In some ways, I feel the same as I did over a decade ago when considering a new version of OS X: I want to believe.Before Lion (OS X 10.7) debuted last year, installing the latest major version of Mac OS X meant buying a disc and slipping it into your Mac’s optical drive. It is the digital manifestation of Apple's belief that the Mac is still relevant, that it can be made better than it was before. Mountain Lion is Apple's answer to all these questions. And really, there has to be more to it than compulsive imitation, otherwise why continue development of the Mac platform at all? For a desktop OS in the year 2012, which direction is "forward," anyway? The obvious answer is "toward iOS," but Lion proved that it's not quite that simple. It has to move the ball forward… hopefully with fewer fumbles than Lion.īut hang on a second. Furthermore, unlike the last OS X release that just added a modifier to its predecessor's name, Mountain Lion doesn't have the luxury of focusing solely on refinement and internal changes. So not only did Mountain Lion have to correct Lion's missteps, it had only one year of development time to do so. The final piece of Apple's renewed focus on the Mac is the uncharacteristically pre-announced move to annual releases of OS X. This is the first of many areas where Mountain Lion aims to succeed where its predecessor failed, so "OS X Mountain Lion" it is- emphatically, universally, with a bullet. Apple made a half-hearted attempt to brand 10.7 as "OS X Lion," but the "Mac" prefix was far from completely expunged at launch. Second bite at the appleĮnter OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. These user-visible changes also met with much resistance-again, some of it knee-jerk, but much of it justified, especially in cases where the changes significantly reduced functionality or made features more difficult to find. This theme didn't just influence the conceptual foundations of the OS (e.g., that users should not have to worry about saving documents or conserving resources by quitting applications), it also reached all the way up to specific details of the user interface and graphical design (e.g., the newly skeuomorphic versions of iCal and Address Book). The theme underlying nearly all of Lion's changes was that the Mac could learn a thing or two from iOS. Bugs in basic functionality like WiFi connectivity and Web browser stability bedeviled many Lion users, and it took Apple several releases over many long months to address the worst of them. Lion differed in both the nature and longevity of its bugs. These bugs are usually fixed quickly, with most disappearing in the 10.x.1 and 10.x.2 releases. The solutions, however, had some rough edges.Īnd then there were the bugs-oh, the bugs! It's been common for 10.x.0 releases of Mac OS X to have bugs related to new functionality. For most people, the problems Apple tried to address in Lion were real. I am not among them-nor, I suspect, are the many millions of people who have been introduced to Apple through an iOS device. Some longtime Mac users rejected Apple's premise that these things needed to be fixed. Trust me, this is going to be awesome." Advertisement And scroll bars? Getting them out of your face is like a breath of fresh air. Don't bother mucking around in the Finder, your applications are only a few clicks away. You don't need to keep track of how many applications are running let the OS handle those details for you. Lion's new features said all the right things: "Stop worrying about saving your documents Lion's got you covered. Sins of the fatherĪpple's intentions were noble. From now on, Mac OS X should be judged by what's been removed." Unfortunately, the surgery was not a complete success. As Apple's newly refocused gaze fell upon its desktop operating system, many parts of it were deemed archaic and unworthy of continued existence.Īt the end of last year's Lion review, I concluded: " marks the point where Mac OS X releases stop being defined by what's been added. That attention resulted in some dramatic changes to aspects of the operating system that had not been reconsidered in decades: application launching, the document model, process management-even basics like window resizing and scrolling. But more broadly, it also meant that the Mac would receive more of Apple's attention. Non-subscribers can purchase an e-book version from the Amazon Kindle store.Īpple presented last year's release of OS X 10.7 Lion as part of a turn " back to the Mac." Ostensibly, the tagline was Apple's promise to bring innovations from its mobile operating system back to Mac OS X. Read it your wayDon't want to read a 26,000 word piece on the Web?Īrs Technica premier subscribers can download a (free) PDF or e-book version of the complete review from the links in the upper right of each article page.
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