Is Mac OS X Lion (10.7) good - or very good?

Leaf color

The photograph shows how it is out there: hot, hot. I have grown tired of the heat.

This time I'm not writing about photography, but about operating systems. If you are not interested in IT or Macs, you may want to skip this.

I have been using the new version of Mac OS X 10.7, aka Lion, since Wednesday, installing it on a four-year old iMac. The minimum requirement to have is a Core 2 Duo processor which the iMac does have. The maximum for memory on the iMac is 4 GB, but I have installed 6 GB, which seems to work well with Lion, even though it is not officially supported.

The best source of information on Lion has been the detailed review written by John Siracusa at Ars Technica. It has 19 pages of well researched information. There you find a lot of helpful hints on how to actually use the new features, and what is under the hood, including the dirty little details about the filesystem etc.

The price of Lion in App Store is 24 euro, and you can install it on all Macs you own or control, which is a very good deal for a major OS upgrade. And even though I had some worries about installing an OS without having it on a physical media, things happened without any hiccups.

How this is done technically is discussed in detail by John Siracusa, and it was rather interesting, as also the fact that there is a hidden recovery partition on the disk after installing Lion. (And if one really needs to have the OS on a media, it will be available in August on USB sticks.)

Lion should be more robust in terms of recovering from errors, and also against malware. This is very good news. There are a lot of improvements, many of which are under the hood, but some also visible to the user. As an example, you can now use full-disk encryption, which is great for those traveling with laptops.

The Lion upgrade seems to do quite a lot of cleaning up on the disks, as the amount of free disk I have on the iMac increased from a bit over 80 GB to well over 100 GB. (I'm comparing the situation when the systems have been started up and one user is logged in.) So, even though some disk space was taken by the hidden recovery partition, it didn't matter in the end.

I suspect what happened is that the Lion upgrade managed to do a good house-cleaning exercise of the old system, which had been upgraded from 10.4 to 10.5 to 10.6, directly on top of the old OS. It is in fact quite surprising that there haven't been any problems on the iMac caused by the cumulative software updates; the safest way would have been making clean installations each time.

Well, lets get back to Lion.

The visual appearance of the OS has changed quite a lot, mostly towards a more subdued look. There are some glaring exceptions, such as the iCal and Address Book applications, both of which are on the ugly side.

In addition to the new look, there are a plenty of new things, many of which are borrowed and "macified" from iOS devices (iPhone and iPad). As an example, by default the scrolling direction (if you use a scroll mouse) has been reversed so that it follows the way how you use your finger on a touch screen. This requires two or three days of getting used to. (Or then you can return to the old way be deselecting an option in the Mouse preference pane.)

Some things are missing completely, such as ability to run PowerPC software in emulation (Rosetta). Also gone is the Front Row application used for watching movies etc. This was a bit of a negative surprise, as the children have liked it, but I suspect they learn soon to cope.

One of the biggest positive surprises has been the new version of Mail. After some initial confusion I have grown to like the new three-pane view, and there are nice touches everywhere. It is also fast, fast.

I have been using Microsoft Outlook (the Mac version) for a while, but now I think I'll return to Mail, as it seems to have evolved well past what Outlook can do. Some issues may crop up, but I think this is worth trying out.

I don't like the way iCal looks like in Lion. It seems too loaded with needless eye-candy, but I suspect I'll learn to live with it. I hope the Exchange compatibility has improved. (Mac version of Outlook isn't so great either.)

Speaking of mail, David Pogue wrote a nice item about it. His Lion review is also worth looking at, although it is nowhere as detailed as the Ars Technica one.

The general feeling of the system is that some things have evolved, some things have changed radically (usually for the better), and some things have taken a step back. (Nothing major so far.)

Apple seems to have a vision of how the OS should be like, borrowing heavily from the iPad and iPhone, but also allowing users to return to the old way, or just to not use the new features.

I suspect that whatever comes after Lion, things will evolve quite a lot. The iCloud service is probably a key direction Apple wants to explore next.

So, in summary: Lion does roar, despite the occasional cough here and there.

How the Panasonic LX3 looks after 200,000 photographs taken with it

LX3

LX3

Batteries

batteries

Arthur asked: "Please, can we have a picture of the camera!"

So, here you are, self-portraits of the LX3 after 200,000 photographs taken with it. I mounted the LX3 on top of my Berlebach tripod, which I use with astronomical binoculars. A bit of mismatch in sizes there with the camera and the tripod...

As I'm taking the LX3 everywhere I go, why not the shower as well?

On a more serious note, when I had my first digital camera, the Canon Ixus 400, I was very cautious about taking photographs in the rain. With the LX3 I have relaxed a lot - rain doesn't bother it much. Just wipe most of the water away after you get inside, and let it dry.

The LX3 has gotten a lot of punishment in other ways also. I have dropped it on rock, on ice, on snow, and on a hard floor. After I first dropped it (on a rock), I was convinced that it was broken - but nothing happened. And nowadays I try to be cautious, but don't stress it too much if the camera is dropped.

The Ixus 400 did break down after being dropped on the floor - the built-in lens cover stuck and didn't work. That may be one reason for the better durability of the LX3, not having such a thing.

If you look carefully at the LX3 self-portrait, you can see some signs of wear around the lens, on the ring where the lens cover is attached: it was originally all black.

I included here also photograph of the batteries which started bulging and didn't fit into the battery compartment any more. Now I have two new batteries, each lasting up to 800 photographs on one charge. It is good...

I couldn't take closeups of the camera bottom, where the biggest signs of wear are, as the LX3 is currently my only camera able to focus close. (With the Nokia E7 the closest focusing distance is 50 cm.) It would be of course interesting to lovingly document all the little scratches, bending plates and worn materials - but I'll leave that for now.

Roaring Lion (Mac OS X 10.7) - or so I hope

Raspberry

Berries

I forgot to include rasperry photographs to my previous posting which had the berry in the title. So here are two photographs of raspberries.

The new version of Mac OS X, 10.7, aka Lion, was released today in the App Store. This must have been the easiest and fastest major operating system update ever: download the update (and 24 euros is not a bad price!), start it up, wait a while (we went for a walk), and log in to the system. (I made an up-to-date backup in Time Machine before starting, of course.)

Everything worked as it used to work. Well, the system is still starting up: indexing the hard disk and making the first Time Machine backup, but I have been using it all the time. And dare I say this: the system feels more responsive than before.

Well, some things are ... different ... some would claim better ... but nothing disturbingly so. The Mail program has changed quite a lot in visual appearance, and that may take some time to get used to, but I already like some things there.

Of the upcoming iCloud service there isn't yet anything to report ... have to see in Autumn what that means for the user.

Anyway, so far so good. Knock on wood...