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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

#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 followed by weeks of people complaining about anything that's changed, whether it's changed for better or worse. From my perspective at least, the Lion-likers appear to outnumber the Lion-dislikers by a wide spread.

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

#3
I'm not sure how he came to the conclusion that Lion isn't beginner-friendly anymore. The only reason it took him 20 minutes to get acclimated is because he's most likely been using advanced features of OS X (that were slightly changed in Lion) for years and it took him a little while to rewrite his muscle memory.

I installed Lion on both of my parent's computers a few weeks ago. The only things they noticed that was changed was the vastly improved Mail UI, which they both picked up almost instantly, and the scrolling.

I simply warned them that scrolling had been reversed, they noted that "it finally makes sense because the stuff that's moving goes in the right direction now," and they continued using the computer normally.

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

#4
I couldn't disagree more. I just gave my father (who has an iPhone) his first Mac and he had no idea where to find applications until I showed him the Launchpad. It's a feature I would never use, but it's accessible with a single button press or click and looks and feels just like the familiar iOS interface.

Apple is doing something smart here. My guess is that more people have iPhones than Macs and they're betting that switchers will understand these new features and turn into across-the-board Apple fans.

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

#8
post #7

I've tried, but I just can't get used to Lion's "natural" scrolling. I think a better transition would be to leave mouse scrolling alone, but reverse the scrolling direction for MacBook trackpads and the "Magic Trackpad" device.

I'm just curious, are you using Apple's Magic Mouse, or a mouse with a traditional scroll wheel?

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

#9

It's obvious that writing another good review about Lion wouldn't have generated enough page views.

Yeah really, I stopped reading "adapting to “natural scrolling” is difficult due to years of muscle memory." I'm sorry but I've had no problems using 'natural scrolling', doesn't it take a few days to get use to yes, but it's possible to get use to it. If for whatever reason you cannot get use to it, you can always change your settings to the 'old' scrolling style.

If anything, I'm disappointed that Lion wasn't even more of a change, but I guess for me it would have been change for the sake of change, as Lion, just like Snow Leopard works great for me.

Additionally, others I personal know that have switched to Lion, no one has any problems with it and everyone likes it. Granted we're all a bunch of geeks working Tech Support and use Windows as well.

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

#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, of all the time his parents wasted trying to understand this quitting apps thing.

My girlfriend was using my iPhone and kept asking me "how do I quit the browser now." She was used to a PocketPC/WM phone, where if you don't manage your open apps, your phone crawls. I had to keep saying: "don't worry about it, just lock the phone. There is no closing."

10 years from now we will look back on quitting apps and saving files as relics of the ancient times, like floppy disks and parallel ports.

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