That’s a preference you can turn off in System Prefs (under Mission Control, natch.) When you have time, google around for Lion tips & tricks–you’ll find a lot of the things that annoy are adjustable.
I just got around to installing Lion last night. I have older computers so I’m missing the full zing of being able to swipe my way through things. My Macbook will do a little bit of it, but not much. My Mac Pro doesn’t have bluetooth and I’m not excited enough by Lion to change that.
I am underwhelmed by this os. The best “feature” I’ve found is that both machines run faster and use less system resources than with SL. I like that a lot, especially on the Macbook which had begun to huff and puff its way through larger files when running on Snow Leopard. But my reaction to the rest of the new features is pretty much meh. There’s nothing in this (other than the speed, which is great) that makes my life easier. I think it actually makes some things harder. Address Book is an ugly looking mess, Launchpad is cumbersome, and I want a hard copy of the OS.
I don’t hate it or anything. I like the new pep in my wheezy old Macbook. Thirty dollars is a fantastic price for that benefit. I guess I’ll just ignore the rest of it and go on.
I’m the other way … I’m running it on a late 2010 13" MBA and I love it. My 17" MBP … over three years old now, hardly ever gets used in spite of the extra screen real-estate which I miss. But Lion comes to life on these newer machines with the great track-pad. My bluetooth mouse sits there unused now, unless I have to do some graphics — I’m not good enough with a trackpad, especially given my tremor and hands that tend to have a life of their own. I never used Spaces in SL or earlier … didn’t seem to be any use, but Mission Control is really great and I’m using it all the time. But I agree Launchpad plays no role in my life.
Since I use Nisus Writer Pro and Scrivener mostly, the only app I use all the time that uses Versions is Keynote, and I’m getting used to that. I’ve moved from GyazMail to Mail.app … I find I do sometimes think “I’m going to go back to GyazMail”, but I’m soldiering on with Mail and I don’t suppose I will go back.
Altogether positive for me …
Mark
At the risk of veering slightly off-topic:
Mark, can you tell me why you’ve moved from GyazMail to Mail.app?
I’m a GyazMail fan thinking of moving to Lion and am wondering whether I’d have to / want to follow your path…
My primary ‘complaint’ about GyazMail is that it doesn’t integrate with Spotlight. Any other reasons to switch (on Lion)?
Thanks
I guess this is First Impressions, Redux.
I sat up last night after I posted here and organized Launchpad. It took hours, but it’s now a fitting replacement for Overflow on both computers. I also sort of rearranged the furniture and dusted off the knicks knacks in Lion so that it now feels more like a cozy workspace. Even though I don’t swipe on my Mac Pro, I use one of those Kensington Expert Mouse rollerball things. I’ve found it can be used to do quite a bit of swiping just by moving my finger tip a tiny bit. That’s plenty for me.
Mark I can guess that Lion would be great on your mba. I think it was designed for such. It’s not bad on my older machines, but except for the speed, it doesn’t feel so much like an upgrade as a change, and some of the changes are not all that welcome. The two things I detest the most are Address Book and iCal. What were they smoking when they came up with that gaggy-looking iCal design? Address Book is way too heavy on the metaphor and way too light on the functionality. I’m not going to use iCloud until next year when my MobileMe deal expires. So I have lots of time for them to fix whatever’s broken with that.
As I said earlier, the improved performance on my Macbook more than makes up for these things.
The Dudette abides.
Not really. I found GyazMail about a month after 10.0.0 came out and I installed it. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the earliest version of Mail.app, but there was no way of changing the coding on mails to be sent, and as Apple was using EUC for Chinese, and all my correspondents used Windows boxes, which needed GB18030 or whatever version it was at the time, they couldn’t read my mails. And having spent my $18 on GyazMail, and $25 on SpamSieve, I just stuck with them, even though Mail.app in 10.1 introduced the change I needed.
I got on well with GyazMail and it had many features I liked, particularly the powerful filters and rules systems, and also the ability to look at what was in the mailbox on the server and delete mails that were failing to download and blocking others. My only ‘complaint’ with GyazMail, if it can be called that, was that when I clicked on a mailto:: link on a web-page, Mail.app would open, not GyazMail.
So on upgrading to Lion, I thought I’d give the vaunted new version of Mail a go … I’m sticking with it for the foreseeable future, though I still miss GyazMail, most particularly the filters, as the amount of objectionable spam I get has gone up enormously since I’ve been using Mail.
Mark
P.S. I’ll leave Vic-K or one of his avatars to comment on off-topicking.
I’ve found that Mail.app’s built-in spam filters are not terribly good. My IMAP mail provider does a pretty good job of spam filtering on it’s own, and I’m trying out SpamSieve to deal with what else gets through. Did you continue using SS with GyazMail until your current switch? Might as well re-install SpamSieve and compare oranges to oranges if you truly want to give mail.app a chance.
Yes, Lion was designed to run best on current hardware, I have no doubt. As to Address Book and iCal, I would agree that the “eye-candy” introduced is not so much “candy” as … choose your own metaphor 
. But I don’t make much use of Address Book, except as a means of keeping my lists of addresses in sync on my two macs and my mobile phone. iCal, I never used until I upgraded to Lion and am now finding it useful. Until yesterday, though, having got it syncing with iCal on my Mobile Me account — I had the latter always
accessible in my default OmniWeb workspace, so the desktop version’s appearance was neither here nor there to me — since upgrading yesterday to iCloud, I am giving the desktop version a go, but don’t have it open all the time … my life doesn’t require that, and having it on the iPhone is more important, so again, I just put up with the unnecessary ugly metaphor.
In general, as long as the graphical appearances don’t get in the way of working, I can turn a blind eye to them. In general, as a good Virgo, it is mental orderliness and tidiness that really matters for me, not external aesthetics or physical orderliness and tidiness.
My biggest worry about having moved “up”? to iCloud yesterday, is wondering if I had any file stored on iDisk that is not also on one of my other disks … I used iDisk as an archive as it was so slow. But if I lost anything, I’ve lost it and as it is years since I looked for anything there, I can live with the result I guess. I discovered a year ago how much having masses of possessions saps my energy … I guess the same is true of having an archive of stuff — class lists and the like, or 2004 versions of keynotes for lectures I don’t give any more … — it is equally energy consuming. 
Mark
Mark–
Not necessarily–even though I’ve migrated to iCloud, my MobileMe (including iDisk) stays available until sometime next year (June or so). I believe Apple extended all accounts to that time (though I could be wrong about that).
As for that, if you prefer a “brushed aluminum” look for those apps (and don’t mind tweaking your system a bit), there’s an app for that: macnix.blogspot.com/2011/07/chan … l-and.html
I bought a new computer at the same time I upgraded to Lion, and have left my older laptops running Snow Leopard and Leopard for software testing, so it is hard for me to comment on Lion, as I don’t really know whether it is the new computer or the new OS that makes all the difference…
But:
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I really like the changed direction for scrolling etc. Feels completely natural to me now, using the trackpad.
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I actually use LaunchPad all the time. It was a pain to organise initially, but once I got all the Apps I care about into logical folders on the front page, I find it much easier and more convenient than having to dive through the Finder window.
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I haven’t used Mission Control yet. No good reason why, since I used Spaces a lot. I think I just need to figure out how to setup the specific desktops and allocate applications to those desktops, and then I will use it.
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Full screen mode irritates me. It leaves the second monitor as a complete waste of space. I don’t understand why they didn’t make Full Screen mode take over one screen, and allow other applications to appear on the alternative screen. When I am programming, for instance, it is nice to have Xcode on the big screen, and my to-do list on the other.
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I prefer the new Mail to the old.
All in all, I like most of what they have introduced, without having any part of it particularly blow me away, and I hate it when I have to go back to the other clunky systems. But I don’t know whether that is just the fact that I am going back to a 2006 machine, and before I got the new computer I had adjusted to just how slow that thing was running.
Matt
@Bargonzo
Thanks for the info … I guess I’ll find a drive with enough space on it to take everything that’s currently on iDisk and set it to transfer overnight, using my old system, still running 10.6.8. And for the “Brushed Aluminium” calendar, I’ll take a look at that, though I hope Rebecca will read your post, as it sounds as if she needs an alternative look more than me.
@Matt
I would guess it’s the combination of the two. I imagine Lion on the old hardware would feel less of a useful development. I have thought about putting it on my MBP, but as I plan to replace that shortly, I’m not bothering.
- I agree about the new scrolling direction. Although I still occasionally get it wrong, I have come to prefer it as feeling more natural. I guess that when I’ve replaced the MBP, I’ll have Lion on both and I won’t get confused.
- LaunchPad I don’t use. I have Mail and Omniweb loading automatically, have the few other apps I use regularly — Scrivener, NWP, Keynote, ProfCast, iTunes — on the dock, hidden at the side, and have the application folder also on the dock so I access all the other apps through that.
- Full screen mode is something I try periodically, but I haven’t really got used to the way it interacts with Mission Control — if you go into full-screen it puts it in a new space, go back to normal view and it’s in the space where you originally had it — and hiding the menu bar is not such a big deal for me. I don’t have a second monitor to give me your problem …
Mark
Edit @Bargonzo, I’ll have to wait until I’m back in the UK to look up the alternative iCal thing, as it’s on blogspot and that is blocked by the GFWoC.
Sorry Robert, I missed this one. I use SpamSieve with Mail too … the only disadvantage is the loss of Opt-Cmd-J to empty the Junk mail box. SpamSieve moves the mails into it’s own “Spam” box, that I find I have to go into, Cmd-A all the mails and then use Delete.
In point of fact, I think the built-in Junk filter in Mail was doing pretty well as it trained, but I’ve had to turn it off, so as not to conflict with SpamSieve.
Mark
Back on topic, I have one real grouch with Lion … the re-arrangement of the character viewer. There’s no longer a section for phonetics. Some of the glyphs can be found scattered amongst the “Latin” glyphs, but not all the IPA set are there, not even some of the most common ones. Grrr … If this Lion met me in the amphitheatre, it would turn tail and run just as the lions did when they encountered Obélix in the film of Astérix.
I don’t need them all the time, but I do need them, so if anyone knows how to get at the IPA code points and knows how to build a pane in the Character viewer, I’d love to know.
Mark
bargonzo and mark,
i installed the applet to change iCal back to brushed metal. it works, and i’m MUCH happier now!
thank you.
rebecca
Here’s an alternate method:
Thanks bargonzo, that worked really well … straightforward! I see from the same page that there’s also a theme change for Address Book available, but it’s on blogspot, and for me, it can wait. Rebecca might like to have a look at it, though.
Mark
Feeling embarrassed! After a day of scowling at Clarence and feeling grumpy, I was talking to one of my students who’s moved onto a MacBook Pro, and said I finally had a bone to pick with Apple, and said about the “no phonetics in the Character Viewer”. She said, “What’s the Character Viewer?” so I showed her …
… and I noticed a grey and not very vibrant button with a cogwheel in the top left corner, clicked on that … Customise … and there it is …
Sorry Clarence, really sorry, don’t eat me!
Mark
Yes, I was just about to respond to that about the gear menu thing. 
The thing I don’t like about the new palette is that it no longer shows any info on Unicode number. As a geek, I use that stuff sometimes. You can get it, but it’s strange—you have to right-click on the character (but not in the big preview!) and “Copy Character Info”, then paste it somewhere else just to read
Ɣ
LATIN CAPITAL LETTER GAMMA
Unicode: U+0194, UTF-8: C6 94
Brilliant design.
Erm, Ioa, having found the gear menu, and customise, mine has “Code Tables” down the bottom, including unicode … with that on in the main viewer it has code numbers down the side with the final digit across the top. And, if you select a character is that not what you want?
Mark
And you can start with a different category, click on the character you’re interested in, then select the Unicode category; the display will change to Unicode, with the original character still selected.