Mac OS X 10.7 Lion

The latest version of OS X (10.7 aka Lion) is out today. Link to the Mac App Store is here — you have to be running OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) to have the App Store installed. Price is $30.

The best and most complete overview of the new operating system is, as usual, John Siracusa’s writeup at this Ars Technica article.

* Quicken users: if you are running an older version of Quicken — prior to Quicken Essentials — read this article before you upgrade to Lion. You’ll need to export your financial data before upgrading because Lion does not support the older versions.

I think I’ll wait for a couple of weeks before upgrading. This is a major release and I prefer to watch the blogs for a while to see if there are any other incompatibilities or performance issues to be aware of. I don’t like surprises.

Related info

All of TUAW’s Lion tips in one place. Handy resource.

Lion Mail — Improved speed, some UI updates, full screen option, conversation threads.

Mission Control — The evolution of OS X’s Spaces, Dashboard and Exposé.

Make an OS X Lion boot disk — This is the first time an OS X update has been delivered exclusively as a download (from the Mac App Store), so there’s no physical installation media. When Lion installs it creates a 650 MB boot/recovery partition, but some of us still like to have an installation disk.

List of new features in Lion including OS Recovery.

Lion: 10 (or so) things that bug me — Erica Sadun’s thoughts on some of the new features.

A few nasty gotchas, including issues with Mail.app (receiving from POP account) and Network Attached Storage (NAS). Comments on this post also mention problems with VNC and Remote Desktop.

The Mac mini no longer ships with an optical drive. CDs and DVDs are going the way of floppy disks.

Mac App Store open for business

This morning Apple opened the Mac App Store. This is like the App Store for iOS devices (iPhone and iPad) except it’s for Mac computers.

It’s available as a download for Macs running OS X Snow Leopard. Go to Software Update (Apple menu) and download the 10.6.6 update and the Mac App Store will be installed as a new application in the Dock.

The difference between this and the iOS App Store is that software developers can still sell their apps independently, either through retail channels or directly over the web (and keep all the revenue), or they can leverage the App Store and the added exposure it will bring (and take 70% of the revenue – Apple keeps 30% to cover costs).

This could turn out to be a great deal, both for Mac users and the software developers who sell to them. Tons of added exposure for Mac software, and one place for potential customers to browse for the apps they want. The big selling points are easy discovery of apps and quick download and installation to your Mac. One thing I like about the iOS App Store is the ability to look at screenshots and user reviews, so you can get at least some idea of what an app is like before you install it. And like the iPhone and iPad, you’ll get a notification when there are updates to apps you have installed.

This is a huge change to the software sales model, and one that I think could be very successful. I think the software developers will find a lot of value in it, and if so I wonder if something like this will eventually materialize for Windows apps as well. The concept of a central software marketplace is a proven winner for mobile devices, and I don’t know why it couldn’t succeed for desktop and laptop computers as well.

RIM to release the Blackpad

According to this Bloomberg article, Research in Motion (RIM), the maker of Blackberry smartphones, plans to release a competitor to the iPad this November: the Blackpad.

Pricing for the device will be in line with the iPad, which starts at $499, the person said. RIM is focused on reaping additional profits from the tablet effort, rather than competing on price to sell a large number of devices, the person said.

In the tablet market, RIM will have to demonstrate how its device can stand out against products including the iPad, which has attracted buyers because of its integration with Apple’s iTunes service and many software applications, or apps. More than 225,000 apps are available for Apple devices, the company said in June. RIM said in April it had more than 6,000 apps.

So they’re going to launch a new device with far fewer native apps, to compete against the iPad which has a mature app store containing tens of thousands of titles and huge brand awareness right now, and they’re going to demand the same price as the iPad? Good luck with that strategy. I have a few questions:

• Where’s the mobile OS to compete with Apple’s iOS4? RIM still hasn’t delivered anything close to the touch capabilities found on the iPad/iPhone today. This is not a trivial point and I don’t know that RIM has the engineering chops to do it.
• What’s RIM’s answer to the App Store/iTunes ecosystem? Easy integration is critical to the adoption of a new device like this.
• What’s the retail strategy — is there a store people can walk in to and get their hands on the Blackpad when it’s released? This has been huge for Apple, and RIM needs a response here.
• What’s the differentiator? Is there anything about the Blackpad that says better than iPad?

I can see RIM getting some limited traction in the enterprise just due to brand recognition, but I don’t know if that’s enough to take the Blackpad very far considering they’re already late to a game they probably don’t even want to be in. And Blackpad is an awful name.

Hewlett-Packard Co., which bought smartphone maker Palm Inc. this month, said it plans to produce a tablet device that runs on Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system.

HP bought a company with a strong mobile operating system (Palm’s webOS) and tons of valuable patents, and they’re going to put Windows on their tablet instead?

Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer said yesterday the software company plans to increase its focus on tablets.

Translation: The software company plans to increase its focus on what the innovative companies are doing and attempt to duplicate that somehow.

What I think is likely to happen with these companies scurrying to jump into the ‘tablet’ space is something akin to the commodity PC market: A race to the bottom.