The Subtle new features of Mac OS X Lion

[Andrew Danks]

While Apple previewed some of the new features of Lion such as Launch Pad and Mission Control, I believe that the revolutionary new features lie with the auto save features and the idea that apps resume where they left off.

Have you noticed the screenshots that Apple has posted for Lion? The dock has no indicators as to which app is open. Finder always has such an indicator. I don't think this is a mistake either. This definitely has to do with the idea of apps on iOS instantly opening where they were left off in the past. Perhaps they are revolutionizing multitasking on Mac OS X.

I've been reading many forums and nobody has seemed to comment on this.


If this is being discussed elsewhere on this forum, direct me there and I will delete this thread.

 

[celticpride678]

Lion is still a year away. Apple is bound to make UI changes. I don't see them removing that feature (unless they can integrate it better)

 

[HelveticaNeue]

Have you noticed the screenshots that Apple has posted for Lion? The dock has no indicators as to which app is open.

I noticed that during the keynote. When they zoomed in on the demo computer's dock there were no open app indicators.

 

[duyvan82]

*edit

never mind, just realised it's a screenshot of the app store on Snow Leopard.

I'd hate to see the indicators gone.. I really don't think it's a good idea to bring iOS's "multitasking" to the Mac. I for one want to know which apps are running at a glance.

 

[miknos]

But will this approach make 10.7 super fast? When you're not using "x" application, the other ones will not use memory?

Just like iPhone multitasking? memory goes almost 100% to the app you're viewing?

 

[DJ-R]

Apple should add the option for:

- Half Transparency ON/OFF on the GUI. Just like the Menu Bar.
- A limited range changing the GUI grey tone just like Adobe Bridge or Adobe Illustrator that you are able to darken or lighten the GUI for better view and balance with the contents you will be working on.

- Ambiant sensor works with GUI color auto-tone? It will be great instead just changing the LED backlit. It will also change the GUI from light grey to darker grey if needed.

 

[richard.mac]

just noticed the lack on indicators for open apps. thats how it will be, Apple wouldn't post incorrect images on their OS X Lion page.

suppose they think from iOS research that users don't care which apps are open anymore with large amounts of memory and RAM management these days. don't know if i agree with that.

 

[R94N]

I like the Mission Control.

 

[VPrime]

I like the Mission Control.

I like the name mission control..... I think I am one of the few who do .
Makes me feel like an astronaut or something

 

[bristleworm]

I like the name mission control..... I think I am one of the few who do .
Makes me feel like an astronaut or something

I like it, too! Sounds great!

 

[pfjellman]

it's possible that every icon in the dock is a running application, and when the application is closed, it no longer appears in the dock. would make sense if you used mission control and the "homepages" grid to launch your applications.

not sure how i feel about this, i'm somewhat indifferent because i already have my dock set to only show open applications and i launch apps with alfred or by clicking on the apps folder in my dock with stacks.

although this change is fairly drastic and i imagine it upsetting many people. who knows. we'll see.

 

[karsten]

of all the things i saw i'm personally hoping for the ios scrollbars to appear on osx. seriously. some of the fullscreen is neat too but i hope you can disable it because its nice to see more than one running application at a time, desktop monitors are bigger than handheld, there's no reason to replicate that to a desktop-size display.

 

[hachre]

I love them taking these things back to the Mac.

Knowing if a program is running or not is an ancient leftover thing from times when ressources were very sparse. Times when you manually had to manage what runs at a time. But these times are long gone.

I'm not saying you can simply have everything running at the same time but if you stop thinking like that while designing an OS you can implement whole new approaches to all this. Many applications we use don't actually have to run while we don't look at them or interact with them.

If applications were split precisely into parts that have to run even while you don't look at them and parts that are unimportant while you aren't there it would result in the OS being able to halt those parts that aren't required. Halt is the wrong word here. You don't halt anything, you just no longer execute it. Also you mark it's RAM as semi-free and once someone needs it you page that part of the RAM to the SSD.

The result is that basically your apps get closed and opened (from an OS point of view) constantly which gives you a lot more ressources for the things you are really USING at that moment. Also it makes it unneccesary for you to know when a program is really running or just looking like it is. The OS can handle ressource management far better than you can.

In my opinion this is a huge step into the right direction on desktop operating systems.

 

[boston04and07]

it's possible that every icon in the dock is a running application, and when the application is closed, it no longer appears in the dock. would make sense if you used mission control and the "homepages" grid to launch your applications.

not sure how i feel about this, i'm somewhat indifferent because i already have my dock set to only show open applications and i launch apps with alfred or by clicking on the apps folder in my dock with stacks.

although this change is fairly drastic and i imagine it upsetting many people. who knows. we'll see.

I was thinking the exact same thing. After all, with Launchpad right there, giving us access to all of our applications, having another shortcut-holder type thingy isn't really necessary. Maybe the dock will turn into OS X's version of double-tapping the home button in iOS? I think I would like that. All my most-used apps would probably just end up sitting there all the time, anyways, since I usually don't close apps until resources start getting noticeably scarce. However, I can also see this confusing and upsetting a lot of people. Hopefully the user can decide how he or she would like to use their docks.

 

[pi399]

I think this must be obvious, but it looks like OS X is going to go away from the aurora background theme. All the pictures on the apple website, (which were all on the new MacBook Air, by the way), showed a new purple-colored flower as the desktop image. Any ideas on why apple might go to purple flowers instead of something else? It doesn't really make much sense with a name like Lion...

 

[seamuskrat]

Seems like the old Switcher

Way back when, Apple had an system utility called the Switcher. It was the earliest day of artificial multitasking. Back with 512K ram and such.

It was elegant. Just click and one app vanishes and another comes in to start work.

No background processes but it was fairly fast for the day.

Personally I would love to see the best of both. Background tasks like number crunching and rendering and the neat save state and simplistic switch of the early Mac days.

In some ways, it seem slike they are utilizing Spaces in a new way as well from the early info.

I think Apple is going to push the envelope and head towards many net appliances and veer away from desktop computers in the long haul, but I feel OS X has a few more computing iterations left in it. In about another decade I can see there being no PCs at all, and a world of mobile appliances with cloud storage and SaaS apps.