Installing Mac OS X Lion on my Macbook Pro

Mac OS X Lion installer

OS X Lion, the latest OS of Apple for the Mac was released last month. I have posted an article before on why I'm deferring my upgrade to the new OS but the latest update which came this week (10.7.1) prompted me to check out Lion after it's official release. OS X Lion can be downloaded via the Mac App Store but good thing I have a colleague in the office who has upgraded already. So, with the copy at hand yesterday, I decided to update my Mac from Snow Leopard to Lion.

I'm a little worried at first because I have a partition for Windows 7. I use Windows for games that are not natively developed for OS X. I also read articles that other users had a problem with their partitions after upgrading to Lion. Lion also installs a Recovery HD partition for troubleshooting. Apple came up with Recovery HD because Lion does not come with a physical device for installation. Good thing I bookmarked Lion-related articles in Macworld. According to Macworld, as long as you don't have some nasty configurations and third party applications used for the partitions you'll be just fine after the upgrade. With this in mind and backing up my Mac using Time Machine, I finally decided to update to Lion.

I did not encounter any problems with the installation, every step is hassle free. I just copied the Lion installer I got and after opening it, everything else is performed by the application. Here are some screenshots during my installation.

The whole installation took me around 40 minutes to finish. After the upgrade, everything is still in place. All of my Mac applications are still compatible with Lion. I can still boot to my Windows 7 partition. As mentioned also, Lion installed a separate partition for Recovery. After checking, I went back to logging to Lion to look at the added applications. What's very recognizable at the dock are the addition of FaceTime, Launchpad and Mission Control. A tutorial for the new trackpad scrolling in Lion is also shown. I still need to get used to the new scrolling in Lion. It's a reverse to what I used to do in Snow Leopard. There are also additional trackpad gestures that I need to practice. Here are some screenshots of the new features in Lion:

New scrolling in Lion

New trackpad gestures

Launchpad - iOS like feel for displaying Mac apps

Mission Control - displays every application launched in your Mac

All in all, I'm greatly satisfied with how my upgrade went thru last night. The long wait and preparation was really worth it. I'll be sharing some interesting stuffs once I get a grasp of this new OS. Lion absolutely roars.