OSX Lion - first impressions

OSX Lion will be available as a download next month. Photo / Supplied

Cat names are going to run out soon - we've been through Tiger, Panther, Leopard, Snow Leopard and now Lion, which is due shortly.

What cats are left? The Clouded Cat is a bit obscure (but so was Snow Leopard) and it's a mouthful. Like Ocelot. I imagine there's Lynx, but it's kinda little. Puma? I can almost guarantee Moggy and Cheetah will not make the cut. Although some at Apple may be entranced by Fat Cat.

I remember when one of the most exciting things about a new Mac OS was what new system sounds were available. Now, no. In Lion there's just the usual suspects: Basso. Blow. Bottle, Frog, Funk, Glass, Hero, Morse, Ping, Pop, Purr, Sosumi, Submarine and Tink. Old and boring.

Sosumi has been in Mac OS for yonks - it's a joke, and one oft told in Mac circles. Introduced in Apple's Macintosh System 7 operating system in 1999, it's a short sample of a xylophone. It gained notoriety as a cheeky response to a long-running Apple Corps versus Apple Computer trademark conflict.

During the development of System 7, the two Apples concluded a settlement agreement from an earlier dispute when Apple added a sound synthesis chip to the IIgs machine. As a result, Apple Computer was prohibited from using their trademark on 'creative works whose principal content is music'.

When new sounds for System 7 were created, the sounds were reviewed through Apple's legal department and they objected that the new system sound alert called 'chime' had a name that was 'too musical'. The creator of the new sound alerts for System 7 and the Macintosh Startup Sound, Jim Reekes, had grown frustrated with the legal scrutiny and first quipped it should be named 'Let It Beep'. That would definitely not pass legal's approval, he was told, so he remarked "so sue me."

He then resubmitted the sound's name as 'sosumi'. He apparently told the legal department the name was Japanese and had nothing to do with music.

Anyway, it's still in Lion, and I didn't spot any new ones. There is a swell picture of a lion for the desktop, though, just like Snow Leopard had a snow leopard. And there's a new galaxy shot, which is the default Lion desktop, which is cool because I was heartily sick of the old one which far too many people just left on their new Macs. (Please, people, change your desktop picture. Look in System Preferences>Desktop. That's what it's for, amongst other things.)

Luckily, Apple is a lot more sophisticated now (as are we, right?) and changed just about everything else - icons have been redrawn, System Profiler is now called System Information, the lowly Address Book layout is different, and even scrolling is flipped so you have to learn to roll your mouse in the opposite direction for up and down - as per iOS devices.

The scroll bars look different, if you can see them at all - not 3D-ish anymore but plain and flat. 3D might be in with TVs, but not with Lion. Even the pulsing blue button in Save dialogue boxes looks flatter and squarer, with just a modicum of tone to suggest shape.

And there's a new button at the top of finder windows - Arrange, which provides different sort orders like Name, Kind, Application etc. You need it, as you can no longer click on List View headers to swap the sort order in some cases. The little right-bottom tab to drag windows bigger and smaller has gone too, in many cases, but you can just drag that corner for the same effect, and the sides of all windows are now also draggable.

Flags in Mail look more like pictures of flags - this is less successful, aesthetically. But hey, at least there's a variety now, and not just the one Flag/Unflag orange one, which means a more organisation can be undertaken in Mail - many people run their lives in their email applications these days anyway.

When you Reply to an email, the one you're replying to flips into the reply. Nifty. Mail might throw you when you upgrade, as it looks quite different, but most of the changes seem practical and helpful. Like clicking on the Inbox now checks your accounts, just like pressing Get Mail. But in Mail's Preferences, under View, you can choose 'use classic layout' if you don't like change.

And I've been telling people for years about Apple's 'disclosure triangles'. Basically, if you see one, click it, as it almost invariably makes more features available, even in print dialogues. Well, that's gone too, in many cases, but they're still in GarageBand. Now, if you mouse over something which has more features, a word appears in pale grey to let you know what you can do.

The Dictionary - the little app your Apple apps draw on for spellchecking - is more powerful now. It has an 'English' English dictionary and thesaurus (by Oxford, no less) in it plus Latin. You can turn these on - and turn the US ones off - in Dictionary preferences, so your spelling is corrected properly in Mail, Pages, Text Edit, numbers etc. (And if you've never heard of Dictionary, it's time you looked in your Applications folder.)

One new feature is the Launchpad in the Dock. To my eyes it's just a huge monitor-wide grid of icons like the grid view in folders in Dock items. It's full-screen, though, and proves I have far too many applications.

The icons for mine didn't actually appear for a day and just showed the names, but this is a Lion pre-release.

Trackpads really come into their own in Lion. I discovered by mistake that a two-fingered sideswipe in Safari is a very intuitive and excellent way of going backwards and forwards through your history.

Search pages in Safari are cool - just put your mouse cursor over an entry and a pop-out shows you a mini-picture what's at the source of the link on the right.

So that's mostly look and feel and I'm discovering more every time. I will let you know more when I've played with it more.

- Mark Webster mac-nz.com