MacOS X a dog or just in need of a good bitch slap?

Funny you should mention that. I got a new laptop at work today (Windows) and I'm now waiting for PGP WDE to finish processing.

I JUST noticed that the latest OS X update put a new icon in my Dock (the App Store icon). It's ugly. And now all Apple icons are headed towards the iTunes 10 look... .

ddt

They REALLY need to re-architect iTunes ... and rename it... and so on and so forth.

Looks like it's official... Apple has somehow decided to eliminate scroll bars in OSX 10.7 Lion:

http://mashable.com/2011/02/24/mac-os-x-lion-galler/

No scroll bars? Say what? Really now; look a little more carefully.

If an app supports gestures, and a gesture-compatible device is attached then the scrollbars only appear while the gesture is being made and for a few seconds afterwards. If an app doesn't support gestures, or no gesture-enabled devices is attached, then scroll bars are permanently visible and take up their traditional portion of the content area.

I still don't like it; I want the position of the "thumb" to always be visible and tell me how far through the document I am.

I didn't like Lion at first sight, and I haven't revised my opinion. It may be easier for my Dad to use, but it sounds like it is going to get in my way.

After 10.6.6 made the scrolling work like iOS I've never really used the scroll bars/lifts anymore. Scrolling works great with the hardware of the past 4 years, which is basically 1 year past Apple's compatibility window these days.

Yeah, I haven't really clicked on the scrollbars since the advent of two-fingered scrolling but I still like having the visual cue to show me where I am in a document/page/list/etc.

I mostly use the two-finger gesture to scroll, too, but the scroll bar can be very useful in maneuvering through long lists, in situations where searching doesn't work well as a way of moving around. There aren't many examples of this, granted, but I can think of a couple of situations where the absence of a scroll bar would be a major pain in the ass. The scroll bar is also more precise than the gesture. Getting rid of scroll bars would be a step back in usability.

http://developer.apple.com/technologies/mac/whats-new.html

Scroll bars have changed.

I have used (and probably always will use) a trackball. As long as I can still do everything with that I'm happy. I have my doubts about this with Lion.

Current version of Lion is dropping Rosetta and Front Row. Losing Front Row means that I won't update my Mac mini... I'm using it as a media server. If it isn't part of the release Lion, then I'd guess they're trying to force people over to the Apple TV. Which wouldn't be bad for me if it had local storage. Which it doesn't. I don't know how hard losing Rosetta will hit me. I guess that I won't be able to run Quicken 2006 anymore. I'm not sure how many other programs that I use regularly will break.

FrontRow used to drive me mad as I'm always switching between applications in both Mac OS X and Windows. Sometimes I hesitate and accidentally hit escape. It takes about 10-15 seconds for FrontRow to initialise and quit again. Finally got mad enough to completely disable it. I don't think I will miss it.

Me, too.

Ditto. I never use Frontrow, unless I accidentally hit the key combo. I can't sit and watch things on my computer without doing anything else. There are/will be plenty of alternatives, I'm sure.

I hate accidentally hitting that. I never understood why it couldn't have been configurable.

My Mac mini is not set up with a keyboard. My wife and kids use the Apple Remote to pick what to watch. Kind of useless without Front Row.

Now, frankly, WHO sits in the front row except chatty six year olds.
Give me, Center Theater.

I don't mind Front Row, but there's no replacement for Quicken 2007 out there yet, so I'm not sure I'd be able to upgrade.

Is 2007 still PowerPC code? Figures. Remember, Bill Campbell is on Apple's board of directors and Quicken Essentials for the Mac (also known as "Quicken without any of the online banking features") isn't exactly taking the world by storm. A force march to QE might suit Bill just fine. I really don't want to go back to Moneydance, but I think Intuit has made it clear that full-featured Mac Quicken is at the end of its life. Are there any other Mac finance programs that will interface directly with banks and stock brokers? I don't want something that can import downloaded files, I want full integration with the bank. I would really hate to use Windows Quicken. Not because it wouldn't work, but because I don't want to give Intuit any more money.