What is important to understand is that these same messages about how awful the latest version of Mac OS X is appear each and every time there’s a new upgrade. Thomas Reed, Apple Discussions
An Apple user since 1992, and OS X since Jaguar—I strongly disagree.Lion is different in kind from all versions of OS X before in that it introduces iOS features and attempts to blend them into the desktop metaphor—which has in all cases previous, been not only metaphor but the literal way the OS tree is organized. You can see it, if you open your hard drive, which I am given to understand seldom happens in the real world. The Desktop is the top of your desk, and works that way. The directory tree is the “drawers”—but can contain any number of folders, unlike real file drawers which of course have physical limits. Which is why we have computers.
And until now, the user has had the same control in organizing and using the documents/files within those folders (with the exception of the minimal requirements of the System, which has wanted certain files filed in certain places.)
Control, too, over document/file changes—first, you Duplicate a document, before you can Save As. Got that? Hello, Apple, is anybody really home?
I understand the concepts behind Lion—to some degree—and what Steve (shall we say Tim, now? I don’t think so) intends—dragging us, kicking and screaming, into the future. Yet for anyone the least bit conscious of how Macs have worked, has used them for a long time, developed certain habits of usage, nay, even refined them … Lion is broken. Or breaks us. Some call it dumbing down, which is definitely true. But that you know how your browser works, that you have found your way here—this puts you in the sad category of Power User.
The iOS just works, for anyone who picks up an iPad. But it is also said that the iPad is for consuming content, and the Mac for creating it. Ha. Perhaps if you restrict yourself to iWork, particularly Pages (okay, I’m a writer) it all melds together better. But damn it, I’ve bought all these other applications, and so have you. Shareware has been at the delightful heart of using the Mac—countless clever, beautiful programs that so often improved on the Mac experience. A world that is essentially broken by Lion as well, the Walled Garden of the iOS suddenly brought full force to the Mac. The Mac App Store—did I mention? There’s no trials, there, you have to buy that pig in the poke. So much grief, all because Apple couldn’t keep its sticky fingers out of the iOS pie.
But that makes no sense! It matters, on an iPad, that apps work independently, that there is no real Quit, for example. There’s no Desktop, there are no Drawers! Of course, jail-breaking gives much more fine-grained control, but no Cydia app can or will ever turn an iPad into a Mac. True, there’s a little computer in there–but it is most emphatically not a Mac … much to the Mac user’s frustration. The day we can easily access, sync and manager our devices without the Horrible Behemoth (I’m looking at you, iTunes) … that’s not really going to come, either. It can’t. The iOS is not a miniature OS X. Data In and Data Out will always stink, to some degree, requiring some kind of “translation” for the two OS’s to talk to each other.
Tidbits.com has a great Lion Info Center. Alan Zisman more fully explains the Duplicate/Save wackness. But trust me, Lion complaints are not the same-old. I’ve worked with Lion since the day it dropped, and am strongly considering going back to Snow Leopard and staying there, observing this new beast from a cautious distance. Why? Because I haven’t come across a single feature that makes working on a Mac easier, more efficient or more smooth. The novelty was fun, but now I just kick the intrusions out of the way—constantly—and have spent way too much time looking for workarounds. Not fun, anymore. I mostly use Nisus Writer to write, so have Save As right there in the menu—gosh—which serves two essential functions that Lion has also broken: easily and instantly choosing where a document is Saved To, (besides the automatic, timed Saves) and in what format. This is so easy! My novel has versions over several years—they are dated, backed up, I know where they are! The original document sits there in its own folder, unaltered!
Lion presumes to not just hide that kind of flexibility but to remove it—and the Mac has always been such a nimble system, duh—essentially breaking Choice. Who the hell at Apple—which one assumes is full of “power users”—had the bright idea of removing Choice. This indeed is how Windows works.
Pity, that.
