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Look forward to many hours of frustration with Lion's Launchpad

Both of the new Macs that Apple shipped today come with the latest version of OS X: 10.7 Lion. The update brings many new features, as you’d expect of a new operating system, but there are some fundamental changes both to the user experience itself, and the way Apple has chosen to deliver the new OS. One — the lack of any physical install media — is both convenient and annoying. The other — adopting UI metaphors from the touch-only iOS — is likely to appeal to new users and upset old ones.

Download Only

The very first thing that is impossible to ignore is that Lion only exists in the ether. There are not, nor will there be, physical media carrying the installer. Instead, you have to either buy a new Mac with Lion pre-installed, or download the 3.5GB installer from the Mac App Store. [UPDATE 2011-07-21 09:49:45. Apple will sell a Lion USB thumb drive for $70, starting in August. It will still be a lot cheaper to make your own]

There are ways to make this file into bootable USB sticks and DVDs, but that’s for the nerds and sysadmins who want to install on multiple machines. For the regular customer, the installer disk is dead.

And what happens if your computer goes belly-up? Is there a recovery disk in the box? Nope. Apple gets around this by partitioning the boot drive and putting a utility called Lion Recovery onto it. When you have trouble, press Command-R when you start up and you’ll be booted into recovery mode. From there you can repair the disk, reinstall Lion or restore from a Time Machine backup.

I know what you’re thinking. What if the drive is completely dead? How do I rescue my Mac then? Well, the news is good and bad. The good is that, even if you slot in a brand-new, bare hard drive, the Mac will boot into “Internet Recovery” mode. This connects to Apple’s servers and grabs a copy of Lion Recovery, and you go from there. This works thanks to firmware installed on Lion-capable Macs bought from now on.

The bad news is that you need an Internet connection to do it, and we all know that hard drives always fail at the most inconvenient moment. The worse news is that, even if you have an Internet connection, it’s going to take a long time to download that 3.5GB installer file.

It Looks Like iOS

The other big change is the look of the OS. Apple titled it’s introduction of Lion “Back to the Mac,” signaling that many new discoveries made in iOS are being folded back into the Mac mix. Thus you’ll find Launchpad, which turns even the giant 27-inch screen of the iMac into an icon-infested home screen. Just like on your iPhone, only way harder to use.

You also get full-screen mode, allowing you to concentrate on one app at a time, again like iOS. Windows users will chuckle at this “new” feature — Microsoft’s OS defaults to full-screen windows, but it is great for certain kinds of app — photo and video editors for example. Our own Brian X Chen praises it in his Lion review, but I’m not sure how useful it will be for a blogger’s simultaneous, multi-window needs.

There are plenty of other tweaks, from Resume (which lets an app pick up where it left off last time you quit it) to Autosave, which does what you’d expect. For more details, check out Brian’s review. And if you’re not sure if your favorite apps will be compatible with Lion, check out this rather handy wiki from Roaring Apps to find out.

Lion is available now in the Mac App store for $30.

Lion Features [Apple]

The MacBook drops from Apple’s Store (update: confirmed) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 09:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s brought both sizes of the MacBook Air line straight up to what you’d expect from a laptop in 2011, adding a Thunderbolt port, but more importantly some sweet Sandy Bridge i5 and i7 chips—and backlit keyboards. More »

They say Apple updates its products like clockwork, releasing something new at the same time in the same place every year. Not so with MacBook Airs anyway. The outfit’s gone and freshened up its 13-inch and 11-inch ultraportables — the second such update in nine months. Although the industrial design hasn’t changed much since the last generation, both models step up to Sandy Bridge Core i5 and i7 processors, Thunderbolt ports, backlit keyboards, and, of course, OS X Lion.

The 11.6-inch flavor starts at $999 with 64GB of solid-state storage, 2GB of memory and a 1.6GHz Core i5 processor. The higher-end of the two configurations costs $1,199, with the extra two hundred dollars doubling your RAM and storage. The 13-inch Air, meanwhile, starts at $1,299, with a 128GB SSD, 4GB of RAM, and a 1.7GHz Core i5 CPU. Step up to the $1,599 model and you’ll get a 256GB SSD instead. Regardless, you’re looking at Intel HD 3000 graphics across the board, along with FaceTime webcams, two USB ports (plus an SD slot on the 13-inch version), 802.11n WiFi, and Bluetooth 4.0. The two differ when it comes to resolution and battery life: the 11-incher has a 1366 x 768 panel and is rated for up to five hours of battery life, whereas the 13-inch model has a 1440 x 900 screen and promises up to seven hours of juice. As for that 1.8GHz Core i7 CPU, it’ll set you back an extra $100 on the 13-inch version, and $150 for the 11-inch version. Whichever size you choose, it’s only an option for the higher-end configuration. Hit the source link to peep the specs and buy one, if you’re so inclined.

Continue reading Apple refreshes MacBook Air with Sandy Bridge, Thunderbolt, and backlit keyboards

Apple refreshes MacBook Air with Sandy Bridge, Thunderbolt, and backlit keyboards originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 08:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Off with his head! Serial blinkers are no longer a problem with Photoshop Elements 9

Grab your coats: Hell has just frozen over. Or rather, Photoshop has come to the Mac App Store. For $80, you can now download Photoshop Elements 9 from the App Store.

Ever since the Mac Store was announced, there have been two standout examples of apps that would “never” be sold through Apple’s strictly-controlled channel. The first is Microsoft’s Office suite. The second was Photoshop. The reasons? Price and compatibility.

The thinking goes that Adobe and Microsoft wouldn’t want to give 30% of the revenue of their flagship products to Apple. The second, and more sensible reason is that these monster applications would never be accepted into the Store thanks to their deep and “illegal” ties into OS X.

Elements isn’t the full Photoshop, to be sure, and is clearly compatible with Apple’s rules (either that or Apple has bent them). More interesting is the price. The full Elements 9 costs $100, making the App Store version cheaper. It is missing the Adobe Elements Organizer, but as Elements is designed to complement apps like iPhoto, this is probably a good thing.

Elements is like a power editor for your snaps. You can tweak the basics, but the gimmick is that you get to use Adobe’s fancy-pants image processing features. You can paint out mistakes with a brush that uses Content Aware Fill to fill in the gaps. You can make panoramas. You can even switch in people from various group shots to get one picture with everyone looking good.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 is available now for $80, the same price as Apple’s Aperture.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 [Mac App Store]

See Also:

• Photoshop Crashes onto iPad
• Hands-On Review: Pixelmator, a 'Photoshop Lite' for Mac Shutterbugs