Oh my god I hate OSX Lion

I read that people aren't very impressed with Lion, so I decided not to upgrade.

Then, I read that Lion includes support for tools that extend the life of solid state drives and for encrypting the entire hard drive.  Since both of these things seem very useful for my Air, I decided to go for it.  I can take some ugly applications.

Not that I have a big "tech blog" type following, but I have to grouch about all this, so here goes.

Ridiculous scrolling

When I first booted up my computer after installing Lion, I was greeted by an "upgrade assistant" screen telling me how to scroll.  "Duh," I thought.  I tried to scroll, but with no success.  I tried closing the program, but it warned me that I shouldn't, making me wonder if there was more to the tutorial.  It took me a good five minutes to figure out it was telling me to scroll the other way.

On every laptop trackpad that has been made since the invention of two-finger scrolling, you scroll down by dragging two fingers downwards (towards your body) and scroll up by dragging two fingers upwards (away from your body).  Down is down, up and up.  It makes sense.

As of OSX Lion, though, you drag up to scroll down and down to scroll up.  This is to mimic the "flick" type gestures you use on your iPhone (if you were duped into getting an iPhone).  The thing is, that's actually intuitive when you're actually touching the image.  The trackpad is separate from the screen, so there's no desire to act like you're "flicking" the image or document.  Nobody who has ever been born has difficulty grasping that you flick one way on a touchscreen phone and the other on a computer trackpad, but Apple decided to solve a problem that didn't exist and drive everybody absolutely crazy.

(You can turn this off in settings, but still.  Really?)

Ugly sidebar, and what is this Finder??

Remember when iTunes used to have nice, color-coded icons on the navigation bar?  That was before iTunes 10 came along.  Now the rest of the Apple navigation experience has gone the way of gray icons, either to make sure it takes me longer to do anything or to ensure those using black-and-white monitors aren't getting a lesser experience than everyone else.

Also, launching the Finder now defaults to a new "All My Files" view, laughing in the face of all my organization efforts.

And while I'm on frustrations with launching Finder, once I finally locate the gray "Applications" icon and click it (reaching the point I'd already be at in Leopard), I find I'm unable to "modify" (move) any of the core applications.  See, I spent an obscene amount of time building folders into which to sort all my applications and installing custom icons so those folders could look pretty on the dock.  Here, look:

In a new-agey move I bet Apple would appreciate, I made all the folder names verbs.  "Browse," "Communicate," "Organize," "Enjoy," "Edit," "Write," "Play."  It's been one of the rare times such effort proved well-spent, because I love it.  Only now, I can't put Address Book, iCal, etc. into those folders, because they can't be "modified."  So now I have to go with aliases, complete with ugly arrow icons and a cluttered Applications folder.

Vomit-inducing ugliness


Take a look at iCal:

And Address Book:

This is for people who remember with longing a day when we actually used physical calendars and address books.  And bought the most hideous ones possible.  This might be cute on the iPhone, which favors cuteness over functionality, but it has no place on my computer.  And there's no option to turn it off, either, which means as soon as I post this blog I'll be hacking my computer.

OH, and I forgot Launchpad.  You click it, it shows you all your applications.  In case you're one of those people who only uses your computer six times a year and doesn't have more applications than can fit on one screen.  Also, when did they become "applications" and not "programs?"  Damn you, Apple.

Anyway, I want my old operating system back.