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Apple Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Part Two

The cat scan continues

If you use Apple Mail, you should appreciate the iPad-style three-panel window and enhanced Exchange support. Apple says it has improved searches in Mail, but I think it has worsened. For example, it appears to be no longer possible to search for ‘Sent To’ partial e-mail addresses.

Apple Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Mail app

Conversations are a bit one-sided: even if I responded, my email wouldn’t be included here
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Supposedly, your search text appears as a ‘token’ in the search field, whereupon you can narrow down the results. In practice, these tokens only appear when you search for something really obvious such as a full-text user name, and fail to appear at all for much else.

Apple Mac OS X 10.7 Lion All My Files

All My Files is supposed to provide an ‘organised view’ of my computer – it looks a bloody shambles to me
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Messages with the same subject line are grouped together iPad-style too. Apple calls them "conversations", although since they don’t include your replies, these conversations are a bit one-sided.

Another curious addition is the All My Files view in Finder windows. Instead of showing you the content of the current folder, this feature picks a seemingly random handful of the millions of files on your hard disk and shows them to you in horizontal-scrolling rows. There must be a good use for this but it eludes me. Your troll-like suggestions and insults are welcome, as ever.

Still, being able to arrange icons first by a category - filetype, say - and then sort each category - alphabetically, by modification date, or somesuch - is good. But the CoverFlow-style display (above) needs some whitespace at the start and end of rows, Apple.

Apple Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Tokens

The cleverness of ‘tokens’ in searches leaves me cold. You can do this much in Snow Leopard
Click for a larger image

Verdict

In short, OS X Lion is a decent upgrade for Macs but a great one for MacBooks. Everything from FileVault 2 - encrypt everything, not just your home folder - to FaceTime - video chat on the move - screams ‘mobile!’, while sedentary users look on and mutter ‘that’s nice’. But for £20.99, who’s complaining? ®

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