John Siracusa's Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Review | Hacker News Reader

John Siracusa's Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Review

arstechnica.com

371 pointsthisisblurry212 comments

Siracusa strikes me as a power user type so I'm extremely surprised that he neglected to mention how patently awful and useless Mission Control is on multiple monitors.

Whereas in the Spaces view in Snow Leopard I could move a window to a different space AND a different monitor with a quick drag, Mission Control doesn't allow this - I have to first move the window to the correct "Desktop", then exit MC and drag it to the correct monitor.

Full Screen Apps are similarly useless on multiple monitors - regardless of which monitor the window originates on, clicking the full screen button returns it to whatever display is designated "primary". Even worse, while you're in full screen on one display, the others become useless as it blocks them out with Apple's new favorite canvas texture. Why?

At first I thought all this was intentional and that Apple was leaving multi-monitor users in the dust to focus on Macs that are very close to iOS devices (11" Macbook Air comes to mind), but today they also announced a new Cinema Display that lets you daisy chain two monitors off a single Thunderbolt port. Clearly it's still a mode of operation they intend to support for some time - so why have they crippled it so horribly in this release?

wasn't ready in time and will be fixed for 10.7.1?

I really hope so...

Don't know why you're getting down voted, seems to me this is the obvious reason (if not 10.7.1 then 10.7.x). These are clearly bugs, and I agree, they make these features kind of useless for me on my main setup. Prior to Lion I already used a "poor man's fullscreen" by manually making the windows these sizes on each screen. Was hoping this would make things better but instead made it infinitely worse.

Windows is just as bad. Windows 7 doesn't ship with multiple taskbars for your secondary monitors. Seriously?

What's worse is that the developers actually making these features are probably using more than one monitor. And hitting those productivity gaps every day.

When I used Windows on a multi-monitor setup I never found myself wishing, "if only I had a taskbar on each monitor." (Similarly, I've never wished for multiple docks on OSX.) So YMMV.

The dock is an application organizer, the taskbar is a window organizer. Big difference.

The windows on each monitor should be represented in a taskbar on that same monitor. Easier to comprehend, faster to mouse to. The app Ultramon does this very well, it's essential for any multi-monitor Windows install.

Except I use one monitor almost exclusively for reference. I want as much screen real estate there as possible. Since my mouse is already on the editing monitor, it would take _more_ effort to move it over there to switch windows.

With the default Windows 7 group and icon behavior, they're virtually identical in behavior...

Power users go with the "Combine when taskbar is full" option. Reduces clicks and hover times tenfold.

Power users go with the "Combine when taskbar is full" option.

What sample size do you have here?

Me :)

One puts a task bar on the same screen as the applications which makes it easy to switch applications per window, the other hides pictures of the application in a task bar on another screen which makes it harder to switch applications at all and completely ignores screen distinctions.

They aren't virtually identical; they aren't even the same thing done differently, they're completely different.

What are you talking about? I'm dual monitoring with both windows and OS X right now. Both have their taskbar on my right hand monitor. Both have icons for launched applications with indicators representing each instance of the application. They both include icons for quick, often used apps that are present even when the application is not open.

They're identical... Is there any chance that you're using "task bar" to mean the application's menu? There are lots of engrossing UI discussion surrounding the application menu and the global menu, but that's not what we're discussing here...

Hell, if you ignored the fact that the Windows taskbar extends across the bottom of the screen and is grey rather than floating in the middle, and ignored the start button vs the finder button... my taskbar and dock look identical, Chrome, Firefox, VLC, Office Apps.

I see; I interpreted you meaning Windows 7's solution is virtually the same effectiveness as Ultramon because of window groups. Missed that you were comparing the OS X dock and 7.

Ultramon does a pretty good job. But I always wonder why MSFT didn't just clone the ultramon features. Why not? How hard could it be?

You might want to check out ActualMultipleMonitors as well. It adds some features that I don't believe Ultramon has yet, such as the ability to have a completely functional taskbar on your secondary, complete with its own start button and notification area/clock/etc.

I didn't need this feature until I started running multiple 30''s, but now that I am it's invaluable.

+1, trying it out now and it works pretty well. Really wish there was a simple multiple monitor app though. The ActualMultipleMonitors settings screen is a clusterfuck, has all these 'features' like extra title menu buttons that I don't want and can't figure out how to turn off.

I totally agree, it's a disaster. I feel the same way about GridMove, which is the best thing I've been able to find for managing multiple windows on a big display. For some reason, the syntax for defining the grids is so opaque to me that whenever I look at it I feel like I'm trying to read in a dream.

By the way, you can definitely remove those buttons. I don't remember how, but I do remember thinking it took far too long to find the setting to disable them.

I gotta say, Windows 7 nailed it when dragging maximized apps from one screen to the other.

Actually interestingly enough full screen apps that have palettes are really nice on multiple monitors. Omnigraffle, etc. The palettes can live on top of the linen on your secondary display. it makes using Keynote, omnigraffle and similar apps such a joy.

Example: http://f.cl.ly/items/0x3q260l0a390E1u1N1P/Screen%20Shot%2020...

That's great, but the whole reason I like multiple monitors (instead of one big one) is to segregate tasks. For example having full-screen terminal on one monitor and a browser on the other.

Regarding Mission Control and multiple monitors, what it will let you do is if it's on your second monitor in your current space, you can drag it to the second monitor of another space. It is odd that it doesn't let you do it directly (it even highlights if you drag it over, but just doesn't drop). So I guess you have to move it to the second, then go to mission control, then change what space it's in. Although this is just a different workflow it does make a bit more sense. Hopefully a change will come for this however.

I think the assumption here is that if you have multiple displays you would rarely need full screen apps in the first place. It's definitely a feature that works best on a laptop display. The best alternative I can think of is to full-screen all the windows on each display. So for example if you had 3 monitors with 3 Safari windows, one on each display, they would go full-screen on their respective display. (downside is it would be awkward to leave full screen since the controls for it reside on the menubar)

As someone who has never used OS X as his primary operating system, I am confused about what is being shown off as new in the Window Resizing section [1]. Were you not able to resize windows from all of those eight points before Lion?

1. http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.a...

No, this has been one of the fundamental UI differences between Mac OS (from farther back than OS X) and Windows/Linux. Mac windows can only be resized from the bottom-right, with those other points being used to drag the window around.

I haven't owned an Apple since my old IIgs, but from playing around with friends' and Apple Store Macs, I always wondered if there was just a non-obvious way for powerusers to maximize Mac windows for an alt-Tab type window switching workflow.

Now I know there wasn't. Was this ever a pain point for powerusers, especially on laptops, or did you just get used to it?

As a power user I never maximized windows (also not convinced about the new full screen mode) but just stacked a gazillion open programs/windows, that I can bring them with a click to the foreground. I also have always Skype/Adium or a terminal/twitter/netnewswire window at the side of the screen open.

Absolutely. My typical workflow is a mixture of full-screen windows and windows that are tiled left-right or top-bottom. For what feels like forever, I have managed this manually (and tediously), but then I found Moom - http://manytricks.com/moom/ - and it made my life easy.

OS X has always had its own window management protocols, different from full-screen alt-tab but arguably just as good. In Leopard it was all-windows-Expose, activated via mouse flicks to the screen hotcorners. It was great, really natural.

Unfortunately they crippled the feature in Snow Leapard (grid based rather than spatial layout) and did away with it entirely in Lion in favor of Mission Control.

I am pretty sure you misunderstood grandparent's question.

What?! Exposé is still there. It’s just not called Exposé.

It's really not still there though. Mission Control always groups by app. No way to get an immediate spread of all open windows. Instead you have to explore the bundles of windows grouped by app.

I didn’t have to do that until now. I could always tell the windows apart.

Er, so you agree? Want the "all windows" mode back?

Er, no. Until now I seem to prefer having the windows grouped together. Until now I never encountered a situation where I had to spread apart the groups. I guess it depends on how you use the Mac.

The apps I spend the most time in, Firefox and Emacs, have ways for me to make them cover all the pixels except the menu bar at the top and the Dock at the bottom. In Firefox it is a simple as hitting the maximize ("+", green) button -- and once you do, Firefox remembers your preference next time it opens a new window.

Click the maximize button twice.

Just got used to it. I reboot very infrequently - once a week, if that - so I setup my windows once and just forget about it. The + button up top means "maximize vertically" in most applications, so that's a start. And in Terminal, it actually maximizes it to the whole screen.

Apps that support full-screen mode are supposed to add a menu item with the keyboard shortcut of cmd + ctrl + f to enter/exit full screen.

Yes, it is pretty awful. Even worse if you frequently disconnect/reconnect external monitors. My main sore point with OS X.

The irony being that GNOME 3 has slavishly copied (badly) various Mac OS X "features", one being the inability to resize windows from all sides. And less than a year later, Mac OS X changes to allow resizing from all sides.

I don't think this is true. I'm using GNOME 3 on Fedora 15, and I'm able to resize windows along all 4 edges and 3 of the 4 corners (I can't resize by the close button).

The resize border in GNOME 3 is one pixel wide. There's even a bug about it:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=644930

Great snippet from the report summing up all that is wrong w/ GNOME 3 devs:

"I propose to remove the ability to resize a window by the 1px border. The current behavior requires super precise positioning to achieve it willingly, while still poses a good chance to do it accidentally."

The difference is that GNOME 3 still allows you to resize from any point inside the window with Alt-middle-drag. No matter how big your resize border is, it's smaller and more fiddly than 'the entire window'.

But ALT + Middle drag isn't discoverable.

Slight correction - pre Mac OSX you could only resize from the bottom right, but you could move a window by dragging from the border on any edge (the idea being that windows were equivalent to pieces of paper, so people would rather move them out of the way rather than resize them, which had no physical analogue). But OSX took a step back - resize from the corner and move from the title bar only.

No, just from the bottom-right corner.

Nope, and no "Full Screen" mode or "Maximize" mode for windows on OSX.

Since the article didn't mention it, I'll ask here.

Anyone know the versions of Python, Ruby, Apache, PHP, etc. that come installed with OS X Lion?

Pretty sure Python is 2.7 (but don't remember sources).

  $ /usr/bin/python -V
  Python 2.7.1
  
  $ /usr/bin/ruby --version
  ruby 1.8.7 (2010-01-10 patchlevel 249) [universal-darwin11.0]
  
  $ /usr/bin/php --version
  PHP 5.3.6 with Suhosin-Patch (cli) (built: Jun 16 2011 22:26:57) 
  Copyright (c) 1997-2011 The PHP Group
  Zend Engine v2.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2011 Zend Technologies
  
  $ /usr/sbin/httpd -V
  Server version: Apache/2.2.19 (Unix)
  Server built:   Jun 16 2011 22:09:54
  Server's Module Magic Number: 20051115:28
  Server loaded:  APR 1.4.2, APR-Util 1.3.10
  Compiled using: APR 1.4.2, APR-Util 1.3.10
  Architecture:   64-bit
  Server MPM:     Prefork
    threaded:     no
      forked:     yes (variable process count)
  Server compiled with....
   -D APACHE_MPM_DIR="server/mpm/prefork"
   -D APR_HAS_SENDFILE
   -D APR_HAS_MMAP
   -D APR_HAVE_IPV6 (IPv4-mapped addresses enabled)
   -D APR_USE_FLOCK_SERIALIZE
   -D APR_USE_PTHREAD_SERIALIZE
   -D SINGLE_LISTEN_UNSERIALIZED_ACCEPT
   -D APR_HAS_OTHER_CHILD
   -D AP_HAVE_RELIABLE_PIPED_LOGS
   -D DYNAMIC_MODULE_LIMIT=128
   -D HTTPD_ROOT="/usr"
   -D SUEXEC_BIN="/usr/bin/suexec"
   -D DEFAULT_PIDLOG="/private/var/run/httpd.pid"
   -D DEFAULT_SCOREBOARD="logs/apache_runtime_status"
   -D DEFAULT_LOCKFILE="/private/var/run/accept.lock"
   -D DEFAULT_ERRORLOG="logs/error_log"
   -D AP_TYPES_CONFIG_FILE="/private/etc/apache2/mime.types"
   -D SERVER_CONFIG_FILE="/private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf"

  $ perl -v | head -2

  This is perl 5, version 12, subversion 3 (v5.12.3) built for darwin-thread-multi-2level

Would you be kind enough to show the output of `perl -v | head -2` ?

This is perl 5, version 12, subversion 3 (v5.12.3) built for darwin-thread-multi-2level

Anyone know why Apple didn't update Ruby to 1.9.2 in Lion?

Most likely they were worried about breaking existing scripts since 1.8 has been the official Ruby of Mac OS X for pretty much its entire lifetime. Ruby 1.9 is better, but it did manage to break a decent number of programs.

If you need 1.9.2, the cleanest way to currently get it is via RVM.

Install RVM, then:

  rvm install 1.9.2
  rvm --default use 1.9.2

https://rvm.beginrescueend.com/

I heard there was some kind of Postgres included in the standard Lion installation, that true?

Also, is there a Python 3 bundled?

Appears to include the "psql" command-line client and related support libraries, but no server. The server might be present in Lion Server, which I don't have.

What about `sqlite3 -version`?

Can we haz 3.7 and its Write-Ahead Log?

$ sqlite3 -version 3.7.5

Love the (lack of) scrollbars. My perfect OS would have no visible window chrome at all, no edges, no title bar, no buttons, nothing other than my work. The other bits would fade in as needed, then disappear again. not sure how exactly though...

It seems like your perfect WM is a tiling one. :)

Like Xmonad.

As an XMonad user, I can attest to the fact that it is indeed nirvana.

actually, no. My window management is like my desk - loads of crap everywhere, but I know where everything is and can get it it quickly (most of the time...)

Ever used Quicktime X? That's what I want :)

But I like the Ubuntu scrollbars better. There is at least a small line showing there is more content.

The reviewer is also surprised to see he is "missing" some programs (scrollbar is missing). I think this is a bad UI decision.

yeah, I like what Ubuntu have done too. Same idea, different solution (probably better, imho)

I thought about the "bad ui" thing, and I can see where this coulf be confusing, but tonight (it's almost midnight here) I'm being selfish and voting for no scrollbars just because that's what I like.

Of course I'll have to reconsider this later when my father-in-law rings me up saying almost all his documents has gone.

What his screenshot doesn't show is that Finder does show the scrollbar for a couple seconds to indicate to the user that he/she can scroll to see more.

So why not show it all the time then? This is a great example of putting design above usability.

Look at a tiling window manager on Linux. No title bar, nothing to grab on to the resize or anything like that. Just simply the content displayed.

You could run all your apps in Lion in full-screen mode and move among them with swipes...

On resuming application state:

>So, how's that "geek panic" now? Still there, huh? Well, let me try to reassure you. As a committed user of a great Mac text editor that, years ago, implemented its own version of almost all the document management features described so far, I can tell you that you get used to it very quickly. Spoiled by it, in fact. Ruined by it, some would say. Yes, it's a very different model from the one we're all used to. But it's also a better model—not just for novices, but for geeks too.

This works fine with text editors (although I'd argue that if invoked via the equivalent of "mvim" or "mate" they should discard this), but it absolutely falls apart with media creation applications. Photoshop and Illustrator files can be big, and they can take a long time to open. Just so that you can close it immediately and open a different one. Logic Pro currently does this, and it isn't nice or better. It's annoying.

Then there's the privacy concerns. If a designer is working with multiple clients, the last thing he or she wants is a different client's work showing up when he or she is showing something to a client.

Don't worry - Adobe won't be updating the Creative Suite with these features until at least the next release cycle. I imagine that, as you said, "Resume" will not be supported for performance reasons alone.

I'm not sure I follow. You mean that when you are working on something, you just shut down the application to close all your open files?

BTW, the apps need to be updated to take advantage of resuming application state, so application authors can choose to not support it if it doesn't make sense (giant Photoshop files, etc.).

I casually dabble in making music with Logic. When you open it (in Snow Leopard), it opens the last opened project.

Logic is a pretty complex application, and there are a lot of different synths and filters. The synths take a lot of memory, since they have a large number (presumably) lossless audio samples in them (think every key on a piano, times X for X number of different strike velocities).

Therefore, Logic only loads the synths that are needed for files that you have open. It actually recommends with an alert box that you close your current file before opening another one.

When you open a file, it loads all of the synths for that file - this can take a long time.

The result is, when you open Logic, if the last file that you had opened isn't the one you want to work on now, you have to wait for that file to load, then close it, then open the file you actually want and wait for that one to load.

This probably won't be a problem for Adobe users, because Adobe is really bad at making native-feeling Mac OS software, so this probably won't be supported. But for Apple's document-based media applications (Final Cut and Logic, Aperture is different because of its nature), this is a bigger issue (Final Cut has some... bigger issues right now though).

The other issue is the privacy one. I used graphic designers working for competing clients as an example, but really, it could apply to anyone that values their privacy. Personally, I like my browser being a blank slate each time I start it back up.

A final issue that I can think of is with applications that tend to be opened by files (the user clicks on a file in Finder, not on the application). QuickTime and Preview are good examples. If I open a picture in Preview by double clicking it in Finder, typically I don't also want to see the last picture I viewed as well. I quit Preview when I was done looking at that picture for a reason - I was done with it.

I know it doesn't help much, but you can globally prevent apps from resuming. There is even a checkbox for doing so in the System Preferences, it's not a hidden preference.

I say it's not helping much since it's a global preferemce and resuming apps would be great to have – at least sometimes.

The APIs in Lion which enable the saving and resume are built to do their reading and writing asynchronously. So long as the developer makes use of the new system APIs, it should be a nicer experience for a case like Logic with its significantly larger files.

Try doing this with 3rd party sound libraries (e.g. East|West) and you can quickly get into loading times that are hugely longer. I love opening my projects that only use Logic's built in synths, because they load quickly compared the marathons that can ensue when I am working on a large, fully-orchestral, 70/80-track piece.

And that's before I've added other media, such as video, to the project.

there's an options in system preferences to turn it off. but it's global for all apps

And it's an application implementation in any case, your application is perfectly free to not implement that API.

You can buy this review as an ebook on Amazon, for the same price as a month's subscription to Ars Technica ($5) http://www.amazon.com/Mac-OS-10-7-Lion-ebook/dp/B005DHYPR4

Downvotes? Did I copy-and-paste an affiliate link or something?

I wanted the EPUB version, so I bought an Ars Subscription for $5 (it auto-renews, though). You can also get MOBI and PDF versions with the subscription.

Interestingly, I was offered a 1 year subscription to Wired, or a $10 refund (which requires printing something and mailing it in). Does anybody know if I can send that in and get my EPUB for an effective -$5?

It's not really worth the time, but it's amusing.

BTW: Gruber had an Amazon affiliate link for Siracusa, which was almost enough to make me get the Kindle version: http://amzn.to/oJtmGd

I would love to see serious developer tools integrate the new file/state APIs creatively.

- Will it be possible to populate the list of previous file versions from another source, like a git or svn repo?

- Could the application state API include a shell intelligently reopening itself and launching the development environment that was running before a restart?

- Can applications read old versions of files edited in another application? E.g. could I tell Chrome to view a page in one tab, and in the next tab view the version of that page from a week ago to compare differences?

I'm disappointed in the answer to the following questions:

Can I tile two windows without 17 clicks and mouse movements? Fortunately for the creator of Cinch, it seems the answer is no.

Can I archive a gmail message? No?

About GMail archiving: Really not? (I haven't read trough this massive review yet.)

At least on iOS it is possible to convince the delete button to archive. (By setting the trash folder to 'All mail', if I remember correctly.) I would imagine that Apple Mail should be at least as configurable as its iOS counterpart.

iOS supports archiving perfectly fine. No need for any tricks.

Lion kinda does. You can archive but doing that will actually create an “Archive” folder and moves the mail there. That’s not the expected behavior when using Gmail. (The expected behavior would be to move the mail to the “All Messages” folder, or, in Gmail lingo, to remove all labels from the message. iOS does that, Lion doesn’t.)

Archiving is handled through IMAP delete by default. Check your GMail settings and go to the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab. Most likely your setting for "When I mark a message in IMAP as deleted" is "Archive the message (default)."

But I want to be able to delete mails (anywhere). I don’t want to repurpose the delete button, no way.

Move the mail to the trash folder. Sorry, not a 1-button solution, but it works.

Yeah... And then you delete how?

Umm, the point of GMail is to never delete anything anymore. I love being able to search through my years of old mail.

That was the point of gmail... five years ago. And then they added delete, because there are some message which never again need to see the light of day.

Move it to the folder Thrash

I use Divvy for Mac for arranging windows. I love it.

http://mizage.com/divvy/#divvyMac

I'm a fan of SizeUp. http://irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/

SizeUp is great if you have multiple monitors too, you can send a window from one screen to another in one keystroke.

except Adobe Air apps (stupid hipchat)

SizeUp is awesome. Easy window management without having to touch the mouse? Yes please!

I use Moom. It's inexpensive and you just hover your mouse above the maximize icon.

http://manytricks.com/moom/

Yup, the fifteen bucks I spent on Divvy were definitely worth it.

I just purchased this. One feature I'm really looking for is the ability to launch multiple apps in a specific configuration. The best solution I've found so far is using Applescript. I realize I might just be overlooking already implemented features. Anyone have a recommendation?

Don't forget ShiftIt.

Completely Free and does everything divvy and SizeUp can do !!

A git repo, with latest chages based on

  https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt/network

appears to be here:

  https://github.com/mehowte/ShiftIt

Very easy to build with Xcode 4 on SL 10.6.8 ...

I'll be happy to upload a binary of the latest build I made last night for those in need (just ask).

As far as I can remember I had problems when I compiled it to a universal binary so if anyone else does try compiling it directly to your architecture.

What do you use tiling for? If anything Apple is moving even farther away from tiling with the full-screen changes in Lion.

I use tiling when I want two Windows to each occupy half of the screen.

Let me ask you a question: What on God's green earth does the little green plus button do in OSX? I just pressed it three times on Chrome and here's what happened:

1) The windows was occupying the entire screen (thank you Cinch) and when I clicked the green plus, the window changed to roughly 600x800.

2) Window changed to to 600x1100.

3) Window didn't change any more.

WTF?

The green button tries to remove all scroll bars and it will also shrink the window down to where there are just no scroll bars (i.e. shrinking it one more pixel would activate the scrollbars).

It fits the window to the size of the content. Or something. Can't deny it's confusing and I never use it myself

I'll have to give cinch a try, I've just gotten used to really janky window layouts in OS X.

sizes the window to best fit the content (in theory). I think it's up to the application to specify that size though.

Works very well in Safari, but always seems to go to full screen for Firefox. Chrome's working sort of as expected here alternating between best fit and some stupid tiny size it seems to have concocted.

In old MacOS it was called "zoom", not "maximize" and the application developer was supposed to swap between the "ideal small size window" and the "ideal large size window".

In this age of cross-platform apps, and people who are used to "maximize" instead of "zoom" it is a concept that has been long forgotten

I believe click green works as size to content or size to vertical max.

shift-click green is maximize.

Coming from Windows this confused me as well. I found an article that clarifies why it behaves the way it does; it does make sense to do it this way particularly on high res screens where the empty space would be glaring.

http://www.macyourself.com/2011/02/06/why-doesnt-mac-os-xs-g...

It has always been possible to archive a message by moving it to the "All Mail" mailbox, right?

Flexiglass is the best:

http://www.nulana.com/flexiglass

Window Magnet is really nice and complete while still sticking to Less is More. Shame it's so unknown.

Yes, you can archive Gmail messages now (and in ios5)

From page 13 of the review:

"With ZFS out of the picture, Brtfs presumably eliminated due to its licensing, and future development of ReiserFS uncertain, its hard to see where Apple will get the modern file system that it so desperately needs other than by creating one itself."

There is one BSD licensed option I can think of: HammerFS. However, considering the fact that the creator of BFS is an Apple employee, I could totally envision them creating their own from scratch.

> However, considering the fact that the creator of BFS is an Apple employee, I could totally envision them creating their own from scratch.

Dominic has been working at Apple since 2002. I'm guessing if they wanted a new filesystem they'd have tapped him quite a long time ago.

They didn't want to make a new file system for a while, when they were going after ZFS, but that has fallen through. And anyway, all he saying is that they definitely could make their own, which is true.

Apple's interest in ZFS started in 2006. He'd already been at Apple for 4 years by then.

True but they probably had other fish to fry when he started. As I recall, he worked a lot on Mac OS X's expanding use of metadata search and extended file attributes.

"Terminal also—finally—supports 256 text colors with its new xterm-256color terminal type."

Woohoo! Finally a true MediumAquamarine comment-face in emacs in mac term.

Agreed, about time! Having to hack the terminal's prefpane to make my terminal colors work has been a total headache every time I upgrade or switch machines.

iTerm2 remains a better program in my opinion. Try it sometime! (and it's free!)

Tried most of the non-Apple Terminal alternatives, but personally I have always kept returning to Terminal because there is something about its finishing touches that add up.

Does the new Terminal.app support xterm mouse reporting?

Woah. I actually reported an erratum and John responded within 10 minutes for clarification and subsequently updated the article.

(Previously, page 18 stated that "The old lock screen didn't allow account switching." Turns out it has, since at least Panther back in 2004.)

I've emailed John before to ask him about language issues on OS X – I think this was back around the time that Apple decided they weren't going to roll their own Java runtime anymore. He responded back promptly and pointed me toward some reading material he thought was insightful.

Not only are his reviews and articles awesome, he seems like a really decent, chill guy.

He does an interesting podcast here: http://5by5.tv/hypercritical

Totally agree with your last sentence. This is an EPIC review, and drove me to clear some diskspace and buy and install Lion.

I like it so far, some nice touches, but there really are some serious usability issues, including discoverability, with Mission Control. Very unlike Apple, at least for the last few releases of OS X.

The one point (OK, one of the points) which I think will be VERY confusing to the power user is that the "Automatic Termination" function will remove programs from the application switcher. Given that they're still existing as a process, what's the point of this? The whole point is that launching and quitting apps should be transparent. Why remove it from the application switcher - which will now be the only way to see what apps are running, given that the little doc light gems are gone by default - thereby making the user click on it to restore it? There's no benefit, and it's a jarring concept ("Hey, where'd my app go? I didn't quit it!") I don't see the point.

I've been running Lion for a while and I have the lights under open apps without doing anything special. Does yours not?

I think they're off by default for new installs but on for upgrades from Snow Leopard. My upgraded-today Mac had them on by default. Either way, you can switch it in System Preferences > Dock > Show indicator lights for open applications.

I've observed my parents, wife and sister using OS X and they've NEVER ever quit an application "the Mac way". They just click the red cross and think that quits the application as it does on windows. The only person who gets upset about their behavior above is me and with this change, even I don't need to bother. I think it's a change for the better. The policy for automatic termination is VERY conservative so I doubt an application will be terminated when you really don't want it to.

The entire point is that you shouldn't be concerned with what applications are running - the article discusses this idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhOG25fM8so - Preparing for John Siracusa's Review of OS X Lion

"This video contains content from SME, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds."

ARGH. I'm still bitter over the introduction of Spaces in the first place—a crappy implementation of virtual desktops that nevertheless drove all the third-party versions out of business—and now they cripple their already-weak version further?

Over and over in this review I'm seeing Steve Jobs's message come through loud and clear: "You should be on an iPad. We're going to make Macs as much like iPads as we can, even when this makes no sense and observably degrades productivity and user experience. If you're still somehow holding on to your non-iPad existence, we don't give a shit."

Spaces is now implemented in a way people might actually be willing to use. That's what Apple typically does.

A bit hyperbolic don't you think? Have you used Lion yet?

What changed in spaces? I really can't stand stock spaces in snow leopard and am currently using hyperspaces to get reliable hotkey switching in spaces, if something breaks this I would like to know so I can not upgrade.

According to the review, Spaces can no longer be laid out spatially, only in a line.

Separately: I've used Keyremap4Macbook to get my desired hotkey-switching behaviour in Spaces.

Seems like arstechnica is a little bit overloaded by the number of requests (or am I the only one getting errors sometimes?)

You're not alone :)

I just got:

"Our servers melted!"

"Our servers are misbehaving"

I saw "John Siracusa" and said to myself Damn, wasn't that the RoseDB ORM author from CPAN?

http://metacpan.org/author/JSIRACUSA

Yup. I had no this idea he was a tech writer/editor for Ars Technica. I really like his (Perl) work. The article has great insight too.

Don't forget to prep yourself properly before reading the review :)

Preparing for John Siracusa's Review of OS X Lion - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhOG25fM8so

I look forward to JS's reviews... so detailed and well-written. I always read them thoroughly even though I haven't had a Mac on my desk since the old beloved IIci at work.

"Lion adds Emoji support to Mac OS X. So that happened."

I am not able to understand how a 3.7GB install image can later fit into a 650MB recovery HD partition (and if it somehow could through some compression magic, then why not compress it even before to only give me 650MB to download from the app store)?

My total guess would be that the 650MB image just provides you a mechanism to download Lion again. Or perhaps it's a machine-specific rev? My instinct says the former.

Yup, your guess is right. Lion will be downloaded again if you install from the recovery partition.

The recovery partition doesn't need to contain the entire OS.

but there is also an option to install Lion from that recovery HD partition.

Is there a version of Firefox that plays nicely with the new full screen app features? 5.0.1 kind of falls apart with it, but I just can't give up TreeStyle Tabs to make the leap to Chrome, which is a good citizen.

I'm surprised he did not point out that the document saving model is just revision control for the masses. If you have a mental model for cvs or subversion, it's just like having that automated for your documents.

The author gripes about the the scrolling direction of the mouse being matched to the scrolling direction of the trackpad. And then says:

>Unfortunately, the settings are linked; you can't have >different values for each kind of input device.

This turns out not to be true, you can indeed making scrolling different on the mouse and the trackpad. The trick is that link is only one way: changing it for the mouse changes it for the trackpad, but not vice versa. So by changing them in the right order you can make them do what you want. Confusing, but at least you can get it to work.

When I read the section on dropping support for PowerPC-application support altogether on this version of Mac OS X, I couldn't help but think of the video of someone upgrading from Windows 1.0 all the way to Windows 7, and many of the features/applications still working. Why did Mac throw out a feature they had working? Couldn't they have retained it, just not upgraded it anymore? (Or given it to the community?)

Full Disclosure: I'm a Microsoft employee. These views are my own, but I am supporting our product.

I can think of a few reasons. One is that Apple want to minimize cruft and crap bloating the install. I think my fresh install weighed in about 6 GB or so. Very nice, just 20% of a 30 GB drive.

Another is that software still built with old tools and compilers will still be using old deprecated toolkits, more cruft to keep running, and likely will be unsupported, potentially creating a crappy user experience.

It is really neat that really old stuff still runs on Windows, but why are people still running crappy old 16-bit software?

Ooooold games (DOS days)

Business software

Well, that's just another app. I haven't actually tried, but I bet old crusty copies of Lotus 1-2-3 in which I've actually done development, would probably run just fine under DosBox on any Intel platform.

There's very little reason to cruft up the OS for everyone, for that stuff.

Having listened to Siracusa's 5by5 podcast, Hypercritical, I am reading this with the voice of Squidworth from Spongebob Squarepants.

Dan's been trying to get the rights to do a dramatic reading for at least a few parts of it. (Ars said no to him reading the whole thing, understandably.)

This week's episode should be awesome.

I dont really like the direction OSX is going tbh. Its clear that its going more and more into the iOS direction, consumer orientated, easy to use for average users but not very efficient for power users. Multiple Monitor workflow is even more awkward then before for example.

I am in India, and have a connection that is 256Kbps. This is sufficient for most things, but I cannot get Lion from Apple.

I don't mind waiting for 40 hours for ~4GB to download, but the likelihood that a connection in India is sustained for more than 10-15 minutes is rather low. The problem here isn't with the speed (it is with that as well), but with the reliability of the connection. Even at 8MBPS, this download will still take about an hour and it's rare that the connection won't be randomly dropped during that hour.

Why can't Apple download these things smartly like BitTorrent? Why this behemoth of a download? Why not break it up into smaller pieces of ~10-20MB each, with a checksum for all these pieces so that WHEN (in India it's WHEN, not if) the connection gets dropped, you're only effectively losing 10-20 MB of downloaded data, not losing an entire GB or more of downloaded material. To me, it almost seems silly not to do this. Is Apple really this ignorant of flaky internet connections?

Can you not find a less than legit copy and put in your key? I'm unfamiliar with the process by any standard.

There is no serial or copy protection on Mac OS X.

I have a faulty router that just this morning rebooted itself several times while Lion was downloading. Everytime the connection was lost it just resumed.

Why don't you try leaving it some hours and see how it goes?

To be very honest, I have a 3G connection with a limit of about 1.25 GB per month. Since I wanted Lion as quick as possible, I downloaded 1 GB of material using the 3G connection (took me a very, very short time - relatively). When I tried to resume the download from the App Store using my normal internet connection it didn't, and I lost about 1GB of stuff.

That's why I posted the earlier message.

In the interest of full disclosure, it was probably because the Mac App Store needed to re-authenticate me (I changed IPs remember), clicking resume resulted in me not being able to start the download, and the App Store just decided that the 1GB downloaded was useless.

The point about flaky internet connections, and "chunk"ed downloads still stands. I don't expect to be able to get through this download, and even my current issue would have been more gracefully handled with a smaller download size since only 1 chunk of data would have been lost.

Note: Interestingly, my 3G connection is more reliable than my broadband with respect to reliability. Even more interestingly, the provider is the same in both cases.

What's your broadband? FTTH? DSL? Cable?

I'm in Vietnam, and we're able to download Lion over FTTH.

> Even more interestingly, the provider is the same in both cases.

The wired and wireless divisions of telecoms are often managed very differently. For example, AT&T's U-Verse FTTH service is great, but I wouldn't touch AT&T's cellular service with a 10' pole.

FWIW, I have found that Airtel's DSL is quite reliable (and fast).

Well, India's the exception, not the rule, when it comes to exceedingly poor infrastructure. And considering Apple's upscale target demographic, India probably isn't a huge concern for them.

Is there some other reason why you think the idea I suggested is incorrect, or not worth it? Because it seems to me that claims like India "isn't a huge concern" might hold some water, but I've read of people complaining of flaky connections even in countries with better infrastructure. Does Apple really want to waste bandwidth on re-uploading data that has already been uploaded? Lion isn't the only multi-gigabyte application available for download on the Mac App Store.

I can only comment on America and Japan, but I'm fairly sure that if it were that simple to implement resumable downloads, Apple would have already done so. Who knows - maybe they already have. After all, you admitted to actually restarting the download from a different IP, which means that the issue may be something completely different.

I'm in India too and have a 1Mbps connection and downloaded Lion overnight yesterday. MTNL isn't known to be very stable but the Lion install was there in my applications folder in the morning so it does support resuming.

That said, Apple suggested they'll let users download Lion at Apple stores and since this is India we always can do some "jugaad". Why not try talking to the friendly guys at your neighborhood Apple store and they'll install Lion for you.

Which service provider is that? I use Airtel and I've never experienced the dropping of connection in the last 5 years. Airtel is very reliable and fast too.

"It chose to attack the lowest-hanging fruit first, the one thing about Apple's development environment most likely to stand out as primitive and backwards to programmers coming from other platforms or even fresh out of school: manual memory management."

ARC works great until you have cyclic references. Then you "just" have to add "Zeroing Weak References". Ok. Where? How do I know when I have to add them?

The problem with reference counted memory management is NOT having to type [x retain]. Its having to KNOW where NOT to type it. ARC doesn't solve this at all. It just allows an entire generation of programmers to stop thinking about it altogether. That's going to end well.

There are other forms of memory management than manual and refcounted.

You can find retain cycles using the abandoned memory and ARC debugging tools in Instruments.

I can. You can. I bet most can't, and even if they could, still wouldn't know the right place to break the cycle. If you break the cycle in the wrong place then things go bye-bye when you still need them.

I've had this very discussion on here. Hell, at a games company that developed AAA titles, I had to demonstrate to a non-junior programmer that C++ references can be null. To the majority of programmers, memory management is incomprehensible voodoo. And they're all making iPhone apps. o_O

One thing that continuously strikes me is Apple's ability to invest great level of detail when they want to.

Take the FileVault recovery key, for example.

For something so crucial like file encryption, not only do they offer you a quick solution but a practical and more "human usable" one; they offer to store it for you.

And then they go the extra mile with those security questions! http://static.arstechnica.net/2011/07/04/lion/file-vault-app...

Remember how typical security questions are "What was your mother's maiden name" or name of your pet? Typically those questions are considerably very unsafe since they are very easy to find out in an innocent conversation.

Compare that to questions like childhood phone number, first teacher in school etc. - they are considerably "safer".

Being picky about the childhood phone number: does anyone even remember that? Since I have the iPhone I can only memorise something like three or four phone numbers.

Well, maybe that point just got me all excited because I had to work on exactly that dilemma of bad security questions a few years ago for a big identity management installation and we would end up with exactly those kind of a bit more personal/specific questions like who was your first manager, lyrics to favorite song, most significant politician...

In my case, being European and only moved from my parents' house once in my life so far - yes, I do remember my (old) home phone number better than the one my mom switched to now.

Either way, it is a surprisingly difficult topic and very dependent on the organization and people.

I really love that type of research and I guess I got myself all excited as well and forgot to say that one of the numbers I do remember is the childhood phone number but only because it still is the same!

Yes, but it's also still my parent's phone number. I know it better than my social security number.

It's pretty much the only phone number I can remember.

I wonder if there's an age difference thing here. I'm unusual for my early twenties (AFAICT) in that I have several numbers in my head (including most of my college phone numbers, original home phone number, etc). Most of my friends are helpless without their cell.

Interesting: at 65, I only remember my childhood phone #, my current cell # (which I had for a couple years before I memorized it), and a previous landline which I use at the grocery instead of their club card.

No I really don't think it's an age thing; I think it's more likely a thing you're born with. I have no idea what my phone number is, have serious difficulties remembering even my postal code or house number. In the meantime, my girlfriend (who's my age) easily remembers the IP addresses of my servers.

Childhood phone numbers - if your parents still live in your childhood home and haven't changed phone number (not that unusual) then it's just their phone number.

First teacher - actually I can't remember mine (I was only there for a single term) but, again, I know enough people who have contacts they've had since very early school days, so will share that answer.

Honestly, I'm yet to come across a 'security' question of that type that is memorable to the user but couldn't be identified by someone else for at least a significant percentage of users. I'm not at all sure there are 'safe' questions of this sort.

The best solution I've found: I lie on all my security questions.

Give your father's middle name instead of your mother's maiden name, or something. As long as you're consistent in your lies, it's not hard to keep track of.

This is not-super-secure, but in a lot of situations I just use a rule like "third character of first word + second character of third word + first character of fourth word", and so on. You end up with gibberish most of the time, but at least you're not going to let it slip in conversation (and as long as you remember the rule and don't pass that around, you're hopefully okay).

My strategy is to pad the real answer with the same two words for each question. For example, "purple 12345 banana", "purple Smith banana", etc. Not perfect, but it should defeat even the best would-be guessers.

Or just put "forty two" in all the answers!

We spent some time working on this for the security survey at SocialSci during signup -- since we don't associate your email to your account; its the only way for our participants to recover their password.

We did a lot of research and came up with a list of 20 security questions, tiered by quality and applicability. We present users the questions, and allow them to skip to a more desirable one.

Some highlights: Who taught you how to drive? How do you like your eggs prepared? What was your first brand of cell phone? (a cell phone is required to have gotten this far) How quickly after you were eligible did you get your drivers license? What time of day were you born? What is the name of the place your wedding reception was held?

Many of these questions are multiple choice, not fill-in-the-blank. We found that users are far more likely to recall what they would've chosen from the available choices vs what arbitrary text they entered into a field.

There are limits on recovery attempts; and limits on how much we tell you about what/how many you got wrong.

We require you to fill out 5 of these.

"Who taught you how to drive?"

So that's 60% of your users with the security answer: "Dad"

Tigers are bigger than lions.

Downmodding me doesn't make it any less true. Tigers are bigger than lions, despite whatever misconceptions the writer of the article may hold.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion

I'm sure people are downvoting you purely because it has nothing to do with the discussion.

It's related to the article:

Lion's just another big cat name, right? Within seconds, we were on to the next slide, where Jobs was pitching the new release's message: not "king of the jungle" or "the biggest big cat," but the "back to the Mac" theme underlying the entire event.

I don't miss the karma. However, it was interesting to see this petty, gang-like downmodding behaviour from HN. More interesting still was that I provoked it merely by acting upon a desire that any nerd should be able to love-- a desire for correctness.

I skipped about four pages from the middle of this review because it was just way too technical. I know he's an engineer and wants to cover these things, but I'm not interested in seeing so much coverage for something that very few people will get.

It's not so much a review as it is an overview.

That's alright, the review even advises you to skip a few pages if you are not interested in technical details.

The technical details are definitly part of Siracusa's reviews and have been for well over a decade. It would be wrong to leave them out. Many readers expect them.

You might consider getting a review from a more mainstream source then; ars and js are where they dig into the nuts and bolts.

You must be new to Siracusa. Geek Porn at it's finest really. :)

"If this is your first time reading an Ars Technica review of Mac OS X and you've made it this far, be warned: this section will be even more esoteric than the ones you've already read. If you just want to see more screenshots of new or changed applications, feel free to skip ahead to the next section. We nerds won't think any less of you." - (Second Paragraph, Page 9)

This is Hacker News, where it is generally understood that most people will have a fairly technical background (it's not called "Hacker News" for nothing). And the review is on Ars Technica, which also targets a technical audience. John Siracusa's reviews of new versions of Mac OS X are famous, as they provide all of the technical details that most other reviewers don't. I understand that's not what you are looking for, but that's what the target audience of Hacker News and Ars Technica wants, and I certainly appreciate it.

That's fine. My main point being the entire "Internals" section of the review could have been skipped and no one would have thought any less of it.

This is an opinion not shared with many readers of Ars or HN is my guess.

Is this your first time reading one of John's reviews ? The last few that I remember even had a programming section of some kind :-) And he does mention before beginning the Internals section that people can skip it and the geeks wouldn't mind.

Stuff like the internals section is why I read his reviews.

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