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Now that Lion has been out for a while, many of us have downloaded it on our primary computers and are now using the operating system full-time. As far as stability goes, the reports that we’re receiving are a bit scattered.
For my part, Lion roars along nicely. I upgraded the day it launched and apart from an initial slowdown while Spotlight finished indexing, I can’t say that I’ve run into a single major issue that couldn’t be addressed in a few minutes or less (even on my ancient 2007 MacBook).
However, I’ve heard several people, including some of our own writers, describe OS X Lion as an “extremely buggy” and all around unstable release. Given the variety of different Mac setups that exist, there are bound to be some pretty disparate experiences from users. Today we want to know what you think. Is Lion solid as a rock or one big, buggy mess?
Cast your vote in the poll and then leave a comment below telling us about some of the persistent problems you’ve run into and what machine you’re running.
Along with a ton of great new features, OS X Lion brings about at least one fairly controversial change: the default behavior for scrolling has been reversed. It used to the case that if you wanted to scroll down the page, you made a downward swiping gesture, and of course the reverse of that for going back up.
However, the iPhone changed things up a bit. With the direct interaction model, it felt more natural to move the page instead of the scroll position, so to scroll down on an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, you swipe up.
When you’re directly interacting with a touchscreen, this scrolling model is incredibly intuitive. You reach out and touch the page and move it freely in any direction that you please. Your brain immediately understands what’s happening and there is zero adjustment period.
With Lion, OS X has picked up this system. Now the scroll gesture acts as if you’re reaching out and touching the screen: swipe up to scroll down. Now instead of moving the scroll bars, you must imagine that you’re tossing the page.
For some, the new system immediately made sense and required very little adjustment time. However, many users are complaining that the indirect nature of a mouse or trackpad is in conflict with the direct model of scrolling. Our brains are already so set on the way things have been for years that it’s difficult to reprogram them, especially since there doesn’t seem to be a pressing need to do so.
Today we want to know what you think. Do you like natural scrolling in Lion? Or do you wish Apple would subscribe to the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” theory? Have you decided whether or not to adjust to the new system or revert back to the old way? Vote in the poll above and leave your thoughts in the comments below.
Choosing between a default Mac utility and a more powerful third party client is always difficult. Tighter system integration and the “free” aspect are on your side with the built-in tool, but there’s often a shortage of the kind of powerful features that a freestanding application offers.
Font management is a perfect example of this. Font Book is a decent way to manage your fonts, but creative professionals and anyone else who deals with fonts daily might find it fairly lacking.
Today we want to know how you manage your font library. Do you use third party software or have you stuck with the tools that Apple has provided? Cast your vote above, then leave a comment letting us know which font management apps you’ve tried and which you like the best.
