Over the next two weeks I’ll be publishing a sequence of quick videos to help folks with some of the small changes they will be experiencing having migrated from Snow Leopard (OSX 10.6) to Mac Lion (OSX 10.7).

My 1st impressions of OSX Lion is terribly favorable. I’ve noted that Apple has been able to maintain the same look & feel for the amateur user and at the same time providing some necessary and often potent tools for the experienced in the background.

The new Mail application is a great example of a good product, which is now even better. Although Apple’s Mail application was the 1st to provide access to Microsoft’s Exchange 2007 platform (long before Microsoft’s Outlook 2003) and its enhanced features, the application itself was limited and regularly subject to crashing.

Furthermore, access to Gmail as an IMAP service was ‘hit-and-miss’. Mail messages would appear and vanish at random and the Internet forums where full of similar grumbles from folk utilizing hosted Exchange mail. The application interface was terrible and the navigation between separate accounts was ungainly. Nonetheless it was still a more acceptable alternative to Microsoft’s Entourage.

The most recent version of the E-Mail application has an especially powerful business interface. Navigation is intuitive and doubtless a trend that other’s will follow. The ability to show and hide the folders isn’t new however the icon facilitating this action is both intuitive and convenient.

The facility to add quick fixes to folders though not new is further boosted by the ‘show-hide ‘ feature of the folders. As a user who amasses mail messages and catalogues each and every one, my folder list is in depth and the simple task of fileing messages had been an awkward task the releasing of this evolutionary Mail application.

It is not all good news though. Put simply , Safari is a travesty.

While I have yet to establish if the issues I have been experiencing are related or otherwise it would seem that Safari in the Snow Leopard guise was bullet-proof and curdled milk in OSX Lion.

I have noted that AdSense accounts can’t display and so the CPU utilisation is frequently at it’s maximum whenever Safari is launched. Understandably, the majority may not be concerned with AdSense promotions ‘ however it’s a straightforward technology that all browsers should be able to accommodate. I have tested both Chrome and Firefox without issue hence I can be hopeful that Apple is now aware of the issue and is busy working on a solution.

I have also read a number of forum posts where folks are saying that applications have stopped working since the upgrade. This is par-for-the-course usually whenever an O. S. is overhauled. Most industry leaders are advising that people should wait a couple of weeks before upgrading giving software developers time enough to acclimatize to the new OS.

The following fortnight will be a fascinating period as people upgrade and adapt to Mac OSX Lion. I’ll be ‘keeping an eye’ on what’s being declared and posting to my Mac Lion Blog in association with the video’s I mentioned earlier.

Meanwhile, let’s be optimistic that Mac OSX 10.7.1 is on it’s way with some significant solutions for Safari.

Zane AL-Said is an 18 year specialist of the retail and wholesale industry. He is also an avid Motor Racing fan.

Zane owns and operates Simply IT Services which is a wholesaler of refurbished desktop as well as a supplier of Apple Mac Support Services.

Check out our review of the release of OS X Mac Lion.

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