Guest post by InfoWorld’s Galen Gruman provides a look at the best features Mac OS X Lion has to offer, as well as the biggest disappointments of Apple’s latest OS. Whole disk encryption, the new Server application, automatic file versioning and locking against accidental saves, iOS-like configuration policies for IT, automatic syncing across Mac OS X and iOS 5 are among the key new features of Mac OS X. But many of the even the best new features still fall somewhat short, including the new contextual scroll bars, issues with sharing automatically versioned documents, the lack of external disk encryption after the fact, and the complexity of new Mac OS X Lion Server app.
But the Launchpad app — essentially, a simulacrum of the iOS home screens for application access — is frankly a needless pander to iOS. It may sound great to have all your apps in a grid on your screen, but it’s not. On a computer screen, the grid is overwhelmingly large, and the order in which apps appears is essentially random. Sure, you can create folders and rearrange them, but it’s a lot of work to do something that the Dock and the Finder windows for your Applications folder and Utilities folder handle much better.
I’ve read about how Launchpad is so much easier for people than using finder, and I sort of agree, but I haven’t seen anyone suggest my preferred “App launcher” so-to-speak for Mac OS X.
Am I the only person who always drags the /Applications folder to the right side of the dock whenever setting up a new user account? Before Leopard it was just a nested list, a bit like a start menu, and since Leopard I usually use it as a Grid or a list (an option for all Stacks). It actually looks really nice with translucent black as a list, and I can type the name of what I’m looking for after I’m in the grid. I can even navigate into Utilities without having to move the trackpad.
Yeah, that’s what I do. Works well. Haven’t upgraded to Lion yet, so I haven’t tried launchpad.
Apple+space, type first few letters of app name, hit enter.
Best launcher ever. Windows, GNOME and KDE have it too.
I find KDE’s search to be much better. Not only does it search by application name, but also by function using metadata.
So, I can never remember how to spell the funky Media player. Akarjasdfihasdf or something. So I just type “Music” and a list of choices show up and I click the one with the icon that’s correct.
I also use that trick for the worlds best feed reader Akremegiasdfh.
This would probably work for me if I configured spotlight to not index my other installs on other partitions (I usually have 1-3 partitions). Since it indexes those, I have to think to make sure I don’t run old versions of apps.
Since I’m too lazy to configure spotlight (I don’t use it that much… too many duplicate source repository checkouts), I really like the applications-on-dock method.
I think I started using that method in Panther, so no spotlight anyway.
Bottom line is everyone should do what works best for them… until Apple takes it away!
I think Launchpad is a great feature if you only have a few apps. Easy click or gesture based access.
But once you have to scroll Launchpad, it fails. Then you have to hunt for apps. Applications like Photoshop also scatter so many launchers/updaters/icons into the App folder that itself takes up the entire Launchpad area.
For power users, using the Dock with most commonly used apps, plus using Spotlight to find apps when needed, is the best way to go.
I’ve already removed Launchpad from my shortcuts since it just can’t handle having many apps.
If you have read Siracusa’s review of Lion, you will see you can indeed enable disk encryption after the fact, but only when using the command line Diskutil.
Though I don’t agree with Apple’s decision. I would have liked to do a “one click” enable of my external backups.