In The Big Picture, Is OS X 10.7 Lion A Step Forward Or A Value Regression? The ‘Book Mystique
OK, I’ll cop to being a little bit sucked into the vortex of excitement over today’s release of OS X 10.7 Lion, but my rational side has me digging in my heels at some of Lion’s implications – as much or more with what the changes it signifies to the Mac world as with the OS itself.
I’m not blindly against change, just change for change’s sake, or worse — change that dumbs good things down and makes them less good. In the latter context, I’m definitely not a fan of what I call the “iOSsification” of Mac OS X that 10.7 Lion represents.
I have an iPad 2, and other than obvious advantages in portability and handholdability in certain contexts, plus the instant-on feature, which is seductive, it does nothing I can think of offhand better than my MacBook. Consequently, I use the iPad frequently, but rarely for very long, and revert to my Macs for any real, serious computing tasks. I appreciate that within the constraints of practical handheld computing, GUI compromises needed to be made, but there is virtually nothing I find functionally superior or preferable in the iOS way of doing things compared with traditional Mac OS user interface conventions. The iOS’s angularities are what I like least about the iPad. I dislike gesture based control, I don’t like full-screen application windows and the need to check out of one application in order to look at another. Text selection is a frustrating nightmare of imprecision and inconsistency among apps, and so on. Even for Web surfing, the flexibility and versatility of OS X browsers is far superior to the lame and abidingly frustrating limitations of iOS browsers, and to say that the incursion of iOS characteristics in OS X makes me apprehensive is an understatement.
In its Lion release announcement today, Apple chose to highlight as marquee features of its new OS new Multi-Touch gestures, which as noted in the previous paragraph doesn’t give me the warm fuzzes; system-wide support for full screen apps (I detest full screen app. mode); Mission Control, a view of everything running on your Mac (some possibilities there); the Mac App Store built right into the OS ; Launchpad; and a completely redesigned Mail app.
I’ve owned a multitouch-capable MacBook with the oversized glass trackpad for two and half years now, but still rarely use the gestures it supports. I just don’t find them as intuitive as a machine-mediated point and click, which I suppose is part of the reason why I’m not a touchscreen enthusiast or a consummate iPad fan.
To say I’m not a fan of the Mac App Store is an understatement. It’s been online for about half a year now, and I only got around to registering a username a month or two ago in order to download something that I needed to review. So far, that’s it. I’ve of course used the iOS App Store to download a number of apps. to my iPad, but I’m emphatically not a fan of the concept as the sole or near-sole source of software, and consider it an emblematic example of the “regression” I allude to in this column’s title.
The App Store is not about buying a product but rather about purchasing a the license. OK, technically, that’s was all we were supposedly doing when we purchased a shrinkwrapped DVD or CD according to the software EULA, but at least you got something tangible that you could resell on eBay and use to reinstall the application any time without oversight from Apple’s servers. Now you get nothing but a license, and as Low End Mac’s Frank Fox observes in an excellent essay on the topic, the App Store is not really a store at all, but rather a glorified license manager – software as a service. If you don’t pay your license fee, your access to that product will be terminated. No more reinstalling or reselling older versions of apps, and once everyone is switched to this software model, additional restrictions, controls and other indignities can be implemented. That’s no improvement to anything other than Apple’s balance sheets and control freaky exercise of power over the user experience.
As for Launchpad, it’s a giant step backward from the OS X Dock, which itself was not without manifold shortcomings. Launchpad is the epitome of dumbing-down, and seems calculated more to synergize OS X usage with iOS conventions than anything. Launchpad reminds me a bit of the in the Classic Mac OS Launcher feature, and I was amused to recall this little critique of the old Launcher I wrote in 2001 – . These days I’m a big fan of the very cool freeware Quicksilver freeware app. as an application launcher, and it exemplifies the way Apple should’ve gone, but didn’t, being as QuickSilver is very keyboard-oriented.
Now, I’m not totally negative about Lion, and some of its new features sound positively seductive. For example, the new Resume feature that restores your applications back to exactly how you left them when you restart the computer or quit and relaunch an application. That is an improvement without question.
Lion’s AutoSave feature will automatically and continuously save your documents as you work, which could be a real lifesaver. I don’t very often lose unsaved work, but having it happen is right up there among my unfavorite things about using computers. Along with AutoSave, the companion Versions feature will automatically record the history of your document as you create it and provide you with an easy way to browse, revert, or copy and paste from previous versions. Sounds handy
Airdrop, which finds nearby Macs and automatically sets up a peer–two–peer wireless local area network will be kind of slick as well, hopefully mitigating to a greater degree the lack of FireWire on some recent Mac systems such as my own MacBook, alas. However I still want wired connectivity with Thunderbolt.
I was also pleased to note that Apple has blinked on a couple of points. Of immediate importance is that the system requirement for installing Lion has been dialed back to Snow Leopard OS 10.6.6 from the OS 10.6.8 that had been anticipated. That relieves those of us who’ve balked at installing the bug-plagued 10.6.8 update from the necessity of downloading and installing 10.6.8 before upgrading to 10.7 Lion.
Another concession is that Apple says a tangible Lion installer will be made available on a USB thumb drive through the Apple Store come August, although it will cost $69 rather than the $29.99 for the Mac App Store download — obviously a deliberate and gratuitous cost deterrent unless that thumb drive is gold plated.
All academic to me at this point, since I have mission-critical legacy apps. and utilities such as Tex Edit Plus and MailBeacon that have no viable substitutes I’ve found, and probably won’t run in 64-bit only Lion, in which Rosetta support of programs containing PowerPC code, has been terminated to consider upgrading any time soon, although one way or another I suppose I’ll eventually make the transition. We’re obviously being shunted into the post-PC era whether we like it or not, and unfortunately for those of us interested in serious computing, most folks seem to like it just fine.
As dvorak.org’s Uncle Dave, a veteran of 35 years of computing and tinkering experience, noted in a column yesterday, the audience for computers now is the audience for the Internet, for email, for being a modern human being, and with this new audience, you can’t presume that people have the patience or capacity to understand how to configure printer drivers or troubleshoot kernel exceptions.
Dave observes that the number of people concerned about not having root access to their iPads pales in comparison with the number who would freak out if Angry Birds suddenly disappeared, which is why, like it or not, the iPad is arguably the most popular personal computer ever made – the first computer that successfully stoops to most users’ level.
We’re already living a new computing era, in which both hardware and software are being dumbed-down to make them easier for computer-illiterates to use, leaving a rump minority of what I suppose amount to power-users twisting slowly in the wind. I’ve gotta’ say, Linux is looking better and better to me these days.