Being a bit of a geek, I updated to the new Mac operating system ‘Lion’ on the morning that it was released to the public on the 20th July, last week.

Now I say I’m a geek but I’m not one of those super intelligent nerd-a-lingers who can hack into the girl nextdoor’s Facebook account with a sponge and a rusty hammer. No, I just like shinny things. However I am pretty much the epitome of one of Apple’s target markets which consist of magpies, hairdressers, wannabe’s, thick kids, mums and ‘trendy’ vicars. So this review is probably not going to be of use to the kind of people with any inclination to search for it.

Anyway, to start with I downloaded the software from the Mac app store, it was placed on a virtual shelf in between iNipples and Monkey Tennis. And in about 45 minutes it was installed and ready to go. I was very happy with this cloud based, immediate and cheaper way of obtaining software… it’s a bit of a no brainer really and I’m glad that hugely over priced companies like PC world and Curries, who prey on the computer illiterate and less than savvy are going to have to sort their act out if this trend continues.

Now Apple are very good at telling stories and making something that is pretty much a complete waste of your time and money seem like the most innovative, beautiful excuse to procrastinate since gin was first mixed with tonic. But they are able to do this because at least some of the time they do release good, worthwhile products. It’s kind of like Willy Wonka gozzing into every third Scrumdiddlyumptious bar. Then by keeping their marketing consistent and ensuring that every announcement looks the same, good or bad, they can hypnotise us into believing that their toxic airborne events are magical.

Try it for yourself, piggy back on Apple’s visual marketing language: If you were to stand infront of a bright white sheet with two huge fill lights on your face and one on the background, make sure your face looks a bit unsymmetrical and over enthusiastic to subvert the holy glow which may other wise make your efforts construable as a religious declaration. Then over some plinky plonky, cutesy, indie music announce that you are going to force a new piece of music organisation software onto your viewers that will destroy and sabotage them at any given opportunity.

OK, so my point is that Lion is a bit of a toxic airborne event. So far at least anyway.


Here’s a list of the things that are annoying…

  • Upon booting for the first time into Lion I was gutted to discover that my scroll wheel now works in the opposite direction to the way it used to work. It seems that Apple knows best and believes that you can make something more intuitive by changing it to work in the opposite way that you are used to. So far it’s only benefit to me has been making me feel drunk.


  • Personally I have no cause to use it but… Microsoft Word no longer works. Hmmm… But if Steve Jobs came round to my house and smashed up my toasted sandwich maker I would probably call the UN, it would be bang out of order.


  • What the hell have they done to Spaces? In the Mac OS you can have multiple virtual desktop spaces with different applications running in each to help you work clutter free but for some reason these spaces have now developed a mind of their own and have started moving around into exactly the last place I would expect to find them, every time I alter my mental system for preempting where what I am looking for has moved to, Lion changes up it’s game and beats me down. It really is like playing Find the Lady with my emails and so far I have lost everything I own to the silicon-man including my first unborn child unless I can guess the name of the next iPhone (hopefully Steve will get Slugworth to leave one in a strip joint again).


  • Apple keeps on pushing and pushing their baby the iPad and it’s mobile operating system onto us like some deranged parent with their double buggy in the pub telling you with a wide toothy grin and starey eyes that their kids are dead clever and don’t normally refuse to sync and brick whenever they run the iPlayer app. Now Apple is trying to position their baby as the next computer world game changer but, of course, it is not because it can’t do anything worthwhile like a normal computer can do, unless in the future people can make money by flicking cartoon birds into piles of pigs. Unfortunately, to get around it’s shortcomings it seems that Apple is trying to get us to adopt the ipad platform by turning our desktop computer into a massive iPad essentially making it a sophisticated iPad advert. Now where’s Naomi Klein when you need her.



    • Finally, it’s all just a bit try hard like the kid at school who you phased out of your friendship group because he used to eat spiders and say stuff like “My dad’s got a Snow Leopard”. There have been lots of promises about cool stuff that doesn’t work properly and videos about things that will make a huge difference but turn out just to be flumph geared towards helping Apples own marketing ambition.

    Amazing features like auto save and versions only work with Apple’s weak own brand products which are always badly organised, mapped to cryptic keyboard shortcuts and do annoying things to your work without you asking them to. All in all is seems like a bundle of superficial features that are more about Apple’s strategy, tenuously excused as benefits to the end user… I still like it though.

    Further Lion reading…
    MacRumors

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