In what I hope breaks from this mould , may I say — without rail Apple ’s latest Mac o release or those multitude who ’ve chosen to embrace it — that Lion is n’t yet for me . At least not for the Macs I use for getting much of my work done . I spent many hours with the Lion betas and lived with thefinal Lion releaseon my MacBook Pro for a couple of weeks while go . I have to admit that I was relieve to return to my Mac Pro running Snow Leopard . And here ’s why .
Input devices
One of the major themes of Lion is the touch port and gestures . To fully take advantage of them , you must use a trackpad . ( Yes , I know today ’s Magic Mouse endure a smaller set of motion , but unless you grass in the petite aisle of the local Glovateria , half those gestures are desolate . Any side - to - side swipe with well - fed fingers is a atrocious and often futile exercise . ) I retrieve a trackpad to be a less precise input gimmick than a mouse — more often than I ’d like I have to wrestle with my trackpad to accurately post the cursor . So , I ’m a mouse guy .
As a mouse guy , gestures are a feature article I do n’t use . In cases where a mouse click is clumsy in compare to an procedure that can be fulfill with a gesture — snarf to a previous page or revolve an iPhoto trope , for example — I’ve recover that a keyboard crosscut work commendable ( and , unlike a motion , works every time ) . Also as a mouse guy , Apple ’s natural scrolling is no benefit to me . I understand why it could be useful with a trackpad — it ’s barely a leap to imagine how the direction of iOS gestures can be implement with a trackpad — but when you inclose a mouse ’s scroll wheel , the amour propre breaks down . There ’s nothing natural or intuitive about incite a scroll roulette wheel in the direction paired to what we ’ve used in the past tense .
Applications I don’t use
Apple has introduced a act of improvement to Mail , include conversation , the Favorites Bar , and well look for . I still wo n’t use it . The decision to use one email customer or another often rests on a pair of features life-sustaining to your perceived needs . In my typesetter’s case , I need to be able to quickly categorize people who send me email and then filter that email based on the sender ’s class . Specifically , if I receive a PR sack , I go after the transmitter as Porto Rico so that whenever that person next sends me a message , that substance is diverted to my PR leaflet . post does n’t provide an refined way to do this . Microsoft Outlookdoes . And so Outlook — despite its bugs and slowdowns — remains my choice . Again , this is a very specific need . post may be a perfect fit for you .
iCal and Address Book — with their new “ like the literal matter ” look — aren’t for me either . iCal has become less utile to me over the years thanks to Apple hiding its editing features and , now , force you to click a Calendars push button whenever you want to see a list of your calendars . I ’m promising ( and felicitous ) about these applications ’ desegregation with iCloud , but I manage events and contacts elsewhere — BusyCalfor my calendars and Outlook for contact .
High-concept, lower functionality
When work with Lion I sometimes feel like I ’m watch an Andy Kaufman subprogram — concept is central to appreciate the performance . But when you focus on what ’s really chance , it ’s just some guy singing “ 99 bottleful of Beer on the Wall . ”
Take Launchpad , for instance . The Launchpad idea works well on an iOS gadget given the constraints of the port — no windowed environment or sense of a directory hierarchy . But on a Mac where I may have hundreds of covering ? There are skilful ways . I know , it ’s one of many options for launching applications . And it ’s an selection that ’s best used by those who have very few applications programme . But for me — who has those hundreds of program program — it ’s a cumbersome port that I ’ll ignore .
Or scroll bar . This is another concept that mould well under iOS but makes little sense to me in the Mac type O . How , in any way , does take away the pointer buttons from a scroll bar make that scroll bar more functional ? The aesthetic of a less littered scroll bar ( or no scroll bar at all ) is interesting , but I do n’t need my Mac to be aesthetically interesting in this example . I need it to provide me with mastery for easily navigating windows .
And Autocorrect : I ’ve regain this feature to be a life ring on my iOS twist because of those gadget ’ small keyboard , where I ’m disposed to mistype . However , I use a full - sized physical keyboard with my Mac . With that keyboard , I ’m a far better typist and yet Autocorrect pops up every so often to “ objurgate ” a perfectly ok word . If I ’m not careful , wrong give-and-take are inserted and I subsequently have to go back and correct the autocorrection .
For power users and not
Lion has a loading of features that power user could take advantage of , yet Lion often steps in the style of those same exponent users . I ’ll proffer Mission Control as a +1 for big businessman users . Apple took a couple of underused ( because they were a bit ill-chosen ) features — Exposé and Spaces — and mixed them together into the ample soup that is Mission Control . body of work - surroundings direction has become more powerful and gesture make the thing a pleasure to expend in the correct hands . But cool - looking at though it may be , it ’s not a feature that the mythically falter new users , “ your parent , ” are ever going to touch . Both the concept and carrying out are too convoluted for newbies .
The – 1 for power drug user is permissions . Lion routinely demands that I authorize one action or another with my Administrator ’s password or bland - out bars me from conducting an cognitive process because I do n’t have the right permissions . I understand that the impression of the Administrator does n’t mean what it once did — someone with the power to easily originate veridical variety on the Mac . And for good ground : Anyone who instal Lion is an Administrator and give that form of power to new users is n’t always a good idea . However , if Apple is going to dilute the Administrator ’s account to the head where mistake dialogs fly left and right-hand and I want to get at Info windows to alter permissions on data file and folders to do things I could easily accomplish under Snow Leopard , let ’s make another user grade — the Super Administrator . I ’m not asking for root privileges , but I would like to be able to move files where I want them , throw out item in the Applications pamphlet ( even if they were installed with Lion ) , and have a visible Library folder in my exploiter folder .
Not baked to my satisfaction
And there ’s Lion ’s stability . It ’s not unusual for these kinds of major bone freeing to have problems when they first leap from the gate . Lion is no exception . The initial Lion release was kooky in my experience . The10.7.1 releasehas help , but I still find Lion less stable than Snow Leopard .
Summing up
My Leslie Townes Hope is that those who are tempted to react to this report ’s headline will scroll down to this scrap before posting a het up reply . Again , I ’m not intimate that Lion is a terrible , atrocious , no good O . It may be a great fit for you — particularly if you apply a trackpad and discover gestures convenient . to boot , like every other version of the Mac OS , I gestate it will become better baked with each update . And I also understand that I can tack off nearly all of the features that I do n’t care for .
So , what it boils down to for me is this : What in Lion compels me to abandon what is currently a stable and functional version of the Mac o ? As a mouse - centric big businessman user who ’s tweaked his Mac to nigh - perfection , not enough .
Yet .
[ Christopher Breen is a elderly author for Macworld . ]
