So, I am runninf Lion (Mac OS X 10.7) and going through the features and new small but powerful enhancements of the OS when around every corner you discover something new. While these features listed below are great for every day use, they are especially great for photographers and make things easier to work, compare and immerse yourself in your workflow.
1. Flickr me this, flickr me that
Safari is arguably one of the nicest browsers out there. I use it as my main browser but also use Firefox in order to see how things look on the web. While browsing in Safari and looking at some flickr pages and photos I usually want to go back and see what a photo looked like, or even go back in the history to another page earlier. This is normally done bia the back button or the history. If you want to go through the photo history of a photos stream that you have looked at etc. all you have to do is swipe one finger. Literally. It will slide back the current page and reveal the previous page underneath, without having to RELOAD the page from the internet. It is blazingly fast. If you have a magic mouse, just swipyour index finger from right to left and if you want to move FORWARD in your history, swipe left to right. it will look like this:
2. Full Screen ahead!
Aperture, Safari, Photoshop etc. They all have one thing in common, they work in full screen mode. In Mac OS X Snow Leopard you had to task switch to another application (CMD + TAB). In Lion this still works but there is a smoother, cooler and actually nicer way to switch your applications: Fingerswipe… AGAIN! It seems that Apple is going for gestures and human behaviour and move away from the traditional engineering approach. If you swipe two fingers in Lion into any direction, you will actually switch full screen applications, they slide away. This goes all the way to the dashboard which then can have some widgets that you have and you can quickly
cycle through your email, Aperture, Safari and so on. and all in glorious full screen. It’s like having an iPAD on a HUGE screen 
3. Mission Accomplished!
Mission Control, Apple’s replacement for Exposé is arguably extremely great or a big pain. In its current state (pre release) it is buggy, but when this gets worked outI can see this being hugely beneficial. Especially if they integrate it with applications such as Aperture, though that might prove difficult. In case of Photoshop and other applications that oppen multiple windows for each file you work on, this is a godsend. Not only can you see the open apps like in Exposé but you can right there in that single screen, go through each applications’ open files, check them through, move on to another application and check those files through etc. This can, if it is implemented correctly and fixed, make work very very efficient. Let’s hope for the best.
The one thing I have gotten so far out of Lion is that it is an Operating System that takes you, the user, to a whole new place. The whole working experience is much more immersive. You don’t realize how comfortable you feel working in this environment. There is no more dock in the fullscreen applications, no more taskbar, things dont jump and pop…it’s just you and the work you are doing.If this OS gets a few more bugs worked out and stays at least as good as it is now, if not better, this will be a photographers dream. Even the most basic user will feel VERY comfortable with this but for the fact that all applications will be full screen and you just get to concentrate on what you are doing, it makes it worth my while… and com on 29 USD is a bargain for an OS, especially since the license grants you the right to install it on a many Macs as you own.
As Lion comes closer to release, I will be posting more and more about how you will be able to use the OS more efficiently…
