OS X Lion New Features

Hey guys, this is Maads 101, and today I'm going to be making a video about Lion and the new features in Lion. Now, I've had Lion for a couple of days now, well, the latest version that Apple has given out on Monday to its developers. On Monday during WWDC, Apple showed you 10 new features in Lion, and they told you that these are just 10 of over 250 new features.

Now, I can't tell you all of the features because, as a developer, I'm not allowed to give away information that Apple hasn't given away. But I can tell you these new features, and if you want a list of all the new features, you can go to apple.com, and I'll have a link to the description and exactly where you can find all the new features.

But first off, I'm just going to tell you exactly what they said in the WWDC keynote address. So first off was multi-touch gestures. Now, Apple has already introduced multi-touch gestures into their older operating systems, and it's on their phones, and most of their computers now support the hardware. Even their desktops, they sell the Magic Trackpad so you can use multi-touch gestures. Like with three fingers, you can zoom in on Safari just like you do on the iPhone. Instead of making it bigger by pressing Command Plus, you can actually zoom in on a page.

You can go between spaces and Mission Control and your full-screen apps, and I'm going to be talking about a little bit more about that. So, as I mentioned, full-screen apps—almost all of Apple's applications are full screen now, and they're trying to encourage developers to make full-screen apps too. They made more APIs for full-screen apps, and like if an app is in full screen, usually like in Lion, I mean in Snow Leopard, if an app was in full screen, that app is full-screen. Like if you're watching a movie in full-screen, that's in full-screen, and you can't see anything else. It kind of sucks.

Well, on Lion, full-screen apps go into a separate space, which you can navigate through Mission Control. I'll talk about that in a second. But they go in a separate space, and then you can go back to your other spaces to see the non-full-screen app. So it's pretty cool, and you can have more than one full-screen app running at the same time now.

Mission Control! What is this? Well, there's now more and more ways to navigate between different things on your computer. There's Spaces, there's Exposé, you have your Dashboard, and there's full-screen apps. So this is just a way of putting this all together. So Mission Control is a way where you just see the desktop you're in. You see all your desktops above it, like all your spaces, all your full-screen apps, you can see Exposé, and you see your Dashboard. Your Dashboard's now not over a desktop; it's a separate desktop. So Mission Control is a nice way of doing that.

Now, the Mac App Store—Lion is very big on the Mac App Store. In fact, you can't even download Lion; you can't even buy Lion on a CD anymore or a DVD. You have to buy through the Mac App Store. They gave it to developers through the Mac App Store, and it comes built in. Apple's trying to navigate away from CDs and more and more through app distribution via the Internet. So the Mac App Store is going to be the great way to do that. Apps are becoming more and more popular on the Mac App Store.

The only thing I don't like about the Mac App Store is 30% of the revenue goes to Apple. But if you were going to give the exact same application online, you could get 100% of the profit. You don't actually, like with the iPhone, unless you jailbreak, you need to put apps on the App Store for people to download them. On a computer, you can just download applications off the Internet. So pretty much, the Mac App Store is just a better way of having people find your applications.

Now, Launchpad! Apple has talked a lot about this. What is this? The Launchpad is essentially a home screen for your Mac. So what's this mean? Well, on your home screen on an iPhone or an iPad, you just see all your applications. You've got more than one page, can make folders. You can't have folders in folders because Apple is trying to move away from the file system, but you can see all your applications and you can launch one right from the Launchpad. It's the exact same thing on the computer as it is on the home screen. It’s an icon that sits in your dock; you press it, you see all your applications, you can make folders. Yeah, it's the exact same thing.

Another new feature they talked about was Resume. What is Resume? Resume essentially is exactly what it sounds like. Whenever you leave anything, you can resume just by reopening it. So if I were to quit an application without saving or anything, just like I type up some stuff in TextEdit, I quit, reopen TextEdit, everything's there. The text is still selected if it was selected; the windows are in the same spot, all the windows are there. So even if I turn off my computer and I turn it back on, the same applications are open with the same windows in the same spots.

So basically, it’s kind of like how things are on the iPhone. Basically, all of Lion was essentially bringing things that are in iOS back to the Mac. So, I like Resume because I actually hate restarting my computer. I know it's important, but I hate doing it because then I have to reopen all my applications. So Resume is a nice nifty way of just having everything back.

So AutoSave! Like I mentioned, when you quit, you didn’t have to save, and your stuff is still there. How's that work? Well, Apple is actually always saving stuff. You never have to save. If I type a TextEdit document, I can just type things, and it won't save. I won't need to save, and the only time I need to save is if I actually close the window. Because if I close the window, that means the window is now closed, and if I want to resume that application, the window won't be there anymore. But even if I quit the application, the window will still be there with all my data. So you never need to save, which is good because I can't tell you how many times I've lost data because I should have saved, but I didn’t. So this is going to be at least useful to me.

Versions. Well, since you’re constantly saving, sometimes you don't want to save. You more like, "Hey, I like that old version before I... Why did it save for me?" This is the end of the world. Well, it’s not the end of the world because you can now go through versions. Since it's always saving, it records different changes with each version it saves. You can see different versions of a document, you can restore it to an old version, and you can actually cut and paste between the old version and new version of a document.

So like, if you're working on a Pages document, let's say, and you add a picture, and then you delete the picture but you type up a bunch of new stuff, you don't want to restore the whole document, lose your picture, lose all your stuff. You just want that picture. You can't find it on the Internet anymore. You can just go into Versions, find the version that had that picture, and copy and paste just that picture. So I think that's pretty neat.

AirDrop! AirDrop is essentially, Apple thinks it's really hard, and I kind of agree with them. There's no best way of giving someone else a file. Sometimes people use USB sticks, sometimes they email to each other, sometimes they send it via iChat. There's no real easy way, just "There you go, there's your file!" So AirDrop essentially tries to solve that problem, but they still have to be connected to the same Wi-Fi network as you. But anyone who has Lion who's connected to the same Wi-Fi network as you, assuming they have AirDrop enabled, you can just see their computer under the AirDrop menu.

Then, you drag any file onto their AirDrop icon, and it'll ask them if they want to accept. If they click accept, it sends them the file. So that is AirDrop.

Next is Mail. Mail is not really a new feature; it's just been improved. But yeah, so Mail—they were just big on two big new parts of Mail. One was search; they added really good search optimization. So you can search, like, who sent something. It's hard to explain, but alright, let me do the best I can.

Basically, when you search something, you can search for a word. You can say like, "Let me search for Dad." So I can say, "Sent to Dad from Dad," anything containing "Dad," and that's just one search tag. You can add as many search tags as you want. So really, and then you can search not just the mail you have on your computer, but onto your server, onto the web server. So that really helps you narrow down exactly what document you're looking for, and it's actually helped me a lot.

So yeah, I've been playing around with all the new features just so that way I can… that's one of the reasons why this video—like instead of making it right on Monday right after to the keynote—so that way it could be one of the first videos online, I wanted to mess around with Lion for about a week so that way I could actually have a full idea of what I'm talking about, not just repeating what I'm hearing of the keynote.

So again, sorry this video is late. I just wanted to completely understand everything in Lion. Alright, next was Convos, or conversations in Mail. Basically, conversations are just like—alright, if you've ever emailed someone and they email you back, and you email them back, it gets really confusing because you've got more and more indented parts of the mail, and you're like, "Alright, that's what I emailed before; this is what I'm emailing now." Sometimes when it gets too confusing, I just delete all the stuff and start a new email.

So basically, conversations is just like it says; it shows the original email above that, like, without anything indented. There's just a space in between; it shows the next email. Alright, I don’t know if you completely understood that, but if you see it, you’ll just be like, "Oh, I get it." It is really easy to read.

Alright, next is Lion Server. Now, for all other server options of Mac OS X, Apple used to say, "Alright, you can buy Mac OS X, you can buy Mac OS X Server." Now, if you have Mac OS X, you don't want to reinstall a whole new operating system. It's pretty much the same thing. So you can buy the server tools additionally and just install that right over your operating system. So I thought that was pretty smart of Apple.

Now, these that might just seem like a couple of new features; those are just a couple out of over 250 new features. I'm going to have a list. I'm going to have a link to read all the features.

And yeah, now please, I don't want to be mean, but I know I said that I have Lion. I can't give you guys a free copy, or if you ask me, and I can't make videos about Lion until it comes out. Why? Well, for two reasons. I can't show you the features. Number one, it's against my YouTube partner agreement. I can't display content which I don't own, and I do not own Lion. Apple's giving me an early copy, and if they don't want me to show people stuff, I can't.

And it's against my Google agreement, and it's against my Apple agreement because as a partner, I am not allowed to show people Lion before it comes out. So, but I'm allowed to make this video because I'm just talking about it and telling you what Apple has already told you. So yeah, I can, I can, if you comment, I can answer questions about it. Then I'd be allowed to answer; I can point you in the right direction. So feel free to comment questions if you don’t understand.

But no, I cannot show you new features of Lion before it comes out. Anyways, thanks for watching Maads 101. I hope this gave you a better idea of what Lion is and if you'd want to upgrade or not. If you want to read new features, just click in the link in the description. Thanks for watching, goodbye.