OS X Lion - anyone using it yet?

I'm obviously following all the discussions on places like macintouch.com, but I'm interested in the folk here. Anyone upgrade their Mac to 10.7 yet? How is it going for you?

I'm superstitious, I just can't bring myself to upgrade until the .1 release. On the other hand, Apple didn't have to press DVDs for distribution, so they had a few more weeks to find the last minute bugs. I haven't heard any whispers about the .1 release on the rumor sites.

I'm interested to hear what people think about Mission Control, especially anyone who relied on Spaces in 10.6.

 

I have it, it's okay. I'm not crazy about Mission Control, it really isn't better than the previous version of Exposé. And now instead of Spaces looping – if you had 4 spaces aligned horizontally, you could move right from #4 to #1 – they are completely linear and you can't do that anymore.

I do like the iOS-esque autocorrect when it comes to spelling, not that I'm a bad speller or typist but it catches the little things. It also corrects intentional mistakes or proper terms, which is irritating but it's infrequent enough that it doesn't bother me. I also kind of like Launchpad, though it'll never replace any other method of navigating my computer, it's nice to have all the applications available in one place that isn't just the Applications folder, which I always felt was a little clumsily navigated.

What I *love* is the system state restore: When you boot into Lion, if you so desire, it will retain every open program, position and setting in your workspace and restore it when you log in. This is great if you are dual booting with Windows and switch back and forth with any regularity, or hell, if you just have a power outage and don't have an APC.

Ultimately, if you don't NEED it then I'd wait, I picked it up because eventually Xcode and iOS development will require it, much like what happened with Snow Leopard, but in the meantime if you don't have a pressing need I'd say hold off, save your money.

 

Oh, I forgot the other thing that I was waiting on; Chrome Stable doesn't have the gestures working properly, and since that's where I spend most of my time, I need to wait for that as well.

 

I'm still trying to get the gestures down. Like Maverick mission control is a little awkward and I haven't found a use for launch pad yet when everything I really need is in the Dock. Launchpad could potentially replace me going to spotlight to launch something not in my Dock, but I'd need to figure out the gesture to open it or change it something else. Maybe someone new coming into OSX would like it better? I'm having trouble getting down the four finger close and open gestures down. In mission control when I have windows open and I click on a program or a window, it shakes but doesn't come into focus... Maybe it's just me having that problem but before with expose I never had to double, triple, or quadruple click a program window to bring it to focus.

Program saved states are a little awkward. If I close powerpoint with a slideshow open and I reopen powerpoint with another slideshow the previous stays in focus. I look confused and think I had opened the wrong but the one I intended to open is right behind the previous. The same thing happens with quicktime. Quit quicktime with a video window of a movie I finished watching. Later on open a different movie and the previous one stays in focus so I'm scratching my head for a second until I realize the video I want to watch is behind it... It's great if you're always opening the same files. Just have to make it a habit to Command + W then Command +Q if I want to start fresh next time.

Spell check everywhere is awesome and so does the auto-correct. Animations are pretty cool too. Visually the environment is very smooth and pretty.

 

I suspect that LaunchPad is designed for the beginners, for people who don't want to know about file systems. At least they let us ignore it, right?

 

I haven't noticed much of a change. I had to reset some of the gestures because I preferred "the old way". Upgrading seems to have broken my ability to interact with flash files on the internet (nice, Apple). Other than that. I haven't noticed much of a difference.

 

Yeah, Launchpad is pretty unobtrusive. If you remove it from your Exposé hot corners, it'll only come up if you launch it, and if you don't launch it, it is pretty out of sight, out of mind.

 

I really like Lion. The new Mail app is great and the overall functionality is bar-none

 

I will upgrade over Thanksgiving or Christmas. I'm trying to figure out if it is worth the $40 to get an Apple USB drive.