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 ESTScreen Sharing
The Screen Sharing app, now at version 1.3, gains several notable features useful for anyone for anyone who remotely administers Macs. This helps bring it up to speed with the Remote Desktop Connection features that Windows administrators like so much.
The first is the ability to switch between “observe” and “control” modes, depending on whether you want to control the Mac’s screen or simply look at what the remote user is doing. This has long been a feature of Apple Remote Desktop, but until the advent of the Mac App Store this was an enterprise-level product priced well out of reach of home users (and at $80, it still probably won’t find many fans outside the business crowd).
Second, and this is a feature so simple that I actually had to check my Snow Leopard install to make sure that I hadn’t missed it, Screen Sharing is now a full screen-capable app. This is especially useful if you’ve connected to a Mac with a higher screen resolution than yours - every pixel you can use for the remote connection makes navigating a bit easier.
Lastly and perhaps most interestingly, Screen Sharing in Lion now supports multiple simultaneous users to be logged into a Mac at once. This is unheard of in many client operating systems - similar functionality in Windows is only enabled in the server versions - and could enable OS X thin clients (at least in theory - the cost of Mac client computers and the inflexibility of thin clients would probably make such a solution more trouble than it was worth). It’s more likely that you’ll use it to log onto a Mac in some other area of the house without interrupting what its current user is doing, which is still plenty useful.
Boot Camp
The Boot Camp Assistant and its partitioning process work essentially the same way they did before, except that now all models download their Windows support software to external storage instead of using the OS install DVD (this was true of Snow Leopard on the 2010 MacBook Airs, though in my experience other models had trouble downloading the support files). The support file download in Lion is about 650MB, and worked fine on a variety of older and newer Macs.
The Boot Camp support software itself, now version 4.0, seems largely to be a driver update, and a pretty minor one at that - support for multitouch in Windows remains as basic as ever. Most notably, support for Windows XP has been completely removed - you may be able to get Vista working due to similar driver models, if you’re into it, but otherwise 32-bit or 64-bit Windows 7 is the way to go.
Also, I mentioned these things in the FileVault section but it can’t hurt to mention them again: while BootCamp can read standard HFS+ partitions, it can’t read FileVault-encrypted partitions, and since FileVault can only protect HFS+ volumes, any data stored on your Windows partition is unencrypted and easily accessible.
Migration assistant
As an advanced user, I generally prefer not to use OS X's built-in Migration Assistant to transfer files and programs from one Mac to another - I usually find that the program is actually too thorough in bringing over weird, old cruft from a longstanding OS install. To its credit, though, it does make it that much easier to get a new computer setup, especially for novice users. In Lion, the OS X version of the Migration Assistant app remains essentially unchanged from prior versions, so I want to focus mostly on the new Windows version of the tool.
Even though the Windows version of the Migration Assistant is new, in operation it is largely identical to the Mac version. You'll first need to install it on the Windows computer from which you'll be migrating - it's a small download from Apple, and takes just a few minutes to setup.
You'll need to make sure that both the Windows computer and your Mac are on the same network, since the Windows version of the Migration Assistant can only transfer files over a network. Once they're both connected, fire up the Migration Assistant on both machines. You'll have to click through a few screens and verify a confirmation number, and then you'll be asked what you want to bring over.
Of course, you won't be able to bring over any applications or system preferences, but because of underlying similarities in how user data is stored between Windows and OS X, it seems to work pretty well - the Migration Assistant will even attempt to find any non-standard files on the C: drive and try to move them over for you.
Once the data copies (which will take some time, depending on the speed of your network), you'll be asked to setup an account name - this will generally match whatever your Windows account name was, though you're free to rename things as you like.
OS X will now create the account, and you'll be prompted to give it a password the next time you login.
And that's really all there is to it. The bar for Windows-to-Mac switchers has been set that much lower.
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steven75 - Friday, July 22, 2011 - link
"The fact is Windows/Office is really only expensive if you are building your own computers and installing your own OS"You seem to be implying that Office comes free with a pre-built computer when it in fact doesn't ever.
anactoraaron - Sunday, July 24, 2011 - link
wrong. I know I shouldn't feed the trolls but when office 2010 came out my local office depot (and likely every office depot) had at least one pc with the full version of office 2010 on it. It was some kind of promotion they ran for about 2 weeks.tipoo - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
Apart from the new animations in Safari, is performance improved any? Any word of it getting GPU acceleration?name99 - Thursday, July 21, 2011 - link
My experience was that it ran the IE Paintball demo 25% faster, and the end result showed no visual artifacts. So, an improvement on 5.0, but still nothing like the HW acceleration performance of IE.On the other hand, I've yet to encounter a site (apart from the IE demos) where this actually matters...
name99 - Thursday, July 21, 2011 - link
Oh, it also, if you care, has elementary support for MathML. To be honest, however, the support is REALLY limited. The typography looks like crap, and anything even slightly fancy looks even worse --- eg long bars over symbols, large surds, etc.tipoo - Friday, July 22, 2011 - link
Thanks. Yeah, its GPU acceleration doesn't seem as expansive still as other browsers, judging by canned benchmarks I've run it through. IE9 and FF5 are still far ahead in GPU acceleration, Chrome and Opera are getting there, Safari 5.1 is still last.EnzoFX - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
I think it's pretty unfair to compare Windows full-screening to Lion's. Full screening in Windows is not a feature at all IMO, it is the equivalent of dragging the window size out to the size of the screen. You do not gain any functionality whatsoever (usually just a lot of empty space, which was never in Apple's radar before). This kind of full-screen functionality has been present in OS X long before Lion, though it was often more manual, having to drag the window size out.But as you say, Apple has added functionality and it's become it's own separate feature. I think the comparison is pointless.
SmCaudata - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 - link
True full-screen in Windows only happens with games, certain video players, and select other apps. I personally so no use for full-screen for most computer applications.Also, the comparison is valid because even in those areas where Windows does use full-screen, the other display still works. I can have a full-screen movie on one monitor while I do whatever I want on the other.
I really fail to see how Apple's implementation has "added functionality" that didn't exist in other OSes before. The article talks about using gestures instead of minimization... isn't that what Alt+Tab and Win+tab already did?
There are certain things that Apple does do well. Their dock was something that MS obviously took inspiration from for W7. This implementation of full-screen seemed pretty limited IMO.
name99 - Thursday, July 21, 2011 - link
I suspect that the multi-screen hiccups with full-screen are purely temporary.We have seen problems like this before --- for example when multi-user GUI support (the rotating cube thing, to allow new users to log in to a mac) was first added, it didn't take long to discover that various iLife apps didn't behave properly. (I forget the details, but I think both iTunes and iPhoto wouldn't launch for the new user.)
It's one of the drawbacks of Apple being so secretive, even internally, that you get these sorts of crossed signals. But the issues usually get fixed, and if they are very visible, they usually get fixed soon.
I'd say, right now, the appropriate response is to assume this is a screwup, not go into conspiracy theory mode about how this is a plot by Apple to eventually remove multi-screen support.
Uritziel - Friday, July 22, 2011 - link
LOL. As if a company spearheading Thunderbolt would aim to remove multi-screen support.