NY Times’ Pogue reviews Mac OS X Lion: Offers the promise of a fast, powerful, virus-free, thoroughly modern OS

15 years ago

“If the Lion upgrade is about any one thing, it’s about the iPad,” David Pogue writes for The New York Times. “What made the iPad a mega-hit? Two factors, really”

“Factor 1: Simplicity. No overlapping windows; every app runs full screen. No Save command; everything’s autosaved. No files or folders. No menus. All your apps are in one place, the Home screen,” Pogue writes. “Factor 2: The multitouch screen. You cycle through screens by swiping the glass, zoom out by pinching and rotate something by twisting two fingers.”

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“Spending the day with your arm outstretched, manipulating tiny controls on a vertical surface is awkward and exhausting. The ache you feel later is not-so-affectionately known as Gorilla Arm,” Pogue writes. “Apple has built what it considers a better solution, a horizontal multitouch surface. That’s the trackpad of its laptops, and the top surface of its current mouse.”

MacDailyNews Take: If you use OS X Lion on your desktop Mac, we recommend you take a serious look at Apple’s $69 Magic Trackpad. We use them with our Mac desktops and OS X Lion just isn’t the same without them.

Pogue writes, “The good news is that once you learn all of this stuff, it does work… If you prefer the status quo, you don’t ever have to put an app into full-screen mode, or use a touch gesture, or open apps from the Launchpad. You can even turn off that reversed-scrolling-direction thing… It may never be the king of the jungle. But once the world’s software companies have fully Lionized their wares, and once Apple exterminates the bugs, Mac OS X 10.7 might be something even more exotic: a fast, powerful, good-looking, virus-free, thoroughly modern operating system.”