The Most Advanced Operating System!

 

I don't have a Mac (how ironic!) but I have troubleshooted, fixed, unfixed, frustrated and sometimes amused myself with Apple products for 10 years now; from the apple shape iMac to the latest MacBook Pro. To tell you honestly, the previous lack of support from Apple made me "Windows Stuck" but all of that changed when I was invited by my brother (who works for Mac) in the unveiling of the Mac OS X Lion.

I arrived around 4:00 PM at the Ayala Museum and was welcomed by the Power Mac team. I registered in the reception area and confirmed the reservation I did online. Krispy Kreme donuts and coffee were served. Power Mac Notepads were also given to the attendees (It would be better if it was a Mac notebook though :-) ).

Since I arrived early, I checked the mini museum of Mac products and I was taken down memory lane when I saw the laserwriter (Man, I'm old), the Apple shape iMac and the 1st Gen iPod. The Power Mac Team is very helpful in discussing the history of their products and how Mac was first introduced in the Philippine consumer market 17 years ago.


                              


I also checked the main course which is the latest line up of Mac computers; from the the MacBook to the 27 inch iMac that I wish I could have (hint! hint! #2). 

Around 5:00 PM, a lady voice echoed and announced the start of the program. She introduced the speaker who is the Apple Training Manager for Southeast Asia, EC Tan. He was welcomed with an applause from the audience and immediately he goes down to business. He started by telling everyone the growth of Mac of 28%. He also informed everyone that Lion was the 8th major release of the OS X and boasts to be "the world's most advanced desktop operating system". I raised an eyebrow...


Mr. Tan also informed the crowd that Lion has 250 new features that are sure to be loved by Mac enthusiasts but he only discussed and drilled down on a few but most significant features. Here they are: 


1. Multi-Touch Gestures - New gestures such as "pinch out", "pinch in", "swipe", etc. 

2. Full Screen Apps - go full screen and back to desktop with out minimizing windows


3. Mission Control - a feature that somewhat gives you multiple desktops


4. App Store - an iPhone feature now available on Mac OS X Lion based computers

5. LaunchPad - provides options to categorize your apps for easier and more productive access


6. Resume - a feature resumes any application being read by the computer if in case your computers unscheduled shut down.

7. Auto-Save - feature that saves your documents without any pop ups.


8. Versions - this is one of the highlights of the presentation as it makes sure that you retrieve your previously saved documents (even from months or years back) without affecting the latest file. I asked the question if Versions is compatible with 3rd party apps such as Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro but Mr. Tan told everyone that all third party apps are in the works of getting compatible with Versions.

9. Airdrop - the main target of the Airdrop is to create a firewalled connection between 2 computers without connecting to LAN or WIFI. But for some reason it took 5 minutes for a 7.2 MB file to be transferred from one Mac to another during the presentation. I may need to review that again once I get hold of my Mac (hint! hint! #3)

10. Mail - This is my most favorite part of the presentation because part of my everyday job is to configure mail for our customers that leases our servers. I call it "Outlook in Steroids". No need to put incoming and outgoing servers for Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Aol and also has MS Exchange compatibility. Not to mention options to setup emails of your own domain.

It also has a good email search engine that lets you search within your search results and capabilities of your emails to be synced with iCal. 


Other features that are mentioned but not discussed were Safari enhancements, FileVault 2 and Windows Migration Tool.


Upgrade cost from Snow Leopard is only $29.00 via the App Store. 


System requirements are:


Core2Duo, i3, i5, i7 and Xeon Processors
2GB RAM
Snow Leopard 
7GB Hard Disk Drive space


To sum it up, Lion is very promising and more Windows users may think twice about this new release of the OS X. If not for the Airdrop that I had issues with transferring files this review is a 10 out of 10 stars (if Mac gives me the chance to test it on my end!) but nevertheless, I am giving this product a 9.5 stars.