MAC OS X 10.7 LION as released for Developers as of 24/02/2011.
This is the developer build, therefore might have bugs and issues, but will be generally stable. Underneath is the description of Lion as taken from the Apple website.
We’re taking our best thinking from iPad and bringing it all to the Mac with Mac OS X Lion, available in summer 2011. Here’s a preview of some of the top features:
The Mac App Store.
The best way to find and download Mac apps.
Just like shopping the App Store on iPad, the Mac App Store offers endless possibilities for browsing and purchasing apps. Newly purchased apps install in one step and appear right in the new Launchpad. The Mac App Store is available now on any Mac running Mac OS X Snow Leopard and will be a part of Mac OS X Lion.
A home for your apps.
Launchpad gives you instant access to your apps — iPad style. Just click the Launchpad icon in your Dock. Your open windows fade away, replaced by an elegant, full-screen display of all the apps on your Mac. It takes just a swipe to see multiple pages of apps, and you can arrange them any way you like by dragging icons to different locations or by grouping apps in folders. And when you download an app from the Mac App Store, it automatically appears in Launchpad.
Ready to blast off.
The app and nothing but the app.
On iPad, every app is displayed full screen, with no distractions, and there’s one easy way to get back to all your other apps. Mac OS X Lion does the same for your desktop. You can make a window in an app full screen with one click, switch to another app’s full-screen window with a swipe of the trackpad, and swipe back to the desktop to access your other apps — all without ever leaving the full-screen experience. Systemwide support allows third-party developers to take advantage of full-screen technology to make their apps more immersive, too. So you can concentrate on every detail of your work, or play on a grander scale than ever before.*
Mac command central.
Mission Control is a powerful and handy new feature that provides you with a comprehensive look at what’s running on your Mac. It gives you a bird’s-eye view of everything — including Dashboard and full-screen apps — all in one place. With a simple swipe, your desktop zooms out to Mission Control. There you can see your open windows grouped by app, thumbnails of your full-screen apps, and Dashboard, arranged in a unified view. And you can get to anything you see in Mission Control with just one click. Making you the master of all you survey.
More handy ways to interact
with your Mac.
Multi-Touch gestures make everything you do on iPad easy and intuitive. Now a richer Multi-Touch experience comes to the Mac. Enjoy more fluid and realistic gesture responses, including rubber-band scrolling, page and image zoom, and full-screen swiping. In Mac OS X Lion, every swipe, pinch, and scroll looks and feels more responsive and lifelike.
Past perfect.
Say good-bye to manual saving. Auto Save in Mac OS X Lion automatically saves your work — while you work — so you don’t have to. Lion saves changes in the working document instead of creating additional copies, making the best use of available disk space. The lock feature prevents inadvertent changes from being saved and automatically locks documents after two weeks. And the revert feature returns you to the state the document was in when you last opened it, so you can feel free to experiment with confidence.*
See every step you take.
Versions records the evolution of a document as you create it. Mac OS X Lion automatically creates a version of the document each time you open it and every hour while you’re working on it. If you need to revert to an older version or retrieve part of a document, Versions shows you the current document next to a cascade of previous versions — in an interface similar to that of Time Machine — so you can see how your work looked at any given time. You can revert with a click, or quickly copy and paste work from a previous version into the current version.*
Pick up exactly where you left off.
If you’ve ever restarted your Mac, you know what’s involved. First you save your work, then close all your apps, then spend valuable time setting everything up again. With Resume, that time-consuming process is a thing of the past. Resume lets you restart your Mac — after a software update, for example — and return to what you were doing. With all your apps back in the exact places you left them. In fact, whenever you quit and relaunch an app, Resume opens it precisely the way you left it. So you never have to start from scratch again.*
A whole new way to look at email.
Just like Mail on iPad, Mail 5 in Mac OS X Lion features a new layout that takes advantage of the widescreen display on your Mac. You see the messages in your inbox as well as a full-height preview of the selected message. The new Mailbox bar gives you one-click access to your favorite folders. Mail 5 also includes a powerful new way to search that makes finding what you’re looking for quick and easy, even in the largest of inboxes.
Keep the conversation flowing.
Mail 5 also introduces Conversations, a natural new way to read and manage email that automatically groups messages from the same conversation — even if the subject changes along the way. Just click a conversation in your inbox to reveal a streamlined feed of individual messages in chronological order, and easily file or delete an entire conversation.
Send it by air.
With AirDrop in Mac OS X Lion, you can send files to anyone around you — wirelessly. AirDrop doesn’t require setup or special settings. Just click the AirDrop icon in the Finder sidebar, and your Mac automatically discovers other people nearby who are using AirDrop. You’ll even see contact photos for those who are already in your Address Book. To share a file, simply drag it to someone’s name. Once accepted, the file transfers directly to the person’s Downloads folder. When you’re done with AirDrop, close the Finder and your Mac is no longer visible to others.
A new level of security.
Keep all the data on your Mac even more secure with XTS-AES 128 data encryption at the disk level. Initial encryption is fast and unobtrusive — it encrypts everything in the background while you work. FileVault also encrypts for your external drives, and provides the ability to wipe all the data from your Mac instantaneously.
Simply a better server.
Lion Server is now part of Mac OS X Lion. It’s easy to set up your Mac as a server and take advantage of the many services Lion Server has to offer. Here are just a few of the new features that make server deployment faster, easier, and more powerful than ever.
Easy Setup
Lion Server guides you through configuring your Mac as a server. And it provides local and remote administration — for users and groups, push notifications, file sharing, calendaring, mail, contacts, chat, Time Machine, VPN, web, and wiki services — all in one place.
Wiki Server 3
Wiki Server 3 makes it even easier to collaborate, share, and exchange information. Users can quickly switch between a server’s home page, My Page, Updates, Wikis, People, and Podcasts. File sharing is simpler than ever, and a new Page Editor makes customization a breeze.
Profile Manager
Profile Manager delivers simple, profile-based setup and management for Mac OS X Lion, iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices. It also integrates with your existing directory services and delivers automatic over-the-air profile updates using the Apple Push Notification service.
File Sharing for iPad
Lion Server delivers wireless file sharing for iPad. Enabling WebDAV in Lion Server gives iPad users the ability to access, copy, and share documents on the server from applications such as Keynote, Numbers, and Pages.
