Steve Jobs will kick off next calendar week ’s Worldwide Developer Conferenceby dish on iOS 5 , iCloud , and the next incarnation of the Mac OS , Lion . Thanks to Apple ’s selling and a trio of developer preview , we already know plenty about what Lion will add . But until Lion ships , we appropriate the right to clamor for a few pet features we ’d really like to see added before the fresh O roars onto our Macs .
Everything and the kitchen sync
One strong , fervent Bob Hope among the entireMacworldteam is that the cloud - ground iCloud offering Apple plans to uncover Monday willunite Lion and iOS 5 together and provide honest synchronicity . Picture iDisk , reimagined : a system - wide , Dropbox - esque mechanism to ensure that your datum is always current across every one of your devices . Tweak a Pages papers on your laptop , update it on your iPad , open it on your iPhone to apportion it with friends — whatever the pattern , all your machines will as if by magic , seamlessly stay in sync .
Security!
We ’re also hoping for continued security improvements . Only in the wake of MacDefender ’s arrival did Apple start includingdaily malware arrest for Snow Leopard ; we ’d wish to see — or perhaps even better , not see , but merely gain from — steady progress on the security measures side , ascertain that malicious software is quarantined quickly .
Book ’em, Danno
Additionally , as long as Lion is take on some cue from iOS , we think it ’s high meter that the iBooks eastward - reading software arrive on the desktop . And while we ’re at it , it would be just expectant to graze the iBookstore from our Macs , too . Right now , if you read about a great iBookstore book on your Mac , you ’re forced to grab your iOS equipment , open iBooks , record the iBookstore , and purchase the book . In direct contrast , Amazon set aside you to purchase a Kindle Holy Scripture at once from its Website , which will then sync to the Kindle program on the Mac in gain to any other iOS devices you have floating around . Apple clearly could fare better in this contender , and Lion seems like a gross chance for the company to up its game .
Multitouch and go
We ’re enough excited about the many ways that Lion embraces multitouch gestures , but we ’re less than thrilled that some of our favorite ( like the four - finger swipe to show the desktop ) have been usurped for new purposes ( like Mission Control ) . Thus , we ’d love the power to customise gestures — configuring just what actions are tied to certain swipes .
Gotta go back in time
A few of us are also hold out hope that Time Machine will work even better under Lion . We love the characteristic in possibility under Snow Leopard — automated , rough-and-tumble - liberal iterative backups are majuscule ! In practice , though , Time Machine can take much longer than seems appropriate to complete back - ups , and it be given to get distressed backing up to networked drives . And the public utility has never worked well if you require to restore files and are n’t quite certain where they are . Lion is put in an machine - save lineament and interlingual rendition , which keeps reiterative backups of your single file ; perhaps the backup squad at Apple could send a little love life Time Machine ’s way , too .
How about you , high-priced readers ? What feature are you holding hope will happen their way into Lion before Apple releases its latest cat ?
