Apple Announces Next OS X Iteration, Mountain Lion

Seemingly out of nowhere, at least for me for which this announcement jumped out me as I was browsing Cult of Mac, Apple has announced today the next version of OS X, to be dubbed Mountain Lion.

Delving into the details of the upgrade, Apple is continuing the process of migrating iOS applications and features back to the Mac. Most notable is the new Messaging app, Notification Center, operating system wide Twitter integration, and GameCenter. Messaging completely replaces iChat, much like Facetime allowing communication between your Mac and any iOS device. In fact, Apple has made the beta version of the application available here. Notifications Center finally provides a native notifications application/system, apparently almost identical to how it appears and operates on iOS. It will definitely be interesting to see how quickly developers get on board, as well as how the system competes with the current notifications solution for Mac users Growl. iOS 5 introduced full Twitter integration to the mobile operating system, and now that integration has found it's way to the Mac. Finally, there isn't too much to say on GameCenter past the unification it allows between desktop and mobile iOS gaming.

While I'm giddy at the thought of a new iteration of OS X, that feeling get's spoiled by the feeling that this upgrade feels, at least to me, to be coming far too soon. The current version of OS X, Lion, has only been publicly available for less than a year. It will be closer to a year by Mountain Lion's release, but that is a ridiculously short amount of time before essentially making it obsolete.

The Sandboxing Issue

To increase security for an already incredibly secure Lion, Apple is requiring application developers who have their applications on sale in the Mac App Store to comply with a new rule requiring the usage of Lion's new sandboxing feature inspired by iOS. Sandboxing means that an application is partitioned off from the operating system and other applications running on the system, which means that an application is completely prevented from having any unauthorized interaction with other applications and the operating system itself. The problem is, however, this isolation from the system itself and everything else running on the system means that functionality for many applications will be crippled.

Initially the deadline for the enforcement of this new rule was the first of November, but Apple opted to give developers a little more breathing room by extending the deadline until March first next year. While many developers have complied with this new rule and have re-submitted their applications, it's clear by the deadline extension that many others are resistent to this new requirement.

While the desire for increased security is understandable, Apple's push for sandboxing on OS X makes very little sense. Sure some applications make the transition completely unaltered, but others require access to other applications meaning that several key features and functions could get the axe. Of course there is no stopping a user from leaving the safe confines of the App Store and combing through the vast wilderness of the interent to find an application that suits their needs, but again, the point of the App Store is to be the primary place that users rely on to locate applications.

What are your thoughts?

OS X Lion Tips & Tricks

Initially upon firing up OS X Lion you may notice several things to be different, such as the lack of lights below open applications and the font in the Finder sidebar to be a tad bit too large. In light of that, here is a handy list of settings that you may have an interest in tweaking:

Indicator Lights - To become more iOS like Apple made the lights that appear below an application in the dock to signify that it is open an option. If you no longer have these indicator lights, head into the Dock pane of System Preferences and check "Show Indicator Lights…".

Sidebar font size  - When you initially fire up Lion you may notice that the font-size in the sidebar of the Finder and Mail is larger than it was in Snow leopard. This can be easily adjusted by heading into the General pane of System Preferences and selecting "Small" in the Sidebar Icon Size drop-down menu.

Dashboard - Initially Lion sets Dashboard aside as it's own space, accessed by a swipe to the right with the trackpad or Magic Mouse. You can easily reverse this and make Dashboard an overlay once again by heading into the Mission Control pane of System Preferences and unchecking "Show Dashboard as Space".

Clean up Launch Pad - There is a handy little application called LaunchPad Control that easily handles this, allowing you select what you want to see and get rid of what you don't. Head here to download.

Finder Status Bar - To hide the system's complexities from the user, Apple has opted to hide the Finder status bar. To fix this, head into the View menu and select"Show Status Bar"

Hidden Library Folder - Apparently to prevent users from tinkering around in the Libraries folder and potential doing something very bad, Apple elected to hide the folder. For those of us power users out there who know what we're doing and need access to this folder this can be particularly frustrating. Thankfully a Terminal command comes to the rescue. So, fire up Terminal and enter the following command and it will be accessible once again: chflags nohidden ~/Library

Review/Impressions - OS X Lion

Polish - Feels incredibly slick, the animations certainly impress. The new look for the Address Book and iCal are certainly off-putting, being a desktop operating system that isn't exactly a theme that one would expect to see. iCal is bearable with it's smooth animations, but Address book is a little too out there for me.

Features - Mission Control definitely impresses, seamlessly combining Spaces with Expose as well as full screen apps. Now having spaces, along with full screen apps, on a single plane it's easier than ever to switch between apps and spaces. Launch Pad certainly has it's utility, but ultimately comes up somewhat lacking and useless for veteran or power Mac users. It will definitely help ease the transition from iOS to the Mac, but it's usefulness beyond that is debatable with the presence of the dock, Finder, and Spotlight to launch applications. Auto Save, while definitely requiring getting used to due to it's casting aside years upon years of muscle memory pressing command-s, certainly makes a step in the right direction. In this day and age a user should no longer have to worry and obsess over saving and just work without distraction. Going in hand with Auto Save, Versions does to single documents what Time Machine has been doing for your system for years. It allow you to view a timeline of the document that you have been working on and either completely revert to a past version or pull bits and pieces from past versions that you've decided that you want restored. Then there is the increased focus on the utilization of the multi-touch interface of the trackpad and Magic Mouse, which overall lend to making to OS X experience feel even slicker. To simply flip between a space or full screen app with the swipe of two fingers is quite satisfying, and impressively no longer do you have to right click on a word and open up the Dictionary app to get the definition. Now all you have to do is perform a three finger tap and the word selected by the cursor becomes highlighted in yellow and out pops the definition.

Performance - While my MacBook is just over a year old, I'm running at the lowest possible RAM requirements for Lion (2 GB) and thus far everything has run smoothly and without issue.

Shortcomings - The increased utilization of multi-touch gestures means the death of prominent gestures found in Snow Leopard. In SL any application that had some sort of navigation (a web browser, iTunes, or Spotify for example) could easily be navigated forward and back with the usage of the two finger swipe gesture with the magic Mouse. Now that that gesture has been mapped to switching between spaces and full screen apps that fundamental system-wide navigation has been dropped and it certainly feels like a step backwards having to drag the cursor up to the forward/back arrows and click rather than easily swiping. Also worthy of note, as with any new operating system, Lion has it's share of bugs and issues to be ironed out with future updates. Thankfully I've only experienced minor bugs so far.

Overall Impressions - Overall, Lion is quite an impressive operating system. It essentially takes Snow Leopard, adds an infusion of iOS, and sprinkles on some extra polish through a nice step forward in terms of aesthetic and animations. If you're machine is capable and you haven't upgraded yet, trust my word and do it now. The outrageous price of only $29.99 is only the icing on the cake.

Apple to Release Lion Tomorrow

After over half a month of speculation and rumors, Apple has finally revealed the a concrete release date for the latest iteration of OS X: tomorrow. It was announced this afternoon by Peter Oppenheimer during the Third Quarter Financial Results call.

I will have all my initial thoughts and impressions once I get a hold of my copy in a couple day's time.

New Lion Features to Get Hyped Over

Along with the refresh to the MacBrook Pro line, Apple announced a developer preview and a slew of new features that will be found in the next iteration of OS X, fittingly named Lion. Previously revealed in the Back to the Mac event last year were the App Store, LaunchPad, Mission Control, and complete support for full screen applications. Now added to that list are: increased usage of gestures with the trackpad and Magic Mouse, Autosave, Versions, Resume, Mail 5, and Air Drop.

Increased Gesture Usage
If you've ever used a Magic Mouse, you'll know how limited it's functionality is straight out of the box. To really take advantage of the revolutionary Multi-Touch interface you need a third part app like MagicPrefs or BetterTouchTool. Clearly Apple looks to rectify this with Lion, though in the demo video below only a trackpad is used a Magic Mouse was used in the Back to the Mac demo.

Shoot, no more video. Got taken down due to copyright claims by Apple.

Autosave
As you can clearly tell by the name of the feature, you no longer have to consciously save the file or document that you are working on, Lion will handle it for you. There is also a lock feature which means that you can close your documents and keep them safe from unintended changes being automatically saved. You can also choose to revert the document to the state it was in upon opening.

Versions
This is a feature that acts much in the same manner as Time Machine, only for continuously saved versions of your documents. Not only will this allow you to revert to a previous version of the file, but you can also copy and paste directly from those older versions.

Resume
Much in the way multi-tasking works on the iOS devices, this means that when you open up and return to an application, things will be as they were when you lasted used it.

Mail 5
With Lion, as expected, Mail gets a refresh. It now has adopted an appearance similar to that of the Mail found on the iPad. Not only that, mailboxes are now handled in a bar across the top of the application rather than a menu on the side giving the app a much cleaner appearance.

Air Drop
This feature allows easy file-sharing with any Mac. You simply click the icon in the Finder to see who else are using Air Drop and simply drag and drop files onto their name.

All of these newly revealed features are getting me more and more excited for Lion's release this summer. I'll certainly be there on day one to pick up my copy.