Apple Announces OS X Lion

Apart from the MacBook Air, Apple has also taken covers of its latest OS X version, the OS X Lion, the eight iteration of the same. It seems, with this update, OS X has gotten even closer to its cousin iOS with a plethora of features directly ripped of from the latter. This is amusing in itself because iOS in its original for was derived from OS X and it’s now payback time for iOS and gives OS X something back!

To summarize whats new, here is a small summary of whats new with OS X Lion

App Store. On Macs

That’s right, your Mac will receive an App Store in the next 90 days. While there would be Mac Specific apps in there, it might turn out to be an all integrated App Store sometime in the future. Interestingly, the Mac App Store too would have the same 70:30 revenue sharing agreement with developers. Just like on the iOS App Store all software installations would involve just a single click. Other features include a re-download option – especially convenient when you buy a new Mac and want to load it with apps you already own. The App Store would also alert you when a new update to an installed App is available.

Launchpad

OS X Lion also gets a new Expose influenced interfaced that would be called the Launchpad. This is designed to offer you instant access to your apps – just like it happens on the iPad. All you need to do to launch the Launchpad is to click the Launchpad icon on the dock after which your windows fades away to be replaced by a full-screen display of all the apps on your Mac. You can swipe to access multiple pages of apps and You can also drag and drop items to folders Newly downloaded applications from the App Store will be listed automatically on the launchpad.

Full Screen Apps

Full screen apps is yet another feature that has been derived from the iPad. On iPad, every app is displayed full screen. Similar to that, on Mac OS X Lion you can bring an app to full screen with one click, switch to another full-screen app with a swipe of the track pad, and swipe back to the desktop to access your multi-window apps.

Mission Control

Next we have the Mission Control – which as the name suggests, would be the centralized “command center” of your Mac from where you can (in Apple’s words) get a bird’s-eye view of everything. This “everything” includes Exposé, Spaces, Dashboard, and full-screen apps— all in one place. You get the skype feature here as well. It also groups your open apps

Multitouch Gestures
If you though a touch screen Mac was on the anvil today, well that’s not happening any time soon. Instead, the Mac has received a set of new multitouch gestures for the track pad.

However, we’d be on hold till the Summer of 2011 till OS X Lion makes it to the public domain. Eagerly waiting? Well we sure are!