I upgraded to Lion yesterday and mostly like it. Given the direction Apple seems to be heading, I wouldn’t be surprised if this were the last major version of OS X for me. My main reasons for upgrading were the security enhancements: Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), non-executable stack (NX), and the new public sandbox APIs, which are all a real improvement. I also welcome the return of the Lisa’s “Resume” feature (yes, back in 1980, the Apple Lisa restored applications to the same state after you rebooted; credit, I’m sure, to the Xerox Alto). I also welcome “Versions”, another great feature that almost all DEC file systems had going back to the 70′s. Apple’s versioning implementation manages chunked differences, so it will be interesting to see how the bugs work out over time, but this is goodness nonetheless.
Xcode 4.1 Customization
After downloading the “Install Xcode” application from the App Store, if you want to customize the Xcode 4.1 installation, you want to double-click “Contents/Resources/Xcode.mpkg” inside the installer bundle and not the “Install Xcode” application itself. I’m just after the compilers and don’t need the iPhone software kits (5GB) and the meta-meta installer just installs everything. It would be nice if option-double-click were to just run the embedded .mpkg but blade-guards now seem to be permanently engaged, perhaps with good reason for most apps.
The /Application directory (along with /System) now has a “0: group:everyone deny delete” ACE, which prevents you from moving anything out of those directories. So once you’ve installed Xcode from the .mpkg and want to delete the “Install Xcode” application from /Applications, you can’t just drag it to the trash in the Finder. The Finder now offers to make an Alias for you when it notices you can’t actually delete it, which is nice, but not particularly helpful in this case. I just opened a terminal window, did a “sudo mv /Applications/Install\ Xcode.app ~/Desktop/”, and then dealt with it from there.
System Voices
Under “System Preferences” > “Speech” > “Text to Speech” > “System Voice” > “Customize…”, you can choose a bunch of new voices to download.
Text Auto-Correction
You’ll probably want to turn off text auto-correction in “System Preferences” > “Languages & Text” > “Correct spelling automatically”.
Mission Control / Spaces
I understand wanting to simplify the Desktop layout grid so that it’s linear, which makes the Mission Control layout easier, but I wish they hadn’t removed the drag-and-drop ability to move application windows between Desktops. You can still drag-and-drop the applications from the bottom portion of the display, but not from the little mini windows in the Desktops themselves. For that matter, you can’t rearrange them in the bottom either, just move them between desktops. I much preferred Spaces behavior here.
Also, if you previously had applications bound to particular Spaces, the UI controls for this moved. You now have to Control-click on the Dock icon > “Options” > “Assign to” to manage these bindings.
