IT Director for a non-profit in Washington, DC. Man About Internet.
My good friend Wayne Dixon has posted his combined OS X Lion & Lion Server review. Server contains a few neat features I was not aware of, as I've always just used the retail version. Definitely worth checking out.
This morning, shortly after Lion hit the App Store for the general public, I posted a link to several notable reviews of Lion where you can read all about the nit-picky details that have changed or been added/removed. I won't attempt to write a comprehensive review of my own, simply because people like John Siracusa will do a much better job at it than I will. One notable new feature of the operating system that I would like to point out though, is the new recovery partition that Lion makes when it installs itself. Apple has posted an entire knowledge base article detailing how this process works:
OS X Lion includes a new feature called Lion Recovery that includes all of the tools you need to reinstall Lion, repair your disk, and even restore from a Time Machine backup without the need for optical discs. A lot of people noted that the new Mac Minis released this morning no longer contain optical drives built-in. Jim Dalrymple actually managed a brief interview with Brian Croll, Apple's vice president of OS X product marketing who told Jim: A new Mac mini was also released with faster processors, and surprisingly to some people, no optical drive. Apple said the popularity of the Mac App Store helped with that decision. “We found that the majority of customers don’t use the optical drive on a regular basis,” said Moody. “Things are changing. The primary use for the optical drive was to install software, but the Mac App Store provides a more efficient method for doing that.” Clearly Apple is not afraid to eliminate components that customers don't regularly use in order to take advantage of the extra space to add new hardware on the inside. They first did this with the MacBook Air, and now the Mini. As John Gruber says: Optical drives are the new floppy drives.
John Siracusa has released his OS X 10.7 Lion Review. In case you aren't aware, John Siracusa is the king of Apple OS reviews. The PDF of his review is 105 pages long and has a table of contents for pete's sake. A Kindle Edition is available for $4.99 to get the article all on one page.
Other notable Lion reviews that are out:
1. Shawn Blanc's review, "OS X Lion".
2. Benjamin Brooks, The Brooks Review, "Time for the Big Cat".
3. Jason Snell, Editor in Chief at Macworld Magazine, "Apple Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)".
4. Wayne Dixon, a friend of mine, reviews both Lion and Lion Server in a combined review.
5. Not really a complete review per say, but a brief commentary, Matthew Guay wrote on tech inch, "First Thoughts on Mac OS X Lion".
In addition to Lion being released, Apple released new MacBook Airs, new Mac Minis, and a new Thunderbolt Cinema display.
I've been using Lion since early May, due to the fact that I'm an Apple developer and I've had access to the developer previews since earlier this year. Developer Preview 3 and 4 were stable enough for me to run as my main machine, with the GM Seed (retail version) having been released 2 weeks ago, it was just icing on the cake. My system has been very stable, with perhaps the only app to semi-regularly crash being Chrome, which was the norm for me on Snow Leopard as well.
I highly recommend Lion. Mission Control, Launchpad, Versions, the recovery partition, the new About This Mac panel, I could go on and on. This is a good upgrade. Get it.