Here's my current assessment of Lion's features. [+] Save/Resume - Out of all the changes this version of OS X has this is by far the best. Quicktime loads videos at the point I left them and iTunes doesn't need to reload everything every time it's opened. It's not a huge change but it is very noticeable. Once more third party apps take advantage of this it's going to be hard to live without it. [+] Launchpad - It's a bit superfluous considering you can create a link to the apps folder in the dock but it does provide another way of accessing apps. Since the beginning of OS X there has never really been a start menu analog, some people even choose to just leave every app they use in the dock. Between dock folders, Quicksilver and Launchpad there's now three perfectly good ways to quickly access apps. I don't know if this will bring more iOS users to the Mac but it certainly doesn't hurt. [-] Full Screen Apps - On a laptop or HTPC I can see this being useful but on a multi-monitor setup it's unsightly. Not only are the window to full screen animations some of the jerkiest I've seen on OS X but on the other monitors it just displays the ugly cross stitch pattern we've all become accustomed to in the iOS multitasking bar and folders. This version of the OS was not made with multi-monitor users in mind and this is one painfully obvious example. [-] Scroll Bars - They just pain look ugly particularly when you've got them running in both directions. The gray bar works well on iOS because it's not set within a scroll bar and disappears when not in use. [+/-] Mission Control - The absence of minimized windows is a huge drawback for me and it's another feature designed without multi-monitor support in mind but it has potential. At some point I think enough people are going to complain that Apple will put some serious thought into fixing it's faults. For the moment I'd rather have expose back.
I'm hoping they can fix the minimize window problem in 10.7.1. I really liked that feature in SL. Every time I go to Mission Control I think, "**** this, I want Expose back." I didn't like the new Spaces at first but I'm getting used to it now. Swiping spaces instead of hitting Control+arrow key really simplifies it for me. I really like Full Screen Apps though. No complaints there.
I hate mission control! If you have more less than three windows open, you can't see any of them. If you have more than four windows open in one app, you won't see be able to see them. And holding down an app icon to get a contet menu instead of app expose is worthless. Why would Apple change this? PS. you can use BetterTouchTool to reset most of the gestures to pre- Lion.
Is it working with MS Word 2008? I have papers that I'm writing with Endnote, and can't afford the time to mess around waiting for a fix. I bought but am holding on actually installing it.
RoaringApps has a long list of apps that they tested with Lion. Here is Office 2008: http://roaringapps.com/app:2533 As long as you don't clean install Lion, and already have Office 2008 on Snow Leopard, it should work fine.
