For more than a decade, there has always been a gap of three to a maximum of four months between the announcement of a new macOS version and its release on the market. However, before Apple switched to the strict annual cycle, things often looked completely different. For example, with 10.5 Leopard and 10.6 Snow Leopard it was more than 14 months – with OS X Lion it was around 9 months. The new system was shown for the first time at the “Back to the Mac” event in October 2010, and it came onto the market exactly 15 years ago. The motto of the event reflected the guidelines Apple followed during development. What worked well on the iPad (and partly iPhone) should also come to the Mac. The Mac became a kind of iPad in some respects
Launchpad, full-screen apps, mission control, gestures, resume, auto save and versions are some examples of features that Apple transferred from iOS to OS X. In addition, the scrolling direction was reversed, because in Lion you no longer pushed the scroll bar, but rather the actual content. Which sounds quite logical, because this is completely normal on touchscreens, but felt (and still feels) very strange and unusual for many Mac users.
“Mission Control” was Apple’s attempt to bring together Exposé, Spaces, Dashboard and full-screen apps in one large overview. However, many long-time Mac users liked the old Exposé/Spaces behavior better, because the basic function of Exposé (“all windows clearly arranged as tiles”) no longer provided for the concept. The full-screen apps didn’t cause any enthusiasm given the implementation either, as the view was often hardly suitable, especially for programs with more than one window – and also not for multi-display setups.
Handling documents
Documents are saved automatically, old versions can be searched like in Time Machine, apps open again in their old state after restarting – what sounds comfortable, but in practice caused a lot of criticism. The old workflow “Open file, change, save as…, original remains untouched” has been replaced by “Duplicate/Revert to…/Versions” in supported apps. Many people also saw this as a completely unnecessary change to a tried-and-tested principle – especially since the requirement was usually that when an app was started, it should be “fresh” and not bring back everything that had actually been closed.
Hidden Library, Rosetta Aus, Design
Other changes were also not entirely well received. Apple hid the library folder with Lion, installation DVDs were completely eliminated in favor of downloads – and PowerPC programs died virtually overnight because Rosetta was no longer included. Scroll bars disappeared as a standard visible element – instead Apple brought the design language of “skeuomorphism” to the Mac. What set the style for iPhone and iPad under iOS was found by quite a few to be inappropriate for work computers.
Radical conversion according to iPad logic…
Lion was so controversial mainly because Apple radically reshaped the Mac according to iPad logic: less visible file management, less classic window orientation, more full screen, more gestures, more automatic states, more App Store thinking. This certainly seemed more consistent to new users, but to many long-time Mac users it felt like the Mac was losing some of its desktop identity.
Still called “MacOS X” here – but Lion was then called “OS X”
…which Apple corrected again a year later
Apparently Apple also recognized that it had gone too far in numerous points. The next major release appeared in the summer of 2012 and also marked the switch to an annual cycle. Apple made improvements in many places and scaled back changes. No more mandatory automatic saving of changes without a query, the return of “Save as” as a hidden option, starting programs could start working without the previously opened documents, automatic locking of documents that had not been used for a long time disappeared – and Mission Control followed the Exposé logic more closely again.
