Coming into this Lion review, I think the first thing you’d expect me to say is that Lion is a transitionary version of OS X that begins the process of converging with iOS. At a first scratch on the cat post, this is the conclusion that we may immediately jump to as we glance across the changes made. We focus too much on the Launchpad, complaining about what seems to be obvious handholding without looking deeper into the underlying enhancements Apple has made for everyone across the board. OS X Lion may be influenced by a lot of smart interactions discovered in iOS, but it doesn’t feel nearly as limited as initially perceived. It is one of Apple’s goals to provide consistency across all of their platforms, but OS X is still of its own design.
Lion is exceptionally well done. Consistency, the user experience, and improvements to the user interface aren’t a nod towards iOS, but rather a nod towards Apple’s future. Much attention was paid to making the Finder easier to navigate, the interface more fluid, and the desktop more accessible than ever before. Lion fixes and improves upon the previous version of OS X just like every other version did. The fundamentals never change. Instead, concepts are expanded upon and built out in new, delightful ways. With Apple’s recent innovations and discoveries being made on iOS, it only makes sense that they’d implement much of what they’ve learned into their desktop OS.
