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OS X Lion: Macs' beginner-friendly days are over

extremetech.com

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Re: OS X Lion: Macs' beginner-friendly days are over

#21

Post by wynand »

New Mac user here (I've had mine for less than 12 hours now). Caveats upfront: I'm a long-time Ubuntu user and I'm a programmer, so I'm not exactly a parental-class user.

The most confusing thing for me was to get my Mac onto our university WPA2 enterprise network. It is actually impossible to configure Mac OS 10.7 for this (at least via a GUI). After an hour, I realized I could use the .mobileconfig file for the iPad/iPhone (on our network) to set up a profile for my Mac and then things went smoothly. This was annoying to be sure and I'm not sure what benefit derives from this removed functionality (since 10.6 can do this).

But other than that, I've had a blast of a day. Everything else has been fairly discoverable and I figured out the gestures very quickly. In contrast to some of the complaints, I like the reversed scrolling and I like the way that Mission Control works.

I'm certain that if I were to give this machine to my parents, they would be fine. Perhaps I would disable Mission Control but otherwise I cannot foresee stumbling blocks.

Re: OS X Lion: Macs' beginner-friendly days are over

#23

Post by astral303 »

bjtitus wrote: post #18
astral303 wrote: post #10

They switched from Windows XP earlier this year, and it’s taken them this long to learn how to _quit_ an app, as opposed to simply closing its windows. That's exactly why Lion is more beginner friendly. They don't need to know how to quit an app anymore. Why would you ever care to quit an app? That's a legacy concept that's so ingrained in the author's memory that he can't comprehend not knowing it. Think, instead, o…

Why are you talking about not having to quit apps? Lion still has the concept of quitting apps versus closing windows. Are you just talking about iOS or am I missing something? I actually think the handling of background apps running state handling would be one of the best things to port from iOS to Mac. There are obvious large hurdles, though. --EDIT-- I guess you're talking about resume but the issue is having apps…

Lion still has the concept (as does iOS), except it's rendered effectively useless by the new Automatic Termination feature and the correspoding quick state restore, which is very close to what iOS does. Also, Lion hides the 'open app' indicator by default for new installs, so beginner users have even fewer hints at the concept of quitting an app.

Re: OS X Lion: Macs' beginner-friendly days are over

#24

Post by kyleslattery »

bjtitus wrote: post #18
astral303 wrote: post #10

They switched from Windows XP earlier this year, and it’s taken them this long to learn how to _quit_ an app, as opposed to simply closing its windows. That's exactly why Lion is more beginner friendly. They don't need to know how to quit an app anymore. Why would you ever care to quit an app? That's a legacy concept that's so ingrained in the author's memory that he can't comprehend not knowing it. Think, instead, o…

Why are you talking about not having to quit apps? Lion still has the concept of quitting apps versus closing windows. Are you just talking about iOS or am I missing something? I actually think the handling of background apps running state handling would be one of the best things to port from iOS to Mac. There are obvious large hurdles, though. --EDIT-- I guess you're talking about resume but the issue is having apps…

Lion actually adds some APIs so developers can make their apps work like iOS apps. If the developer allows, the OS can kill their app at any time when it's in the background. More info here: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.a...

Re: OS X Lion: Macs' beginner-friendly days are over

#25

Post by schrototo »

bjtitus wrote: post #18
astral303 wrote: post #10

They switched from Windows XP earlier this year, and it’s taken them this long to learn how to _quit_ an app, as opposed to simply closing its windows. That's exactly why Lion is more beginner friendly. They don't need to know how to quit an app anymore. Why would you ever care to quit an app? That's a legacy concept that's so ingrained in the author's memory that he can't comprehend not knowing it. Think, instead, o…

Why are you talking about not having to quit apps? Lion still has the concept of quitting apps versus closing windows. Are you just talking about iOS or am I missing something? I actually think the handling of background apps running state handling would be one of the best things to port from iOS to Mac. There are obvious large hurdles, though. --EDIT-- I guess you're talking about resume but the issue is having apps…

There are new APIs in Lion that enable the system to automatically quit applications if they're not needed at the moment. Pretty much like iOS.

Re: OS X Lion: Macs' beginner-friendly days are over

#26

Post by kenjackson »

astral303 wrote: post #19
kenjackson wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I haven't used Lion yet. But from listening to Engadget it sounds as if they have made some rather confusing changes. For example, they point out that application-wide gestures are two finger and system-wide gestures are three finger. This strongly assumes that people know the difference. Based on convos I've had people don't. "Which version of Office are you using?" "XP". "Office XP?" "Umm, Windows XP?". "OK,…

However, that's a difference that can be picked up experimentally and can start making sense: "two fingers keep me in the browser, three fingers throw me out of the browser and go somewhere else." You don't get punished by using the wrong gesture (unless it's a web page in Safari that doesn't support back and forward movement): if you use three fingers in one direction, three fingers in the other direction will get y…

How can you say there's no reason to discover to discover the difference between apps/system yet argue that they'll notice they jumped from one app to another? And as web apps approach the look and feel of native apps this will become harder to understand.

As you point out, the distinction isn't necessary for many novices. Yet Apple is making the distinction a fundamental aspect of their gesture model.

Re: OS X Lion: Macs' beginner-friendly days are over

#28

Post by DrJokepu »

Caballera wrote: post #15
glhaynes wrote: post #2

New users and non-techies aren’t the only groups negatively affected by Lion’s changes, either. Seasoned Apple users have spent the last two days filling the internet with blog posts and Twitter updates noting their frustrations. Whether it’s the gestures, scrolling, full-screen apps, Mission Control, Versions, or Resume — people are having more than their fair share of trouble adjusting. Every release of anything is…

I agree, it was the same after Snow Leopard. It was the same with Windows 7, although maybe less so since Vista was sooo horrible and a lot of people were happy for the change.

Ironically, most complaints about Vista also fell in the "people complaining about change" category. There were a few annoying things about Vista (UAC was a bit more annoying than it should've been) but it wasn't that bad.

Re: OS X Lion: Macs' beginner-friendly days are over

#29

Post by flamingbuffalo »

bjtitus wrote: post #18
astral303 wrote: post #10

They switched from Windows XP earlier this year, and it’s taken them this long to learn how to _quit_ an app, as opposed to simply closing its windows. That's exactly why Lion is more beginner friendly. They don't need to know how to quit an app anymore. Why would you ever care to quit an app? That's a legacy concept that's so ingrained in the author's memory that he can't comprehend not knowing it. Think, instead, o…

Why are you talking about not having to quit apps? Lion still has the concept of quitting apps versus closing windows. Are you just talking about iOS or am I missing something? I actually think the handling of background apps running state handling would be one of the best things to port from iOS to Mac. There are obvious large hurdles, though. --EDIT-- I guess you're talking about resume but the issue is having apps…

according to the siracusa review, lion works more like iOS, in that the OS can reclaim resources from 'open' apps, and sometimes leaves processes open for a short time after they are closed. I think this is what was meant about not quitting apps, the concept is still there, but not really needed like it was previously.

Re: OS X Lion: Macs' beginner-friendly days are over

#30

Post by bonch »

bjtitus wrote: post #18
astral303 wrote: post #10

They switched from Windows XP earlier this year, and it’s taken them this long to learn how to _quit_ an app, as opposed to simply closing its windows. That's exactly why Lion is more beginner friendly. They don't need to know how to quit an app anymore. Why would you ever care to quit an app? That's a legacy concept that's so ingrained in the author's memory that he can't comprehend not knowing it. Think, instead, o…

Why are you talking about not having to quit apps? Lion still has the concept of quitting apps versus closing windows. Are you just talking about iOS or am I missing something? I actually think the handling of background apps running state handling would be one of the best things to port from iOS to Mac. There are obvious large hurdles, though. --EDIT-- I guess you're talking about resume but the issue is having apps…

Why are you talking about not having to quit apps? Lion still has the concept of quitting apps versus closing windows. Are you just talking about iOS or am I missing something?

Lion supports a feature called Automatic Termination that allows the system to automatically quit applications in the background, similar to the behavior of iOS. Start TextEdit, close the document window, and switch to another application. You'll notice the app disappear from the dock because it has been quit by the system.

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