Mac OSX 10.7 lion - first thoughts

Even though I promise, pretty much every post that i'm going to post more on this blog, it just never seams to happen. However, here I am again... with another (hopefully) interesting post.

In apple's "back to the mac" event, they gave us a sneak preview of the upcoming features in the 8th major release of mac OSX, Mac OSX 10.7. As many people had prodicted, apple named this version lion, and many of the features found in this new version are enspired by their iOS platform for iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Earlier this week, I had the chance to download and install the developer preview of mac OSX 10.7 lion. Without knowing quite what to expect, I wasted no time in upgrading my mac. Before I get started, the mac specs:
Early 2009 mac mini; 1.83 ghz intel core2 duo; 2 GB ddr2 667 MHZ ram; 80 GB external harddrive (2 partitions of 40 GB); and the built-in intel video adapter with 64 mb or vram.

I used my portable external harddrive so as to avoid replacing my current install of snow leopard. The system runs surprisingly well on a usb harddrive. To begin, I partitioned the drive into 2 partitions, installed lion from 1 partition onto the other, and in about 25 mins I was presented with the lion desktop.

So...?

From what i've seen of lion so far, I love it. It's fast, stable (for a developer preview) and packs tons of new features everybody will love. THe most notable of these features being the new full screen apps, which adds a button to supported apps to full screen them. This is one of the features apple took from the iPad, and makes creating tutorial videos a snap. Mission control is a new way to see everything on your mac, even windows hidden in the background. The macintosh text-to-speech system has been updated to include hundreds more voices (the majority of which must be downloaded and are unavailable at this time). The new launchpad, enspired by iOS, is a new way to organise and sort your apps. It presents you with a screen just like the iOS homescreen, and allows you to sort apps into folders, and launch your apps with a single click.

I could go on for ages about the new features in lion, but I think i'll wait until the final release.

Here is a video of steve jobs introducing lion in the 'back to the mac' event: