The Leap is a small iPod sized USB peripheral that creates a 3D interaction space of 8 cubic feet to precisely interact with and control software on your laptop or desktop computer. It’s like being able to reach into the computer and pull out information as easily as reaching into a cookie jar.
The Leap senses your individual hand and finger movements independently, as well as items like a pen. In fact, it’s 200x more sensitive than existing touch-free products and technologies. It’s the difference between sensing an arm swiping through the air and being able to create a precise digital signature with a fingertip or pen.
I’m highly skeptical of this thing, but it will be earth-shattering if it actually works. Pre-orders have started. It’s only $70.
The Mountain Lion is Here
Apple stealthily announced OS X Mountain Lion to the world this morning. I’ve been reading reactions and reviews all day, and the best post is definitely by John Gruber:
There many new features, I’m told, but today they’re going to focus on telling me about ten of them. This is just like an Apple event, I keep thinking. Just like with Lion, Mountain Lion is evolving in the direction of the iPad. But, just as with Lion last year, it’s about sharing ideas and concepts with iOS, not sharing the exact same interaction design or code. The words “Windows” and “Microsoft” are never mentioned, but the insinuation is clear: Apple sees a fundamental difference between software for the keyboard-and-mouse-pointer Mac and that for the touchscreen iPad. Mountain Lion is not a step towards a single OS that powers both the Mac and iPad, but rather another in a series of steps toward defining a set of shared concepts, styles, and principles between two fundamentally distinct OSes.
MG Siegler, Jason Snell, and The Verge also provided great coverage. We’ve been cranking out posts like crazy at Cult of Mac all day, and I wrote a little piece about Apple’s approach to iOS and OS X moving forward. My coworker Buster wrote a great review of the new Messages for Mac as well.
It’s been an interesting day.
You should sign up to get in on the beta for Wunderkit. It looks like the next big thing for productivity apps. Read more about it!
No comment.
OS X Lion Reviews
John Siracusa for Ars Technica,
“Apple pegs Lion at 250+ new features, which doesn’t quite match the 300 touted for Leopard, but I guess it all depends on what you consider a “feature” (and what that “+” is supposed to mean). Still, this is the most significant release of Mac OS X in many years—perhaps the most significant release ever. Though the number of new APIs introduced in Lion may fall short of the landmark Tiger and Leopard releases, the most important changes in Lion are radical accelerations of past trends. Apple appears tired of dragging people kicking and screaming into the future; with Lion, it has simply decided to leave without us.”
(John’s review is also available in e-book format on Amazon for $5.)
Paul Miller for This is my next,
“There are going to be two major takeaways, depending on what type of user you are. Lion really requires a leap of faith, and its major features (scrolling, swiping, Mission Control, Launchpad) all took me a day or two to get used to. Now that I’m fully immersed and my brain has been rewired, I’m pretty happy with my experience. I feel more productive, and I feel like everything has a place (except for that terrible “All My Files” mess Apple is trying to force on me).”
David Pogue for The New York Times,
“Does the iPadization of the Mac succeed? There’s good news, bad news and then good news.
The good news is that once you learn all of this stuff, it does work. Swiping sideways with three fingers takes you from one full-screen app to the next, animated as though someone’s dealing full-screen cards. Launchpad would be a better fit for technophobes if it were always there waiting, and not a program you have to open manually every time; but otherwise, the Lion makeover is fluid and satisfying.”
Walt Mossberg for The Wall Street Journal,
“The past two major computer operating system releases, Windows 7 and Snow Leopard, were incremental. Lion is very different. It’s a big leap, and gives the Mac a much more modern look and feel for a world of tablets and smartphones. If you are willing to adjust, it’s the best computer operating system out there.”
Harry McCracken for TIME,
“Apple says that the upgrade sports more than 250 new features — everything from refinements to the Mail app to better security in the Safari browser to tools designed to make the software more accessible to disabled users. But most of the highest-profile changes share a unifying principle: They make a Mac feel a little less like a cranky, complicated personal computer, and a little more like a 21st-century appliance. The upgrade gets there by borrowing both specific capabilities and general themes from iOS, the software on the iPad and iPhone.”
Andy Ihnatko for The Chicago Sun-Times,
“With 10.7, Apple is once again creating an OS that looks to the future. There’s a host of terrific, tangible, practical features, sure. But on the whole, you come away from the Lion experience thinking that you’re looking at Apple’s plan for the next five years. There’s little that’s truly revolutionary about Lion, but I can’t help but lick my chops and wonder what the next few years hold in store for Mac users.”
Jesus Diaz for Gizmodo,
“It breaks my heart to say this, but Mac OSX Lion’s interface feels like a failure. Its stated mission was to simplify the operating system, to unify it with the clean experience of iOS. That didn’t happen.
If it weren’t for the fast, rock-solid Unix, graphics and networking cores, Lion would be Apple’s very own Vista.”
Jason Snell for Macworld,
“After a long period of relative stability on the Mac, Lion is a shock to the system. It’s a radical revision, motivated in part by the vast influx of new Mac users coming to the platform from iOS, that makes the Mac a friendlier computer. Veteran Mac users who don’t like those changes can turn many of them off, or just opt not to use them.”
MG Siegler for TechCrunch,
“With all the changes based around touch, one can’t help but feel that OS X Lion could be the last of its breed in the OS X family. OS X Lion still feels like OS X, but I’m not sure the Mac OS that comes next will. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just inevitable as mobile, touch-based computing increases in popularity.”
Matthew Panzarino for The Next Web,
“There are a host of things that are immediately and dramatically different about the way that OS X Lion looks and feels, as well as the way that it operates. If you’re a student of OS X history then you may find it helpful for me to tell you that OS X Lion falls somewhere in between the deep, hardly visible, undercurrents of code that rippled throughout Snow Leopard and the very visible addition of persistent features like Time Machine and Quicklook that were introduced in Leopard.
There are some 250 documented features of OS X Lion that are deemed new and interesting by Apple and many of those are visual or interaction changes that will jump right out at you at first launch. Most of them will not affect your basic day-to-day operation, but some will, and they’ll do it immediately. Not the least of which is the way that it wants to you to scroll, which is to say, backwards.”
Leander Kahney and John Brownlee for Cult of Mac,
“It’s a big accomplishment overall. Lion not only looks cleaner and nicer, it fixes a surprising number of long-time niggles. But it also adds some nice new features, and while there are some changes that will cause consternation, like reverse scrolling, almost everything added is for the better.
The question isn’t whether you should spend $29 on Lion, because that’s just a no-brainer. No, the real question is: now that we’re in the post-PC age, how will Lion change the way you use your Mac, and how does it set the stage for the Mac of the future?”
Stephen Hackett for Macgasm,
“All said, Lion is a solid update that brings a lot of new ideas to the desktop from the mobile space. Clearly, Apple is trying to make the Mac more attractive to its legions of iOS customers. Gestures, Launchpad and the App Store are all familiar concepts to iPhone and iPad owners. This is Apple forcing the Halo Effect.”
Cody Fink for Macstories,
“Lion is exceptionally well done. Consistency, the user experience, and improvements to the user interface aren’t a nod towards iOS, but rather a nod towards Apple’s future. Much attention was paid to making the Finder easier to navigate, the interface more fluid, and the desktop more accessible than ever before. Lion fixes and improves upon the previous version of OS X just like every other version did. The fundamentals never change. Instead, concepts are expanded upon and built out in new, delightful ways. With Apple’s recent innovations and discoveries being made on iOS, it only makes sense that they’d implement much of what they’ve learned into their desktop OS.”
Darrell Etherington for GigaOM,
“Lion isn’t without its faults. I’m still not crazy about the Finder redesign for example, and I think Apple missed the opportunity to make some changes to that component of OS X that would’ve really resonated with longtime users. Some also seem to think that the some of the redesigned core apps are actually steps backward. But those apps actually aren’t all that important to the core experience, and overall, there’s no question in my mind that Lion represents a significant improvement to the Mac platform.”
Brian Chen for WIRED,
“For the most part, Mac OS X is the same, solid operating system Apple customers have grown familiar with for the past 10 years. Some of the key iPad-like interface tweaks are ugly or nearly useless, but if you just disable and ignore them like I did, full-screen mode, AirDrop, Resume and AutoSave make this very affordable $30 upgrade worth your purchase.”
Sarah Perez for ReadWriteWeb,
“But with all these innovations, the question technologists and pundits alike are asking is: when will desktop and mobile merge, once and for all? Will a “Windows 9” run on phones, tablets, laptops and towers? Will Mac’s OS X ever become iOS X? Will webOS turn into some weird Windows/Web hybrid? Will Android absorb Chrome OS?”
“With Lion we begin to see a subtle obfuscation of the file system and a move toward skeuomorphic design for certain apps — yuck. This represents exactly what Lion is: a nudge forward that pushes what seem to be subtle changes, which are in fact a rethinking how computers should be used.
Not a nudge in the sense that this is an entirely new OS, but a nudge in the sense that this is an OS built for today’s computer users. In stark contrast to what we are used to: systems built for people that want, or know, how to use the system.”
“Lion is what OS X was meant to be: refined, attractive, and user-friendly.
As we’ve heard so many times from Apple, this is a “Back to the Mac” operating system. But Lion is more than just elements that pull from what we see and know on iOS. It is also full of hints that point to the future of Apple hardware and the amalgamation of iOS and OS X. It is exciting to see this big picture slowly coming into focus.”
Jim Dairymple for The Loop,
“Get it, Lion rules!”
Apple’s most revolutionary operating system to date.
An Awesome Collection of Tips for Alfred
A roundup of some fantastically geeky tips for my favorite productivity app on the Mac. Who could ask for more.
Inception’s Plot Explained With the OS X Finder
I FINALLY get it now.
How far we’ve come.
Apple BURNS Windows!
This never gets old.
5 Custom Themes for Alfred.
If you’ve bought the Alfred PowerPack, these themes are now installable through the app’s latest update.
Desktop - 2/13/11
