lion!

the night was finally here. after chatting about it at work, nathan and i decided that we would spend this evening downloading and test driving the new OS for our macbook pro. we have both been looking forward to it, and when we saw it came out a little while ago, we looked forward to checking it out in the comfort of our own home on our own computer. ok so its true, in case you didn't know, we are both pretty big tech-nerds. we like to watch apple's press conferences together (well, each at our respective offices, chatting, while following typically the engadget liveblog coverage of the events). we send each other news stories about whatever new is going on (mostly with apple) and geek out in the apple store. in addition to our macbook, nathan's had an iphone, we've had several ipods between the two of us, and we've had both ipads (we had the 1st one, then sold it to buy the new 2nd one). so yeah, we're tech-nerds. i guess apple fanatics is a better term. but still.

while i was waiting for nathan to get home from work so we could apple-out together, i decided to make us a little homemade pizza, tex-mex style. let me just say, i'm a legit pizza maker. i mean, for-reals. from scratch is the only way i roll (ok, not true, sometimes we eat frozen or mellow mushroom), so i got out the yeast & the cookbook and started kneading. i meant to take pictures of the process, but before i knew it, i was kneading and there sat my camera next to me, no pictures taken. pretty much, i just follow the recipe in my better homes cookbook, using the whole wheat recipe. 

for tonight's enjoyment, i went tex-mex on it. after baking the dough for about 10 minutes, i brushed on some olive oil, covered it in slightly smashed black beans, then topped it with some spicy, drained rotel (on nathan's side) and a can of diced jalapeños (on both sides). to that, i added some freshly sautéed chicken, peppers, and onion- yum! and finally, topped it all with a bunch of mexican-style cheese mix. i popped that baby in the oven for about 10 minutes, and then we were ready to feast! after slicing, i added some sour cream to nathan's half.

with our bellies full, it was time to move on to the good stuff- lion had finished downloading! it was time to install!

its blurry, but the cute little lion tracked our progress, and made us more and more anxious for it to be complete!

the whole download & install process took us, well, right about an hour. not too bad. we have pretty fast internet, which allowed the download to be complete in around 15 minutes, and then a few minutes to restart, followed by about 35 minutes to install. pretty simple stuff.

and oh by the way, did you know that lion was offered as an app in the new macbook appstore? as in, we didn't have to go to the store, order anything, or track any shipments (which i not-so-secretly love to do!). we just clicked on the appstore, clicked on lion, and were on our way.

after getting it all ready, it was time to explore. oh look, new start screen-

and that wasn't the only new thing. here's some screen shots for ya:

new scrolling took some getting use to, but i almost have the hang of it. i still go the opposite direction every time at first, but it is more natural 

new launchpad feature- accessed by either clicking the icon in the dock or hitting the hot corner, this mimics an iphone/itouch/ipad screen. all your applications show up as apps, and you click on them just as you would a phone. pretty nifty. i like the blur effect on your background- kind of reminds you that you are not on your desktop

i appreciate that it tells me my name now. not real sure why, but it does. after clicking on it, i realized it was the user location- so, if there were any other users on this computer, they would show up in the drop down menu

mission control they call it- a great way to swim through the clutter and find the page/app/whatev you need to get to without having to click everything (inevitably twice)

more mission control

so what's my take on it?
all in all, i like it so far. mission control & launchpad are pretty sweet. the scrolling is also pretty fantastic, although it will take some getting used to.  maybe my favorite feature? full screen apps. meaning, no file bars or anything like that- just corner to corner pixaly-goodness. pretty sweet. everything looks a little cleaner & sharper, and i like that too.
down sides? biggest one, and honestly kind of frustrating, is that, apparently, i was running some old school microsoft office suite, and as soon as the restart finished after installing lion, a nice little pop-up came up saying that the office software was no longer compatible. boo. so now i have no word or office.  other than that, can't complain! we really like it, and we enjoyed geekaly-exploring it together.
check it out- if you've got a macbook, its definitely worth $30- much cheaper than any previous OS updates. i recommend it.
now, if only that iphone 5 would come out.....