Apple Announces Mac OS X Lion (10.7), Invites Security Researchers, and My First Impressions

On Thursday 24th February (Happy Birthday Steve), Apple released long-awaited updates to their Macbook Pro family, as well as a Developer Preview of Mac OS X 10.7, codenamed “Lion”. Now while new hardware is cool, I tend to be far more excited by Apple’s OS releases. I’ve been lucky enough to play with Lion, and while there are a few bugs (I’ve submitted bug reports), the new features and interface tweaks are already looking pretty good.

The interface is now a lot snappier, with a bit less time spent on ‘fading’ animations. I also get the impression that there have been improvements to the networking framework, as network activity seemed a bit faster than on my 10.6 box. Lion also now runs everything, including the kernel, in 64-bit mode by default. This would explain some of the speed improvements.

Hit the jump for key features, and security details. Read more