11 ms·

Apple releases dev preview of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion with AirDrop, FileVault

156 points by sandipc 16y ago

beaumartinez 16y ago
Apple has updated their page on Lion with descriptions and screenshots of (all? At least all those mentioned in the linked article) its new features: http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/ http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/
- psykotic 16y ago
  How many of the coolest-sounding features like Auto-Save, Versions and Resume will require special support per application? Resume is the only one that seems doable without that; they can piggyback on the existing OS support for suspend-to-disk hibernation.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - dchest 16y ago
    Auto-save and Versions work with document-oriented apps, so I guess they can also be doable without special support from app.
    - daleharvey 16y ago
      ive been fairly confused about how versions will work, im guessing applications will need to be versions aware for it to be useful, you can do it in the filesystem but without seeing the document in the application that seems kinda useless
      - dchest 16y ago
        You're right.
    - smackfu 16y ago
      The little asterisk after those features links to: "Available with apps that have been developed to work with Lion."
  - archenemy 16y ago
    Resume looks good, and if properly coupled with Bootcamp it can be great. (think: run a Windows app from OSX, have it reboot straight into the app, and back to OSX as-it-was when you leave Windows :)
  - glhaynes 16y ago
    This is one of those things where having the platform vendor provide an app store (especially one that is presumed to become the dominant method of app distribution and that they've shown they're willing to "curate aggressively" when they feel like it) can allow the vendor to push forward faster - they can easily lay down the law that all apps on the Store have to support these features as appropriate by, say, 3 mos after Lion ships. It prioritizes the platform vendor's feature desires over those of the developer or the users' direct vote, but I think it's wonderful for the industry to have at least one vendor (and one who arguably has good taste!) doing so.
    - raganwald 16y ago
      I also think it's wonderful. If Apple leaves progress up to developers, you have people like Aldus inventing new things like Desktop Publishing. Then again, if Apple leaves progress up to developers who are waiting for user demand, you'd never get a Macintosh in the first place. Nobody wanted a mouse until they were shown what you could do with a mouse and Aldus Pagemaker. Nobody wanted "undo" consistently implemented across all applications. And absolutely nobody wanted their applications to run in fully little "windows" on the screen. From this cherry-picked example, I conclude that a good platform does allow the vendor to push certain features forward, but it also gives developers a certain amount of leeway to innovate.
      - glhaynes 16y ago
        That's where I think Apple doesn't have as much of a problem as many devs want them to have: they give a lot of leeway already to devs to create tons of apps that people want. C.f. the various App Stores. And when (eventually? I don't know of it happening yet) some "killer app" appears on another platform that isn't possible on Apple's platforms, they can just narrowly relax the rules to allow it. This is why I'm happy to see both models exist and thrive. Android would look like an old Blackberry if not for Apple. And likewise Apple can pick up any advantage that Android has (other than a few, such as meeting the needs of markets outside Apple's target).
    - psykotic 16y ago
      That's a great point. I'm really excited about the future of the Mac with developments like these. Hopefully the API hooks are simple enough that it's a no-brainer choice for developers to make.
  - beaumartinez 16y ago
    Full-screen apps, auto save, versions, and resume all have an asterisk in their descriptions: available with apps that have been developed to work with Lion.
  - Wientje 16y ago
    I am guessing that these features are 'simply' a recompile away if the software uses Apple API's for all its document handling.
  - smackfu 16y ago
    Exactly. Currently OS X supports per-app Time Machine rollbacks, yet the only app I've ever seen support it is iPhoto.
    - danssig 16y ago
      Mail.app supports it as well. It's saved me more than once.
    - glhaynes 16y ago
      And Finder, of course...
    - wandermatt 16y ago
      I think Address Book also supports this.
  - villiros 16y ago
    From what I can figure out, Auto-Save and Versions are pretty-much built-in. Assuming an application that uses standard Cocoa approaches to document management, it just needs to declare its support for the auto-save functionality, and pretty much everything else will be handled by the system libraries. Fairly trivial. Resume is more involved, however: the application is responsible for (de)serializing its state. Again, for a document-based application that doesn't stray far from the "recommended" path, it should be fairly simple to implement. It's just a matter of the document and UI being auto-saved on termination, which requires little work from the developer. One very interesting side-effect of the Resume feature is that it removes the need for applications to stay running: the system can silently terminate unused applications, and bring them back if they're needed again. What's really exciting about this, is that it's turning applications into something that is "always there".
- sandipc 16y ago
  the video on that page of the new multitouch gesture support looks really useful
  - benjoffe 16y ago
    In that video it looks like safari now auto hides the scrollbar when it's not being used (kinda like on the iphone), seems like an odd thing to do, since 20px of screen space isn't as precious on a desktop as it is on a phone.
    - mashmac2 16y ago
      I don't think saving the screen space is really the point. It's more likely about reducing the amount of clutter on the screen. If you don't need something, why put it on the screen? Apple's minimalist design strikes again.
      - smackfu 16y ago
        The question is how to display things like that on a desktop OS that might be used with a mouse. With a touch gesture, you touch and then move vertically as a continous action. On a mouse, you click or turn a wheel, much more discrete actions. Edit: Aha, they addressed this: "With the new scrollbars, if all of the user’s pointing devices support both horizontal and vertical touch scrolling, the scrollbars are hidden during normal use. They will appear as an overlay on top of the window's content while the user is scrolling, and remain visible briefly to allow scrollbar dragging."
    - callahad 16y ago
      That's now the case everywhere, as per http://developer.apple.com/technologies/mac/whats-new.html#aqua http://developer.apple.com/technologies/mac/whats-new.html#a... "Mac OS X Lion introduces overlay scrollbars similar to those in iOS. These scrollbars appear as an overlay on top of the window's content while the user is scrolling and remain visible briefly to allow scrollbar dragging."
      - 16y ago
gks 16y ago
Am I reading this right? That Lion Server is included in the normal OS X Lion release? That's pretty awesome if so. Means I'd be willing to fork over the cash for one of those Mac Minis to use for Calendar/Contact syncing instead of using MobileMe.
- tvon 16y ago
  Seems so, from the Apple page on Lion: > Lion Server is now part of Mac OS X Lion.
- Stormbringer 16y ago
  The developer program has always included the server versions. At least it did up until they put out the iPhone developer program and didn't give the paid up Apple developers access without stumping up even more cash, which was the point where I rage-quit (would have been 2007 or 2008).
  - yardie 16y ago
    $500 -> $99. Depending on if you paid before or after the price change. Besides, $99 somethings gotta give. And all indications (atleast, recent indications) were pointing to Apple discontinuing the Server OS. Even though every version of OSX was basically server without the management tools, its good they brought the management to the desktop version.
    - Stormbringer 16y ago
      I think another factor is that disk drives have gotten so large compared to your average *nix that it doesn't really make sense not to include everything anymore on a desktop machine. Which is not to say that stripped down versions don't still have their place, but on a machine with half or even a full terabyte standard, tossing out the kitchen sink is more work than it is worth.
      - cpr 16y ago
        Though note that the server software is a custom install option; i.e., it's not there by default. Also note that Lion will be sold from the App Store, so physical discs (DVDs) are probably out. (They'll likely include one of those little flash drives with the new hardware with the install disk image on it.)
clammer 16y ago
Only Apple could brag about finally having a proper window maximize feature. I like many of their products, but their hubris is getting hilarious.
st3fan 16y ago
Screenshots or it did not happen!
jarin 16y ago
Mail 5 looks almost exactly like Sparrow: http://sparrowmailapp.com/ http://sparrowmailapp.com/ Although, if Mail 5 is inspired by Mail on the iPad, it's probably more fair to say that Sparrow looks almost exactly like Mail on the iPad. Also, is that right that the developer preview is being distributed via the Mac App Store? How does that work? I will say though, I'm looking forward to impressing potential clients with some fancy swiping at the coffee shop :)
- Sidnicious 16y ago
  I think more like MobileMe mail/iPad mail: http://www.apple.com/mobileme/features/#mail-5 http://www.apple.com/mobileme/features/#mail-5
- flyosity 16y ago
  Actually, Sparrow looks exactly like Tweetie. Their UI is basically a clone of Loren's but with email messages showing instead of tweets.
- charlesju 16y ago
  The power of sparrow isn't the UI, it's the deep integration with gmail. More specifically, the labels are the killer feature.
  - Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
    For me it's the completeness of the integration - labels, starring, spam. There's not much you can do it the web client you can't do in Sparrow.
    - narkee 16y ago
      Then why not just use the web client? It has 100% integration.
      - kes 16y ago
        Also, being a native app (Cocoa app) integrates it with OS X, which is really useful.
goalieca 16y ago
Is there any news on the invisible parts of Lion? Snow Leopard brought us OpenCL, Clang, Grand Central, and these other cool technologies. Will we finally have resolution independent displays??
Stormbringer 16y ago
From the article: "Resume, which conveniently brings your apps back exactly how you left them when you restart your Mac or quit and relaunch an app;" I really really hope they offer a "blow it away and restart from scratch" option for apps. Having to delete and reinstall apps on the iPad that have properly crashed (as in fall over, and then when restarted just crash straight away again†) is annoying. I actually preferred the 'inferior' way of doing things back when iPad was single tasking, because hitting the home button would undo most programmer screw-ups. †Not sure how they manage this, probably via some settings in their core data that they read in and then get borked up again each time. My theory is that removing the app and then putting it back in works because the persistent storage for that app gets reclaimed when removed.
- swilliams 16y ago
  You can force quit iOS apps. Double tap home to bring up the menu, then tap and hold the offending app icon. This will bring up the "jiggle" and a kill icon.
  - sjtgraham 16y ago
    Doesn't always work. Spotify on iPhone became irreversibly borked for me once, requiring me to delete the entire app and reinstall it
    - masklinn 16y ago
      It does, in your case it seems Spotify utterly corrupted one of its files (since shutting it down completely and restarting it didn't suffice). There isn't much the OS can do then.
      - sjtgraham 16y ago
        That's exactly my point. There is no reset option in the case of a corrupted database or file inside the app bundle.
      - sjtgraham 16y ago
andymoe 16y ago
I'm really excited about the new version of wiki server. (Scroll all the way down to the bottom)
Synaesthesia 16y ago
Netkas has confirmed the following about Lion: >Lion requires hardware with a Core 2 Duo processor or better. A lot of apps are sandboxed. OpenGL 3.2 support I'm happy about the OpenGL 3.2 support. But what about 4?
- robin_reala 16y ago
  Every Core 2 Duo processor onwards has been 64-bit compatible; any Lion-only software can safely drop the 32bit portion of its binary.
- ashleyw 16y ago
  Drat. I wanted Lion on my old cira 2006 MBP with Core Duo. :(
rst 16y ago
Full-screen apps, increased emphasis on gestures, an app store... looks like they're trying to add an iOS feel to the user experience (at least within apps that use the new features).
- YooLi 16y ago
  I believe that was the whole point of the 'Back to the Mac' introduction to Lion from a few months ago--bringing iOS back to the Mac.
samps 16y ago
Anyone else catch this tidbit from Apple's site? File Sharing for iPad: Lion Server delivers wireless file sharing for iPad. Enabling WebDAV in Lion Server gives iPad users the ability to access, copy, and share documents on the server from applications such as Keynote, Numbers, and Pages. This sounds like the OTA iOS file sync we've been waiting for.
- schrototo 16y ago
  Sounds more like the "Copy to WebDAV and "Copy from WebDAV" options currently present in all iWork apps.
- Corrado 16y ago
  Couldn't you just use Dropbox?
blinkingled 16y ago
Still no talk about resolution independent UI or some sort of DPI scaling. I have to wonder how people are using OS X on their 27" iMacs with very high-res screens. My eyes bleed on my 17" MBP with 1920x1200 - Windows DPI scaling works quite well for the most part.
- sjs 16y ago
  Your MBP display has smaller pixels, about 130ppi (pixels per inch), while the 27" display is about 109ppi.
- Stormbringer 16y ago
  Well, working on a larger monitor eventually weans you of the obsessive need to full screen everything. Once you get used to working with documents scattered all over, and clicking on them to move them to the front and so forth, it becomes a more productive way of working. I'm not sure what it was about Windows that drove everyone to the full screen way of doing things. I think possibly the thing is that all windows look so similar on Windows that there was never really any visual clue about where the window you wanted had gotten to, so it made doing that style of navigation much harder. I don't think the scaling is particularly good in Win 7. From memory it used to be better. I recently had a crack at using it, and I played around with different resolutions. Every single resolution that I tried other than the native one was blurry. Some were only a little bit blurry, but some were very blurry. I remember it being better than that (maybe I've just gotten fussier). I ended up in the native (highest) resolution because anything else was too horrible.
  - br1 16y ago
    Don't change the resolution, only the dpi settings, say, frm 96 to 120.
  - Groxx 16y ago
    >I'm not sure what it was about Windows that drove everyone to the full screen way of doing things For myself, it's because so many applications have massive amounts of chrome and tiny vertical scrolling content areas. Height is necessary. Add to that that you can drag things above / below the borders of your screen, and unnecessary borders on everything, and no shadows to show "height", and your desktop becomes a cluttered, disorganized mess with too much scrolling in almost no time. 7 fixes a lot of that. You can drag things to the top of the screen to maximize, and pull away to un-maximize. Height via transparency and shadows. And a regression to thicker-than-ever borders :\ I guess you can't have it all.
jason_slack 16y ago
if I enroll for $99 now would I still get a dev preview of Lion? I am already an iOS member.
- tianyicui 16y ago
  Of course you can. Why not? ;)
- allwein 16y ago
  Yes. Whenever you enroll, all current member benefits are available to you. You'll also be able to download the latest 10.6.7 build if you'd like.
  - jason_slack 16y ago
    sweet thanks!
  - DarthMark 16y ago
    Do you still have to buy the production version when it ships?
    - quux 16y ago
      In the past, apple seeded the GM build to developers shortly before the release date. So no need to go buy the same build in the store.
      - schrototo 16y ago
        Although it's worth noting that Apple sometimes has a very weird definition of "Gold Master". The latest Xcode 4 GM, for example, is pretty much just another beta version. It's not production ready at all.
        yardie 16y ago
        Wait, is this true? iOS GMs have always been ready to ship, minus a few 3rd-party apps and last minute exploits(JBs). If they are throwing GM designator on anything that isn't usable than I'm severely disappointed.
tptacek 16y ago
Block-level full disk encryption would be a huge win, eliminating dependence on PGP, which is pretty close to abandonware at Symantec (a recent 10.5 dot release corrupted PGP WDE drives, for instance). Presumably, if it's cool enough to have a brand name at Apple, it'll also gracefully handle hibernation, which no FDE currently does. Fingers crossed!
- m0nastic 16y ago
  A couple weeks back I tried to buy a single copy of PGP from Symantec's site (as other retail versions no longer exist), and it was an unmitigated disaster (you have to call their sales people, who try to get you to buy a site license). A bunch of folks on Twitter apparently discovered the same thing this week. Sounds like full ASLR might be in the cards for Lion as well (which would be nice).
- mapgrep 16y ago
  Sadly this feature comes just as SSDs are heading toward ubiquity -- whole disk encryption greatly slows down SSDs to near hard drive levels when done in software, as PGP users have learned (http://forum.pgp.com/t5/PGP-Whole-Disk-Encryption-for/PGP-WDE-very-slow-with-OWC-Extreme-Pro-RE-SSD/td-p/35153 http://forum.pgp.com/t5/PGP-Whole-Disk-Encryption-for/PGP-WD...). That said, some SSDs can do their own encryption in hardware, but they need OS support (via Trusted Computing Group standards) for it to be effective (storing the key within the controller would defeat the point). Hopefully this, too, will be supported under Lion. Certain versions of Windows 7 already support it. In any case it's a very positive (if long overdue) move.
  - ryannielsen 16y ago
    Whole drive encryption (e.g. TCG Opal) has many drawbacks. Most importantly: it's "whole drive". There's no way to segregate individual user data and still get the benefits of hardware accelerated encryption. For systems that need segregated users (or even something like an unencrypted system volume with a single encrypted user), you need to toss encryption hardware into the upstream IO pipeline for any benefit. Sticking such hardware into the drive is too restrictive, and also raises the cost of each drive. Furthermore, many chipsets (such as Nehalem and Sandy Bridge) have integrated AES acceleration that offer significant encryption/decryption performance improvements. While encrypted reads/writes will never match the performance of standard reads/writes, Nehalem and SB very much mitigate the performance hit and will still give multi-hundred MB/s throughput on fast SSDs. If I were Apple, I'd ignore TCG Opal and focus on distributing Nehalem and Sandy Bridge throughout the product lineup. (Or, in the case of iOS devices, toss custom ASICS on the upstream IO pipeline.) Then you can offer true encrypted user segregation (or one encrypted user and an unencrypted OS volume) while still buying standard HDDs and SDDs in bulk. Win-win.
smallegan 16y ago
Any reports from HN users who have done the upgrade?
thought_alarm 16y ago
So it looks like they are removing the need for the Quit command and the Save command, and are adding automatic document versioning. In other words, Apple has finally brought the key features of Lisa OS to the Mac. It took a little longer than expected.
- whatusername 16y ago
  It took 6 years for the iPod to gain Wireless and more space than a Nomad. So I don't see why you are shocked about 27 years for complicated stuff like Versioning.
lovskogen 16y ago
Finally. Apple is getting rid of the default, always-on, scroll bar.
yoavniteflip 16y ago
Anyone else catch the new power key to the right of the eject key on what looks like the 13"? Maybe I'm slow, but I was pretty sure the last generation still had a circular power button - is this from today's update on the machines? Scroll down to "Gestures and Animations" http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/ http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/
- yoavniteflip 16y ago
  My bad. That's the MBA.
enterneo 16y ago
no fullscreen mode for safari?
- strmpnk 16y ago
  Safari does fullscreen just fine from my own testing.
Samuel_Michon 16y ago
From Apple's Mac OS X Lion page [0]: "When you’re done with AirDrop, close *the Finder* and your Mac is no longer visible to others." I wonder if that's a typo and they really meant 'Finder window' instead of 'Finder'. In the current Mac OS X, you can relaunch the Finder but you can't keep it closed. If the copy on the Lion page is accurate, then Apple is moving towards operation without the Finder, replacing it with Launchpad and Mission Control. I can see how that could work for first-time Mac users, especially those who already have an iOS device. It reminds me of At Ease [1], an environment that hid the Finder from new users, offering something similar to Lion's Launchpad. [0] http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/ http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/ [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Ease http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Ease
- seanb 16y ago
  Ah, good ol' At Ease. The crippled app-launching interface it provided seemed to be entirely responsible for the nearly universal hatred of Apple computers by students at my high school. Compared to Windows 95, At Ease gave the impression that Macs were only capable of performing simple tasks. Everyone was thrilled when the Macs were replaced with cheap Windows machines.
CountSessine 16y ago
No word on an HFS+ replacement. Also, what's AV Foundation? Is this what QuicktimeX was supposed to become? Will we finally get codec plugins without having to program for the crusty old Component Manager?
stevenp 16y ago
Tried it briefly, but Dropbox won't even install on it. In addition, Evernote doesn't work (it seems to be relying on a private API that doesn't exist anymore) and NewsRack sync with Google Reader is completely hosed due to a memory leak that I'm assuming is a problem on 10.7 (but not 10.6 for some reason). Needless to say, I'm going back to Snow Leopard for now, since Dropbox is a vital tool for me.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
darren_ 16y ago
Does vmware fusion's support for installing OS X Server guests allow Lion Server?
Corrado 16y ago
Its funny, but the first thing I thought of when I read about Versions is the old Vax/VMS file versioning system(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Files-11#Disk_organization_and_naming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Files-11#Disk_organization_and_...). That feature alone saved me tons of re-work in college. :)
mwg66 16y ago
Is it me or is Aqua being dropped?

156 points by sandipc 16y ago

Apple has updated their page on Lion with descriptions and screenshots of (all? At least all those mentioned in the linked article) its new features: http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/ http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/

psykotic 16y ago
How many of the coolest-sounding features like Auto-Save, Versions and Resume will require special support per application? Resume is the only one that seems doable without that; they can piggyback on the existing OS support for suspend-to-disk hibernation.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- dchest 16y ago
  Auto-save and Versions work with document-oriented apps, so I guess they can also be doable without special support from app.
  - daleharvey 16y ago
    ive been fairly confused about how versions will work, im guessing applications will need to be versions aware for it to be useful, you can do it in the filesystem but without seeing the document in the application that seems kinda useless
    - dchest 16y ago
      You're right.
  - smackfu 16y ago
    The little asterisk after those features links to: "Available with apps that have been developed to work with Lion."
- archenemy 16y ago
  Resume looks good, and if properly coupled with Bootcamp it can be great. (think: run a Windows app from OSX, have it reboot straight into the app, and back to OSX as-it-was when you leave Windows :)
- glhaynes 16y ago
  This is one of those things where having the platform vendor provide an app store (especially one that is presumed to become the dominant method of app distribution and that they've shown they're willing to "curate aggressively" when they feel like it) can allow the vendor to push forward faster - they can easily lay down the law that all apps on the Store have to support these features as appropriate by, say, 3 mos after Lion ships. It prioritizes the platform vendor's feature desires over those of the developer or the users' direct vote, but I think it's wonderful for the industry to have at least one vendor (and one who arguably has good taste!) doing so.
  - raganwald 16y ago
    I also think it's wonderful. If Apple leaves progress up to developers, you have people like Aldus inventing new things like Desktop Publishing. Then again, if Apple leaves progress up to developers who are waiting for user demand, you'd never get a Macintosh in the first place. Nobody wanted a mouse until they were shown what you could do with a mouse and Aldus Pagemaker. Nobody wanted "undo" consistently implemented across all applications. And absolutely nobody wanted their applications to run in fully little "windows" on the screen. From this cherry-picked example, I conclude that a good platform does allow the vendor to push certain features forward, but it also gives developers a certain amount of leeway to innovate.
    - glhaynes 16y ago
      That's where I think Apple doesn't have as much of a problem as many devs want them to have: they give a lot of leeway already to devs to create tons of apps that people want. C.f. the various App Stores. And when (eventually? I don't know of it happening yet) some "killer app" appears on another platform that isn't possible on Apple's platforms, they can just narrowly relax the rules to allow it. This is why I'm happy to see both models exist and thrive. Android would look like an old Blackberry if not for Apple. And likewise Apple can pick up any advantage that Android has (other than a few, such as meeting the needs of markets outside Apple's target).
  - psykotic 16y ago
    That's a great point. I'm really excited about the future of the Mac with developments like these. Hopefully the API hooks are simple enough that it's a no-brainer choice for developers to make.
- beaumartinez 16y ago
  Full-screen apps, auto save, versions, and resume all have an asterisk in their descriptions: available with apps that have been developed to work with Lion.
- Wientje 16y ago
  I am guessing that these features are 'simply' a recompile away if the software uses Apple API's for all its document handling.
- smackfu 16y ago
  Exactly. Currently OS X supports per-app Time Machine rollbacks, yet the only app I've ever seen support it is iPhoto.
  - danssig 16y ago
    Mail.app supports it as well. It's saved me more than once.
  - glhaynes 16y ago
    And Finder, of course...
  - wandermatt 16y ago
    I think Address Book also supports this.
- villiros 16y ago
  From what I can figure out, Auto-Save and Versions are pretty-much built-in. Assuming an application that uses standard Cocoa approaches to document management, it just needs to declare its support for the auto-save functionality, and pretty much everything else will be handled by the system libraries. Fairly trivial. Resume is more involved, however: the application is responsible for (de)serializing its state. Again, for a document-based application that doesn't stray far from the "recommended" path, it should be fairly simple to implement. It's just a matter of the document and UI being auto-saved on termination, which requires little work from the developer. One very interesting side-effect of the Resume feature is that it removes the need for applications to stay running: the system can silently terminate unused applications, and bring them back if they're needed again. What's really exciting about this, is that it's turning applications into something that is "always there".
sandipc 16y ago
the video on that page of the new multitouch gesture support looks really useful
- benjoffe 16y ago
  In that video it looks like safari now auto hides the scrollbar when it's not being used (kinda like on the iphone), seems like an odd thing to do, since 20px of screen space isn't as precious on a desktop as it is on a phone.
  - mashmac2 16y ago
    I don't think saving the screen space is really the point. It's more likely about reducing the amount of clutter on the screen. If you don't need something, why put it on the screen? Apple's minimalist design strikes again.
    - smackfu 16y ago
      The question is how to display things like that on a desktop OS that might be used with a mouse. With a touch gesture, you touch and then move vertically as a continous action. On a mouse, you click or turn a wheel, much more discrete actions. Edit: Aha, they addressed this: "With the new scrollbars, if all of the user’s pointing devices support both horizontal and vertical touch scrolling, the scrollbars are hidden during normal use. They will appear as an overlay on top of the window's content while the user is scrolling, and remain visible briefly to allow scrollbar dragging."
  - callahad 16y ago
    That's now the case everywhere, as per http://developer.apple.com/technologies/mac/whats-new.html#aqua http://developer.apple.com/technologies/mac/whats-new.html#a... "Mac OS X Lion introduces overlay scrollbars similar to those in iOS. These scrollbars appear as an overlay on top of the window's content while the user is scrolling and remain visible briefly to allow scrollbar dragging."
    - 16y ago

gks 16y ago

Am I reading this right? That Lion Server is included in the normal OS X Lion release? That's pretty awesome if so. Means I'd be willing to fork over the cash for one of those Mac Minis to use for Calendar/Contact syncing instead of using MobileMe.

tvon 16y ago
Seems so, from the Apple page on Lion: > Lion Server is now part of Mac OS X Lion.
Stormbringer 16y ago
The developer program has always included the server versions. At least it did up until they put out the iPhone developer program and didn't give the paid up Apple developers access without stumping up even more cash, which was the point where I rage-quit (would have been 2007 or 2008).
- yardie 16y ago
  $500 -> $99. Depending on if you paid before or after the price change. Besides, $99 somethings gotta give. And all indications (atleast, recent indications) were pointing to Apple discontinuing the Server OS. Even though every version of OSX was basically server without the management tools, its good they brought the management to the desktop version.
  - Stormbringer 16y ago
    I think another factor is that disk drives have gotten so large compared to your average *nix that it doesn't really make sense not to include everything anymore on a desktop machine. Which is not to say that stripped down versions don't still have their place, but on a machine with half or even a full terabyte standard, tossing out the kitchen sink is more work than it is worth.
    - cpr 16y ago
      Though note that the server software is a custom install option; i.e., it's not there by default. Also note that Lion will be sold from the App Store, so physical discs (DVDs) are probably out. (They'll likely include one of those little flash drives with the new hardware with the install disk image on it.)

clammer 16y ago

Only Apple could brag about finally having a proper window maximize feature. I like many of their products, but their hubris is getting hilarious.

st3fan 16y ago

Screenshots or it did not happen!

jarin 16y ago

Mail 5 looks almost exactly like Sparrow: http://sparrowmailapp.com/ http://sparrowmailapp.com/ Although, if Mail 5 is inspired by Mail on the iPad, it's probably more fair to say that Sparrow looks almost exactly like Mail on the iPad. Also, is that right that the developer preview is being distributed via the Mac App Store? How does that work? I will say though, I'm looking forward to impressing potential clients with some fancy swiping at the coffee shop :)

Sidnicious 16y ago
I think more like MobileMe mail/iPad mail: http://www.apple.com/mobileme/features/#mail-5 http://www.apple.com/mobileme/features/#mail-5
flyosity 16y ago
Actually, Sparrow looks exactly like Tweetie. Their UI is basically a clone of Loren's but with email messages showing instead of tweets.
charlesju 16y ago
The power of sparrow isn't the UI, it's the deep integration with gmail. More specifically, the labels are the killer feature.
- Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
  For me it's the completeness of the integration - labels, starring, spam. There's not much you can do it the web client you can't do in Sparrow.
  - narkee 16y ago
    Then why not just use the web client? It has 100% integration.
    - kes 16y ago
      Also, being a native app (Cocoa app) integrates it with OS X, which is really useful.

goalieca 16y ago

Is there any news on the invisible parts of Lion? Snow Leopard brought us OpenCL, Clang, Grand Central, and these other cool technologies. Will we finally have resolution independent displays??

Stormbringer 16y ago

From the article: "Resume, which conveniently brings your apps back exactly how you left them when you restart your Mac or quit and relaunch an app;" I really really hope they offer a "blow it away and restart from scratch" option for apps. Having to delete and reinstall apps on the iPad that have properly crashed (as in fall over, and then when restarted just crash straight away again†) is annoying. I actually preferred the 'inferior' way of doing things back when iPad was single tasking, because hitting the home button would undo most programmer screw-ups. †Not sure how they manage this, probably via some settings in their core data that they read in and then get borked up again each time. My theory is that removing the app and then putting it back in works because the persistent storage for that app gets reclaimed when removed.

swilliams 16y ago
You can force quit iOS apps. Double tap home to bring up the menu, then tap and hold the offending app icon. This will bring up the "jiggle" and a kill icon.
- sjtgraham 16y ago
  Doesn't always work. Spotify on iPhone became irreversibly borked for me once, requiring me to delete the entire app and reinstall it
  - masklinn 16y ago
    It does, in your case it seems Spotify utterly corrupted one of its files (since shutting it down completely and restarting it didn't suffice). There isn't much the OS can do then.
    - sjtgraham 16y ago
      That's exactly my point. There is no reset option in the case of a corrupted database or file inside the app bundle.
    - sjtgraham 16y ago

andymoe 16y ago

I'm really excited about the new version of wiki server. (Scroll all the way down to the bottom)

Synaesthesia 16y ago

Netkas has confirmed the following about Lion: >Lion requires hardware with a Core 2 Duo processor or better. A lot of apps are sandboxed. OpenGL 3.2 support I'm happy about the OpenGL 3.2 support. But what about 4?

robin_reala 16y ago
Every Core 2 Duo processor onwards has been 64-bit compatible; any Lion-only software can safely drop the 32bit portion of its binary.
ashleyw 16y ago
Drat. I wanted Lion on my old cira 2006 MBP with Core Duo. :(

rst 16y ago

Full-screen apps, increased emphasis on gestures, an app store... looks like they're trying to add an iOS feel to the user experience (at least within apps that use the new features).

YooLi 16y ago
I believe that was the whole point of the 'Back to the Mac' introduction to Lion from a few months ago--bringing iOS back to the Mac.

samps 16y ago

Anyone else catch this tidbit from Apple's site? File Sharing for iPad: Lion Server delivers wireless file sharing for iPad. Enabling WebDAV in Lion Server gives iPad users the ability to access, copy, and share documents on the server from applications such as Keynote, Numbers, and Pages. This sounds like the OTA iOS file sync we've been waiting for.

schrototo 16y ago
Sounds more like the "Copy to WebDAV and "Copy from WebDAV" options currently present in all iWork apps.
Corrado 16y ago
Couldn't you just use Dropbox?

blinkingled 16y ago

Still no talk about resolution independent UI or some sort of DPI scaling. I have to wonder how people are using OS X on their 27" iMacs with very high-res screens. My eyes bleed on my 17" MBP with 1920x1200 - Windows DPI scaling works quite well for the most part.

sjs 16y ago
Your MBP display has smaller pixels, about 130ppi (pixels per inch), while the 27" display is about 109ppi.
Stormbringer 16y ago
Well, working on a larger monitor eventually weans you of the obsessive need to full screen everything. Once you get used to working with documents scattered all over, and clicking on them to move them to the front and so forth, it becomes a more productive way of working. I'm not sure what it was about Windows that drove everyone to the full screen way of doing things. I think possibly the thing is that all windows look so similar on Windows that there was never really any visual clue about where the window you wanted had gotten to, so it made doing that style of navigation much harder. I don't think the scaling is particularly good in Win 7. From memory it used to be better. I recently had a crack at using it, and I played around with different resolutions. Every single resolution that I tried other than the native one was blurry. Some were only a little bit blurry, but some were very blurry. I remember it being better than that (maybe I've just gotten fussier). I ended up in the native (highest) resolution because anything else was too horrible.
- br1 16y ago
  Don't change the resolution, only the dpi settings, say, frm 96 to 120.
- Groxx 16y ago
  >I'm not sure what it was about Windows that drove everyone to the full screen way of doing things For myself, it's because so many applications have massive amounts of chrome and tiny vertical scrolling content areas. Height is necessary. Add to that that you can drag things above / below the borders of your screen, and unnecessary borders on everything, and no shadows to show "height", and your desktop becomes a cluttered, disorganized mess with too much scrolling in almost no time. 7 fixes a lot of that. You can drag things to the top of the screen to maximize, and pull away to un-maximize. Height via transparency and shadows. And a regression to thicker-than-ever borders :\ I guess you can't have it all.

jason_slack 16y ago

if I enroll for $99 now would I still get a dev preview of Lion? I am already an iOS member.

tianyicui 16y ago
Of course you can. Why not? ;)
allwein 16y ago
Yes. Whenever you enroll, all current member benefits are available to you. You'll also be able to download the latest 10.6.7 build if you'd like.
- jason_slack 16y ago
  sweet thanks!
- DarthMark 16y ago
  Do you still have to buy the production version when it ships?
  - quux 16y ago
    In the past, apple seeded the GM build to developers shortly before the release date. So no need to go buy the same build in the store.
    - schrototo 16y ago
      Although it's worth noting that Apple sometimes has a very weird definition of "Gold Master". The latest Xcode 4 GM, for example, is pretty much just another beta version. It's not production ready at all.
      - yardie 16y ago
        Wait, is this true? iOS GMs have always been ready to ship, minus a few 3rd-party apps and last minute exploits(JBs). If they are throwing GM designator on anything that isn't usable than I'm severely disappointed.

tptacek 16y ago

Block-level full disk encryption would be a huge win, eliminating dependence on PGP, which is pretty close to abandonware at Symantec (a recent 10.5 dot release corrupted PGP WDE drives, for instance). Presumably, if it's cool enough to have a brand name at Apple, it'll also gracefully handle hibernation, which no FDE currently does. Fingers crossed!

m0nastic 16y ago
A couple weeks back I tried to buy a single copy of PGP from Symantec's site (as other retail versions no longer exist), and it was an unmitigated disaster (you have to call their sales people, who try to get you to buy a site license). A bunch of folks on Twitter apparently discovered the same thing this week. Sounds like full ASLR might be in the cards for Lion as well (which would be nice).
mapgrep 16y ago
Sadly this feature comes just as SSDs are heading toward ubiquity -- whole disk encryption greatly slows down SSDs to near hard drive levels when done in software, as PGP users have learned (http://forum.pgp.com/t5/PGP-Whole-Disk-Encryption-for/PGP-WDE-very-slow-with-OWC-Extreme-Pro-RE-SSD/td-p/35153 http://forum.pgp.com/t5/PGP-Whole-Disk-Encryption-for/PGP-WD...). That said, some SSDs can do their own encryption in hardware, but they need OS support (via Trusted Computing Group standards) for it to be effective (storing the key within the controller would defeat the point). Hopefully this, too, will be supported under Lion. Certain versions of Windows 7 already support it. In any case it's a very positive (if long overdue) move.
- ryannielsen 16y ago
  Whole drive encryption (e.g. TCG Opal) has many drawbacks. Most importantly: it's "whole drive". There's no way to segregate individual user data and still get the benefits of hardware accelerated encryption. For systems that need segregated users (or even something like an unencrypted system volume with a single encrypted user), you need to toss encryption hardware into the upstream IO pipeline for any benefit. Sticking such hardware into the drive is too restrictive, and also raises the cost of each drive. Furthermore, many chipsets (such as Nehalem and Sandy Bridge) have integrated AES acceleration that offer significant encryption/decryption performance improvements. While encrypted reads/writes will never match the performance of standard reads/writes, Nehalem and SB very much mitigate the performance hit and will still give multi-hundred MB/s throughput on fast SSDs. If I were Apple, I'd ignore TCG Opal and focus on distributing Nehalem and Sandy Bridge throughout the product lineup. (Or, in the case of iOS devices, toss custom ASICS on the upstream IO pipeline.) Then you can offer true encrypted user segregation (or one encrypted user and an unencrypted OS volume) while still buying standard HDDs and SDDs in bulk. Win-win.

smallegan 16y ago

Any reports from HN users who have done the upgrade?

thought_alarm 16y ago

So it looks like they are removing the need for the Quit command and the Save command, and are adding automatic document versioning. In other words, Apple has finally brought the key features of Lisa OS to the Mac. It took a little longer than expected.

whatusername 16y ago
It took 6 years for the iPod to gain Wireless and more space than a Nomad. So I don't see why you are shocked about 27 years for complicated stuff like Versioning.

lovskogen 16y ago

Finally. Apple is getting rid of the default, always-on, scroll bar.

yoavniteflip 16y ago

Anyone else catch the new power key to the right of the eject key on what looks like the 13"? Maybe I'm slow, but I was pretty sure the last generation still had a circular power button - is this from today's update on the machines? Scroll down to "Gestures and Animations" http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/ http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/

yoavniteflip 16y ago
My bad. That's the MBA.

enterneo 16y ago

no fullscreen mode for safari?

strmpnk 16y ago
Safari does fullscreen just fine from my own testing.

Samuel_Michon 16y ago

From Apple's Mac OS X Lion page [0]: "When you’re done with AirDrop, close *the Finder* and your Mac is no longer visible to others." I wonder if that's a typo and they really meant 'Finder window' instead of 'Finder'. In the current Mac OS X, you can relaunch the Finder but you can't keep it closed. If the copy on the Lion page is accurate, then Apple is moving towards operation without the Finder, replacing it with Launchpad and Mission Control. I can see how that could work for first-time Mac users, especially those who already have an iOS device. It reminds me of At Ease [1], an environment that hid the Finder from new users, offering something similar to Lion's Launchpad. [0] http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/ http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/ [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Ease http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Ease

seanb 16y ago
Ah, good ol' At Ease. The crippled app-launching interface it provided seemed to be entirely responsible for the nearly universal hatred of Apple computers by students at my high school. Compared to Windows 95, At Ease gave the impression that Macs were only capable of performing simple tasks. Everyone was thrilled when the Macs were replaced with cheap Windows machines.

CountSessine 16y ago

No word on an HFS+ replacement. Also, what's AV Foundation? Is this what QuicktimeX was supposed to become? Will we finally get codec plugins without having to program for the crusty old Component Manager?

stevenp 16y ago

Tried it briefly, but Dropbox won't even install on it. In addition, Evernote doesn't work (it seems to be relying on a private API that doesn't exist anymore) and NewsRack sync with Google Reader is completely hosed due to a memory leak that I'm assuming is a problem on 10.7 (but not 10.6 for some reason). Needless to say, I'm going back to Snow Leopard for now, since Dropbox is a vital tool for me.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

darren_ 16y ago

Does vmware fusion's support for installing OS X Server guests allow Lion Server?

Corrado 16y ago

Its funny, but the first thing I thought of when I read about Versions is the old Vax/VMS file versioning system(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Files-11#Disk_organization_and_naming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Files-11#Disk_organization_and_...). That feature alone saved me tons of re-work in college. :)

mwg66 16y ago

Is it me or is Aqua being dropped?