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What one feature will make you upgrade to Lion?

neiltc13

neiltc13

macrumors 68040
Original poster
May 27, 2006
3,128
28
I've read through all of the pages on Apple.com, particularly the full list of new features and I'm still struggling to find even one that makes me want to upgrade.

The only ones that have jumped out at me so far are:
Mac App Store - Efficient app updates
When an update is available for an application, the Mac App Store makes efficient use of bandwidth, delivering only the data that is different from the previous version.

Overlay scroll bars
The new overlay scroll bars appear when you need them and fade away when you don’t, resulting in a more streamlined experience.
Click to expand...

So I thought I'd ask you guys for advice - what one feature has impressed you most about OS X Lion?
 
Apple said:
Browse the web with Safari

Recovery mode now includes the Safari web browser, so you can check your email or browse the Apple Support site.

iPhoto faces

Put a face to a name so you can find someone at a glance. Address Book makes it easy to turn an iPhoto picture into a contact photo. Just double-click an empty picture frame or an existing contact photo on any card. Click the Faces icon, browse your iPhoto faces, and click a face to choose a photo. You can zoom and crop the photo so it looks just the way you want.

Export audio only

The new Export Audio Only feature produces an AAC audio track that’s perfect for listening on the go or posting audio-only files to the web.

Set up online accounts

The new Mail, Contacts, and Calendars pane in System Preferences gives you a central location to set up and manage all your accounts, including Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo!, and AOL.
Click to expand...

Mine. It's the little things that make a world of difference. If Export audio only is applescriptable, I'd be in heaven.
 
How about a feature to make you want to not upgrade?
System Preferences
Set up online accounts
The new Mail, Contacts, and Calendars pane in System Preferences gives you a central location to set up and manage all your accounts, including Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo!, and AOL.
Click to expand...
I like the idea of being able to change account information while I'm in mail. Why should I have to open up System Preferences when I want Mail preferences? Depending on how they did this, it made things more complicated, not less.

Looking over this list, I think I will need to go in to an Apple Store and play with Lion to see how I like the assorted changes. I hate to say this, but it could be worth the hassle and pain to migrate to Windows when my Mac needs replacement. Then again, the features page doesn't cover everything. I really do need to go play with Lion at an Apple store before I even think about installing it on my system.
 
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Photo Booth, obviously.

I'm going to let those birds fly around my head aaaall daay looong! :cool:
 
$29

Thats the feature that makes me want to upgrade :D

Thats a crazy price for a whole new OS.... this is not just a leopard add on like snow leopard was.
 
May seem trivial, but for me resizing from any corner is the best - I've always found the "just one corner" stupidly awkward.

But Mission Control looks like the reason I'll skip it. I'll wait until I've seen it for real, but as a big user of spaces this looks like a serious reduction in usability.
 
The ability to resize a window from any corner or side as well as the overlay scrollbars are reason enough to upgrade, as trivial as it may sound to some.

Other key selling points that merit the $29 price tag include AirDrop, Mail, Mission Control, Gestures, System Resume, and Scroll Direction Preference.

In its current state, Expose is largely useless to me as I can't tell what window belongs to what application. Thankfully, Mission Control fixes this annoyance by overlaying an image of the application's icon over the windows that belong to it. This is a subtle, yet important tweak that many will find useful.

System Resume will be a huge time-saver for us fastidious desktop organizers that would rather drink arsenic than be forced to lose window postions and open applications in the event of a system restart.

Even a feature as outwardly banal like the ability to modify scroll direction preference is being overlooked. Inverting the scrolling motion on the trackpad gives Lion a smooth, iOS-like feel when scrolling through windows. It's hard to describe, but something about it just "feels" right.

Netizens allover are coming to knee-jerk conclusions without giving Lion its fair shake. It's a bargain at $29 when compared to previous full-blown incarnations of the OS that retailed for $129 or when compared to the nearly-featureless Snow Leopard refresh. Lion is shaping up to be the best iteration of Mac OS X by leaps and bounds, you guys just need to give it a chance. Rawr.
 
So far I have mixed feelings. Im going to remain open and think about it. See what is said and what other aspects may be revealed in the coming days.

I haven't seen anything yet that is truly significant, or groundbreaking in terms of serious computing. What is there is fluff and gee whiz features to appeal to the novice user. Cleverly concealing a reduced efficiency as more gestures, less clicks, and more touchy geeky stroking of the screen.

Time will tell. I'm going to sit back and let others be Apples lab rats. Testing it out on the public will not include me giving up my data to Apples cloud.

No flipping way!
 
superAl1394 said:
(If its there for 3rd parties on release) TRIM support.
Click to expand...

I'm going to say it because as a fellow mac user, you need to hear it. DONT buy a SSD that DOESNT use a sandforce controller. They are the absolute best, plus trim is then no longer an issue because sandforce takes care of that for you. And you wonder why they're the best... :)

Edit: There's also plenty of discussion on whether OSX even needs it.
 
When Leopard was previewed and we saw Stacks, one of the things that Steve showed was the ability to make stacks of Apps in the dock, to the left of the crosswalk. When Leopard came out, this didn't happen. So we have the applications folder which you can put as a stack in your dock and list, fan, or grid it (I prefer grid) to launch stuff. But you get everything. At one point, I made aliases of all my Apps, created folders for the aliases, and put those folders in the dock to categorize and launch my Apps. But it was cumbersome, you had a little alias arrow on the icon, and it just wasn't Apple.

So for me it's a no brainer. Sure I like full screen Apps, gestures to swipe screen to screen, and Mission Control, but what I am really looking forward to is LaunchPad.

I will say the one thing I wish we were getting. Safari tab gestures. I don't want to swipe forward and backward in my browsing history. I want to swipe from tab to tab for navigation. And I want a close tab swipe as well. At one point there was a utility called MultiClutch that allowed you to do this and define gestures in almost any App, but the developer couldn't get it to work in Snow Leopard. Oh well.
 
Only to keep my data in sync as icloud is only lion

The rest of the new features I hope can be turned off
 
iSync

My wife and I have non-smart phones.

We have shared contacts lists.

Both of our laptops use iSync to sync to both of our phones.

If she adds a contact, they appear on my Laptop/phone and vice-versa.

If one phone is out of juice, we're still good. I keep track of my family contacts, and she keeps track of hers. We have contact info for each of our employers if one of us is sick. We have a shared family calendar, which we sync, which helps keep us in sync.


I'm not going to trust all of my 200+ contacts to some company. The recent security failures of Sony should illustrate why I don't trust most companies with any more of my sensitive data than I need to.


I won't use a tool that only works with a specific brand of phone. I won't use a tool that requires me to use anything other than an OS built in address book/contacts list. I have no interest in wires, iSync has done this via Bluetooth for years. In short, I'm not interested in anything that works less well than what I have now.


In short iSync is something that has become a foundational technology that allows my wife and I to manage our busy lives.


Other than iSync, there doesn't appear to be any option other than using Windows 7's somewhat blatant rip-off of iSync to fill in this void in functionality. It'd be lame, as I'm really not a fan of Win7. However, my employer did just issue me a wicked fast, but also bulky and overly heavy Dell Precision Laptop which coincidentally shipped with Windows 7.
 
drewyboy said:
I'm going to say it because as a fellow mac user, you need to hear it. DONT buy a SSD that DOESNT use a sandforce controller. They are the absolute best, plus trim is then no longer an issue because sandforce takes care of that for you. And you wonder why they're the best... :)

Edit: There's also plenty of discussion on whether OSX even needs it.
Click to expand...

Even the SandForce drives will slow down without TRIM. Eventually, all blocks will become 'dirty' and erase cycles will need to preceed program cycles which will slow everything down.

Yes, OS X needs it. I have a SandForce SSD in my MBP and after 6 months it was noticeably slower on boots and everyday use. Implemented the TRIM enabler and things were zippy again within days.
 
I'll upgrade just for the new download window in Safari, under Snow Leopard it gives me the............................................Too bad the 5.1 preview of Safari forSnow Leopard still has the same annoying download window.
 
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What one feature will make you upgrade to Lion??

Being able to get it without my computer registered to an AppleID to the Mac App Store.

What feature won't make me upgrade to Lion?

The disappearance of the 'Library' folder in ~/Users
 
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