It break my affection to say this, but Mac OSX Lion's interface feels like a failure. Its declared mission was to abridge the operating system, to arrange it with the apple-pie acquaintance of iOS. That didn't happen.
If it weren't for the fast, rock-solid Unix, cartoon and networking cores, Lion would be Apple's actual own Vista.
The aisle to a simpler future
When Steve Jobs first alien Lion, he set a adventurous goal: to yield what has fabricated the iPad and the iPhone so acknowledged and accompany it to the desktop. There's annihilation amiss with that. The description of the computer experience—which in fact gives added ability to the users by acceptance them to focus on their plan instead of blame about with their apparatus to accomplish it do what they want—has been the Holy Grail of computers aback the 80s.
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It happened then, if we switched from the command band to the graphical desktop. (For the complete history of this evolution, read this). But in the endure three decades computers accept afresh become too complicated for a lot of people. The blow of us put up with it because we've gone through years of conditioning, but a lot of humans don't apperceive any conventions and shortcuts accumulated over two decades—the layers aloft layers of user interface, patched one on top of another.
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That's why the iPad and the iPhone accept been so amazing. They were apple-pie slates that kicked all those conventions to the curb. The aftereffect is a simple, able environment. It's awesome. It is the future.
Lion is the amiss footfall into that future. By aggravating to amuse everyone, the OS X aggregation has produced an adverse user interface caricature that will not amuse the consumers gluttonous artlessness nor the able users in seek of OCD control. Angel hasn't absolutely targeted a specific population. Or provided capricious levels of user control—a super-simple modal interface for accustomed humans and pro-level archetypal window interface for nerds. That's what Microsoft is aggravating to do with Windows 8. Ironically, if Apple had taken a page out of Microsoft's book in this case, it would accept been a footfall in the appropriate direction.
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Lots of adequate intentions
The aboriginal time I started Lion I was assured Launchpad to yield over the screen, like the iPad. Angel accustomed it as the new way to barrage your apps. The accumulated approach of Lion-iOS-iCloud is good, about magic: Launchpad to admission your apps, apps to admission your abstracts which, eventually, would all be in the billow and attainable from all your devices. Eliminating the concrete desktop allegory completely, the aforementioned way Gmail has alone the charge to accept mail folders. With accepted instant-search technology, there's no charge for anal binder organization. Avant-garde users and added masochists would still accept admission to their Finders for the time being, of course, just like Microsoft is accomplishing with Windows 8.
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That could accept fabricated a lot of faculty for anybody involved. But what Angel did doesn't compute: Launchpad is allegedly the way to admission all your apps, but who wants to bang already on the dock's Launchpad icon, barrage that interface, and afresh baddest your app if you can just accessible the app from the Finder itself? It's an added bang (or two or three). It's added complexity; it's superfluous.
Mission Chaos
That's one allotment of Lion's assorted personality problem. Mission Ascendancy forth with Abounding Awning apps is another. Mission Ascendancy is accustomed by Angel as the absolute alliance of Exposé and Spaces. Beloved by avant-garde users, Exposé and Spaces are abundant abundance accoutrement in Leopard. The aboriginal allows you to bound baddest apps and windows. Spaces helps pro users acclimate plan environments, by alignment altered app windows all amphibian on altered desktops.
The way they alloyed it (check the video for a bigger understanding) may plan for avant-garde users, but it is way too complicated for consumers. It feels like a torn arch amid the modal angel and the windowed world.
By default, there's a Dashboard Space, area all widgets live, like in the accepted Mac OS X. Afresh there is a Desktop Space, area the windowed apps exist. Again, this is like in Leopard. In Lion there could be assorted desktops alignment altered apps, all set by the user. And finally, there is Abounding Awning App Space, which after-effects in assorted spaces too, one per app demography over the accomplished screen. iPhoto, Examination and abounding arrangement apps can run abounding awning at this point.
This is not a bad abstraction per se. If you plan alone with Abounding Awning Apps it all makes absolute sense. It's actual simple and bland to move from one app to the added annexation your three or four fingers larboard or right. Your apperception switches tasks as you move from app to app. I mostly plan with Photoshop, my called browser, iMovie/FCP and Mail. Add iPhoto for my claimed 70,000-photo anthology and iTunes for about 12,000 songs. It'd be actual adequate for me to about-face through abounding awning versions of these apps. I like the artlessness and the accuracy it brings.
But if you add Desktop Spaces and the Dashboard Space, it all becomes a mêlée of windows, desktops, squares, Dashboard widgets and icons. If you get into Mission Ascendancy by annexation three fingers up, you get a new clusterfuck that is added to the adequate windowed clusterfuck we accept now. Bang on one of the windows or spaces or whatever to go to it. Does it work? Yes. Is it added ambagious for consumers than Exposé or Spaces? Yes. It's added complicated because it tries to mix ascendancy of all these altered entities in one individual place. The mix doesn't work.
Allegedly, as all third-party apps cover the abounding awning approach that Angel is advocating, a Desktop Amplitude would become a home for baby single-window apps like iChat or Twitter (or at that time, it may be bigger to move all of those to the Dashboard Amplitude and get it over with). Avant-garde users would be able to run all their apps in the Desktop Spaces if they capital so. Accustomed users would be able to run all their apps in abounding awning mode, simplifying their lives. Like with Launchpad, abounding awning apps should be the absence approach of apps, unless defined in the Arrangement Preferences.
For consumers, that would aftereffect in a pure, advantageously simple modal ambiance like the iPad. The pros would still accept their clusterfuck.
The aberration problem
This mix and bout of concepts brings a lot added problems. Yield this example: if you are in a abounding awning app, there's no simple way to accessible a new app. You either accept to bash your way aback to a Desktop amplitude and barrage your app from the Dock or the Finder or Launchpad. Or you bash your three fingers up to admission Mission Ascendancy and barrage your app from the Dock or bang on Launchpad in the Dock and acquisition your app there. Or you can admission the Command + Tab card and admission Launchpad from there. Or you can acquisition your app in the Spotlight accoutrement on the top card of the abounding awning app.
These assorted credibility of admission would accomplish the arch of any customer explode, while avant-garde users would apparently go for a quick third-party launcher like Alfred, something that would acquiesce them to bound accessible any app or certificate from anywhere.
That's not the alone cephalalgia that this mix of assorted concepts introduce. There's the affair of aberration in gestures. Never apperception the addition of Natural Scrolling, which basically reverses the way you accept circling all your activity to bout the way the iPad does it (your academician will acclimate to it in a few minutes—but you can consistently about-face it off). The botheration is that gestures are not constant amid applications.
You bash larboard and appropriate with three fingers to move through spaces, but if you are in Launchpad, you do a agnate affair by appliance two fingers only. One doesn't work. That's because Launchpad is an application, so it uses the two-finger page-swapping gesture. But it feels amiss because your academician is active to the way you bandy spaces. In Safari, the two-finger swapping makes you biking in your history. In Preview, it makes you go through pages. Which affectionate of makes sense, but it doesn't.
There's a botheration there, which is adequate traveling to affect added apps. It feels like the action accent is non-consistent and it's absolutely not as automated as the iPhone or the iPad, conceivably because the blow aspect doesn't exist. One tip: If you are traveling to get Lion, get a Magic Trackpad.
The animal abortion of the concrete metaphor
Another iOS aspect that has formed its way into Mac OS X Lion is the graphical appetite of concrete surfaces. Now there's gross faux copse panelling in Photo Booth. The Abode Book is a absolute angel hardbound abode book. iCal is a blood-soaked pseudo-calendar fabricated of cardboard and leather.
The catechism is: Why is Angel breeding things that are anachronistic already? Do humans still use calendars fabricated of covering and paper? Do humans use agendas? Seriously, does anyone beneath 18 even apperceive what these are?
I accept that the iOS guidelines alarm for concrete surfaces to allure touch, but that's because there's a awning to touch. And, let's face it, we are not in 2008 anymore. Anybody knows how to blow a screen. And I can't blow my iMac awning and accomplish it do anything, anyway.
It may be the accountable for addition article, but this appetite of old being feels like a adolescent gimmick, abundant like the old gummy-drop Aqua interface feels old and anachronous now. In this regard, conceivably Angel software humans should accept taken a page from Jon Ive and his cronies: Abridge the interface, get rid of the things that don't add any advice to the user, all the abortive adornments. I'd accept admired to see a user interface that echoed Apple's own accouterments and use of typography.
The appropriate stuff
It's not all bad. They got rid of the Aqua clabber scrollbars and—when they are not accomplishing contemporary real-world article emulation—the graphical aspects of the user interface are simpler and unified. Added abstaining than anytime before.
The use of action is aswell gorgeous, and abounding of meaning. The administration interface of AirDrop works great. It's simple, it makes sense, it works. There's annihilation superflous there. In Mail, the action acclimated to appearance accoutrement works well. It helps the user to accept what's traveling on ("oh, it's expanding!"). I would adulation to see added description of the cartoon and added use of action to aback information.
There are lots of added little things, like iChat and its unified acquaintance list, a abundant bare fix that third affair chats apps already had. The accounts and acquaintance advice is aswell unified in a iOS-like affectionate of way. Those things feel good. As do things like extenuative the cachet of appliance and the automated versioning of documents, which saves your abstracts automatically and allows you to go aback in time to about-face edits on a document-per-document basis. These little things will be acumen abundant for abounding to advancement to Lion.
I don't charge Lion, and you apparently don't charge it either
But overall, it doesn't feel like a must-have advancement to me.
I adulation Mac OS X. I've acclimated it aback the actual aboriginal and aching developer preview, aback in September 2000. I adulation iOS too, because its modal attributes simplifies able computing, and, at the aforementioned time, empowers accustomed people. I hoped Mac OS X Lion was traveling to absorb both perfectly. Sadly, from a user interface point of view, it has bootless to accomplish that. And by declining at this task, it has fabricated a blend of what was ahead absolutely acceptable.
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Mac OS X Lion still works. It's fast. It's solid. Its shortcomings could be partially fixed. And I'm abiding that abounding will apprentice these new user interfaces patches and reside with them. Me? I'd rather delay for a added articular operating system. Conceivably Mac OS 11. Or iOS 6.
