My take on Lion

I always have to have the latest and greatest in software. Some people hate change, but I love it. So of course I upgraded to OS X Lion yesterday. It was a pretty simple and easy upgrade. It took about 45 minutes, and Lion was up and running with all my settings intact. For the most part it works great. Nothing too revolutionary though. I’m not even sure how much I am going to be using any of the new features.

The Launchpad it interesting. It’s like an iPad look of your apps. I think it would be great on a touch screen, but don’t see the point of it on a desktop. It’s much quicker to use Spotlight, or my favorite Google Search Box to launch an app.

Mission Control is pretty looking and makes it easier to set up your multiple desktops. I like it, but I’m not a fan of the new layout of the multiple desktops. I preferred them in a grid rather than a in a line, but I can get use to it.

I don’t really understand the Full Screen Mode that most apps have now. I guess I see if you want to work distraction free, but it just blanks out my second monitor when I go to full screen. It kind of defeats the point in having two monitors.

Then there is the backward scrolling. I don’t know anybody that didn’t turn that off. Again that makes sense on a tablet or touchscreen, but not a desktop. It should have been off by default.

I also wasn’t a big fan of the new layout in Mail, but that can be quickly changed in the preferences. No big deal.

As for the new mouse gestures? I hate the Magic Mouse, so I won’t be using any of them. My Logitech mouse just feels so much nicer in my hand. Apple makes some great hardware, but for some reason they can’t make a mouse that fits comfortably in your hand.

I did have one problem with Lion. It would not connect to my NAS. A quick Google search and I found a workaround, and got it working. A few terminal commanded, a couple reboots, and I connected to my NAS.

Overall I like the look. It’s not drastically different from Snow Leopard, and they have added some cheesy animations, but overall, probably worth the $30 upgrade despite all my complaints.