Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Review

OS X 10.7 "Lion" is the eighth major release of OS X, and comes with a new philosophical approach to the Mac. Apple has been using OS X for the "Mac OS" as well as the underlying OS for the AppleTV as well as the iOS on iPhones and the iPad, and is now looking to bring some of the innovations in the iOS back to the Mac OS to enhance the Mac experience.

The first is multitouch gestures, a feature that has been progressively implemented into OS X with Apple's multitouch trackpad, Magic mouse, and Magic trackpad input devices. While many might imagine a touch-screen option for notebooks, Apple is not going to go in that direction, indicating user fatigue as the main problem with that approach, but also that it is just cumbersome for most users. Instead, Apple will be concentrating on the horizontal approach to gestures and inputs that we have seen in the multitouch trackpads, and is leaving the onscreen gestures to mobile devices.

The second feature is the implementation of the Mac App Store on OS X. This is available as a standalone application that you can put in your Dock, which will open and show a view into the store similar to the iTunes store. It will allow you to better discover new applications as well as offer easy one-click purchasing and installation of applications. When applications are purchased, they will immediately show in the Dock along with a progress bar indicating the download and installation progress for that application. When the progress bar is done, the application can be launched immediately.

While Apple is advertising the new App Store for Lion, the program will be available for Snow Leopard within 90 days, so stay tuned. Apple has a developer kit to hopefully get other applications into the store besides its iLife and iWork suites, and we expect that like the current App Store for the iOS, it will populate rather quickly.

 

The next feature in Lion will be the Home Screen feature called the Launch Pad. This looks like a merge between the current Dashboard and the iPhone home screen, and it will show you the available applications on the system, which can be launched with a single click. Like the current Dock, you can create folders for applications, but the larger screen real estate allows for more to be viewed at once, and be better organized not only in folders but also on multiple screens. This addition makes us wonder whether or not Apple is going to be replacing the Dock with this new feature.

Beyond home screens, as with iPhoto and recent releases of Safari, Apple is concentrating on full-screen and has options for supporting applications that can be viewed in full screen, allowing users to take their own full workspace but also be flicked off the screen with a multitouch gesture. Apple is also working on implementing auto-save features for applications in OS X Lion, which has been a lacking option for many applications including Apple's own, since the implementation has been up to individual developers. This should also be a welcomed addition to the program.

Finally, Apple is trying a new approach to Expose, Dashboard, Spaces, as well as the new full-screen application support in Lion, which is to merge them all into a single view called Mission Control. This will show all running applications, with individual windows for each application being lumped into stacks called "clusters." This will likely be a huge relief for those who keep many windows open at once and get lost when Expose is invoked. It might have been nice to see a cover-flow feature implemented in Expose, but the clusters view looks like it will suffice.

When Mission Control is invoked, not only are applications lumped together, but full-screen applications are shown in a separate section, allowing you to quickly switch between them as well. It looks like Apple is ironing out some of the clutter that can happen in multitasking environments, and Mission Control seems so far to be a good enhancement to previous multitasking management options.

These new features in Lion do bring up a few unanswered quiestions, such as what will happen to the Dock, or the Command-Tab switching abilities prior versions of OS X? Additionally, since many of these implement multitouch gestures, will they require the use of a multitouch input device? Many systems that should support Lion have limited multitouch options, so hopefully Apple will implement options for these systems.

Apple has just given us a preview release of Lion, and many of these answers will come over the next few months as Apple rolls out new information about Lion. The OS is on track to be released sometime in the summer of 2011, and if Apple sticks to its past reputation, that means it will likely be released in late September or early October. Meanwhile current and future information about OS X 10.7 "Lion" should be available on Apple's "OS X Lion" Web page.

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Google's Chrome OS Review

What if nearly everything you usually keep on your computer - photos, documents, music and software - was stored online? Your machine would be speedier and perhaps less vital because you could simply use another machine to recoup your digital life should you lose your laptop.

This premise - somewhat scary, yet liberating - is behind Google Inc.'s upcoming Chrome OS, which will make notebook computers more like netbooks than most actual netbooks.

The software powering Chrome OS, which is based on the search giant's eponymously named browser, serves mainly as a tool for connecting your computer to the Web. That's where nearly everything you use is housed and linked to your Google username and password. It's a concept known as cloud computing.

A peek at the upcoming operating system and its vision of cloud computing shows a promising idea that could make computing faster and more convenient. But it still needs a lot of work. Google expects the first computers powered by Chrome OS to be released this summer, and initially they'll be made by Acer Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.

For now, though, Google is operating a pilot for some individuals and companies to test an unbranded laptop that runs Chrome OS. The company lent The Associated Press one of these machines, which aren't going to be sold to the public. The laptop itself, called the Cr-48, doesn't really deserve to be critiqued, because it is a stripped-down machine that is chiefly a frame for Google's OS oeuvre. The shell is entirely matte black plastic, without a hint of branding. It has a webcam, a screen that is about 12 inches diagonally and a full-sized keyboard with a search key in place of the caps lock key.

The machine also has 16 gigabytes of flash memory for storing files, if you feel absolutely compelled to download something. Downloads are obviously discouraged, though; my music collection alone would nearly fill this allotment.

Moving on to the main event, Chrome OS brings a few clear benefits: Starting up the notebook takes just seconds - roughly 13 of them, according to my stopwatch - and waking the closed notebook from "sleep" mode is as quick as opening it up (almost too quick, as the notebook couldn't regain its wireless service quite as fast). By contrast, my Windows machine at work takes more than two minutes to boot up.

After you sign in with your Google account, the same username and password you would use to access Gmail, you can pull up a home page showing all the apps you've installed from the Chrome Web Store. Assuming you're connected to the Web, you can just start using apps and surfing the Web right away. There were plenty of free and paid Web apps and browser extensions available when I tested the notebook. Some are only for the Chrome OS; others also work with Google's Chrome Web browser for other computers.

I installed a range of the free ones, some of which seemed to be just links to existing Web pages. The apps I snagged included Web-based office suite Google Docs, the chatting service Google Talk, Aviary's Advanced Image Editor and balloon-popping puzzle game Poppit.

As with smart phones and tablets such as Apple Inc.'s iPad, publications are also making Chrome apps. USA Today, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are among them. On my work computer, it can take ages to open up applications that are stored on my hard drive. With the Cr-48, I could immediately start editing a Google Docs spreadsheet or tweak the colors in a photo using Aviary because the programs are all running online. I only needed a strong Internet connection.

Surfing the Web was a pretty normal experience, with most websites loading speedily, though the Cr-48 was not that good at displaying Flash videos. But I felt constrained because I had to use the lone browser that comes with the system and the Web-based apps I obtained. Apps loaded slowly when my Internet connection wasn't stellar. This wouldn't be a problem with programs stored on a regular computer's hard drive. If a Chrome OS-based laptop becomes my primary computer, a data plan would be a must. I feel anxious just thinking about the possibility that I couldn't access my documents at any time, and I don't even keep anything that important on my own laptop.

I mostly used the notebook with Wi-Fi at home and at the office, though I also tried out its 3G network service, which is provide by Verizon Wireless. So what happens if you don't have any Internet access? The Cr-48 is pretty useless. I could still write in an already-open Google Docs document, add notes in Scratchpad and look at photos I'd downloaded. But I couldn't use apps that are not yet opened because they're all connected to the Web.

If you lose your connection while using an app, you may be able to view some information that has been temporarily stored in memory, as I could when browsing The New York Times' app. But you'll need to get online as soon as possible to really use the machine. Faced with this situation, I'd probably just search frantically for an Internet connection or simply put away my laptop.

In its current state, the Chrome OS is far from ready to take over as my main computer, even if I were using it on a more powerful machine than the Cr-48. Sure, I spend most of my time on the Web already, but I'm not quite ready to rely on having Internet access to do almost anything with my computer. I can imagine getting comfortable with that in the not-so-distant future, though, and I'm curious to see if Google can make it happen.

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