Note that what they refer to as "Versions" isn't really version control. It would more accurately be referred to as snapshots, as it simply performs a backup when opening a document, then an hourly backup while it's open. This is a bit to arbitrary to be considered version control. Nonetheless, it might be useful to undisciplined users, if the snapshots are easy to access and the feature isn't well hidden. Also note that apps must be updated for Lion in order to take advantage of the feature.
It may not be 'real' version control, but remember that huge percentage of people have no idea that such a thing even exists. If you've ever explained version control to a non-developer the second they actually grok what it is, they instantly see the value.
This seems like a great way to introduce your average user to the powers of version control.
Basically, Versions looks like a better and simpler application-level Time Machine integration (TM can already be integrated into applications, though that's now widely known and almost never used. Apart from Finder, I only found out Mail and iPhoto using it)
It might be the case that simply saving the document creates a new version. Not exactly version control but quite good compared to nothing. Apple tends to omit details like that.
The guidelines say that apps should auto-save their documents on Lion, and you can bet Apple'sown productivity suite will. So snapshotting every 2 seconds might not work out too well.
I was obviously referring to saving manually. If that’s no longer possible they could just replace the the save command in the menu with a “Create Version” command and Command+S could create a version instead of saving.
Absolutely not true version control, but if it covers everything on the HD and does so automatically, that's pretty awesome. There was an app called TimeDrawer that I was using for a while that did exactly that, and it saved me more times than I can count - "Automatic" and "Everywhere" are pretty powerful where versioning is concerned.
Too bad really, at first I wondered if it was versioning built into the filesystem, like VMS used to do, but more transparent. We'll just have to wait for apps to take advantage of the functionality.
Both of these require the application to specifically support them (per the asterisk after the features).
I'm assuming they'll be supported by Apple's first party programs, then sporadically by 3rd party developers, as it is with Time Machine, QuickView and Spotlight document helpers support.
I found this interesting, apparently Dino A. Dai Zovi (http://twitter.com/dinodaizovi) and Stefan Esser (http://twitter.com/i0n1c), two security researchers (hackers) have apparently received invitations to try out Mac OS X Lion with some strings attached that they can't talk about the as of yet unreleased OS:
If indeed Apple is moving forward and opening up dialogue with external researchers this is a good thing. Hopefully that means that Mac OS X Lion will finally join the ranks of Windows 7 and Linux in having full ASLR available and more sand-boxing of the various components so that it becomes a much more hardened target.
Yeah, I was honestly really surprised as well that Apple is doing an outreach, it definitely makes me extremely happy to see that Apple may finally be getting it concerning security!
Resume is something I've wanted from an operating system for a long time. Nothing is more frustrating than leaving your computer for an hour, only to come back and realize updates demanded that they restart your computer and you need to relaunch all your applications, videos, etc.
I 'verun into this on Windows XP, but never on Mac OS X. Actually, I don't think Windows 7 forces reboots either, it just installs updates when you shut down or restart.
Unless I'm misremembering, unless you ask for detailed information about the updates, it doesn't tell you ahead of time if it's going to ask to restart your computer. It just says basically, "There are updates available. Do you want them?"
you're probably misremembering -- there's a little arrow next to the update items which require a reboot, and even after installing everything, you can still choose to reboot later. I still have a system running Tiger so I don't think it's changed since then.
I just checked. The standard Software Update screen in 10.6 doesn't have a list of items. It just has three buttons: "Show Details", "Not Now" and "Install" — the list you're talking about is revealed by "Show Details." You do still have the option to wait as long as you want to restart, though.
Linux users only have to reboot on kernel updates (say, twice a year, only if you want a new kernel, which often isn't worth the trouble).
It isn't that you've wanted "restart" from an operating system, it's that you've wanted an operating system where the paradigm is such that no restarts are required.
Distros like Ubuntu will give you updates that require an reboot more frequently. If you have it on auto-update, which an average desktop user very well may, the situation is about the same as a Mac. Ubuntu puts out new kernels very couple of months.
The primary focus here (understandably) is "we make your laptop look / work like your iPad". Versions, AirDrop, etc are tacked on at the end and given much less focus.
The problem with making my laptop work like an iPad is that the laptop is a general purpose computer and the iPad is not.[1] The genius of the iPad was that it was a specialized device built for a single purpose: consuming media anywhere, anytime. It has long battery life, sunlight-visible screen, and does not require mouse or keyboard. It is very good at its purpose -- you can use it as a book reader or movie viewer while riding a bus, sitting in a park, etc -- and it sucks for anything else (e.g. anything that requires typing more than a few characters).
My laptop, on the other hand, was designed to be an all-up computer that could be used anywhere that there was a flat surface, but mostly indoors. I can use it at home, at the coffee shop, etc. It's also fine for consuming media as long as I'm not in direct sunlight or away from power for more than a few hours.
So. What exactly am I gaining by adding these iPad features? Sure, I bet they're handy and I'll probably learn to use them. But I can't help but think that a bunch of guys as talented as Apple could have produced something really impressive in the time they took adding these iPad features.
Well, I think the ipad style of app is intriguing--they differ from a current desktop app in a few significant ways:
1. There's no notion of save.
2. There's no notion of quit.
3. There's no notion of filesystem.
Those are all interesting tweaks.
Having the app save things automatically and always present you with the most up-to-date version of your document is kind of cool actually. But, you say, "I don't want it to save my document sometimes--what if I want to experiment and then throw away the changes?" I think that is where the new "versions" feature fits in. It seems designed to give people exactly that. I suspect that ⌘S will change from "Save" to "Snapshot".
Having the app suspend itself, save its state and unload at the appropriate time is interesting too. It gives the app a sense of persistence that doesn't exist in most desktop apps currently. I've already subconsciously switched to this style of thinking. I like my Firefox set up to restore the windows from last time. I do a similar thing with my Emacs so that all my buffers get saved and restored (emacs-desktop).
I think I'd have a hard time letting go of my filesystem. I don't see anything in Lion that seems to indicate they are moving that way. But I kind of understand it. It'll probably start moving that direction eventually. But who knows.
What are you gaining? The ability to resume working where you left off (so you can reboot your computer after updates and not worry about having to shut down everything). The ability to use your computer full-screen and switch to other apps also in full screen. Better management of memory and processes so that you don't have to care about Ctrl+Qing applications.
These are pretty good lessons they've learned from the iPad user experience. There's no reason why a laptop shouldn't learn from the experiences of other platforms.
When Jobs unveiled Lion he said their goal was to bring some of the best aspects of iOS back to OSX. Which feature(s) do you think make the Mac less of a general purpose computer? I don't see much of a trade off here.
The official marketing message is bring the "magic of iPad" to the desktop. Apple knows how to ride their own wave. The glossy pictures give Grandma the impression that the UIs will merge and everything will be better because of the new interface changes.
The substance behind this hype are the improvements toward ubiquitous computing. No single improvement is revolutionary. Auto Save and Versions means less worry about losing work. Google Spreadsheets has these. Resume is similar to Session Manager for Firefox. It is useful for single computers now, but will be even more handy when we move around between computers and resume from anywhere. AirDrop and even iPad File Sharing over WebDAV on Lion Server are efforts to integrate services like Dropbox into the core of the OS.
Management of these menial tasks and concerns fades to the background. Google is artful in bringing such improvements to their web apps, and Apple is beautifully skilled at integrating new functionality and paradigms into their devices and OS platforms.
So we have saving, versioning (of sorts), resuming, and sharing. All we need is a humongous data center to store all the data.
The writing is on the wall, just past the glossy pictures.
Versions and Resume look cool, but Launchpad? Do people really need a full view of all the (dozens) of apps they have installed? I thought we were getting away from that with Quicksilver and other 'find as you type' tools.
Launchpad seems like Program Manager from the olden days of Windows.
By "we" do you mean the geeks that read HN and write code, or their typical consumer?
I have never seen my mom type to find a file she was looking for, let alone launch an app. Every single person I know that isn't in technology or consider themselves technically competent uses and explores their computer solely with the mouse. Even editing a word she just typed, my mom would leave the keyboard, mouse over the previous word's characters, and then retype it.
Hmm, one of my fave features of 10.6 is that I can put the Applications folder in the dock and then set it to pop up as a big scrollable grid of items when I click it. Now the thing is, most users would never get round to setting that up themselves, so Apple have just cut-out that extra step and made this default behaviour. So it's not a big deal but it is a smart move which many people will like, IMO.
Although you can always open /Applications, you can also litter your HD with apps. But now with the App Store you don't even have to know where the app is at all when it just appears in your dock or now in Launchpad.
I hope it at least supports drag and drop like cmd-tab. I'd use it. Typing app names is great and all, but I don't manage my photos with the command line.
From how I've seen non-powerusers manage OSX, most just throw every app they ever use (and apps they'll never use) on their dock, making it cumbersome to use. Launchpad is probably aimed at that type of user.
Is there any news on the invisible parts of Lion? Snow Leopard brought us OpenCL, Clang, Grand Central, and these other cool technologies. Will we finally have resolution independent displays??
Which is weird, because resolution independence has been part of Mac OS X since 10.5. Only if developer tools are installed though, and it never really worked with Carbon applications, but those are slowly vanishing anyway.
I just activated it again to see how it looks and.. well, it could look better :) I tried the preferences and I've to admit I think they looked better (scaled up) in 10.5 than on 10.6.
Intel's HD 3000 seems to only support OpenGL 3. NVidia's 320M and 330M are likewise limited to OpenGL 3.3 (according to wikipedia, NVidia's own spec pages only talks about 2.1[0]). I'm not sure it makes as much sense to support that.
Apple has used LLVM in the past to run more advanced OpenGL implementations on lesser hardware - their Intel 950 graphic driver was one example of this:
Yah it only took OS X what.. some 13 years to get what KDE has had with "Resume". Year after year I pondered why other desktops didn't implement this. A pretty basic and killer feature that is hard to let go once you have it.
Faulting Apple for having different priorities about which features to implement first? I used to use a a Linux (Fedora) laptop but I got tired of opening the lid, only to find out that it didn't suspend properly. I bought a Mac so I could run Unix and have the basic stuff "just work."
I'm still hopeful that someday the Linux community will finally produce a polished desktop solution on par with Apple.
Same here, when I discovered that OS X was solid enough that I rarely rebooted combined with suspend that always works the requirement to re-launch on boot like KDE went down for me. It is still a cool feature.
I think it's more than just saving which programs are open in a session - based on the line "In fact, whenever you quit and relaunch an app, Resume opens it precisely the way you left it.", it's also saving program state a la iOS.
I'm scared of what they'll do to Exposé in Lion... they already butchered it with the grid style in 10.6, but at least that could be undone with an easy little hack:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=869611
The auto-versioning got me thinking of how to do this with git. You could have a cron job come by while you're working and if anything has changed, add and commit it to $CURR_BRANCH/auto. Then, when you're ready to do a real commit, you `git merge --squash`
I know that real git users commit about as often as they save, but would this make sense as a workflow for those of us who are still used to committing only when it works? Or would all of the autocommits make things overcomplicated?
That's also present on countless window managers for X11 (Linux, BSD).
What both Macs and Windows seem to lack is a modifier for holding to drag windows: most X11 window managers let you hold Alt to drag windows, regardless of where you click. That would have saved me from several situations in Windows where the titlebar of a window is out of the viewable area, and I therefore could not move the window.
It's up to apps to implement it. But why, do you honestly think it will get in the way anywhere besides IDEs (and maybe not even there...)? This is an honest question because I can't really think of instances where I wouldn't want something like this.
I'm spoiled by Notational Velocity, which saves automatically, and by iPad apps for same. I have Coda and TextMate set to save when they lose focus so I don't lose work...
Those people are exceedingly rare. And I'm sure applications won't autosave huge files; if they do there would be large performance hits. Most files that need autosaving are basic documents, maybe pictures. 99.9% of the time autosaving is a good idea.
If your autosave makes you run out of disk space, you're probably "doing it wrong".
They are not so rare at this point in history - many people use a laptop as their main/only machine, and the move to SSD shrunk my disk by 3X. Space is going to be tight for a couple of years - I traded it for great performance.
It seems pretty small-minded to blame the user for "doing it wrong" because an application used up all his hard drive space with no way to disable it. What would "doing it right" consist of? Just not using the application at all?
Why shouldn't the OS treat the HDD/SDD just as it does RAM: use up as much as possible in the background, while always ensuring the user's immediate needs come first? In other words, empty disk is wasted disk. Lion could quite easily use 'empty' disk space for document versioning or local backups, and immediately reap those versions/backups when the user actually does need that disk space.
For HDDs (rather than SSD), there are very good technical reasons not to abuse the disk. Disk access is easily the slowest thing a computer. While everything else leapt ahead over the past several decades, seek times for hard disks have improved a fair amount, but nothing like the almost unbelievable improvements the other parts of your computer have gone through.
Your computer already kind of does what you describe: That's what virtual memory paging is. And when your system starts paging a lot, it's noticeably slower. And when your computer starts paging with a nearly full disk, it is an out-and-out dog.
Actually, I disagree. What I describe is more like RAM buffered IO, where the space can be reclaimed at no cost, rather than swap, where the data must be saved for coherency.
It's entirely viable for a filesystem to archive all of the data you've ever created. Treat the archived files as an LRU cache and, when new data needs to be saved, just write over the least recently used data. Instead of a volume bitmap of used blocks, you have a tree that can be traversed to get the blocks that can be overwritten. This is not data that must be saved, like the swap; it's data that should be saved until something else needs it, at which point it's overwritten, like most OS's RAM IO buffers.
Cause the implementation of a feature is more important than the feature itself. Apple rarely comes up with new tech on its own. They rebrand existing tech and work on the experience to create a product and a platform. Seriously, who in the general public knows what LUKS is?
Mac OS itself is great. I don't mind paying for a version as part of a new machine. The update, though, isn't necessarily exciting enough to me to pay for.
