Apple Finally released the next major version of their operating system on Wednesday.

Wednesday July 20th was the day Apple released the 7th major version of their Mac OS X operating system - code named Lion.

Introduction

I've been using Mac OS X since it first came out and Lion brings some new features to the table that borrow some of the touch and feel of Apples wildly popular iOS mobile operating system. Over the past several years I have used Time Machine to back up my computer and use that back up when migrating to a new machine. While this makes for an easy transition to a new machine it also brings along with it all the old crude that builds up over the years. Another contributing factor to this build up of crude is that in the past I have always installed each new major OS release right on top of my old one.

Well this year I decided to do things differently and there are a couple of reasons why. First of all I just bought one of the brand new 27 inch iMacs a few weeks ago. You know the ones that just came out in May with the new Thunderbolt ports and the super fast Intel Sandy Bridge processors... yeah one of those. So buying a brand new machine and with the release of Lion coming out at about the same time I decided to bite the bullet and take the time to do a manual install. Well sort of.

Backing Up

In short I backed up all of my important files from my User Home folder onto an external terabyte drive. I then copied over my entire iTunes folder and Pictures folder and Movies folder and Mailbox folder as well. I also exported all of my contacts from Address Book. As far as applications go I think it is important to always keep a copy of the original .dmg and .zip files of the applications you buy or download from the Internet. This way you always have it in the original package with the installer ready to reinstall. So of course I backed up all of those as well to make it easier to do the manual install.

Wipe Machine and Reinstall OS X Snow Leopard

Once I had all of my important files backed up I used Disk Utility found in the Utilities folder to erase my entire Hard Drive and said good bye to all the crude. Of course there was still long road ahead of getting this clean new machine back up and running with the things I do want to keep and get it ready to download and install Lion. After reading some articles on this process I found that it is best to load the applications on first because they will sit on the outer portions of your hard drive so they will be read faster. So I used the install disk that came with my computer to first load Snow Leopard and then the 2nd DVD that had all the Apple Applications. Once that was done I used the Software Update utility to grab all the updates to get Snow Leopard ready for Lion. Next was loading all of the Apps that I wanted back on my new machine. This is where keeping copies of the .dmg and .zip files with all the applications I have collected over the years comes in handy. Oh I also always keep a note card with a list of all my serial numbers, usernames and passwords. Not only for my applications but every single website that I have ever created an account for. That was one of my important files because it makes it much easier to get back up and running having a file that you can easily copy and paste from.

So at this point I had all of my important applications back on the new machine. I then copied back over my iTunes and iPhoto folders as well as all the other small things. This was the part that takes the most time. When backing up things that were important I actually made the folder structure on my external drive exactly like it was on my hard drive to make it easier to remember where everything important goes.

So at last once everything was back as it should be as best I can tell it was time to download and install Lion. I must say that if you have purchased a brand new machine from Apple in the last few months you should call them before paying for Lion because any machine bought after June 6th 2011, I think, can get a special code to download Lion for FREE. Don't hold me to the exact date but I'm pretty sure that is what the rep told me. Since I bought mine on July 5th I was in like Flynn and glad I called them cause it saved me $30 and the Apple rep was kind enough to stay on the phone long enough for me to get the email sent to me which contained the code to enter on the Mac App Store.

Downloading and Installing Lion

Of course everyone will have a different experience depending on how fast your Internet speed is and how fast your computer is but it only took a little over an hour for Lion to download from the Mac App Store for me. The file was about 3.5 Gigs which is pretty substantial so don't expect it to download in just a few minutes. Most report anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours but again it depends on your network speed. The installation itself went very smoothly and I my apologies but I didn't take note of how long it took. I can say it took a little while but I just went off to do other things and just checked back in every little bit. It may have been about an hour or so.

Getting use to Lion

While I have had very little time to really dig in deep to all of the great new features that Lion offers I will say there are some that stand out. I really like Mission Control and the gesture based scrolling through the Spaces I have set up as well as web pages. I have the Magic Mouse and while I may end up buying the Magic Trackpad the mouse works just fine with using the gestures. To get into mission control just lightly double tap the mouse with two fingers and to add a new Space while in Mission Control just hover your cursor in the upper right corner and a little Space with a plus sign will slide into view for you to click. It is also very easy to drag items from one window to another. Again I am still getting use to Lion so this is not really a review and besides there are plenty of reviews you can find online. Mostly from people who have been playing with Lion for months using the Developers Copy.

The Downside

As with any brand new major OS release there are bound to be plenty of bugs to be worked out. But usually early adopters are smart enough to know this and just deal with it. Unfortunately there are some people out there who are not savvy enough to understand how tech works and just expect a shipped product to be perfect out of the gate. This is never true with complex software. It takes a huge install base with many people running the OS on different machines doing different tasks to find all the bugs. Also a major update like this would never be released if they ran every possible scenario in order to find these bugs before shipping. So what I have I noticed. Well I have had a few freezes which is something I am not use to with most Mac OS X releases. Sure even with a stable system occasionally you have an app freeze up and since it is sort of sandboxed it doesn't affect anything else. Well I have had Lion freeze up completely on me twice and had to reboot the entire computer. But oddly enough that experience also came with a silver lining and was a good chance for me to see the Auto Save feature in full effect as once it rebooted Lion opened everything where I had it before the freeze up.

In Closing

Any how I hope Apple is hard at work trying to fix some of the bugs that are being reported. Until then I will enjoy using Lion and trying out all the new features that this new release brings with it. Oh and getting use to the way it scrolls is something that will take me a bit of time to get use to as it is very much like the way iOS scrolls. Like using your finger to touch the actual page. So this natural touch scrolling is much like as if your finger was touching the web page itself. Basically it is the reverse of how we scrolled before using a mouse and a Mac but I think once I am use to it that I will prefer it as I do like the way things work on my iPad.