This week’s hosts are:
Allison Sheridan NosillaCast Mac Podcast http://podfeet.com @podfeet
Bart Busschots International Mac Podcast http://www.impodcast.tv @bbusschots
Don McAllister  ScreenCastsOnline – http://screencastsoonline.com @donmcallister
Adam Christianson, Maccast http://www.maccast.com @maccast
John F. Braun, Mac Geek Gab http://www.macgeekgab.com @johnfbraun

Lion Hits the Virtual Shelves:

The Good:

• The app store download was painless, and you CAN easily move the PKG file around to the various machines in your house, so only have to DL once
  • If you know to move it to another drive before you run the installer
  • No problem burning bootable DVD
  • I don’t think I was charged, I had downloaded the developer’s GM version earlier, is it supposed to be free if you’re a developer?
  • Apple have announced a version of USB thumb-drive for those not on Snow Leopard or with bad internets – coming out next month at $69
• Full disk encryption with FileVault2 is an absolute breeze – you can even keep using your Mac while the disk is encrypting itself
  • Also, to protect your machine’s drive from being mounted Firmware Password Protection http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1352
• The OS-wide auto-correct is really nicely implemented – a great carry-over from iOS
• On the whole, I think the new ‘natural’ scrolling is a very positive upgrade, it takes us from controlling the scroll bar which controls the page, to just controlling the page we want to read. The iOS-like scroll bounce is a lovely little touch
  • Hard to switch between Macs
  • If you do want to change it back, System Preferences | Trackpad | Scroll & Zoom | Scroll direction : natural -> UNCHECK
  • There is an app to add natural scrolling to Snow Leopard – Scroll Reverser: http://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/
• Like the full screen apps a lot – more useful to me than Spaces ever were
• Zoom in window is cool for visually impaired (but I can’t find how to zoom the whole screen)
• Love love love email – threads so clean and crisp, I almost hope I get email from someone on aol!
  • Reverted to older layout (Preferences | Layout | Use classic layout -> CHECK) I prefer msgs on top content on bottom, not side by side – me too, so glad they left the classic option
• The iOS-like auto-save is both really cool and really disconcerting – will be confusing for a while as apps are updated, but sould soon become the new normal.
• Saving state when re-opened is nice, you can disable (hold down option to Quit and Discard Windows)

The Bad:

• The total lack of any indication of what does and doesn’t scroll is very annoying – particully on web pages where just parts of a page scroll – don’t need scroll bars, but surely SOME indication is needed!
  • Scroll doesn’t work in Help!
• Spaces has really been hobbled for power users – more people will use the feature now, but power users are taking a real step back
• The new monochrome Finder with the most important stuff at the bottom (hard drives) is REALLY annoying <— YES!
• Pitty you can’t do in-place encryption on external drives, has to be done when you format the drive (was linked to a Terminal hack – (http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/1935/lions-whole-disk-encryption)
• Changing definition of three-finger swipe BOO.  System Preferences | Trackpad | More Gestures | Swipe Between Pages | Swipe left or right with three fingers, disable Swipe between full-screen apps
• No AirDrop for earlier MBP (http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html)
• The mysterious hidden ~/Library folder, hold down “option” in Finder and you’ll see it in Go menu.
• Found some hiccups in Console, due to new Safari model, “sandboxd: ([323]) WebProcess(323) deny file-read-data … /Adobe/AIR/ELS/<file>” edited entries in com.apple.security.plist and they’re gone.
• No “obvious” way to hide the “message” pane in the new mail layout. When I delete a message it jumps to the next one and marks it as read which I may or maynot want. Can switch back to Classic mode which does allow hidding the message pane.

The stuff that makes you go, “huh.”

• There doesn’t appear to be Save-As any more – Save a Version doesn’t appear to do it, had to use Duplicate – and when you save your duplicate it does NOT remember where you were in the file system – REALLY annoying!
• Launchpad – meh. I use search to find apps on iOS, use Alfred on the Mac because I don’t want to have to search around visually
  • I think it’ll be great for Windows users used to a Start Menu-like this, and for people who think desktops should be cluttered with icons, they can clutter Lanch Pad instead!

What Died During the Upgrade:

• Existing MacPorts installations are destroyed by the upgrade – RC1 of Lion support released
• TrueCrypt was killed by the update, seemingly because FUSE was killed by the update
• iCal went nuts – entire duplicate calendars popping up, and then not disapearing when they were deleted
  • No problems here in iCal – 4 calendars syncing + 5 subscriptions
• There are bugs in some Automator actions – so the automator scripts I rely on every day in work died (the Get Contents of Clipboard action gives currupted output for a start)
• My Desktop changer app DeskLickr is no longer able to change my desktop wallpaper 🙁
• Cleared out all old PowerPC programs (view with System Profiler) beforehand, only item that was identified as incompatible was Default Folder X.  More info here http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3258
• Mail.app and add-ons (SpamSieve and Signature Profiler)
• XCode upgrade (now free in app store? – yes) first install resulted in Xcode reporting inconsistent state, ran installer again and all is well.

Misc

• Anyone else reminded heavily of Window7 on some of the OS animations? Nope
• To really get the most out of this OS you need a mutlitouch trackpad – multitouch on the MagicMouse is a disaster – RSI-inducing hell!
• Neat little add-on in /System/Library/CoreServices, Wi-Fi Diagnostics, includes data capture as a pcap file.
• Also found Network Link Conditioner prefpane in Utilities folder, looks to be able to shape bandwidth based on pre-defined or user-defined profile.

Picks:

• Bart: Monopoly for iPad – http://itunes.apple.com/ie/app/monopoly-for-ipad/id405634168?mt=8
• Adam: Zoom H4n Handy Recorder ($299.00 USD): http://www.zoom.co.jp/english/products/h4n/
• Adam (bonus pick): Ticket to Ride ($7.99 USD): http://www.daysofwonder.com/dow-online/en/t2r/ipad/ (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ticket-to-ride/id432504470?mt=8)
• John: Team Fortress 2!!!!! FREE http://www.teamfortress.com/ WE MUST PUSH LITTLE CART
• Allison: $8 VidConvert from http://www.reggieashworth.com/vidconvert Really efficient video conversion – amazing compression, especially shrinking .avi files from point and shoots
• Don: Moom from http://manytricks.com/moom/http://manytricks.com/moom/

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