Sorry for the awful pun; I had to do it.

Now that that’s over with, it’s time for the last bit of info from WWDC*. And by “bit,” I mean it’s a big one (not like iCloud and iOS 5 are little ones).

This announcement has to do with the operating system for the Macintosh (aka, all of the computers made by Apple). Since March 2001, OS X has been majorly updated** six times (Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard). It’s getting another one in July: Lion (or, for number fans, 10.7). Many tech writers (with far more credentials than I have) are saying that this one will be the biggest update since OS X was first released, and I’m inclined to agree.

The whole idea behind Lion is to bring some of the more convenient elements of iOS to the Mac. But, you ask, how are they doing that if iDevices use touch screens and Macs don’t? Excellent question. I’ll do my best to answer it by explaining the features that were announced*** out of the over 250 new ones. Don’t worry, it’s only 10.

Phil Schiller, Apple’s SVP of Worldwide Product Marketing, began with this quote, transcribed for your consideration: “The new features work seamlessly together to create a user experience unlike any we’ve had before.” All I can say is, amen.

1. Multi-Touch Gestures. This feature was announced first for a very good reason: it’s what makes the similarities between iOS and OS X work. So how does it work? Laptops have trackpads. For those with Mac desktops, Apple makes a beautiful Magic Trackpad, similar to those on laptops, and the Magic Mouse.

These devices are able to accommodate multi-touch gestures. When you scroll down on your iDevice with your fingers, or when you double-tap or pinch to zoom, you’re using a multi-touch gesture. Lion will allow all of these on your Mac, plus a bazillion more. You can even customize them to maximize your user experience. These gestures will permeate the whole OS, which is why they’re so important. They’re so important that there won’t be a scroll bar anymore. Apple really wants everyone using these gestures.

2. Full Screen Apps. In Lion, there will be a little button in the top right corner of most applications (all apps made by Apple will have it, and they’ve given third-party app developers the ability to do it) that allows you to make the app full screen. It’s absolutely gorgeous and allows you a tight focus on whatever you’re doing. But what happens if you’re doing a few things at once? Maybe you’ve got your Mail full screen, your iCal full screen, and your iPhoto full screen… How does that work? This is where the excellent gestures come in. You can swipe on your trackpad to “flip,” like a book, between the full screen apps. And you can always return them to windows if you like. This takes us right into our next new feature.

3. Mission Control. So now, if you’ve got, say, five apps running full screen, and perhaps three windows open in Safari (the Apple web browser), how the heck do you keep track of it all? Mission Control to the rescue! With a three-finger swipe up, or clicking on the icon in your dock, Mission Control pops up and shows everything you’ve got going on on your computer at that moment. You can browse between apps in full screen, the Dashboard^, and all the windows open on your desktop. The idea is, with full screen apps and Mission Control, you can have multiple workspaces simultaneously. It’s pretty neat.

4. Mac App Store. The Mac App Store is familiar to anyone who regularly updates his or her computer (you do update regularly, right?). It came as part of 10.6.6 and quickly revolutionized the way we find new apps. It’s like the iTunes App Store for iOS, except it’s for Mac Apps, as you might imagine from the name. It’s now built into Lion, and developers were given some convenient new features to add to their apps, such as delta updates and sandboxing^^.

5. Launchpad. Users of the iPad will find this feature very familiar. With a quick gesture, you’ll be able to see all of the apps installed on your computer in one place. You can switch apps between pages and you can make folders just like on iDevices, so you can organize all your apps however you want them. When you buy a new one through the Mac App Store, it literally flies into your Launchpad.

6. Resume. You know how when Software Update pops up on your computer, you ignore it because you’ve got a million windows open, you’re in the middle of something, and you really don’t want to restart your computer? Yeah, we’ve all done it. But you won’t have to ignore it anymore in Lion. When you restart your computer, your windows will pop up exactly as you left them (but you do have the option to do a “clean restart,” where nothing pops back up). And, even better, this extends to quitting an app. Let’s say I was editing an article in Pages (Apple’s word processor), and randomly quit. When I open Pages, the exact document I was editing, right down to any text I highlighted, comes back. Part of how Lion does this is the next feature.

7. Auto Save. Phil Schiller made an excellent point about something that has plagued every student since the dawn of computing: save, save, save your work! Because the one time you don’t is the one time you get screwed. It’s happened to me, it’s happened to everyone. No more! In Lion, your documents will save themselves. No more anxiety about saving after every major change. This element leads us into the next new feature.

8. Versions. So what happens if you’ve made a bunch of changes to a document, but you don’t like them? Versions! The title of documents will be a menu that you can interact with, offering four choices: Lock, Duplicate, Revert to Last Opened, and Browse All Versions.

Lock gives you the ability to create something like a template; it won’t let you autosave over the current version you’re working on. Duplicate does exactly what it says: it creates an exact copy of the document. Revert to Last Opened allows you to go back to the version of the document that existed when you first opened it to work on it. Browse All Versions lets you see every version of the document basically since you created it. Even better, in the Browse All Versions view (see picture below), you can see the current version on the left and all past on the right, allowing you to change the current version to an older one or even letting you copy something from an old one to the current one. I think that’s going to be pretty cool.

9. AirDrop. You’ve finished your document and now you want to share it with someone. The best way to do this before Lion was to email it (if it was small enough) or load it up on a flash drive and walk it to your friend’s computer (aka, sneakernet; no, I didn’t make that up). In Lion, there is a feature called AirDrop, a peer-to-peer, WiFi-based network. By clicking on the new AirDrop symbol, you can see everyone else who is running AirDrop at that time. You can then drag the file to the person you’d like to send it to, confirm that you want to send it (they receive a notification asking if they want to receive it), and it gets sent, fully encrypted.

10. Mail. The Mail application was completely redesigned and looks very familiar to anyone using Mail on his or her iPad. Instead of putting the list of messages on top of the message preview, they rearranged it so the preview is to the right of the list (which now includes the first few lines of the email). Additionally, if you have a message thread (aka, a back and forth about the same subject with the same person or people), instead of the current, and ugly, view (which has different colors in the same message, lots of indents, and none of the original attachments), it’s a gorgeous “conversation” view (see below).

So how much will this gorgeous bundle of Mac wonder cost when it’s released? $29.99. No, I’m not joking. I totally give you permission to laugh at your Windows-based friends for paying (officially), at least a few times that And that’s for the Home Premium version. Then there are different prices for upgrades from previous Windows versions, Professional versions… it’s a mess trying to figure out which one will run on your computer and which has the right features. It gives me a headache just thinking about. The $29.99 price tag applies to almost the entire Mac-running population. That’s it.

If you’re not sure your computer will run Lion, there’s an easy way to tell. The simplest way is that if you bought your computer before 2006, Lion will probably not work (2006 is iffy too, depending on your computer model). If you’re unsure, navigate to the Apple icon in the top left corner, and choose the first option, About This Mac. If the words next to the bold “Processor” are Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon, you’re fine. If not, you might want to consider a new computer purchase.

Additionally, your computer must be running Mac OS X Snow Leopard. In the same About This Mac window, under the giant Mac OS X, there should be a version number. It should say 10.6.8. If it says anything over 10.6 (like 10.6.1, etc.), you really, really need to run Software Update. If it’s anything under 10.6 (10.5.8, for example), you won’t be able to upgrade to Lion immediately. This is because Lion will only be available through the Mac App Store, which became available in 10.6.6, as noted before. If you’re still running Leopard (10.5), your computer might not have the right Processor, as outlined. If all of that confused you, send me an email or call 1-800-MY-APPLE for help.

I, personally, am waiting until Lion launches before buying a new laptop; there are some pretty persistent rumors that Apple will be updating its MacBook Air line to coincide with the Lion launch. Needless to say, July is the best month^^^.

Theresa Giannetti is a passionate Applephile, writing about her first love for Woman Around Town. You can contact her with any tech-related, especially Apple, questions at theresamarie17 AT me DOT com. Who knows? Your question might become a whole Tech Tidbytes article!

* By now, you must know that WWDC stands for the World Wide Developers’ Conference, and that developers are the people that make games and other apps for various technology.

** There are (sort of) two different kinds of updating: big updates and small updates. The first version of OS X was 10.0 (as you might remember from school, “X” is the Latin for the number ten), aka Cheetah. Then there were some small upgrades, making the last version of 10.0, 10.0.4. Then 10.1, Puma, was released in September 2001 (a big update), with little updates until 10.2. A big difference is that the Software Update utility provides small updates, but you have to purchase big updates. Also, in the interest of the truth, OS X has actually been updated more than six times, but the first few weren’t for regular release. So, really, the timeline is from 1997 to 2011, but Apple says 2001 to 2011. Oh, and the first two kitty names, Cheetah and Puma, were internal code names. Confusing, I know.

*** If you have an iDevice and a Mac, my explanations might make more sense. Also, if you’d like a full list of new features, visit Apple’s website.

^ Wow, I’ve never gotten to carets before. Dashboard is currently an icon on your dock that allows you to run multiple baby apps, like a calculator, basic translator, the weather, etc., called widgets. I don’t blame you if you’ve never used it; not too many have. But now it will be super easy to access and, in my opinion, much more useful!

^^ Delta updates has to do with updating an app. If you download an app from the App Store or the Mac App Store, it has to redownload the whole app, then throw away the old one. With delta updates, you will be able to automatically download only what has changed in the app, making the updates faster and way more efficient. Sandboxing is the ability to make an app more secure; instead of accessing all the information in your computer, an app developer will have the ability to make the app only access the information it needs to run.

^^^ New OS, new computers, AND my birthday. It’s a win/win/win for me!