A perfect morning — warm April sunshine, a hunk of dead tree (newspaper) and a hot cup of joe (mmm, Butter Pecan Roast). And, who should appear at my door but Scruffy, the American Kennel Club certified feature retriever, with fresh news about Apple’s upcoming Mac operating system rewrite.

TextEdit 1.7 comes bundled with the current OS X Lion Preview Release and sports (image above) an updated user interface. The improved graphic menu bar offers one-click access to text highlighting and, to my thinking, attractive icons.

The bad about TextEdit’s menu bar is that it’s not configurable — you can’t move or add things. It’s still early days yet, so perhaps Apple’s still brewing a stronger release.

An app with pedigree

The second headline feature is vertical text layout used in Asian languages, such as Japanese and Chinese. That said, Scruffy and I are kind of curious as to why Apple chose this particular time to include this feature — in this increasingly digital world, traditional right-to-left, vertical column layout is fading from use.

Perhaps they’re thinking about Hebrew?

TextEdit — Support for vertical layouts for East Asian languages, as well as a new graphical menu bar with font selection and text highlighting. The new TextEdit also supports Apple’s new automatic file saving and versions technologies — Wikipedia

See also:
— Can my Mac run OS X Lion?
— New in OS X Lion: QuickTime 10.1
— New in OS X Lion: About This Mac
— New in OS X Lion: Mail 5
— AirPrint Activator 2.0b8: OS X Lion compatible

With Apple’s new automagical file saving and versions tech, you’ll never have to worry about losing work again, which is a good thing. However, that magic is happening someplace in the background and Scruffy isn’t clear on how well OS X will tidy up after itself — who wants more system cruft to clean?

Thereupon, for people who’ve been using Macs since the early ’90s, the gold standard for word processing is still Microsoft Word 5.1a. OS X Lion’s TextEdit 1.7 is, at least in my humble estimation, a pretty darned good (basic) writing tool in the same league as that storied app for yore…

What’s your take?

Has Scruffy (Tip — Scratch him behind the ears) visited your home or office? Dish a little in the comments below on what you like, and not, in Apple’s OS X 10.7 Lion Developer Preview…