Is Mac OS X Lion Apple’s Best Innovation Ever?

It’s been just a few days now that Steve Jobs’ keynote at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco (Jun 6-10) has concluded! And what an event it was!

Leave alone the showcasing of the newest technologies and latest innovations from Apple including iOS 5 (to be available this fall meant for iPhone 3GS and above, iPad & iPad 2, and 3rd & 4th generation iPod Touch) or iCloud (a cloud-based service for syncing and backing up documents, photos, calendars, contacts, music, and email), the event was ‘Significant’, for it showcased to the world, the very first preview of the Mac Operating System’s next major version X Lion.

Once the news is out, there’s no stopping back! And rightly so, after all, you wouldn’t get to hear about so many tech innovations in a single day under one roof! But that’s how iGod had planned!

Now that the World Wide Web is teeming with reviews of WWDC 2011 and the internet is flooded with reviews, synopsis, expert analysis, and critical insights on Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5 or iCloud, I don’t really find it fruitful to make this post yet another boring discourse.

Let’s not talk about what ‘can be’ or ‘should be’. Let’s try and see what’s there for the offering. Here’s a brief  ‘easy-to-digest’ summary of the salient features of Mac OS X Lion.

• The new OS X Lion has 250+ fresh features!
• There’s Multi-Touch Gestures to give users an iPhone like feel and touch.
• With Mac OS X Lion, the App Store comes with delta upgrades for faster app updates. Besides, the Mac App Store is now the #1 channel for buying any software and is ahead of Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Office Depot.
• There are more than 3,000 new APIs in Mac OS X Lion
• If you want to upgrade any of your earlier versions of Mac OS like Snow Leopard to X Lion, all you need to do is buy it from Mac App store. No more discs involved!

Here’s an insider look at what more you can expect from the Mac OS X Lion once it hits the App market place in July with an upgrade price of $29.99.

Just 2 latest stats that I came across:

• Mac users – More than 54 million globally
• Mac has grown 28%, while PC growth has shrunk 1% year-over-year!

With the X Lion ready to spring into action this July, the figures would certainly need to be revised before WWDC 2012 rolls out with yet another bunch of surprises!

The Beauty of +1’s

Last week a friend of mine, who's an artist by profession, asked me if I can give him some details on Gagosian Gallery. Now, I'm not that informed about galleries and this one surely sounded Greek! I Google'd and there it was! Pages of information on Gagosian Gallery from Google's Search Engine Result Page (SERP) listings. I clicked on the Wikipedia link and found what I was looking for. A second link directed me to an art review published in the New York Times, not too long ago, helped me gain extensive knowledge about contemporary art galleries in the US. While the Official site offered information on the gallery locations, gallery pictures, the ongoing exhibitions, and so on. The result, a smile of satisfaction on my friend's face and a feeling of contentment inside!

You might say "Whats so special about it?"

Well, you're right, that's how we all do it! Isn't it? I mean, we Google to find the desired information on people, places, products, events, news, and what not!

But, from now on things wouldn't be the same as before! And the change is surely for the better.

It's the newest addition from Google Labs +1 button for websites!

Now we already had +1 button in March, earlier this year, which aimed at helping us find the most relevant results as quickly as possible! The basic concept was to enable users share recommendations with the world right from Google's SERP listings. All that we had to do was click +1 tab on a search result, we found useful. These +1's then start appearing on our contact's search results who in turn would +1 their respective recommendations. So, the next time we Google something, say a recipe or a popular tourist place, we would find +1's on our Google results that some friend of ours have recommended as "this is pretty cool". Thus, it makes our selection much easier!

But even that's an Old Story now! On June 1st, Google Labs rolled out +1 buttons for websites as well! Now we'll start seeing +1's on websites, large and small, across the Internet! Google has partnered with - The Washington Post, Rotten Tomatoes, TechCrunch, Mashable, Bloomberg, Reuters, Nordstrom, The Huffington Post, O'Reilly, Best Buy, and AddThis to help users +1 their favorite links! However, to see +1 recommendations from your friends and contacts in Google search, make sure you're signed in to your Google Account.