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Apple killed OSX with Lion

Lion is a prime example of what happens when a company like apple begins to design software ala Microsoft, that is, with the lowest denominator (the average user) in mind in an effort to gain more market share. Here is my beef with Lion after upgrading Today:


New Mouse Gestures: while 'additional' gestures are always welcomed, apple completely missed the point here and has entirely overcomplicated a concept that was supposed to make interacting with the OS and applications simpler, not harder.

  • The gesture to show/hide your desktop is a prime example. It used to be a simple four finger up and down swipe on the trackpad. Now it takes your thumb, three fingers, and a temperamental gesture that takes a while to get right. I still find it cumbersome to do after using my Mac all day. It only works half the time. Would it have killed you to leave this gesture alone or, at the very least, allow users to retain the previous (call it legacy) gesture?

  • Browser (back/forth) navigation gestures: this is the one I am most ticked off about and I can't imagine I am the only one. My very favority gesture to navigate back and forth when web browsing (with either the trackpad - three finger left/right or my magic mouse - two finger left/right) is now replaced with mission control 'spaces' switching. I tried turning this off but I still can't manage to regain the functionality I once had with my web browsers. Thanks to this upgrade, I can no longer browser the web with the ease and freedom I once had on Snow Leopard. Again, such a great feature from a usability point of view and one of the things that drove me to purchase a magic mouse to begin with is now gone for good!
  • 2. Mission Control/Spaces: I can't stand the convergence of expose and spaces in mission control. I used to be able to open spaces via hot-corner, and drag windows/apps between the various spaces from within the spaces 'view' itself. Now I am forced to use mission control where all I get is a tiny preview of what's in each space and I must switch to the desired space before I am able to drag a window or app from it into a different space. Another counter-intuitive and unncessary feature downgrade.




    I think apple completely missed the mark here. The new OS will be attractive to new users for sure but at what cost to your existing user base? Too many UI changes can be risky and apple is prone to upset a lot of long time users with this. It is ok to fine tune features but retaining core functionality should be at the forefront. With so many traumatic changes, you need to at least allow users to retain functionality to which they may have grown acustomed. Gestures is one of those things that sets Macs appart from everything else and a key aspect to how users interact with the OS environment. People get used to these things, they become second nature almost. To turn off the switch on these features on the blink of an upgrade makes me wonder about where apple is heading with OSX.


    Lion to me is nothing more than a dumbed-down Snow Leopard.

    MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.7), Active Directory integrated

    Posted on Jul 20, 2011 9:20 PM

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    194 replies

    Jul 20, 2011 9:27 PM in response to fsck!

    Lion is elder abuse the lack of the pointers at the bottom of the scroll bar causes anyone that is unwilling to part with an old mouse alot of difficulty but the elder perople that love macintosh don't like change and are unwilling to loose these arrows. Apple needs to consider the aged and those who don't want to pay money to replace a good mouse with something that recignizes the gestures. I ask that apple apply the ability to reactivate the arrows together at the bottom of the scrole bare to help people in both catagory the aged and those with older mice that don't wish to change.

    Jul 20, 2011 9:33 PM in response to fsck!

    Very good, I like your honest assesment of the new OS. Why i'm only going to install it on a spare machine.


    To turn off the switch on these features on the blink of an upgrade makes me wonder about where apple is heading with OSX.


    Turnng the Mac into a large iPad, strip out all the hardware features, cut costs, increse profits, make it look thin, sexy, shiny and charge a heck of lot of money for it.


    What else? 😀

    Jul 20, 2011 9:59 PM in response to William Lloyd

    William Lloyd wrote:


    * With Safari, it's now 2-finger swipe left or right to navigate between pages. Have you tried that?

    I do not use Safari, I use firefox and I for one cannot get it to work. It would be easy to blame mozilla for this but I am not so sure it is their fault. They did issue an update to their browser before Lion was released so I can only hope it gets fixed at some point.


    To be fair, I just tried this on Safari and it does work like you pointed out. However, not in the same way it used to. It works differently on the trackpad than it does on a magic mouse. I use a magic mouse at home and it used to be a quick gesture, just as with the trackpad. If you try this on a magic mouse now you will find that due to the new page 'animation' effect, it takes a bigger effort to nagivate back and forth. The new animation forces you to drag the page back or forth ALL THE WAY until it is off the browser before it switches. If you know if a way to turn off that animation please let me (us) know.

    Jul 20, 2011 10:18 PM in response to fsck!

    how many ways does one need to launch an app!



    Exactly - I like the one click access using the dock (which covers the bottom of my entire 27" screen with 68 icons - apps and folders); and Launchpad is not configurable enough for me - I can't even add other apps or folders (and I'd wind up with 10 pages......)

    Jul 20, 2011 10:42 PM in response to fsck!

    I am hardly a new user. 😎 I bought my first Mac in 1992. The first of many. 😎


    My feeling is what is under the hood, more 64 bit architecture, and the inevitable transition to an all touchscreen line up of computers is all part of the Apple "big picture" approach to Lion. It's the natural migration of OS X using the best of Apple's IOS and OS X software features with an eye towards the future of computing. iCloud is another example of what the computing experience will be like in the future as well as the migration to SSD and Thunderbolt.


    As for Lion itself I was more disappointed by the bugs I had after installing it (Safari, Mail and Software Upgrade being the main issues) than the features in it. After fixing those bugs (I hope ; ) by rebooting and then accesssing the Disk Utilities and Repairing Permissions the tactile feel of Lion is growing on me. I use Spaces all the time so Mission Control is pretty much the same thing to me with a slicker look and feel to itdo . I don't have a TouchPad yet (I ordered one today ) so I can't comment on Gestures yet but I love the Mail program, I love full screen apps and most of the other more apparent features seem like they will be useful as soon as I get used to them. For $29.95 this major OS upgrade was a steal even with the bugs (to me that did smack of Microsoft a little bit). My negatives are minor. I find LaunchPad redundant since all the apps I use are in my Dock. I had some issues with Time Machine. I did like the "All My Files" in Finder. I do like Resume, the new cursor and Address Book, the Recovery HD when you reboot with the Option key pressed down, the low power Wake feature in the finder, and even the new look in Photo Booth. Fortunately I have only a few key third party apps that so far have showed no issues with the Lion upgrade.


    There is a reason Apple only charged 30 bucks for this upgrade. It's a precursor to a much more comprehensive OS overhaul and for now it gets end users used to some of the differences the next truly major version (SabreTooth ; ) might have in the next couple of years. It's not like Lion was XP, ya know? 😎

    Jul 21, 2011 7:26 AM in response to fsck!

    My EXACT SENTIMENTS thus far with Lion! I really wish Apple had decided to just add to the existing gestures, or at the very least - makes those they have currently, with a better customization. The single most gesture that I'm missing is the:


    four finger swipe to show all open applications. Next to that would be that the pinch gestures have always been a bit of a P.I.T.A. for me - these are no different.

    Jul 21, 2011 8:02 AM in response to fsck!

    It would be easy to blame mozilla for this but I am not so sure it is their fault. They did issue an update to their browser before Lion was released so I can only hope it gets fixed at some point.


    As far as Firefox/Chrome etc. are concered, yes it is an issue that you can no longer use the three finger swipe, but this is not on Apple's end. Once google and firefox get a chance to actually upgrade the software, they will definately have support for the 2 finger swipe. They just need to design it! The update prior to Lion may have been optimization in terms of how it runs, not how it is used.


    I really like Lion so far, there are a few things I have noticed that may be considered to be a bug or an oversight, but for the most part it is a pretty good upgrade. As someone said earlier, this negativity is just a reaction to change. Everyone is jumping on the bash Lion bandwagon because it is easier to join others who are upset than it is to challenge them and say that you like it. Give it time and I guarentee it will have the same gestures and features of SL but with some significant improvements!

    Jul 21, 2011 8:08 AM in response to macpeople1

    There is a reason Apple only charged 30 bucks for this upgrade.


    The reason is that OS X Lion is really just a cosmetic update. Not that I'm joining the ranks of complainers, but frankly, it doesn't actually do anything that I couldn't already do in 10.6.


    (BTW, can someone please tell them to put the four-finger App switching back...it's a pain w/o it!).

    Apple killed OSX with Lion

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