I am not that impressed anymore

[bcaslis]

Exactly. Fine tuned for the new Joe-sumer iOS market, but nothing mind blowing for us Prosumers.

Nothing?

1.) Full 64 bit OS including 64 bit kernel enabled on machines which you previously couldn't.
2.) TRIM support for Apple SSDs
3.) Better mail app
4.) Full screen support fantastic for smaller screens (think MacBook Air)
5.) Mission control unifies Expose and Spaces

You may not agree with the features, but I find them a significant step up from Snow Leopard.

 

[3282868]

Nothing?

1.) Full 64 bit OS including 64 bit kernel enabled on machines which you previously couldn't.
2.) TRIM support for Apple SSDs
3.) Better mail app
4.) Full screen support fantastic for smaller screens (think MacBook Air)
5.) Mission control unifies Expose and Spaces

You may not agree with the features, but I find them a significant step up from Snow Leopard.

Look, I just posted this (long) explanation on another thread. It explains our stance from the professional and business market as this isn't just about the OS:

In order to save time and space, I'l simply address comments made towards me without quoting as they seem to have the same (valid) points.

My issue is not just with Lion, it's with Apple's general direction. I've been developing and beta testing OS X since it was released, back when memberships cost $499+ (this new $99 fee is interesting as it seems Apple may want more consumer feedback when in the past it was purely meant for those who need to rework their applications with the new OS). I still have beta's from back in the Jaguar days with OS X features that were never released, some great ones that would be even perfect presently. This new deployment of monthly builds via the OS X App Store is odd, as before developers would receive beta's almost bi-weekly, with new features and system advancements, and these beta's would require being burnt to a DVD and installed from scratch (this ensured little compatibility issues). It seems the tables have turned, as an iOS developer as well we receive iOS beta's much more frequently compared to OS X updates (when there is one).

It's not just the software but the hardware. Apple's display line since the Studio line to the Apple Cinema Display line had more than one display option. Apple neglected their displays for almost eight years, and replaced a GREAT line that needed almost no tweaking with Spyder Monitor Calibration tools as OS X was coded to work perfectly with their displays. This allowed professionals such as myself all the way to photographers such as Annie Leibovitz to have a great system that produced uniform colors and a near perfect screen to print ratio. Apple simply replaced those displays with one, the same display panel used in their larger iMac. Certainly a cost effective move as the part's are already utilized, all that was needed was a simple tweak in the shell and voila, you have a display. However, one display does not fit all.

PowerMac G4 and G4's were priced around $1450+, and with a 23" or even 30" Apple Cinema Display, you had a great system for around $2500 or $3000. Now, Apple sells the Mac Pro for around that price, with only one display (now around $1000), and while a great display that used LED LCD panels for a great price, again, it's almost double what professionals invested in previous Apple products. Most of us need a powerful system that is upgradable, but we don't need expensive and power Intel Xeon SERVER processors and we need something more flexible than an iMac as most of us use more than one display and need more power for graphics and the such.

Not getting into it more, I'm not lamenting or trying to complain, most of us are disappointed as we have used Apple for our living well before the newcomers. I'm excited that Apple is doing amazingly well, but the company has $50+ billion in the bank. They went into a niche mobile market and made bank, and the professional and business market is not a niche market. Think of the thousands one business spends in upgrading their systems, that's just ONE business. If Apple utilized even a small amount of their cash reserve to re-focus on us, they could easily make a good amount of money and take much of the business market further from Windows/MS.

Alas, this does not seem to be an importance to Cupertino. So a lot of us are moving to systems and companies that seem to be interested in the business and professional market. This means all the time and money we have spent in Apple products is gone, and we have to reinvest in another platform, spending time and money we may not necessarily afford. It's a shame, but please don't dismiss us as complainers or whiners. We are adults, and unlike the majority of new comers, make our living using Apple systems. This is a big deal for us.

 

[petvas]

Nothing?

1.) Full 64 bit OS including 64 bit kernel enabled on machines which you previously couldn't.
2.) TRIM support for Apple SSDs
3.) Better mail app
4.) Full screen support fantastic for smaller screens (think MacBook Air)
5.) Mission control unifies Expose and Spaces

You may not agree with the features, but I find them a significant step up from Snow Leopard.

Most features do sound great but when you get to use the actual OS you don't get the feeling that it is so much of a difference to Snow Leopard. Full screen is great for small displays but not that useful for bigger displays. Mission. Control is nice but nothing revolutionary. The Mail.app is a significant improvement to the Snow Leopard version.
I am not saying that I don't like Lion. On the contrary: I look forward to using it on my productive Mac when it gets released. I am just saying that not all the features work so well as someone could think of. The new interface is better, the multitouch gestures are really great and Safari is very fast.
Actually here is my list of things that are really great in Lion:

• Mail.app muchly improved
• Safari is very fast
• Restarting retains the state of all open apps
• Installation on an SSD took 6 minutes on my Mac Pro
• Recovery partition
• Autocorrect in the OS (like in iOS)
• Versioning when iWork and Office become compatible
• Full screen mode when Aperture supports it. For other people it is already nice to have it now.

The things I don't like that much:

• There is no way to change the default behavior of apps regarding their state. Cmd-Alt-Q can used for that (if you remember to do this)
• Each desktop appears in random order in Mission Control (might be a bug)
• Launchpad is a big fail. No context menus, it just offers the exact same functionality as on iOS...
• Devices appear in Finder on the bottom left, instead of top left and I hate that. No option to change that.
• Safari in full screen mode doesn't offer an expose. When in full screen mode the open tabs aren't visible.
• The default behavior of the dock. Open apps do not have the blue indicators..
• Scrolling is by default like in iOS..inverted. I hate that

 

[Blakeasd]

I think there should be no launchpad and you can flick through icons on your desktop. Launchpad is nice, but the implementation of the technology isn't great.

 

[bcaslis]

...It explains our stance ...

...most of us are disappointed ...

...So a lot of us are moving to systems and companies that seem to be interested in the business and professional market. ...

You have a perfect right to express your opinion. But you seem to represent yourself as the majority view. I would disagree with that.

And I've been using OS X since the original public beta also.

 

[Cougarcat]

I totally agree. Launchpad should run in a window. .

That's essentially what Stacks is.

 

[petvas]

That's essentially what Stacks is.

Actually yes.

 

[3282868]

You have a perfect right to express your opinion. But you seem to represent yourself as the majority view. I would disagree with that.

And I've been using OS X since the original public beta also.

Which OS X public beta? Panther? Jaguar?

We are all entitled to convey our experiences, however I do speak for a good amount of the professionals who rely/have relied on Apple for our work, to make a living. If things keep heading in this direction, our tools for our trade are essentially gone and we will have to find a new way to make a living. It's not as simple as it may appear to the average consumer.

 

[Cougarcat]

Which OS X public beta? Panther? Jaguar?

No, there was a public beta anyone could buy for $30 before 10.0 came out.

 

[3282868]

No, there was a public beta anyone could buy for $30 before 10.0 came out.

Yeah, that was when OS X made its first debut. I still don't understand how this is relevant to the general discussion, but I'll go with it

 

[GoKyu]

* Mission Control: This one I like. It combines spaces and expose very nice.

* Saving the state of apps: It does take a while to get used to the fact that the state of all apps is always being saved on exit. I would prefer to have the option (without using the Alt key) to not save the state of an app by default. There are situations you don't want to have an app resume its state. Imagine showing a video to someone. You close quicktime and then after a while you need quicktime again. You open it and the video resumes...Not very good!

I really think they've destroyed the flexibility of Spaces in Lion, which is a big reason I may not upgrade for quite awhile. How is it better to be forced to go sequentially through all of your spaces (I have 9, some others may go up to the full 16), rather than to have the great random access by hitting F8 (a.k.a. my click wheel button) to zoom out to see exactly which space I want to go to next...

I'm liking the idea of saving the app's state, but you make a really good point - Will it automatically try to reload the last video in QT Player or VLC? That would be a real pain...unless they allow you to make exceptions for which apps you *don't* want to save state...

 

[bcaslis]

Which OS X public beta? Panther? Jaguar?

We are all entitled to convey our experiences, however I do speak for a good amount of the professionals who rely/have relied on Apple for our work, to make a living...

The original public beta for 10.0. I simply mention to say I'm not one of your "newbies from the past three years". Actually I've been using Macs since 1986.

Sorry but I just don't accept your contention that you speak for a good amount of the professionals. That's a huge statement without any proof. Apple does consult with selected professionals on their needs. That's not to say they do everything they ask for but they do talk to them.

 

[3282868]

The original public beta for 10.0. I simply mention to say I'm not one of your "newbies from the past three years". Actually I've been using Macs since 1986.

Sorry but I just don't accept your contention that you speak for a good amount of the professionals. That's a huge statement without any proof. Apple does consult with selected professionals on their needs. That's not to say they do everything they ask for but they do talk to them.

Thanks for the clarification, and I meant no disrespect by insinuating something you are not.

As for your reaction to my comments, we are all entitled to our own opinions and experiences. My good friend Corey works at Pixar and used to work almost directly under Jobs, and my friend Jackee (she is a documentary film maker from LA) recently moved to Cupertino as a design consultant for the new Final Cut Pro (X). She and I used to discuss Apple's direction with regards to the Pro-market, me being the pessimist and she being the optimist. Having spoken with her w/o breaking her NDA, months working with the team she changed her stance. She stated that much of Apple's focus is on iOS as they have not revamped the Final Cut management in years and the engineers and designers do not work well together, and management is hardly present. She was underwhelmed with the results, and seemed rather frustrated that Apple wasn't devoting enough time and resources to the project while in team squabbling blocked some amazing advancements.

Yes, anecdotal, but never the less you have to admit given Apple's discontinuation of professional/business products such as Xserve, little Mac Pro advancements aside from Xeon updates, no Blu-Ray for HD movie editing, and a lack of a full display line forcing us to use non-Apple displays such as EIZO or NEC (requiring calibration steps that the previous ACD line did not) certainly point to a slow departure from the professional grade products that Apple was once synonymous for producing.

 

[Blakeasd]

We might see a revolutionary new feature at WWDC. I recall some Apple job openings for Mac OS X that had to do with the web and OS X. It was not the App Store, as Apple would already have employees who could port it to the mac. So I think that revolutionary new feature is still in the works.

 

[3282868]

We might see a revolutionary new feature at WWDC. I recall some Apple job openings for Mac OS X that had to do with the web and OS X. It was not the App Store, as Apple would already have employees who could port it to the mac. So I think that revolutionary new feature is still in the works.

That would be great, I'd like to see something promising

 

[Lukeit]

Using your thread title as a start, I'd rather say I AM impressed by Lion, but since last build in a very very bad way!
It seems Apple has worked backwards and has added instabilities and bugs that were not here in the very first build release.
Take Safari... now it barely usable: it crashes and closes down with a frequency I have NEVER experienced in any beta software before.
Preview is using LOADS of memory and it is sticky, sluggish and highly unreliable.
and these are just two simple examples.
I basically think Lion has got worse since its first build: why???

 

[talmy]

None of the releases have been particularly stable for me, but then I'd never expect that they would be. It runs well enough that I can tell 1) I don't like the new GUI features, 2) My own programs run just fine, and 3) Several commerical apps I use don't run.

 

[petvas]

None of the releases have been particularly stable for me, but then I'd never expect that they would be. It runs well enough that I can tell 1) I don't like the new GUI features, 2) My own programs run just fine, and 3) Several commerical apps I use don't run.

Since it is still a dev preview I dont expect that everything will run without issues. On the contrary.

If the rumors are true and Lion should be coming in June and judging by the quality of the dev previews, Apple has still a lot to do to make a stable OS. of course Apple could just have internal builds that are far more advanced in terms of features and stability, so we cannot really be sure.

 

[Lukeit]

None of the releases have been particularly stable for me, but then I'd never expect that they would be. It runs well enough that I can tell 1) I don't like the new GUI features, 2) My own programs run just fine, and 3) Several commerical apps I use don't run.

Of course nobody expect a beta build to be bug free, but at least not to get worse as time progress and buil number increases... many departments of Lion were better in the first and second update... then things went down the drain...
I really hope Apple can show some REAL improvements otherwise I'll keep flooding them with my bug reports !

 

[baryon]

That's essentially what Stacks is.

Yes but the problem with Stacks is that it reflect the exact folder structure of your Applications folder. If some of your Apps (such as Photoshop) reside in a folder within the Applications folder, it gets really annoying to have to click through all that.

You also can't rearrange icons in Stacks, and you can't remove ones you don't want.

Stacks is simply not that great for displaying your Apps, but Launchpad would be perfect if only it would be in a stack-style interface. Maybe Apple should allow "special stacks" that would deal with shortcuts just like Launchpad, in a simple interface.

The current implementation of aliases in Stacks is extremely buggy. I often click on an alias and it tells me the file can't be opened, because the .app extension still remains, yet it's not a .app but an alias. Then I have to go and get rid of the alias's extension, causing the icon to turn into a question mark as it has no extension. Then it works but there's no icon. How is that practical?

 

[talmy]

Solution to all but complete control of rearranging: Create a folder somewhere and put into it aliases of the applications (command option drag). You can create a folder hierarchy to organize the aliases. Then drag the folder to the dock. Now you have just the applications you want, in a potentially hierarchical organization, in a stack on the dock. (I've never seen a problem with aliases in stacks this way.)

Yes but the problem with Stacks is that it reflect the exact folder structure of your Applications folder. If some of your Apps (such as Photoshop) reside in a folder within the Applications folder, it gets really annoying to have to click through all that.

You also can't rearrange icons in Stacks, and you can't remove ones you don't want.

 

[dethmaShine]

Apart from Mission Control, the only annoyance are those people who jump to conclusions without knowing what the thing will actually be/how people are going to use it/finding a way to disregard all the efforts.

@OP: You are too blind to have not noticed anything impressive. Sorry.

 

[baryon]

Solution to all but complete control of rearranging: Create a folder somewhere and put into it aliases of the applications (command option drag). You can create a folder hierarchy to organize the aliases. Then drag the folder to the dock. Now you have just the applications you want, in a potentially hierarchical organization, in a stack on the dock. (I've never seen a problem with aliases in stacks this way.)

Okay, but that is not an official solution to App organization. It's just a workaround to getting your apps to appear conveniently. Sure, there's nothing wrong with it, but it's not a very elegant and simple way to do things, and I'm sure Apple made Launchpad to fix that problem. However, Launchpad takes up the entire screen and breaks the user's workflow. I think they should have used the Stacks idea, and made it as simple to use as Launchpad.

 

[petvas]

Apart from Mission Control, the only annoyance are those people who jump to conclusions without knowing what the thing will actually be/how people are going to use it/finding a way to disregard all the efforts.

@OP: You are too blind to have not noticed anything impressive. Sorry.

I have been using Lion for a while and I don't understand why you are saying that. Could you please help me see what the impressive features are? I am not saying that Lion won't be better than Snow Leopard, I just do not see anything so impressive. When I first read about the new features I was impressed , but after using the actual OS I cannot say the same.

 

[talmy]

Okay, but that is not an official solution to App organization. It's just a workaround to getting your apps to appear conveniently. Sure, there's nothing wrong with it, but it's not a very elegant and simple way to do things, and I'm sure Apple made Launchpad to fix that problem. However, Launchpad takes up the entire screen and breaks the user's workflow. I think they should have used the Stacks idea, and made it as simple to use as Launchpad.

I'd say that what I do is "official" in that it uses nothing other than what OS X provides -- folders, aliases, and Stacks. It may be a bit cumbersome to set up, but it does give a solution that works efficiently for launching within the Stacks feature.

We certainly agree that Launchpad is awful! In the Linux front, Ubuntu has come out with a new program launcher that is a lot like iOS and Launchpad and it is being poorly received as well! But both Lion and Ubuntu don't require their use.

Now if were only possible to revert back to the old Spaces and Expose behaviors.