Is OS X Lion Apple’s Vista?

When the day came to install Apple’s latest and greatest OS, the biggest cat that would top them all marking 10 years of Apple’s OS X, all the usual preparations were carried out of insuring all software updates were installed and files backed up ready for the revolutionary download. Much expectation was placed on OS X 10.7 aka Lion, and like many, eagerly awaited to finally install the new operating system.

The download was smooth, taking 50 minutes to download and install the 3.75GB OS from the Mac App Store, but after starting to use Lion, it became apparent that this new version of OS X could turn out to be Apple’s equivalent to Vista. Vista as you know turned out to be a disaster for Microsoft as software and peripherals stopped working and the OS was extremely buggy as individuals complained on how bad Vista performed. I have used Macs since the days of OS 8 as well as the many versions of OS X without any major problems as Apple have always shipped an extremely stable and impressive OS that supported all installed applications.

My first impressions and experience with Lion have been negative. Apps that I have used for years are no longer working, my scanner can’t be used - as Lion no longer recognises the software, Apps that can be used are taking longer to launch and are constantly crashing like Aperture 3 and InDesign CS5. iTunes would not open initially saying it was created by a newer version, and my Mac has dramatically slowed down to such an extent that it now frequently freezes with the spinning beach ball of death, with the only remedy being to force quit or to restart. I have also noticed some weird behaviour from Lion such as intermittent Wi-Fi connection, folders on the desktop rearranging themselves on restart, keyboard functions working then not working, some of the desktop images in system preferences suddenly disappearing before my eyes, and the most annoying is in Mission Control as it displays windows on top of each other rather than as separate spaces like it is supposed to.

OS X Lion is also the first OS from Apple that won’t run PowerPC applications. In Snow Leopard, the Rosetta translation engine allowed PowerPC applications to run, and run well, often faster than they ran on the older PowerPC Macs for which they were developed (before Intel based Macs). Lion no longer includes Rosetta, so your applications that you have been running on your Mac for years will no longer work. No one expected eternal support for PowerPC software, nevertheless, people still rely on some PowerPC applications.

I am also unhappy with the overall ‘look’ of Lion as my Mac now resembles a giant iPad with Launchpad displaying applications like those found on my iOS devices to ‘swipe’ through pages of apps. Why couldn’t we simply have all the applications in one window in alphabetical order to view when launched? I know we can rearrange them, but we shouldn’t need to do this. I will just continue to use the applications folder I have in the Dock which allows me to view all of my apps just how I want them when launched which makes Launchpad redundant. The overall look of the new OS has now become ‘consumerised’. What this means is that the integrity of User Interface (UI) design that has been so beautifully implemented throughout OS X for a decade is changing and is now starting to look cheap and monochromatic as all coloured icons have now been replaced with gray ones, which are hard to make out.

Mail has also dramatically changed to mimic the iPad, and I have to say, I don’t think Mail needed changing on the Mac, especially the new look of the icons which threw me at first as they resemble the colourless icons in iTunes. But it seems Apple are changing things just for the sake of change to appeal to the consumer who already own and use iPhones and iPads. Quite frankly, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. We want our Macs to look and behave like Macs, not like iOS devices.

There are some nice features in Lion to its defence like right clicking Pages, Keynote, TextEdit and Preview in the Dock to view and access previous files opened and being able to view previous web pages by a flick of a finger rather than having to click back buttons is a really nice touch but the majority of new things in Lion are just gloss and pointless. Other new additions to Lion cross the line like animations and Autosave. Autosave is by far the most annoying as every document is automatically saved. The problem with this is that the user, has no say what is saved and what is not. For instance, you could be working on a document in Pages to be mailed as a pdf, once you have sent the pdf, all you want to do is close down the document without saving as the file does not need to be saved. Due to autosave, your file is automatically saved, and the next time you open up Pages to start a new document the last file you worked on automatically opens up... Why? How annoying is that going to be to everyone? Especially as Apple have now removed ‘Save’ and ‘save as’ and replaced with ‘save as version’, and as far as I know, this cannot be disabled!

I have always had a love relationship with my Mac, as it has always been a dream to use as well as enjoying the beautiful UI, something that has always set the Mac apart, but now feel like getting a divorce and going back to Snow Leopard, which I know some have already done, just like PC users did when they switched back to XP from Vista. Though I feel the switch back could be a painful one.