At 9:32 AM +0100 13/8/11, Doug Browne wrote:
>
>I have been using Lion since the day it came out and to start with I 
>was confused and appalled! After a lot of experiment and several 
>visits to the nearby Apple Store I am getting to know Lion quite 
>well.  Apart from the beautiful new Mail, there are so many useful 
>little features such as being able to change the size/shape of a 
>window by dragging any edge our corner. Once you become familiar 
>with them, 'Gestures' opens up a whole new way of operating my Mac.

Huh? Haven't we always been able to do this? Or perhaps I'm thinking 
of just the bottom right corner. So now you can do it with any 
corner. Wow! And you spent days learning this to save you, what, five 
seconds a year?

>Yes Geoff there is a two finger gesture!

There doesn't need to be -- I can already do on -- in the direction 
of Lion!  :)

>Having used Macs for some twenty years, I was certainly stuck in a 
>groove regarding operating them.

And why not? You're stuck in a groove about how to breathe, walk, 
switch on a light, boil water and make a cup of tea. It all works. 
Why waste time learning a new way of doing essentially the same thing?

>  Now, with multiple Desktops and not having to find applications in 
>a file or the Dock, I love the new OS as it seems so natural.

Yep -- after you have experimented for days and visited the nearby 
Apple store numerous times and overlearned it. Soccer players think 
hitting the ball with their head is so natural too. Lucky there was a 
nearby Apple store. Most people in the world don't have that luxury. 
Here in the prosperous south-eastern and bayside suburbs of 
Melbourne, where perhaps 1.5 million people live, we haven't had a 
dedicated Apple retailer for 10-15 years (after Apple deliberately 
and cold bloodedly send the early retailer broke).

But just yesterday, I visited the regional shopping centre, 
Southland, and was startled to see signs reading "Apple Store now 
open on Fashion Bridge, Level 2". Well, I thought, that location 
tells me all I need to know about the future of the Mac given that 
both Apple and Westfield (the mall owners) are obsessive about 
appropriate grouping of shops.

In Papua New Guinea (and vast swathes of the rest of the world) our 
Internet access is limited and there is no Apple Store, although one 
retailer in Port Moresby now sells Apple. I know more about Macs than 
he does, though.

>It is informative to see very young kids entering the Apple Store, 
>going up to Mac and with hardly any hesitation, performing the task 
>they want. They certainly could not do this a month ago.

They actually did do this a month ago and a year ago and more. 
Starting with no preconceptions, they grokked the system. Just like I 
did with the little beige box and mouse to the horror of the PC 
experts with which Chisholm Institute of Technology (where I worked) 
abounded with the time. Also don't forget that the new Mac OS mimics 
iPhones which in turn are similar in many respects to other phones. 
The current kids enter the store with phone experience.

In the end, why should I learn a new way of operating a Mac -- which 
for me is simply a tool -- when it won't do the work I want it to do? 
Your WPing is going to be transformed by the new OS? I don't think 
so. And so on. Lion won't run Canvas, ergo a Mac with Lion is no 
longer a useful tool for me because Canvas is my tool of choice. 
other programs can't do what it does -- if if they can, it is more 
difficult.

Well, wonder of wonders -- the sun has broken through in Melbourne 
and is now drying the clothes I put on the line yesterday. it feels 
so natural!  :)

Cheers, geoff