Mac OS X Lion

When Apple showed off Mac OS X Lion at the World Wide Developer Conference earlier this year, it was clear the company had paid attention to its successes with the popular iOS devices, and was now beginning to include successful iOS features in its flagship OS. Also, with Apple notebooks and tablets now far outpacing desktop sales, Apple has moved from a primarily desktop computer company to embrace mobile computing. This release of Mac OS X seems to be a reflection of Apple's successes in those categories.

With this eighth major release of the big-cat OS, Apple is adding more than 250 features. Some are big interface changes, whereas others are smaller refinements with the clear aim of making certain actions easier. Priced at £20.99 (inc. VAT), the upgrade adds plenty to make it worthwhile for most Mac users, but those who do not have Snow Leopard will need to pay for that upgrade as well. Lion can only be downloaded via the Mac App Store, which was introduced with Snow Leopard.

Installation
Installation for Mac OS X Lion requires a couple of steps. You start by running Software Update and check for Mac App Store updates — this is always a good practice before a major upgrade, to make sure you have the latest versions of Apple's core apps.

From there, you simply navigate to the Mac App Store in Snow Leopard, purchase the upgrade and begin downloading. You'll need to have an account with Apple via the Mac or iTunes Store in order to purchase Mac OS X Lion. The OS is about 4GB, so depending on your connection, you may want to start the download before going to bed or leaving for work. When the download is finished, the Mac OS X Lion installer appears in the Dock and launches automatically.

Mac OS X Lion installs in place, so you won't need to create a separate disk or run the installation off an external drive. All of your photos, documents, applications and other saved files will be there when you're finished with the upgrade. Once the installation is complete, your Mac will automatically restart and you'll be ready to start exploring Mac OS X Lion. Apple also told us that Snow Leopard users migrating data to a new Mac with Lion should first grab the Migration Assistant update for Snow Leopard. This ensures that all of your files, photos and information are smoothly transferred to the new system.

Other download options: Apple recognises that 4GB can be a big download, especially for users without broadband. If you don't have broadband access at home, work or school you'll be able to download Lion at all Apple retail stores. If there are no stores close to you, you'll need to wait until August, when Apple says Lion will be made available on a USB thumb drive through the Apple Store (www.apple.com/uk) for £55. (Mac OS X Lion Server requires Lion and is available from the Mac App Store for £34.99.)

New features
Multitouch gestures
With the success of touch-screen iOS devices and sales of Mac notebooks outpacing desktops, it's only fitting that Apple would make multitouch gestures a priority in Mac OS X Lion. Whether you're using the trackpad on the MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air or the Magic Trackpad for desktops, you'll be able to take advantage of multitouch gestures that get you where you want to go quickly without having to navigate using a mouse. The Magic Mouse offers alternative gestures as well, so you won't be left out in the cold if you prefer a more traditional mouse.

Mac OS X Lion offers several new and useful multitouch gestures that are easy to learn and save you time as you navigate your Mac

Even the feel of gestures seem smoother, which Apple says is not a change in how the functions work, but are attributable to new animations for things like swiping, zooming and momentum scrolling. Whatever the explanation, it works well.

In Mac OS X Lion, Apple has rethought the concept of scrolling through pages by making the idea of the scroll bar mostly obsolete. Now you can swipe with two fingers to scroll through a web page or document, but the document moves as though you are actually moving it with your hand. This is different from former scrolling methods, where you would scroll downward with the scroll bar to make a web page move upward, for example. This might take some getting used to for many people, but we found it very intuitive once we got used to 'grabbing' a web page or scrollable document and moving it. The scroll bar is not completely a thing of the past, however, because it still shows up to indicate where you are on a page and disappears once you're finished scrolling — it's just that you'll mostly no longer need to use it.

Some of the more-useful gestures we found were the aforementioned two-finger scrolling, a three-finger swipe upward to open Mission Control (more on this later), and the three-finger swipe to the side to switch between full-screen applications. All of these gestures are very fluid and intuitive and — once you remember the important ones — should become second nature.

Full-screen apps
One of the more obvious differences between the Windows and Mac operating systems throughout the years was Windows' ability to easily switch (or maximise) to full screen, while Mac apps would always launch (and remain) in a window. With Mac OS X Lion, you can now switch the core Mac apps to a full-screen view using a diagonal arrow icon in the top right of the app window. Apple's Mac software that's separate from the operating system, like iWork and the iLife apps, now has this functionality as well, but you'll need to update the programs via the Mac App Store to add full-screen capabilities. Apple says that full screen will be available as an API to third-party developers as well, so expect many of your favourite apps to soon be updated with full-screen support.

Several of the core apps can now be run in full-screen mode so you can work (or play) without distractions; Apple says third-party developers will be able to add full-screen functionality to their apps as well

Once in full-screen view, you'll be able to use multitouch gestures like the three-finger swipe horizontally to smoothly move between applications. If you want to see the Dock while in full screen, move the mouse to the bottom of the screen, take your finger off the mouse then swipe down again. Apple has stuck to this particular design aesthetic for many years by not implementing this basic feature, and we're glad to have the ability to use apps full-screen in Lion at long last.

Mission Control
Mac OS X has offered many ways throughout the years to quickly navigate to open apps and open windows through various iterations of what Apple calls Exposé. But with Lion, you'll now have Mission Control, which displays all your open apps and windows so it's easy to find everything you're currently working on in one screen. Apple also integrated Spaces (separate desktops to organise your work) into Mission Control, via a floating icon in the upper right corner of the Mission Control window. Now, if you want to move work to a separate space, you'll enter Mission Control, then click and drag the windows to the icon to create an extra desktop.

Mission Control takes the best things about Spaces and Exposé and ties them together in one useful screen; with a simple three-finger swipe upward, you'll have everything running on your Mac at your fingertips

We found earlier versions of Exposé to be somewhat confusing, with different buttons for different actions causing you to have to experiment to find the right key to see all windows open in an application. With Mission Control, your open apps are displayed across the top with the Exposé view of all open windows at the bottom — no confusing options. You still have Function keys (with new obvious icons on the new MacBook Air and presumably on Macs to come later), but you can also do a three-finger swipe upward to open the unified Mission Control screen on any trackpad. We really like how easy it is to get to Mission Control using multitouch gestures. It eliminates steps and gets you where you want to go, quickly.

Safari
Apple's web browser has a few enhancements to make it easier to use, and lets you use multitouch gestures to smoothly navigate from page to page. The app supports the newly designed scrolling method, along with tap or pinch to zoom, and swipes to navigate a tab's history. This is one area where you'll particularly notice the natural animations of the new multitouch gestures: when two-finger swiping a web page, it slides over smoothly exactly at the speed you swipe. Even though the animations are mostly an aesthetic upgrade, we found it much easier and more elegant than hitting back on the web browser and reloading past sites.

Acting as a set of temporary bookmarks, the Reading List will make it simple to manage your daily reading; just click the '+' sign to the left of the address bar or Shift-click a link to add it to your Reading List — when you're finished with today's reading, you can save stories for later or clear it out

A new feature called Reading List acts as a temporary bookmarking system for stories you want to read a bit later. When you see a story you can't get to now, hit the '+' sign to the left of the address bar and choose Reading List (you can also Shift-click a link in a story to automatically add it). Once you've collected a few stories, you can go back and read the preloaded sites in your Reading List. When you're done, you can click Clear All to clean out today's list. We think this particular addition is very useful for quickly grabbing links to stories without having to save them to your bookmarks.

A small but welcome addition is a new Download indicator on the upper right of the browser. When you download a file in Lion, an animation shows the file fly to the icon, then begins downloading. Click the icon to check progress or to look at past downloads. Although small, it's a much better interface design than digging through menus to show the Downloads window and lets you know right away that your download has been initiated.

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