Apple Gets Back To Basics with Lion

Great post by David Chartier at Macworld:

iOS and Mac OS X are symbiotic entities. When designing iOS, Apple distilled the Mac down to something pocketable, but the core concepts are there, such as an app-centric workflow, an always-accessible “home base” Dock, and a fierce pursuit of intuitive interfaces. After gaining knowledge and experience from nearly five years and four versions of iOS, Apple clearly felt that it’s time to return the favor in Lion. Apple is incorporating some of the fresh simplicity of iOS back into its point-and-click desktop computing platform that, at its conceptual core, is almost three decades old.

It’s all there in the first beta: AirDrop lets you share files in your local network with one click (and I wonder if iOS 5 will gain support for this feature). The Finder is streamlined, redesigned and it’s got Coverflow-like navigation in the icon view. There is a unified UI for managing Mail and Calendar accounts. The Launchpad really looks like an iOS homescreen. Mission Control, one of my favorites, brings Spaces, Exposè and full-screen apps all together into a simpler interface.

We only have one beta of Lion, but the future points in this direction: simplification.