By embracing post-PC era where mobile computing dominates the market, Apple successfully unleashed its latest beast, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.

Since its much-awaited roar on Wednesday, most of OS X Lion's reviewers have called Apple's new flagship OS a worthy upgrade. Apple's declaration of OS X 10.7 Lion as the world's most advanced desktop operating system was not in vain, so far.

Released exclusively on the Mac App Store until a USB thumb drive rolls out in August, the most radical upgrade of Mac OS to date takes a bold step in including many features from the popular iOS devices - iPad and iPhone.

David Pogue of The New York Times praised the company's philosophy that follows an old Apple pattern of embracing what's cool and progressive, and ruthlessly jettisoning what it considers antiquated.

Naming simplicity and the multitouch screen as the two factors behind iPad's mega-hit, Pogue stated, In Lion, Apple has gone as far as it can go to bring those factors to the Mac.

Among the new 250 features sported on OS X Lion, features such as LaunchPad, full-screen apps, an iPad-like app launcher, and app resumes and autosaves reminisce the iPads. With Automatic Restoration, the programs will resume right where you left them off. With Mission Control, you can arrange your open windows, full-screen apps, spaces, and Dashboard. With Auto Save, you don't need to save your works, because the OS will automatically save every version of every document.

With Launchpad, your Mac's display is filled with a grid of icons allowing you to launch programs, shuffle them around and delete items as you wish.

The new multitouch gestures allow you to have an iPad experience, allowing more fluid and realistic gesture responses, including rubber-band scrolling, page and image zoom, and full-screen swiping. Just not a real touch screen, as yet.

The new Mac OS did make computing simpler and more finger-friendly. While a mild learning curve may be inevitable for some users, OS X Lion gears the users toward the post-PC era, where tablets and smartphones reign.

To hear OS X Lion's roar requires an Intel-based Mac with a Core 2 Duo, i3, i5, i7 or Xeon processor and 2GB of RAM, Apple said.

In this post-PC age. iOS has revolutionized not just Apple's core business, but the world of technology that we live in, says Leander Kahney of Cult of Mac. OS X Lion is not only the best version of OS X to date, but also marks the first great PC operating system for the psot-PC age, states Kahney.

A new era is dawning upon us. In the post-PC age, the PC operating sytems will face the challenge of long-term survival. OS X Lion has set an example with its glorious debut, but whether it can be acknowledged as the OS king is yet to see.

Better to tame the Lion now, before other beasts take another leap further into the mobile device jungle.

Lion's Birth Mates

Concurrent with Lion's release, Apple also updated MacBook Air, which is the first device to run Lion.

The MacBook Air features the latest generation Intel Core i5 and Core i7 dual-core processors. With a processor of speeds up to 1.8GHz and faster memory, the new MacBook Air gains 2.5x faster processing performance over the previous generation. It also has the Intel HD Graphics 3000 processor, which includes an on-chip engine for video encoding and decoding.

Prices start at $999 for a base-model 64-GB 11-inch Air. The 11-inch Air with 128-GB storage is priced at $1,119. The 13-inch MacBook Air with 128 GB storage comes at $1,299. The model with 256 GB storage is priced at $1,599.

Top 10 Features of Mac OS X Lion

Automatic Restoration

Mac OS X Lion Gold Master allows you to resume your application exactly as you left it. After quitting or shutting down the system when you come back again, you will find all the open windows, platters, panes, apps and even the cursor position and highlighted text as they were when you left. Mac OS X Lion merely pauses your system, and everything comes back when you restart the computer.

Reboot into Safari

This is a feature that turns your system into an internet kiosk. The Reboot into Safari can be found on the user lock screen. It allows unauthorized users to use the Mac only to browse the Web. In this mode, only a Safari window will appear and nothing else. When an unauthorized user browses web, the Safari browser will not show any of the bookmarks on the Mac.

Auto save

Mac OS X Lion Gold Master brings a complete auto save feature that keeps your data secure and version tracked. It automatically saves changes to your document. Auto Save in Lion adds the changes directly into the file so there's only one copy of the document on your Mac.

You can also easily lock a document at any time to avoid unintentional changes. Lion automatically locks the document two weeks after the last edit. When you try to make a change, it alerts you and asks if you want to unlock or duplicate the file.

AirDrop

AirDrop, a peer to peer Wi-Fi protocol between participating Mac computers, allows you to securely share your documents with others. To share a file you have to simply drag it onto a person's contact photo. After verifying that you want to send the file, it sends a request to the recipient. When the recipient accepts the request, the file gets transferred to the person's Downloads folder.

AirDrop creates a firewall between you and the person you are sharing a file with, a feature that prevents anyone from accessing your computer over that connection. It doesn't require any special settings.

Multi-touch Gesture

Mac OS X Lion Gold Master has multi touch technology that allows you to swipe through files and web pages quickly using your Multi-Touch trackpad or Magic Mouse. Thanks to fluid animations, the gestures have become more responsive. Mac OS X Lion also comprises new animations like rubber-band scrolling, zooming, and swiping.

Mission Control

Mission Control feature allows you to arrange your open windows, full-screen apps, spaces, and Dashboard. While a row of thumbnails across the top of the screen signifies Dashboard, desktop spaces, and full-screen apps, you can see an exposed view of the open windows on the lower part of the screen.

Now, you can add and remove desktop spaces right from Mission Control. You can also attach an application to a particular space or make it available in all spaces right from the Dock.

LaunchPad

LaunchPad makes it easier for you to access your installed apps. While the new apps downloaded from the app store will be added directly to LaunchPad, the user can also create a folder on LaunchPad to organize the installed apps. Each folder can hold as many as 32 apps. It creates full-screen pages to house your apps and adds new pages as you add more apps. You can easily move between Launchpad pages with a three-finger swipe.

iCal

The new look of iCal provides more room to browse and edit your events. The calendars list reveals itself only when you click Calendars. You can now easily add an event to iCal by simply entering a regular-language phrase and iCal will add the event.

FileVault 2

FileVault 2 makes it easier for you to secure data on your Mac by encrypting the entire drive. It encrypts and decrypts your data on the fly. It's also designed to bow out processor cycles to higher-priority user tasks like copying files or browsing. FileVault 2 uses XTS-AES 128 encryption to secure the data on your Mac.

Internet Restore and Utilities

A built-in restore partition allows the user to repair or reinstall Mac OS X Lion without the need for discs. It can be reinstalled on the system from recovery mode through a Time Machine backup.

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