Lion was released late last week, and whilst this is NOT a review, it is some observations on the upgrade so far.
The Good
The upgrade was smooth and quick – a download from the “App Store”.
The new overall interface is more subdued. Personally, it makes the task or content stand out..
Full screen view. Different from the Windows Maximise button. In full screen mode, there is no menu system.
Safari has a new feature “Reading List” which saves websites for later reading.
Add events to iCal using natural language – i.e.; See Craig this Friday at 1pm.
Recovery – Lion creates an invisible volume to help with recovery, restores and re-installs. It is also the basis of the new whole disk encryption.
Windows of course has had a recovery service for years “Last Know Good State” as well as whole disk encryption “BitLocker” – it’s good to see it arrive on a mac – in a more usable form.
Lion Server is now only $49.99USD – this is down from $499USD in Snow Leopard and $999USD in Leopard!
If only Apple had a real Server hardware platform…
You can now merge the contents of two folders by dragging one folder onto on another – an old time Windows feature that is welcome addition.
Lion now has a Windows Migration Assistant as well as the standard Migration Assistant – should make setup of new users defecting from Windows much easier.
The Bad
If you have a NAS (Network attached storage) make sure you check for a firmware update or you might not be able to connect via AFP (Apple File Sharing).
Netgear have released an update for the Intel based ReadyNAS with a update soon to follow for the older Spark based models.
For other brands, your NAS needs to be running an AFP 3.3 compliant firmware – which means netatalk 2.2beta2 or later.
As per standard, a few applications always break.
Adobe has a laundry list of issues – if your running anything before CS4, you won’t be happy.
Extensis Suitcase Fusion 3 will receive an update in a few weeks
Microsoft has a list of issues, mots of which are superficial.
The main issue is cannot import Apple Mail to Outlook 2011 (which is a good thing as I migrate people away for Entourage/Outlook weekly to Apple Mail!)
EverNote has a Safari extension to send copies of websites to EverNote. It’s currently broken – should be fixed soon.
My copy of Parallels is currently PURPLE. There was a Lion update that did not resolve the situation.
Whilst the above list looks scary, it is quite short for a large update like this.
We are less than a week into the new version – hold off for a few weeks if you use any of the above software.
Plenty more coming – contact us if you have Lion questions, or hit us up on FaceBook or LinkedIn.