Lion

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Learning About Lion

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        Yes, there's more to learn, but it's easy and it's fun -- so, of course, it's Mac!  Helping us learn about Lion Jim Hamm sends us some useful links, along with relating his own Lion experiences.  Read on:
        "I did another install of OS X Lion on my MacBook Air (3 1/2 years old) and the download took 50 minutes and the install took 50 minutes - an improvement from my older MacBook Pro. Again, everything seems to be working -- sometimes a bit too much. I noticed my CPU on the Air was running at nearly 100% and wondered why? Two processes -- MDWorker and MDS -- were soaking up all my CPU cycles. A little research found that Spotlight was indexing everything on my Air. Looking at the small Spotlight magnifier icon in the upper right corner of my screen showed a small dot in the center, which indicated that indexing was going on. The report I read indicated just to let this indexing continue and it would stop in about 15 minutes. I did and it did.
        "Occasionally there will be little blips in using Lion. For example, this morning my MacBook Pro, upon opening it, didn’t find my wifi network. A bit of fiddling got it going again. Zee had a problem in Safari when all of a sudden she couldn’t click a link and get it to do anything. I suggested a restart which fixed the problem. From our experience, and reading other blogs on the install of Lion, it seems the fix of the moment is to do a restart on these small blips.
        "Adobe and Lion don’t seem to play well together. Here is an article with more about this.
        "From reading various blogs and articles on Lion, most people seem to be pleased with Lion -- but not all. A couple of people have stated they want to go back to Snow Leopard. My impression of Lion? It’s fine, is probably the first thought that comes to mind -- and I’m glad we upgraded. If someone were to ask me if they should upgrade to Lion now, I’d say not necessarily unless they just want to experience the latest OS. The partial melding of OS and iOS is the way Apple is heading, so I thought we’d get on the bandwagon early-on and learn more about this new OS. Apparently the security of Lion has been improved significantly, which is a good thing. A couple of small blips -- like scrolling in a different direction than usual, and which I was accustomed to, and a missing scroll bar (which I didn’t miss, but other people did) -- were easily fixed and reverted in System Preferences.
        "Mail is quite a bit different in Lion. I’m adjusting to the new format and not sure, at this time, that I like it better than the ‘old’ format. It is basically the same format as one sees in an Apple mobile device, so my learning curve isn’t as steep as it might otherwise have been."  Jim also mentions an article about Mail.
        Now Jim goes on to say, "Walt Mossberg, tech writer for the Wall Street Journal, likes the new features in Lion and elaborates on his opinion in this review. Other tech writers report similar impressions. And the price of the upgrade at $30 is certainly reasonable -- in fact, a bargain I’d say. Just think about all the development work that went into Lion, and we’re buying all this for just $30. A lot of ‘roar’ for the buck, I’d say."  And here Jim gives us a grin.
        But wait, Jim has found more good articles to read after you've installed Lion.  First from techcrunch, and then from applegazette. (How to add your signature to a pdf caught my attention.)
        Here is the very latest from Jim. View a 19 minute FREE video tutorial on the installation of Lion from ScreenCastsonline.
        Stay tuned for more about Lion later.  Jim seems to have been the first from PMUG to make the plunge.

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Let's Hear About Lion

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        The news today is full of information and comments on Lion.  Jim Hamm sends this article on Lion security that introduces us to ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization) and "security sandboxes," and this article on how to access your Library folder in Finder. He comments that Method 2 works fine.
        Jim also wants us to see this from the New York Times. Their last paragraph summarizes what they're trying to explain, "The Lion upgrade, in other words, is classic Apple: innovative to some, gimmicky to others, big leaps forward, a few stumbles back. It may never be the king of the jungle. But once the world’s software companies have fully Lionized their wares, and once Apple exterminates the bugs, Mac OS X 10.7 might be something even more exotic: a fast, powerful, good-looking, virus-free, thoroughly modern operating system."
        More news:  Lion will be available via USB drive for $69 from the Apple store in late August.

See Lion Tomorrow!

        Rumors are flying this morning, and Jim Hamm helps us out.  Possibly Lion will be released tomorrow or Thursday.  He sends this link from 9to5mac revealing rumblings about Lion distributing caching centers.  It suggests that customers who walk into the Apple store could purchase Lion from the Mac App store and download it directly from the store server in minutes, rather than hours it takes over a normal broadband connection.  This article reveals that Find My Mac, a new Lion feature for locating and wiping your Mac remotely, also works when one boots into the recovery partition.  This lets a Mac owner use another machine to locate and wipe out their stolen Mac's hard drive even if the person using it is not logged in.
        THIS JUST IN:  This article quotes Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer that Mac OS Lion launches tomorrow, Wednesday, July 20.  And this from Apple Insider says Lion launches tomorrow, and tells about Migration Assistant Update, needed for the update to Lion.

Possible Problems with Upcoming Lion

        Making us aware of possible problems with the release of Lion Jim Hamm explains, "While reading a blog about the coming upgrade to OS X Lion, here's what one blogger had to say about the upgrade only being available via download:
        'While the issue of distributing Lion to people who don't have adequate bandwidth is one thorny and important problem, I also expect the strain of Apple's servers to be excessive as millions of people flock to download the upgrade the first few days it's available. Which will mean a torrent of complaints about failed downloads. I think Apple is walking into a large hornet's nest here. It's hard to imagine they are unaware of the matter, but as yet they've not acknowledged it publicly. This could turn into a debacle that would dwarf the Mobile Me roll out. In which case, Apple will have once again been too cute - and too smug - for their own good.'
        Jim goes on to offer his opinion, "I must say I agree with his/her comments. It seems to me it would be much better if Apple offered, in addition to the download, the option to purchase a CD for the Lion upgrade, and charge a slightly higher price for it. On the download side, Apple could spread the load on their servers a bit by saying if your last name starts with A thru D, for example, your download window is July...to July...Then E thru H it is July...to July..., and so on.
        "How long will it take to download 4GB of data (the approximate size of OS X Lion)? That depends on several factors: the speed of your internet connection; the load on your ISP network; the load on Apple's servers; et al? As an example: nominally I have a 10 Mbps connection speed. However, I was watching the download speed of the upgrade I did to OS X 10.6.8 and iStat Menus (in my Toolbar) only showed a download speed of approximately 1 Mbps, and that fluctuated around. So, my download time may range anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes, depending on what assumption of download speed I use.
        Jim concludes, "It seems to me that many Mac users are not going to be happy with that download scenario. I'm not happy about it, and I haven't even started the process...(grin)...I hope Apple doesn't stub their toe big time on this upgrade."

Is There a Lion in Your Future?

"The good news today is that if you buy a Mac now, you will get a FREE upgrade to Mac OS X Lion when it comes out," announces Art Gorski.  He continues,  "The bad news is that Lion requires a Core 2 Duo processor or better. Many of us with older Macs will be unable to upgrade. Select About This Mac from the Apple menu to find out if you will be able to install Lion. Here is the Fail message from my MacBook:
(Click to enlarge.)

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The Latest and the Greatest

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        "Well, the big announcements at WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) happened this morning," begins Art Gorski.  Here's his take on the latest and greatest.  First, here's a summary from Macworld.
       "Mac OS X Lion will be out next month for $30 but is available only through the App Store. If you haven't updated to the latest version of Snow Leopard I have no idea how you can get it. There are many changes designed to make Mac OS X look and act much more like iOS: Full screen apps (we've already seen this with the new iPhoto), the Launchpad feature, and support for multi-touch gestures everywhere (if you have an Apple touchpad).
        "iOS 5 will be out in the Fall with 200 new features. The most interesting thing is that Apple has decided that syncing data amongst all your devices is a royal pain, so all syncing, including iOS updates, apps, and all data will sync wirelessly over 3G or wireless. Most of this syncing happens automatically without you even noticing. For example, if you take a picture with your iPhone camera, the next time you fire up your iPad or Mac that photo will be on that device. Along with iCloud (below), it will be possible to own an iOS device standalone for the first time, without ever attaching it to a computer at all!
        "Remember Apple's Digital Hub idea? Where your Mac was your digital hub for all of your data and media? That's now over. Apple has demoted the Mac to just another device, like the iOS devices. Your digital hub is now in the iCloud. Also available in the Fall, iCloud is a FREE service that replaces MobileMe (well, kinda, see below). It will provide a me.com email account and sync that, along with contacts and calendars. Documents in the Cloud is a new app to facilitate automatically syncing iWork documents (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) amongst all your devices. iTunes in the Cloud lets you download any iTunes-purchased media to up to 10 different devices. A total of 5GB of space, shared between documents and email is available in addition to however much space is needed to sync your last 1000 photos and your iTunes-purchased media. An optional service called iTunes Match will be available for $25/year that will scan your complete iTunes library, including stuff you ripped yourself, try to figure out what it is, and then make very high quality versions available for download to your devices.
       Art concludes, "Interestingly enough, Apple did not mention iCloud replacements for iDisk and web hosting. It's possible these are going away. However, Apple just extended all MobileMe subscriptions to June 6, 2012 to give you a year to figure out what to do."
        Also, take a look at the Apple site here and the Apple HotNews site here for more descriptions of the latest and greatest!

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The Lion is Coming

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        The Mac OS X 10.7 Lion will be released through Apple's Mac App Store, with more to be revealed at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference, June 6-10 in San Francisco.  So relates an AppleInsider article forwarded by Jim Hamm.  The future without a physical disc and computer Super Drive is mentioned.  Looking forward to seeing that Lion.
        More on technology advances and how Apple has evolved in this article further inspires Jim to muse about changes he's seen,  "So, will CDs eventually die? And somewhat analogous to this, what with the internet and Sirius satellite, it's been a long time since I've even listened to a CD. When I want a song or album, I just download it, or listen on satellite radio, or listen to music from internet radio on my Mac. And books? Printed copies are becoming less and less each year. Lots of trees saved there. Change just keeps coming in technology."

Look at Lion

A sneak preview of Lion, Apple's new OS X 10.7,  comes from Jim Hamm who mentions this About site.   Going to Apple's site brings up big photos and more detailed descriptions. Read about new features such as App Store, Launchpad,  full-screen apps, Mission control, Gestures and animations, Auto save, Versions (which records the evolution of a document as you create it every hour while you’re working on it), Resume, Mail 5 full-screen with improved search and Conversations that groups messages, AirDrop, All-new FileVault, and Lion Server.  Sounds like fun!