Apple’s latest OS: Lion

Developers had a sneak peak at the new OS that is about to be released by Apple this summer, and they are naming after the king of all cats, Lion.A slew of information is already out both officially and developers who have been tinkering with the OS in and out. After reading through some of the interesting features, I have to agree with most of them out there; this may be the most comprehensive improvement by far for Apple.

Changes are made on all aspects from the improvements of touchpad gestures, to Spotlight and Finder capabilities to networking, Ui’s, Time Machine and many more. A lot more improvements are made under the hood as well. With that being said, I have been thinking whether I should go with the upgrade or not. Getting a new OS certainly costs money and I hope that an upgrade option is available for people who merely just wants an upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion. However, I see this as unlikely as past trends shows that the OS costs around USD129 bucks, so it is gonna cost quite a bit for an upgrade. Couple to the fact that I’ll be doing that on my mac mini with a core 2 duo processor, which according to Apple, the minimum hardware standard that the OS will support. Whether or not I would fully enjoy all the new features without any performance hit remains to be seen. Will it be worth the money to perform an upgrade on my year old mac mini? Time will tell.

In all honesty, if the new Lion OS shows improvements in productivity, why not? I think it is an attractive purchase to keep up to date with the new Apple OS and I would be more than willing to try out new things and see what the OS can offer me in the future. I dont plan to get a new mac hardware, as I’m madly in love with my current mini, always the silent worker. It has never given me any problems at all whatsoever since i started using it and I hope it wont in the future. I have also added Applecare which would give me coverage for another 2 years, well through 2012. This is already a major disincentive for me to upgrade any hardware for that matter.

So what are some of the new features in OS Lion that I’m most looking forward to?

First off, is the new revamp mail. I love the current mail, extremely efficient and productive in using it. The new “iPad” layout would be a great improvement in how you use the mail and communicate with other people.

Secondly, is the Resume feature, in which Lion will reinstate all programs or apps that are running currently as it was when there is a need to restart your computer. In this way, you dont have to relaunch every app that you opened previously and you can immediately resume where you left off without any loss or damage to any file that you have been working on.

Time Machine. I never had the chance to use Time Machine as it requires a dedicated hard drive to backup all your data. With Lion you can backup certain files or folders and need not have to have a dedicated hard drive for backup. This added flexibility allows users to be given a choice in what to back up and what not to, saving space and time.

The preview capability have also been enhanced allowing you to see most files in full screen mode.

So these are some of the new features that I would like to try out immediately and would be of immediate benefit for me. You can read more at this site.

March 2 Event

The march 2 Event have been announced and it is a no brainer that they would announce the arrival of the highly anticipated iPad 2. Though there are already many rumors circulating around the web about possible specs, it still remains to be seen of what Apple will announce in a couple of days time. Will Apple wow us and surprise us again? Possibility, but they may also give a lackluster product announcement if nothing new that we have not heard were being revealed during the presentation.

Rumors are rampant, so there must be a couple of them that could ultimately be the truth come march 2 event. Looking back at the announcement,  it says at the bottom: “Come see what 2011 will be the year off” They mentioned 2011, the whole of 2011. Could it be that Apple would announce something else other than the iPad 2? It could be possible because they are in fact asking the world to come and look at what Apple has to offer in the year 2011. That could be a number of things other than iPad2. It could be Lion OS release dates, additional feature presentations of the OS, or maybe even the iPhone 5 that is set to release just around the corner. iPhone 5 could be a possibility because hardware wise, the iPad2 and iPhone 5 share a number of similarities, the CPU used for instance. If they are going to announce the tech specs of iPad2, why not announce for the iPhone 5 as well, or at least give a small sneak preview of what is to come. Then there is the much needed iMac refresh that is slated in the coming month or so, based on past trends of iMac releases.