Originally Posted By: hybrid8
Launcher app. Really, who cares? All apps at once? No thanks.

I'm curious to see how this goes over with more novice users. For now I don't plan to use it, but I won't knock Apple for bringing it over. They may very well be seeing some new to computer users starting with an iPad, then moving to a full blown Mac later. The Launcher seems to be an attempt to smooth that transition, and avoid putting users into the filesystem to find applications. I noticed mine brought in apps from my Downloads folder, my user Applications folder, and several other locations outside the standard /Applications location. Many novice users never caught on to the "proper" way to install Applications (via drag and drop). While I knew OS X would allow apps to run out of a disk image, I only discovered it would auto remount the dmg if needed when I noticed someone who didn't know better running several apps that way.

Originally Posted By: hybrid8
Auto-hiding scroll bars. How can you tell whether or not you should scroll up or down to reveal more content in a list? Sometimes it's easy, other times it's not. You certainly have no way of knowing where you are until you start to scroll. I've disabled the default in favor of always showing scroll bars (the old behavior).

This changes based on input device too. A system with just a touchpad will by default hide them, just as an iPad/iPhone/Android device does. A system with a mouse will show them by default. And on a laptop with a touchpad, they will unhide if a mouse is attached, and hide again if the mouse is unplugged.

Originally Posted By: hybrid8
Dashboard now has it's own solid background. Great, now when you need to reference something visible in another window on your desktop, you can't. Big reduction in usability.

System Preferences - Mission Control - Show Dashboard as a space

Originally Posted By: hybrid8
Sidebar icons have lost all their color and contrast. Many windows are now starting to look amazingly bland, including the Finder's where color was a great cue to selecting icons.

iTunes seemed to start this trend, and iPhoto 11 even removed the color in the recent patch. Very strange, considering other apps are going the other direction, like the Address Book and iCal. No idea what the thinking is here.

Originally Posted By: hybrid8
Deleting an application that was already present on an existing system when updating the OS. Front Row is removed from your system when updating to Lion. I'm fine with Apple not including it in Lion, but I'm not fine with them removing an existing app. Nothing was mentioned in the install process about this, not even during the final bit about "incompatible applications."

I was also sad to see Front Row go, and for now I'm holding off on upgrading the Mini due to this. My only guess here is that Apple looked to strip everything they could from the OS to reduce the size (both to save download time, and to save space on SSD drives), and decided Front Row wasn't used enough to stay. Hopefully the hardware IR receiver doesn't also get the boot later. They already pulled it from the Air with the refresh last year.

Originally Posted By: hybrid8
Glimmerblocker - doesn't work and the Lion installer actually mentions it at the end.

There is a Safari Adblock extension. I think I recommended Glimmerblocker to you back before Safari properly supported extensions.

I'm still debating what I think about Lion overall. I did get used to the gestures on the touchpad pretty quickly, and found them handy in combination with full screen apps on the Air. Now that I also have the Pro desktop upgraded, I'll get a better feel for it as a desktop OS instead of as a laptop OS.

Oh, for those that might be looking for it, Xcode 4 is free in the App Store if you have Lion installed. Server is also in there as a $50 upgrade. I may install it on the Mini just to see what I can do with it.