Apple has given Mac users another taste of Lion, the next version of Mac OS X.
Among the features demonstrated by Phil Schiller were multi-touch gestures using a Magic Trackpad; full-screen applications, which allow users to run applications in full-screen and toggle between the application and desktop; and Mission Control, which combines Exposé and Spaces.
Craig Federighi, senior vice president of Mac OS X also demonstrated the new full-screen interface for PhotoBooth which has some new effects and facial enhancements for specific areas, such as bigger eyes.
Apple also confirmed that the Mac App Store would be built-into Lion, along with in-app purchases. One of the features of the Lion App Store will be that updating applications won’t require the whole application to be downloaded, just those bits which have changed.
Resume allows Lion to re-instates applications as they were left when a Mac is restarted or the application re-launched.
Versions is a version control system which automatically takes a snapshot of documents as you work on them, allowing you to go back to previous states if you need to. Rolling back through previous versions of the document takes place in a Time Machine-style interface that shows the latest version on the left and previous versions stacked to the right. You can roll back to an entirely different version, but these are, in fact, active documents from which you can selectively copy and paste just the portions you want.
AirDrop lets you send a file to anyone in the vicinity. AirDrop appears in the Finder sidebar, and clicking it displays user account icons of potential recipients in a dynamic arrangement. Drop files and folders onto a person’s name and an alert pops up on their Mac to ask if they want to accept the transfer. When they confirm, the files are delivered directly to their Downloads folder.
The new version of Mail can have either a two-column or three-column view. It works full-screen and looks very much like Mail on the iPad. Searches are organised into categories, so if you type a word that happens to be someone’s first name, all matching contacts are displayed in one group in the list. Messages that match the term in their subject line are grouped below that. Search terms added to the bar are actionable. Say you add “Steve Jobs” as a contact, his name appears as a token (in pill-shaped enclosures, much like keywords in iPhoto) with a clickable left segment that allows you to switch between matching against messages sent to or received from that contact. It’s a more immediate way to build complex searches in Mail, rather than having to create a Smart Mailbox.
Mail 5 also features Conversations — an improvement on Mail’s current message threading system, and not dissimilar to that used in Gmail and in Sparrow.
Apple said that Lion would be a 4GB download from the Mac App Store and cost £20.99 for all the Macs linked to your iTunes account. It will be available next month.
