*OS X Lion 10.7* has now been superseded by OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Lion,
coming just 18 months after the release of Snow Leopard OS X 10.6, was the
first OS X to bring the Mac closer to the iPhone's and iPad's iOS operating
system, making full use of Trackpads and gestures to use your Mac. If you're
still using OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard don't forget to check out our advice and
words of caution beforehand - some older applications simply won't work on OS
X Lion due to Apple's decision to drop Rosetta support. This means you will
have problems running applications like Quicken 2007, Microsoft Office 2008
and other apps which supported Power PC Macs - PPC support is gone forever in
OS X Lion. According to Apple, OS X Lion comes with more than 250
improvements and new features although many of these are minor tweaks. The
biggest change however is far closer integration with iOS, the operating
system of the iPhone and iPad. To take advantage of the many new finger
gestures to navigate OS X however, ideally you'll need either a MacBook Pro
with Magic Trackpad or an external Trackpad (around $69) although a Magic
Mouse will also suffice. For those used to using an iPad and iPhone, the OS X
Lion gestures will come more naturally but for others, there will be some
learning to do, although there are some excellent video tutorials included in
the new Trackpad preferences pane. While some will no doubt love the new way
of navigating OS X, others may not want their Mac turned into one big phone
or iPad - in which case you can always still use the mouse as normal. The
other major change in OS X Lion is that you can only upgrade via the Mac App
Store. There's no installation DVD as with previous versions of OS X. This
obviously means that you won't have a recovery disk if something goes wrong
with OS X Lion, but OS X Lion creates its own "Recovery HD" partition which,
while taking up valuable disk space, means that reinstalling should be easy
enough. The most important new features in OS X Lion can be summarized as:
*Multi-Touch Gestures:* Thanks to the MacBook Pro Touchpad, the Magic
Trackpad and the Magic Mouse, you can perform actions using various finger
movements in OS X Lion. *Launchpad and Mission Control:* Get a convenient
overview of your open windows and applications in OS X Lion's Mission Control
and access/organize applications much quicker with Launchpad. This provides a
more iPhone like way of accessing apps as an alternative to using the Dock
but unfortunately, unlike the Dock there's no way of seeing which apps are
open and which aren't. *Full Screen Apps* All of your applications can now
take advantage of full screen mode in Mac OS X Lion. This is something that
Windows users have enjoyed for years and means that users can finally use
their apps without any background distractions from OS X. *Automatic Save and
Resume:* When you resume or restart your Mac, OS X Lion will resume or
recover all of your documents and windows open from the last version. In
addition, your work will be saved automatically and you can go back and
re-visit old saves and backups. However, OS X Lion relies on the application
being "Auto-Save Aware" for this function to work. There are many other
enhancements to OS X Lion too such as the ability to backup to local drives
with Time Machine and there's a new handy migration tool for those switching
from Windows to Mac. You can also now simply drag and drop files to other
Macs in your vicinity or network via your Mac's AirPort wireless connection -
a nice little feature that makes working with other Mac users easier then
ever. *OS X Lion is an impressive operating system that brings the Mac closer
to the iOS experience than ever before. If you're an iPhone or iPad user that
loves iOS, OS X Lion can't fail to impress. If you're not, then the appeal
may not be so great but there are plenty of other features and enhancements
in OS X Lion worth checking out.*Download *OS X Lion 10.7.5* in Softonic
