I can’t see that changing in the forseeable future.
Quite simply, Microsoft has a stranglehold on the IT world, and the doofuses’ jobs depend on maintaining it.
On a more optimistic note, Apple is undoubtedly making great progress in the home computer market.
The difference is, with the ROI of using Macs, eventually businesses which stick with expensive and insecure Windows machines will suffer financially as their competitors switch to Macs. This is one of those things that will have to play out over a longer timespan. As long as Apple continues to home in on improving user experience & efficiency while continuing their relentless pricing attacks, those Windows strongholds will have to break down eventually.
I always hear this but from where i sit (IT for a very large enterprise) macs have never been blocked due to politics. Most old school IT people i know knew UNIX long before windows.
The reasons i saw in the past were usually work required software not being available or issues between the mac and windows version of a given application.
As those issues are rare in this day and age ive seen macs become much more accepted in enterprise IT.
You evidently work in a progressive IT department dude, and that’s great.
Sadly, that’s not been my experience. I could entertain you for hours with the efforts of my last IT department to crush my Mac out of existence. The battle ended in a bloody and inefficient draw, whereby my Mac was locked off the network (as a “security threat”) but I retained it on my desk. Access to the network was only permitted via a PC (running XP) squeezed into a corner of my office. Productivity was irrelevant; conformity was everything.
Other posts on this topic on MDN suggest that my experiences may be extreme, but this sort of conflict with IT depts is far from unusual. However, if you’ve personally contributed to the enlightened attitude of your IT dept. towards Macs, keep up the good work.
I never really thought about it but its entirely possible.
I often preach to others in our IT department that our philosophy should be that IT is here to serve the company and its needs, not the other way around.
We are piloting iPads currently and so far that is going well. I can see it becoming a standard soon.
The vast majority of our desktop machines are Windows boxes but we have some Mac Exclusive groups and the Mac is becoming an option to more people within the company as a whole.
I sent out some Q&A forms to get feedback from our mac users. I found that our mac users overall have been very resourceful when it comes to solving their own problems because we offered no support. Far more resourceful than our windows users mainly because our windows users know they can just pick up the phone and call our help desk and get answers.
So I pushed our internal help desk to actually document Mac specific processes and offer official support. We have a few appointed mac gurus who handle more complex issues and they were totally stoked as they were heavy macheads outside of work. Its been a success so far.
Sure there are times when what a user wants is not possible simple due to company red tape or approval, certification and accreditation for certain devices or software, but we do work to provide what our users ask us for and we try to balance that with the budget constraints and needs of the overall business.
People just produce better work when they are happy and feel confident in the computers and software they use.
Oftentimes, the “required software” that caused the most cross-platform problems were Microsoft titles – Office, Project, Outlook/Exchange, etc.
Microsoft made a number of underhanded moves in those titles over the years to ensure that Macs were second-class citizens, at the best. I have long believed that Mac users would end up having the last laugh. I look forward to the day that my Mac is no longer cluttered by the bloat of Microsoft products.
“young Apple-centric IT people take their place”… It’s true! Just got the company I work for order the very first Mac computer entering our office! And I am pretty sure it is not the last one!
I got bumped into First Class on the evening flight from Houston to Dulles yesterday. Of the six of us sitting up there, four had iPhone 4s. The one guy with a blackberry also had an iPad2. The last guy had some 7″ thing he didn’t bother using once.
probably best he didn’t pull out his 7″ thing.
What ever how good Lion is , the growth is dismal incomparison to iPhone and iPad .
The Halo affect is not extending enough and it is particulary due to Price.
The adoption for iPhone and iPad has been huge due to it’s price .
Apple should reduce it Mac prices for adoption to increase.
Also Anyone know how to turn off auto save feature in Lion ?? Saving the document for any changes , I don’t need it jn photoshop, there is already history !!