Back to the Mac: OS X 10.7 Lion Review
by Andrew Cunningham, Kristian Vättö & Anand Lal Shimpi on July 20, 2011 8:30 AM ESTiCal is OS X’s calendar application and it sports a new look in Lion. As you might have guessed, the new look is yet again inspired by iPad’s Calendar app.
Weekly view
The most dramatic change occurs right when you open iCal - the toolbar is now beige leather-ish instead of the old iCal’s regular grey toolbar theme, apparently inspired by the increasingly obsolete personal organizer. Overall the look is simpler and cleaner compared to old iCal but the left-hand-side column is now totally gone which may affect the usability of iCal if you have multiple calendars. The column used to hold your calendars but they are now under a dedicated “Calendars” button. On the right-hand-side you can have a Reminders column which will be useful once iOS 5 becomes available.
Calendars drop down menu
The redesign isn’t the only new thing, as Lion’s iCal has some new features as well, although they are more or less copied from iPad. The first new feature is Day view, which is exactly the same as on the iPad. On the left-hand side, you have a regular calendar with dates and below it you have a list of your upcoming events. On the right-hand-side, you have all the events for the selected day, which explains the Day view name of the tab. The Day view is actually present in Snow Leopard as well, but Lion takes it one step further by adding a running list of events instead of just a view of your day’s schedule, so this isn’t a totally new feature.
Day view
Probably the most interesting feature of the new iCal is Quick Add: you no longer have to set everything separately, you can just type it. For example, “Lunch with Anand on Friday at 1pm” would create an event on the following Friday at 1pm with the header “Lunch with Anand”. Of course, you can also use regular dates and set the duration. Another example could be “Dinner with Anand on 20th of June 4pm-5pm”. Once you add the event, you will be provided with the regular event editor which lets you set the location, repeat, alert and so on. Quick Add is a similar feature to what things like QuickCal and Google Calendar provide, so some users may already be familiar with the concept.
Quick Add
The biggest shortcoming of Quick Add is that the location must be entered separately, there is no way to “Quick Add” it. For instance, if you typed there “Party at Anand’s Place on Friday at 9pm”, it will create an event for that date but the name of the event will be “Party at Anand’s Place”, not “Party” and “Anand’s Place” as the location. If you were able to include the location in the Quick Add, Quick Add would actually provide a great overall solution for adding new events, but now you need to add the location separately, which kind of defeats the purpose. Of course, if you are fine with locations in the event name or without locations at all, then this isn’t a problem.
Yearly view
In addition to Quick Add and new look, Lion’s iCal also features a yearly view of your events. This can be useful when planning things weeks or months ahead. The days with activity are marked with colors, something which Apple calls as “Heat map”. Basically, the color shifts between yellow and red depending on how busy that day is. Plain white means there are no events scheduled for that day. Finally something that isn’t copied straight from iOS, although iOS 5 will bring a similar feature.
iCal also supports CalDAV, Exchange, MobileMe, Yahoo and Google calendars, so it’s easy to keep your mobile devices and other computers synced. These features are all present in Snow Leopard, though their continued inclusion in Lion is welcome.
All in all, the new iCal is likely something that will divide people. Anyone who likes the iPad version of Calendar should like and be familiar with Lion’s iCal, as they are very alike. Some users may prefer the old iCal and fortunately, there is already a workaround to get rid of the leather-ish look, you simply have to modify the iCal.app. Quick Add definitely sounds great and handy but essentially it is the only big refinement in addition to the new design.
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mrcaffeinex - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
I purchased a MacBook Pro when Leopard was due to come out. Apple mailed me a free upgrade DVD about a month after I purchased the MacBook. When Snow Leopard came out I purchased the upgrade DVD for something in the neighborhood of $30 if I remember correctly. I've done clean installations from all of the media and never run into an activation/registration problem.On the flip side, I paid $149 for Windows XP, another $149 for XP 64-bit (if only there had been driver support back in the day...), $199 for Vista and another $149 for 7. Granted these were over a slightly longer time period. Still, I can't help but think that some of the initial investment cost of the Mac has been offset by not having to spend significantly more on software upgrades to get the features or functionality that I enjoy having at my disposal.
Factor in the inconvenience of having several iterations of Windows that were more or less junk, but still cost the same and it slides the scale further in favor of OS X in my experience. Now I can also get what is essentially a household upgrade in Lion for approximately $30 if I decide it is worthwhile.
Don't take this as an attack on Microsoft and their Windows operating system, though. It is still an integral part of my computing experience every day and I really enjoy Windows 7 (in fact, it runs better on my MacBook than on most notebooks I've worked on). I just wish they would adopt a strategy that would make upgrading Windows more affordable for the do-it-yourself PC enthusiast.
GotThumbs - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
The amount of money Apple made on your purchase of their hardware more than covers the cost of the OS. Microsoft does not sell their own brand of computers. You can purchase a PC laptop for hundreds less than you can purhcase an Apple MAC.Think McFly, think!
xype - Thursday, July 21, 2011 - link
I love it how PC people have such a sweet feeling of entitlement.Have you ever had/bought/found a product that you were simply content with paying a premium for because it just worked well for you? Have you ever overtipped a waiter because the service was really good?
You know, some people don’t have a problem rewarding either individuals or, yes, teh ebil corburayshns, for work/services well done.
GotThumbs - Thursday, July 21, 2011 - link
??? "feeling of entitlement" ???Not sure what you mean, but I do work hard for my money and do have a choice of where I spend it and how much I'm willing to pay for a product or service. There is a HUGE difference between tipping a waiter for working hard to provide you the best experience, than a company who sells consumers the same technology I can get elsewhere for less and be just as satisfied with my purchase. I'm not a 'Scrooge', but I'm also not a fool. Meaning: A fool and his money are quickly parted.
I build my own systems so I not just satisfied with what is put out by the large PC sellers either. Most readers here are not satisfied with being 'spoon fed' what we should be satisfied with.
If you or anyone else wish to purchase apple products, your free to do so. Just don't expect me to give you a pat on the back for it.
steven75 - Friday, July 22, 2011 - link
You seem to have missed the entire point that Microsoft OS upgrades are *hundreds of dollars* per copy and Mac OSX upgrades are $30 for multiple copies.wicko - Sunday, July 24, 2011 - link
Umm, currently it is roughly 100$ for Home Premium (I paid 125 when I preordered Win7 Pro Upgrade edition), less at some retailers.Not to mention, you glossed over the fact that there does exist a "mac tax", which you would have paid on every mac you own, offsetting the total cost.
Say I spend 2400 on 3 PCs (including OS) and you spend 3000 on 3 Macs. Performance is identical. It will cost me 300 to upgrade each one to Win7. It will cost you 30$ to upgrade all of your Macs. 2700 vs 3030, Interesting. I will have to go through another version of Win7 in order to catch up with you in cost. And I'm being generous with respect to the difference in price before upgrades.
But, you know, you can install it on as many Macs as you'd like, so go nuts. Just don't pretend you're somehow spending less than those who buy Windows licenses.
anactoraaron - Sunday, July 24, 2011 - link
Sure, but let's compare apples to apples (pun intended). If Microsoft were to charge $150 for what little differences there are from 10.6 and 10.6 + hybrid iOS called 10.7 windows discs would never sell (who the hell buys MS discs retail that reads AT anyway?? Newegg has always sold oem discs MUCH cheaper-wait apple person NM). But to sit there and tell me that there isn't any major changes from XP to 7... that's just ridiculous.xyn081s - Monday, August 1, 2011 - link
I think you're the one who missed the point. Even with all these Win licenses, it'll still be cheaper than a Mac. Plus, you can get the Family pack, 3 licenses for $150...ex2bot - Friday, August 5, 2011 - link
I know this comment was a few days ago, but I had a laugh at your comment, so I just had to open my digital mouth and reply:"2400 for 3 PCS ($800 ea.) and $3000 for your [POS] Mac".
If you paid $40,000 for three Chevy Malibus and I paid $80,000 for my one souped-up Corvette" I would have gotten RIPPED OFF! (No, actually I would have received A LOT OF TICKETS!!)
A better comparison is
$800 PC vs. $1400 iMac . Not 800 vs. 3000. * Incidentally, you can sell your used Mac for a lot more than the technically equiv. PC. I've used that to upgrade my Macs several times.
-Ex2bot
Mac Fanbot
* Think an $800 PC = Mac Pro? The Mac Pros have Xeon processors. You know better than I that Xeons are $400 or $500 each. The cheapest Mac Pro has *dual* E5620s @ 2.66. You can't build a octo-core Xeon machine for $800. And you've got to have a motherboard and a, what, case? Power supply? And a few other parts, right?
nafhan - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
So, you bought four copies of Windows for a single computer? You may be the only person to have done this... A more typical experience over that time period is: Windows XP "free" with new PC, and $100 to upgrade to Windows 7.With the amount of money you spent on OS licenses, you could have purchased both a Win XP computer (OS included) and a Windows 7 box (OS included) outright.