Apple Announcement Roundup Part 2/3

OS X Lion


Nothing particularly new has been announced since last summer. Lion is still coming with multi touch gestures, mission control, launch pad, versions etc. It was however priced at $30 and will be released this summer for download only through the App Store.

Let's talk about some big features though. Mission Control will be coming out with Lion, allowing you to be more organized with your applications. It is essentially a much more glorified version of spaces. It can be activated with multi touch gestures, unless you have a computer which doesn't support that in which case you just have to map a hot key to it or something. Mission Control is sort of like a "central hub" so to speak.

Then of course there is Launch Pad, a simpler way to open applications. Launch Pad looks and acts like an iPad, your apps are shown and you click on them to launch. In addition, when you download an app from the App Store, it goes straight to Launch Pad. Uninstalling also occurs from Launch Pad, just click and hold until the icons wiggle. Click on the "x" to uninstall.

Next, and one of my favorites, is called Resume. Resume allows you to shut off your computer and turn it back on with all your applications where you left them. It allows you to "resume" work with out having to re-open everything.

Also very neat is the addition of Versions. Versions is like a more exact Time Machine. It allows you to select and restore a certain version (older save) of a file which you have been working on. For example, say you are working on a presentation, but you have made a couple mistakes a long the way, and you have saved those mistakes. To undo all them would take too much time, but with versions you can travel back to an older save file and restore that, overriding the one with all the mistakes.

These are just some of the big features being added to Lion, for a full list of features and what they do you can visit apple.com

~Dave