Apple Announces Lion will be Released Summer 2011

Mac OS X Lion will be available this summer.  Woot!  Lion, version 10.7, add some serious work flow and UI enhancements.  Lion takes some cues from iOS and now allows programs and apps to be displayed full screen.  I love this feature as it allows for a workspace with no distractions.  WriteRoom, one of my favorite writing programs, has had this feature and now Lion allows it system wide.

Auto Save.  What an ingenious idea.  Finally, an operating system that saves your work, without user intervention. "Lion saves changes in the working document instead of creating additional copies, making the best use of available disk space. The lock feature prevents inadvertent changes from being saved and automatically locks documents after two weeks. And the revert feature returns you to the state the document was in when you last opened it."

But, Lion takes it one more step with a feature called Versions. "Versions records the evolution of a document as you create it.  Mac OS X Lion automatically creates a version of the document each time you open it and every hour while you’re working on it. If you need to revert to an older version or retrieve part of a document, Versions shows you the current document next to a cascade of previous versions — in an interface similar to that of Time Machine — so you can see how your work looked at any given time. You can revert with a click, or quickly copy and paste work from a previous version into the current version."

And no need to purchase multiple versions  of Lion to get certain features.  Apple provides a single version, with all features, including Lion Server.  That's right, you get all of the features of Lion Server on every computer running 10.7 .

I cannot wait until I can get my hands on 10.7 and get a chance to put it to the test!  I will let you know when I do.