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Comment by generalk | Hacker News Reader

I'm seriously underwhelmed here. There's four new features on that page:

The Mac App Store

Maybe this is a naive point of view, but I can't see the value proposition for third-party devs to have their software in this store. Maybe I'm wrong and it'll be huge.

Launchpad

A touch interface for a screen that isn't touchable. Anyone I know that doesn't use Quicksilver or Spotlight uses an application stack in the dock. Nifty eye-candy feature, but I'm not seeing the usability gains.

Full Screen Apps

Not bad, but there are very few applications I want to run fullscreen at all, and even fewer I want to run fullscreen all the time.

Mission Control

Exposé, except there's a spaces overview at the top. A minor feature bump. Oh, and you can access the dashboard with it.

I understand this is a preview intended to excite people who aren't geeks, but still, it just seems so anticlimactic.

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> The Mac App Store

I think you're dead wrong on that one. Having a single, official, centralized place where users (and not only some of them, basically all OS X users) can find, rate and buy your product is a blessing for developers, especially smaller shops. I expect we'll see some of the "success stories" that happened on the iP* platform through the AppStore, because it gives considerable exposure to people that would otherwise probably struggle to get it. That part is probably worth the 30% cut — not so much for big brands like Adobe though. If it also provides updates for all software, as the App Store does, it's an awesome feature. I'd say it's basically the equivalent of a Linux repo, with built-in sales.

> Launchpad

I'm not sure about that one either. We'll see.

> Full Screen Apps

I'd tend to agree. Most app I would want to run fullscreen already have the possibility to do so (Aperture, web browsers, and that's basically all I can think of right now).

> Mission Control

Agreed.

> The Mac App Store

You skipped over an important aspect of the current iPhone app store - updates. A unified update experience for 'all' our apps should be a pretty easy sell. (Not that there aren't already frameworks that do this like Google's Update Engine - http://code.google.com/p/update-engine/ )

> Not that there aren't already frameworks that do this

Like Linux package managers since... ever. On my Ubuntu box I have the official software sources (OS and applications) but also have Skype, VirtualBox and Google repositories registered. It makes the machine self-update soon after an update is published.

I really wish Apple integrated that kind of behavior into OSX's core.

Announcing auto-updates only for store apps feels like a poke in the eye when they could have developed (any time in the last decade) an auto-update system for all apps.

Hey, that's what Sparkle is for.

I like Sparkle, but I see a lot of people who seem happy that it will be replaced with the app store's "better" update process.

I think this is a very narrow view of it all. At the risk of sounding like someone who has drunk too much of the Apple kool aid, here's the big picture potential of all of this together...

If apple makes this a cohesive environment. Download, Launch apps, and full screen modes, then we are looking at the next step past the window/mouse GUI -- at least for the masses.

iOS and the iPad has been successful in part because of how simple it is to use. Touch metaphors make a lot of sense to non computer people. Not sure if it necessary makes as much sense abstracted to a trackpad interface but certainly one window at a time is much easier for novices to understand.

Think of the mom test where I want to talk my mom through installing an app. It's crazy how hard it can be with freely floating windows and disk images and downloading off the internet. App store and launched interface? I think this could be very big.

Now that said this sort of interface simplification has been tried for years... So we will see if it sticks this time.

It's not entirely dissimilar to the package management stuff found in lots of Linux distros -- or perhaps even Valve's Steam. Except Apple can wrap a payment system around it and monetize it.

If they provide the same kind of value through it like Steam has for gamers, it'll be big.

  I'm seriously underwhelmed here.

I am not. First of all, these four features wouldn't warrant a new version (and one of them comes to 10.6).

What I am excited about is that Apple looks heading to truly "it just works" model for Mac.

I did not see anybody so far in comments mentioning thing that Jobs presented as things they have learned from iOS: instant-on, no explicit save, apps preserving state on closing. I think that's what Lion is going to be, allowing to combine power of full-fledged Macs with the user experience of iP*s.

At least full screen apps will satisfy Windows users who complain that Macs can't "maximize" a window.

Actually, I think it's a nice productivity boost myself. Of course, the app I most want to fullscreen is Terminal.

You can simply map the menu item "Zoom" under "Window" to your preferred keyboard shortcut. I use Cmd-Enter. It'll even toggle between "fullscreen" and normal screen. It's not true fullscreen, but close enough.

is there any reason not to use iTerm?

Vizor, and iTerm seems slow (last I checked, which was a while ago).

I just use Visor with the terminal (not iTerm) and it works fine for me.

In poking around for this Visor program, I stumbled across TotalFinder made by the same folks, and holy crap is it awesome. Chrome style tabs for my finder? Hotkey for sliding it in and out of focus? Who hasn't struggled to rearrange two or three Finder windows for some d&d? Yes please!

http://totalfinder.binaryage.com/

And the Mac AppStore is not even a Lion's exclusive feature.

Concerning the full screen feature: Notice that the lowest end of the Mac laptop lineup is now 11 inches (only slightly bigger than an iPad!) instead of 13. The smaller your screen gets, the more apps you will want to run full screen.

The 11" MBA has a screen solution of 1366x768, wider than the 13" MBP at 1280x800.

Am I the only former Performa owner on HN?

Launchpad = Launcher (with a bit of a facelift)

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/tg.online/apple_cps/applemenu/i...

And much like Launcher was a clunky version of a pinned folder, I'm not sure I see the utility of the Launchpad over keeping a folder of all your apps in the Dock.

I love the idea of the Mac App store, however I'm not sure some indie devs will like taking a 30% hit. For example, would TextMate want to be here?

Also, it's not like CS5 is going to show up in the Mac App Store.

Apple cannot stop Indie devs from releasing apps in the normal fashion.

Unlike with iPhones, where iTunes is the only installation point.

If I was an indie developer, I'd say 30% would be worth the extra exposure.

A simple payment system that users trust and that you don't have to think about it is worth the 30%, IMHO.

Bump your price up to cover Apple's cut.

And shut down your servers / payment processor / update system, and enjoy your new found time to work on TextMate2 instead of maintaining infrastructure for TextMate 1.

TextMate is a great case study. It'd be very high up on the Top Grossing list, and therefore massively visible to many new eyeballs that are not Ruby on Rails hackers. I'd wager that it'd move a lot of new licenses if it was in the App Store.

> The Mac App Store

Think of apt-get that also includes commercial software. Convenience is king for consumers. And for software makers, they gain one more distribution channel besides Google.

The "full screen apps" thing is a minor enhancement imo. Everything that was interested in full-screen already has it baked in; I never full-screened Firefox and thought "This isn't full-screeny enough; I wish OS X had native support for full-screening so that my fullscreen mode was more full-screeny."

One thing I like is that the full-screen feature bakes in a better approach to virtual desktops; instead of futzing about selecting an empty desktop and getting the app I want to full-screen onto that desktop and then finally full-screening it, the act of full-screening creates a vitural desktop that I can jump out of at any time.

Subtle by nice.

The interesting thing about this feature is it makes full screen applications first class citizens in a way I'm not sure we've seen before on a desktop OS. I'm thinking you're probably right that for existing applications it's a minor feature but it may drive more applications to offer a full screen mode which is a good thing in my opinion. Being able to quickly switch between full screen apps probably lends this feature to being used as a type of heavy duty widget. If you check Facebook constantly maybe you'd want to always have the Facebook app running a gesture away from your full screen Twitter app.

Hey, I know, they could add a feature where you drag the menubar down to see the full screen app partially exposed running behind it. And the same for that app, etc. Wouldn't that be cool?

Oh wait.... :-)

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workbench_(Amiga))

They could call it Multifinder.

I guess it's underwhelming because I've already had this for years on almost every window manager I've tried. Support is even better in awesomewm, which I am currently using (you can fullscreen apps that have no native fullscreen mode). I fullscreen something and can just Super ← (or various other key-combos) to another desktop. It's nice that OS X is getting these features now I guess, but shouldn't they have been included with Spaces?

The ability to switch between full screen apps will be quite useful sometimes.

Launchpad < command + space - type app name

I feel like the Launchpad was obsolete with the advent of Spotlight.

You have to remember, different people think in different ways. I'm a search focused user, and use Spotlight extensively, however my wife much prefers to navigate around the operating system in a more visual manner.

The Mac App Store is a sort of "minimum viable upgrade." It's the lowest hanging fruit for something worthy of a Mac event (i.e. compare this to Snow Leopard which just started shipping one day).

For me, it's sort of hard to see many iOS apps being particularly a big game changer on a desktop or laptop (so long as Macs continue to ship with Flash). There are simply a lot of existing alternatives for location based services, social networking, etc.

Part of me suspects that it's a response to Phone 7. What I mean is that it extends the "Apple technology stack" from phone to desktop somewhat like Microsoft does - of course the "Apple technology stack" doesn't extend up into enterprise and down into embedded devices so the analogy may be a bit weak depending on the terms one uses.

I'm willing to bet that they went with what was ready to demo, rather than what they have planned. The stuff they've displayed seem fairly simple all things considered. However, I think they have a problem, what with twenty ways of doing things. Expose, Mission Control, the Launch Pad, the Doc, App folder, Spotlight, Spaces.

However...

Mac App Store will be huge. Their is every reason to think this.

Touch interfaces: it's not so much touch as reacting to touch inputs. This is already accomplished in an abstract way with a mouse. Left and right click, moving around, scrolling the mouse wheel. This is a continuation on what's been happening already. Personally, I think this will be really nice for apps. I already use touch features for navigation where I can, and it's frustrating when an app doesn't support it.

Lion is a year away. I think we can guess the next iteration of the Air will have touch screens :)

Also, there are probably a hundred other details to Lion they aren't sharing just yet. They are just giving us some glitter to drool over.

Touch screens on a laptop or computer are a stupid idea and Steve explained why right in the speech.

They don't need a touch screen they already have a fantastic horizontal touch space on the device: the trackpad. Personally I would look to see trackpads getting more and more functionality.

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