Apple today made available a developer preview of Mac OS X Lion, which brings many of the iPad’s features — including Multi-Touch gestures — to the Mac. The final version of Lion is slated to be available to customers this summer.
The eighth major release of Mac’s OS also includes Mission Control, which provides a new view of everything running on the computer, combining Expose, Dashboard and Spaces; Launchpad, “a new home for all your Mac apps,” which displays Mac apps in a full-screen layout with a single click; and the Mac App Store.
“The iPad has inspired a new generation of innovative features in Lion,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Developers are going to love Mission Control and Launchpad, and can now start adding great new Lion features like full screen, gestures, Versions and Auto Save to their own apps.”
Mac OS X Lion Features
Launchpad
Launchpad gives you instant access to your apps — iPad style. Just click the Launchpad icon in your Dock. Your open windows fade away, replaced by an elegant, full-screen display of all the apps on your Mac.
Full-screen Apps
On iPad, every app is displayed full screen, with no distractions, and there’s one easy way to get back to all your other apps. Mac OS X Lion does the same for your desktop. You can make a window in an app full screen with one click, switch to another app’s full-screen window with a swipe of the trackpad, and swipe back to the desktop to access your other apps — all without ever leaving the full-screen experience.
Mission Control
Mission Control is a powerful and handy new feature that provides you with a comprehensive look at what’s running on your Mac. It gives you a bird’s-eye view of everything — including Dashboard and full-screen apps — all in one place. With a simple swipe, your desktop zooms out to Mission Control.
Multi-Touch
Multi-Touch gestures make everything you do on iPad easy and intuitive. Now a richer Multi-Touch experience comes to the Mac. Enjoy more fluid and realistic gesture responses, including rubber-band scrolling, page and image zoom, and full-screen swiping. In Mac OS X Lion, every swipe, pinch, and scroll looks and feels more responsive and lifelike.
Auto Save
Say good-bye to manual saving. Auto Save in Mac OS X Lion automatically saves your work — while you work — so you don’t have to. Lion saves changes in the working document instead of creating additional copies, making the best use of available disk space.
Versions
Versions records the evolution of a document as you create it. Mac OS X Lion automatically creates a version of the document each time you open it and every hour while you’re working on it. If you need to revert to an older version or retrieve part of a document, Versions shows you the current document next to a cascade of previous versions — in an interface similar to that of Time Machine — so you can see how your work looked at any given time.
Resume
If you’ve ever restarted your Mac, you know what’s involved. First you save your work, then close all your apps, then spend valuable time setting everything up again. With Resume, that time-consuming process is a thing of the past. Resume lets you restart your Mac — after a software update, for example — and return to what you were doing.
Mail 5
Just like Mail on iPad, Mail 5 in Mac OS X Lion features a new layout that takes advantage of the widescreen display on your Mac. You see the messages in your inbox as well as a full-height preview of the selected message. The new Mailbox bar gives you one-click access to your favorite folders.
Air Drop
With AirDrop in Mac OS X Lion, you can send files to anyone around you — wirelessly. AirDrop doesn’t require setup or special settings. Just click the AirDrop icon in the Finder sidebar, and your Mac automatically discovers other people nearby who are using AirDrop. You’ll even see contact photos for those who are already in your Address Book. To share a file, simply drag it to someone’s name. Once accepted, the file transfers directly to the person’s Downloads folder. When you’re done with AirDrop, close the Finder and your Mac is no longer visible to others.
Built-In Server
Lion Server is now part of Mac OS X Lion. It’s easy to set up your Mac as a server and take advantage of the many services Lion Server has to offer. Here are just a few of the new features that make server deployment faster, easier, and more powerful than ever.
