AppleInsider has published several outstanding pieces over the last few days reporting on the first developer preview on the upcoming Mac OS X 10.7 – Lion. Anticipated to be released later this summer, in many ways it will be a radical shift in terms of user interface and functionality. (Think a merge of your iPhone and your Mac.)
In addition to new Finder, Desktop, and Dashboard metaphors, the upcoming OS says goodbye to some previous features, such as Front Row, built-in Java Runtime (not as big a deal as it sounds), and Rosetta. It’s this last one that may affect the most users. Rosetta allows you to run older software, written for the PowerPC generation Macs, on your Intel machine. So if you’ve been running, say Microsoft Office 2004 or Quark XPress 6 – which have been running just dandy on 10.6, you’re going to need to replace them before upgrading to 10.7.
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An easy way to discover which programs you’ll need to upgrade, is to use the the Activity Monitor utility (you’ll find it, naturally, in Applications -> Utilities). This application provides a wealth of information about what’s going on inside your computer, if you truly want to get your geek on. But in this case, all you need to do is to make sure the “CPU” tab is highlighted and sort by “Kind”. All applications listed as PowerPC will have to go before you can upgrade. The applications you are checking on need to be open (launched) to show up in the list.
Don’t say you didn’t get enough warning.
Note: Since Lion is still in development, no feature set (or lack there of) is written in stone. It is possible removed features will be written back in – or more will be written out. Still it’s always good to keeps tabs on what you are running.
Apple today released a public beta of