OS X Lion Dev Preview 3

Since I don't frequent MR / AI / the other Mac sites, I figured I'd ask here: for anyone who's spent any time playing with Lion since the first preview release, do you know if Mail 5 finally lets people set an honest-to-goodness font for outgoing mail in a way that (a) sticks, and (b) doesn't need to be done every time?

 

I totally agree with you. I'm running DP3 and sadly no. I don't know why Apple is doing this crap? Mail for Lion is REALLY good. Lots of new and useful features but I can't believe that NOBODY at Apple ever wants to permanently set their own color and style of font for outgoing messages? Weird. This is easily done in Outlook. I've been really annoyed about this since Panther. I thought I was the only one who cared about this issue? They just don't seem to want to implement it. Makes no sense.

 

Maybe Jobs received too many office e-mails in the past written at 48 point size in neon pink so he decided to take that feature out. I was disappointed to see that this feature was lacking if only because I wanted to show off Helvetica to my friends that still stick to Lotus Notes and Windows.

 

never thought of that reasoning, I kept thinking it was become some idiot programmer was too lazy to add something COMMON in the last 20 years. good lord we had set fonts and size for e-mail in the BBS days with terminal emulators.

but for me im hoping they fix PPD/PS issues and fix the fast window switching by keyboard like windows Alt+Tab, yes im aware it can be done but a two step process is SLOW

 

Jobs is a particular person who has been know to steer Apple one way or another based on his personal preferences or any ideology. That is one of the reasons (though there are many) why iOS still doesn't support Flash. Another example is that he changed the cafeteria at Cupertino so that it offered a lot more healthier food once he started undergoing cancer treatment.

I am not saying that is what is going on here but it is a possibility since this feature has been in e-mail clients (and even online e-mail hosts) for a long time now. I remember setting my default font, size, and color back in the USA.net days when it was free.

 

It's not the the feature is "lacking" per say, after all you can customize your emails in Mail, the problem is you have to customize them each time you start a new email which is stupid. There's no way to set it permanently in preferences.

THIS ☝☝☝☝☝

Well TBH, I'm not seeing how this is a bad thing in terms of Jobs making that decision. I don't think companies would be happy to feed their employees with junky greasy crap from the cafeteria as opposed to serving lean cuts of chicken, veggies and natural beverages.

 

I didn't say that it was bad but rather an example (just off the top of my head) where Jobs made a decision that affected Apple based on his personal preferences and/or his ideology at the time. Not to go off on a tangent but I have been to the cafeteria up there in Cupertino before Jobs underwent cancer treatment. Even then, it wasn't all that bad. It was also where I met Weird Al. The cafeteria at Cupertino, even now, is still worlds better than the contracting company running the operation here in a federal building that absolutely butchers the Cincinnati chili recipe.

 

MessageFont in the Mac App Store lets you do this... since Apple Mail doesn't, but it cost $5... I'd rather just use Thunderbird.

 

Thanks for the info, all.

One other thing about Lion: is the scrolling in Safari any smoother on Flash-laden pages?

 

Is it possible to download the OS X Lion DP3? If so where can I get it at?

 

You have to be a registered and paid Mac developer and Apple will provide you the code to download it from the Mac App Store.

 

Quick bump for anyone who's used Safari 5.1 in Lion and can clarify on this. The degree of choppiness in Flash-heavy pages in Safari 5.0.5 on 10.6.7 is enough to make me want to go back to Firefox. Even an embedded YouTube video in one post on a thread makes the scrolling choppy.

I realize I can use Click2Flash to help with this (though HTML5 replacements on YouTube take considerably longer to load for me), but I'd rather use a browser which is consistently silky-smooth.

 

You would do yourself a huge service by just waiting until the finished retail version is released to the public before passing judgement. Of course it's not perfect yet, it's not meant for anyone to actually "use", it's only to help the developers get their apps up to snuff by release time.

 

I'm not passing judgment -- I've never used Lion. I'm just wondering if the new Sarari build in Lion handles Flash better than the current Safari build does on the most recent Snow Leopard point release.

Safari gets choppy with Flash as it is right now, so I'm hoping that's improved in the dev previews.

 

Oh sorry man. I just re-read your post. My issue is I hang out on Macrumors so much that my defenses go up when people complain about Lion when it hasn't been released. Now, I'm not sure why you're having issues with Safari 5.05 with Flash. On battery, full screen flash videos (although not choppy) do run in a more "frame by frame" motion. With A/C connected they run perfectly. On battery the notebooks run on Intel HD graphics. On A/C they run on the dedicated GPU. I have tried Lion DP3 and I will say Safari isn't ready for sure, but neither is the rest of the system. Gonna take a week off of Macrumors.

 

Hah, know what you mean. Have seen a few posts like that myself. "Lion sucks man!"

I guess I should clarify that the problem with Safari 5.0.5 + Flash 10.3 in SL isn't so much with Flash video playback as it is Safari's own performance when there are Flash elements in the page being viewed. It's a minor thing, but I'm talking about scrolling down a page that's all text (like a long thread here on NBR) vs. scrolling down a page that's all text, but with a Flash video embedded (like a thread on any vB forum which is mostly text, but where someone has an embedded YouTube video in their post). The former scrolls perfectly smooth; the latter is choppy. Heavier Flash sites -- MSNBC's Powerwall, Gizmodo -- are even more choppy.

What's a little annoying is that when using Firefox (3.6 or 4.0, last I tried months ago), scrolling is always buttery smooth.

The smooth scrolling option in System Preferences doesn't seem to make much of a difference one way or another. Oh, and I'm on an older MBP -- 15" from '09, C2D @ 2.53 / 4 GB / 9400M / an SSD -- but I'd imagine this isn't a hardware issue.

 

Well I can definitely address your question. I do have Lion DP3 installed on a partition. Downloaded the 10.3 Flash update and have the latest version of FF. Surfed to NBC's Powerwall. You're right, that's quite a flash-heavy site. I can honestly tell you that Safari's scrolling under Lion is very much improved. In SL Powerwall scrolls pretty badly, even with FF (but it's slightly better). In Lion Powerwall scrolls much better, but FF is even better still. Comparing Safari's scrolling with Flash between SL and Lion is like night and day but FF under Lion is still a bit better handling Flash, but not significant enough to switch from Safari.

 

Thanks for that -- good to know it's gotten better. If you have a second, could you see if Safari in Lion is still a little clunky on threads with some YT embedded videos (like here) compared to SL? It's a pretty dramatic difference in SL; wondering what it's like in Lion.

 

Okay I just checked that out. Under Safari for Lion that thread with the embedded videos scrolls very smooth. Under SL, yeah, not great. Funny though, FF under Lion doesn't scroll as smooth as Safari under Lion with those embedded videos. All in all for only a developer release that's not out yet Apple has done quite a good job in Lion. Just a few quirks they need to work on but that's really it. Can't wait for WWDC next week to see the whole thing in action.

 

I don't remember--in the past, did Apple release its OS versions at time of announcement, or at a later release date? (i.e. should I be stalking the apple store in 6 days )

 

I can't speak for next week's show but many people lose sight of the fact that WWDC is a developer conference and IMO I can't see them delivering Lion immediately following WWDC. They will show it in it's full form I'm sure but I'm pretty sure they want the developers to finish up coding their apps by showing the rest of what Lion is offering before release.

I will say though, lately Apple has been under-promising and over-delivering so it's quite possible that we'll get it much sooner than expected. I just don't see a point of having developer conference if they are going to release Lion right after the show. What would be the reason for developers to attend? If that's the case then this would just need to be just another product announcement show. Historically they've announced immediate product releases at WWDC because that won't affect developers but OS releases, never.
Just sayin'.

 

So. With Lion coming next month and with DP4 out, I realized I have one other question: in the dev builds, does Preview.app still have an issue rendering non-"standard" characters?

I have many PDFs which were created in various software which show black boxes for arrows, symbols, and the like when opened in Preview.app. The same PDFs are fine elsewhere.

 

weird.. never had that problem... maybe some language or Font issue on your machine?

 

I don't think it is. Have seen it before and after clean installs of OSX, and the same PDFs work fine in other readers under OSX.