Please excuse my pun above, but I think Apple really went a bit too far in the philosophy of "User uses the OS the way we want it" by removing features or changing things for the sake of change and in the name of style, without looking at the usability side. Usually, that was Apples strong side: Everything is consistent, easy to use, and straight to the point.
Over the past releases, this philosophy has changed - but the usability was still there. Apple added some visual effects and unnecessary other things, but I was okay with it, since it didn't (significantly) bog down the performance or user experience.
Sadly, today I must announce that Lion sacrifices usability for the sake of style, and this is a first in the long list of releases that OS X has seen.
You might argue "hey, they improved everything and even added some nice gestures and other iOS stuff". Yes, the improvements are definitely there, with Safari and the Finder being the more outstanding efforts. Some people might like the new look of Mail, others don't, I was getting used to it when I found those... "style victims".
Apples eMail software has, as some other apps, a pretty full screen mode. Once despised by the Mac-followers, full screen comes to Lion, and I really appreciated the feature that comes with it: Full screen means being distraction-free.
Of course I wanted to read and write my eMails in a distraction-free environment, so I gave full screen a shot. Anyone who reads or writes loves full screen modes in applications like Scrivener, Ulysses, Write Room etc., so for Mail it is a natural benefit. But when I fired up the "New Mail" window and wanted to browse my contacts... you see... I couldn't.
Mail usually has that nice floating address book window that you can open by hitting a button in the compose window. I found that it is not there. "Okay", so I thought, "I just have to customize the toolbar so that it shows up in the composition window!" It really was not there, so I went back to windowed mode, customized the toolbar, added the Address Book button to the window, and hit OK.
Back to the full screen mode, I was finally ready to write my eMail. New eMail, window slides up... and it's not there.
The damn button is not there!
That means, inconsistently to the previously customized toolbar, the "new mail" window in full screen mode uses a locked selection of what you can do or can't do.
Okay, so... full screen mode is pretty pointless if you can't browse your contacts while writing eMails. Do I really have to know all the names of the people I want to write to? What if I forget someone?
Address Book
Always loved the Address Book app, since it is useful, nifty, no-thrills and gets the things done.
What have they done to it in Lion? Hey, it's apparently the same in terms of functionality... except it looks now like a real book! I don't know what brought them to this. Because of this simple design change, the well-known traditional three-column-view is now a thing of the past. Indeed, either you see the groups on the left and the names on the right or you see the names on the left and the details of one person on the right. You always have to click to change those views if you want to switch between groups and want to see somebodys details.
Why that would be useful must be Apples best-kept secret. Oh right, it looks like a book now. Helloooo I am not using a book! I am not even on an iPad with limited screen estate, why would I want this layout on a real computer? Anybody??
Not to forget: If you keep hitting CMD-1, 2 and 3 repeatedly switching views, the window moves to the right until it is off screen. Yeap, great programming right there.
Launch Pad
Launch Pad is useless on a computer. It is probably nice for the millions of "iPad to Mac" switchers who don't know how to open a Finder window or drag an application to the trashcan. But for everyone else, there is little to no use for it. You can't even navigate to an app while typing its name, no keyboard navigation at all, it is really just the same thing as an iPhone or iPad app navigation solution.
For real computer users, I can recommend solutions like Quicksilver, Alfred or Drag Thing, hell, even Spotlight. Any solution from third parties is better than this. Message to Apple: People are more intelligent than this. Really.
Finder
In general the system has been upgraded in a great way, but some of the functionality in the Finder is still a mystery to me. "All my files" - how useful is it to see all your 2000 PDFs in a coverflow interface? Err, don't know, gladly I can just remove this from the side bar. Speaking of which, the drives have been moved to the bottom of the list - and you know what Apple will do next when this happens. They will try to get rid of the whole file system, telling the user what he can and can't do. The ultimate consumer device. Don't believe me? Looky, the Library folder has been... where is it? Heh, it has been changed to invisible by default, the user is not supposed to deal with it.
You might also miss the "back" gesture (three fingers swipe) in the Finder. Instead it will present you the Dashboard, making Finder navigation a bit more cumbersome.
Air Drop, by the way, looks useless if you are logged in on both computers - I couldn't see the other computer with it.
Mission Control
Ahh, I wanted to like that one, really. And I do! But there is one nagging detail that I actually hate about Mission Control and how it includes Spaces and Expose in one interface. It can't replace the classic Expose of Snow Leopard, because it does not show minimized windows! Those remain in the Dock. Snow Leopard displayed all minimized windows on the bottom row, and I can't possibly understand what was so bad about it. What will the explanation be? "People don't minimize their windows anymore" or something like that?
Well, so much for now. It is really all I can think of now, but there are probably even more problems. As long as Apple won't fix at least some of those terrible design choices, I will be sticking with my good old S.L. - leaving PPC apps behind was really not the biggest problem for me...
