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Going on a Lion hunt [OS X 10.7 ready apps] — UPDATED

6 July 2011 6,934 views 11 Comments

Is your Mac and all of that software Mac OS X 10.7 Lion ready? Whereas Roaring Apps has compiled a long and, thereupon, one assumes fairly complete Lion software compatibility list, there’s more to being Lion ready than just the ability to run without crashing.

First things being first, you need to make sure your is hardware compatible with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. The short version of that story is you must have an Intel-based Mac with a Core 2 Duo or faster processor — PowerPC Macs aren’t supported:

Here’s a short list of the apps that also sport Lion-specific features, such as fullscreen mode, as well as commentary about other new features in the upcoming operating system release:

Utilities

Cocktail 5: Swiss Army Knife of Mac maintenance utility that’s currently in beta, ships in August

ClamXav 2.2: A free, open source antivirus app that’s fast and easy on the resources.

AppTrap 1.1.7: A Preference Pane that automagically prompts you to remove associated files when you delete an app

AirPrint Activator 2.x: Adds the files needed to make almost any third-party printer AirPrint compatible.

About This Mac / System Information: A lot more Mac system and software information delivered in tasty new interface.

CandyBar, Transmit, Coda updated for Lion Panic is among the first to tweak multiple apps for Apple’s latest big cat.

SuperDuper 2.6.3: The wildly acclaimed program that makes recovery painless, because it makes creating a fully bootable backup painless.

SmartBackup 3.2: An alternative lightweight backup application for OS X.

HoudahGeo 2.9: A geocoding solution for the Mac that offers support for iPhoto libraries that reference images located on external drives.

Dupin 2.3.x: An iTunes duplicates manager.

Lion Cache Cleaner 6: Keep your caches clean and your Mac running mean n’ lean.

As always, Apple giveth and Apple taketh away. Thereupon, there are a number of notable technologies and apps that have been excluded in OS X 10.7 with Samba (network file services), Rosetta (PPC software compatibility) and Front Row likely to be the most sorely missed.

Graphics, video

Although Apple’s highlighted feature list doesn’t include mention of under-the-hood improvements to graphics, there are plenty of graphical updates built into the operating system. Fullscreen apps, Mission Control and LaunchPad are all new and graphical ways to interact with your Mac.

Acorn 3: An affordable and very capable Photoshop replacement.

Conduit 3D: Composite and analyze live video input on set using nodal techniques in Photoshop, After Effects and, of course, use nodal compositing in Final Cut Pro and Motion.

QuickTime 10.1: More file export choices, more editing tools and QuickTime 7 isn’t gone just yet.

Hype 1.0.3: Animated web pages and graphics without Flash. Fast, easy, fun.

Aperture 3.1.3: Apple’s pro grade photo editing and management application.

iLife 11: iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iDVD and iWeb have all been updated for Lion

GraphicConverter 7.3: Image editing Swiss Army Knife. A true shareware app.

Internet

On the web side of things, Lion brings a lot of new functionality to table. One of the more interesting and potentially useful features is Safari 5.1′s do not track. A feature that’s also available in Firefox and Chrome, do not track sends a header to servers/sites you visit telling them not to track you — whether they do or don’t still up to them, but it’s start.

Safari 5.1: Brings WebGL, Do Not Track, Reader, fullscreen mode and more.
What’s new in Safari 5.1, 5.0.6

Firefox 6: Mozilla’s growth may have flattened out, but they’re making a strong play with their accelerated development program.
Firefox 5.0.1 fixes Lion crash, Java issues

Chrome 12, 13, 14: Offers fullscreen mode and it’s now stable under Lion.

Mail 5: Fullscreen mode, new toolbar + icons, greatly faster search, improved email threading, etc.

Reeder 1: RSS reader that fast, clean and stable (bye bye, NetNewsWire)

Productivity

In addition to Dictionary, which has gained deeper system-wide hooks and user interface, another major under-the-hood features gotten a complete rewrite is Speech, OS X’s integrated text-to-speech feature which includes scores of great voices in 40 languages and dialects (a.k.a. accents).

TextEdit 1.7: Sports an updated user interface, including an improved graphic menu bar offering one-click access to text highlighting, PDF signatures and more.

iWork 9.1: Fullscreen, auto save, resume and more.

Dictionary 2.2: The OS X default dictionary-thesaurus now launches in-app and features a new user interface.

Preview 5.5: There’s now a Signature tool that allows the user to capture (via the integrated iSight webcam) their John Hancock and it works well enough.

NeoOffice 3.2: Lion compatible text layout and rendering, copy and paste, drag and drop, font support and reduced PDF size.

Evernote 2.2.2: The premier way to save your ideas, things you like, things you hear, and things you see, and access them anywhere.

Mail Scripts 2.10.3: The gold standard for OS X Mail automation with scheduled sending, archive functionality and more.

DevonThink Pro, DevonThink Personal, DevenNote: Your brain(s) on your Mac.

The appearance of 1024 x 1024 icons in OS X Lion is something of a head scratcher, as in Snow Leopard’s 512 x 512 were already adequately huge and really didn’t have any practical application. So, why even bigger icons in Lion? Who knows.

Surely, there must be more Lion ready app out there, but searching the either the Mac App Store or MacUpdate for OS X Lion returns few results — a lot less than what you’re seeing here.

Know of more? Share a link in the comments below…

11 Comments »

  • Panic updates CandyBar, Transmit, Coda for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion | FairerPlatform said:

    [...] See also: OS X Lion icons are bigguns; Going on a Lion hunt [OS X 10.7 ready apps] [...]

  • Mail Scripts 2.10.3 delivers Lion compatibility | FairerPlatform said:

    [...] See also: Going on a Lion hunt [OS X 10.7 ready apps] [...]

  • Are your apps Lion compatible? How to check | FairerPlatform said:

    [...] done check out Fairer Platform’s Going on a Lion hunt [OS X 10.7 ready apps], a growing list of Lion ready apps that offer at least some features of the new operating system. [...]

  • Aperture 3.1.3 adds Lion fullscreen mode | FairerPlatform said:

    [...] See also: Going on a Lion hunt [OS X 10.7 ready apps] [...]

  • iLife Update: iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb, iDVD get Lion fresh | FairerPlatform said:

    [...] See also: Going on a Lion hunt [OS X 10.7 ready apps] [...]

  • Tim Tringle said:

    The 1024×1024 icons are a no brainer. Apple has been more forward thinking of lately and it still amazes me that people think this is unusual. Right now we have 27 inch monitors that support a native resolution of above 1920×1280. If desktop display’s are destined to go the way of the iPhone’s retina display then we are looking at 4K resolution at those monitor sizes. This means that the icons that seem plenty large now would literally drop to half size over night.

    If Apple double’s the size of those icons then they will remain compatible with current display technology and be future proof for whenever these next generation display’s appear. We’ll see how long that takes and considering how much a 27 inch IPS display costs today I shudder to think what these double resolution display’s would cost at first.

  • Pixelmator 1.6.6, PSE 9 Lion compatible? Acorn is | FairerPlatform said:

    [...] In related news, my current image editing axe is Acorn ($49.99) and, yes, it’s also Lion compatible. [...]

  • joberele said:

    Thank you FP for this listing,
    …….Plenty of graphical updates, improvements to graphics etc!
    I am disappointed to find that I have lost all my collection of ‘added’ Mail stationery (graphics) invitations, movies, thank you’s etc. Any replacement ideas?

  • joberele said:

    Update correction and thank you, Re: my earlier post ‘Lost’ Mail stationery:
    My Mail stationery is now all present! However, earlier, when I tried to use a stationery graphic on my Macbook Pro-most appeared to be missing! (In the meantime, I did a reinstall of stationery-I am not sure If that helped fix the situation.)

    A big thank you, to the good folk at FairerPlatform, who promptly and correctly advised me that my Mail stationery would not have been lost in the upgrade process to “Lion”.

  • 1Password 3.7 addresses Safari 5.1 issues | FairerPlatform said:

    [...] Additionally, check out the Fairer Platform’s Going on a Lion hunt: OS X 10.7 ready apps. [...]

  • Hetima releases Lion ready SafariStand | FairerPlatform said:

    [...] your copy of SafariStand 5.1.117 here. And, don’t miss the Fairer Platform’s Going on a Lion hunt [OS X 10.7 ready apps] for your OS X 10.7 edification and [...]

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