Of Course I Bought OS X Lion on the First Day
Because some times you just have to be who you are, and I’m the type of person who likes new operating systems and playing with new ways of doing things and futzing around with settings on the computer. I mention this not to seem special or especially adventurous, but to let my readers know that if you upgrade, either through buying Lion or when you get a new computer, and have any questions about the new features and settings, please feel free to ask me questions. I am by no means deeply knowledgeable about the underlying architecture, but for non-computer geeks I can probably answer most of your questions or concerns, or at least point you in the right direction to address them.
Here are just a few brief thoughts mostly related to user interface elements:
- New Scrolling Directions: Take some getting used to, but are worth putting in the effort to retrain your muscle memory, with the caveat that if you work on multiple computers or operating systems, it might be a good idea to switch back to the “regular” way of doing things.
- Hidden scrollbars: Bad, and I switched them back to always visible. I like being able to see where I am in a document at all times if I want to without having to move my mouse.
- Mission Control: Very good, almost great. The one quibble is that I would like to wrap around to the first desktop from the last instead of having to go backwards.
- Resizing windows from any point along the edge instead of the lower right hand corner: about effin’ time!! That was always one of my pet peeves about OS X, even years after switching from Windows.
- Full screen program view: In general, I really dig them, though there are some odd differences in how different programs present the menubar when you mouse up to the top of the screen. But I’m already frustrated with programs that haven’t integrated full-screen yet.
There are few other things I’ve tweaked (turning off the auto-correct function that is system wide) and a few other quibbles I’ve encountered. Because of how Lion remembers a program’s state (both content and window(s) position) I find myself with way more browser windows than I want whenever I open Safari. Yet, I don’t want to turn off the feature entirely because it’s so damn useful. What I’d like to have is individual settings for programs so that, for instance, Pages always remembers its state after I’ve quit and Safari starts with only one, new window.
So, a few thoughts and an invitation for family, friends, and those few strangers that read my words here: feel free to use my love of new Mac operating systems for your own benefit and let me know if I can help in any way.
UPDATE 2011-07-23: Logic Express 8 does NOT officially work with OS X Lion. There is a way to launch the program through the Terminal, [and my thanks to Bch2 at the Apple Discussions Board for posting it][1]. Once launched, the program seems to run fine, though you will need to keep the Terminal window open for as long as you are using the program. Definitely not something I expected!! While I have been considering upgrading to Logic Express 9 for quite a while, I’m also not sure if there might be a Logic Express 10 coming soon.