OSX Lion is the latest incarnation of Apple’s flagship operating system and last week the official GM seed was sent to developers for testing. Yesterday I put it through it’s paces and have been happily surprised with the performance and improvements laid out in the latest release, attached is a quick video of Lion in action in all it’s one solid O/S.

To note,

• Launchpad for Apps (iOS)
• Mission Control
• FaceTime now integrated
• Address Book UI upgraded (more like iOS Books)
• Reset User Password via Apple ID
• Touchpad Gestures now a core part of the O/S
• Masses of UI improvements, gone and the rounded corners.
• Can set specific desktop background per Virtual Desktop / Space
• Fancy drag animation when moving files (gets out of the way of the cursor)
• Loads more…

On the App side everything still works pretty well, the following apps operate fine on Lion:

• Photoshop CS5
• Transmit
• Coda
• CornerStone SVN
• CSS Edit
• OmniGraffle
• VLC
• Tower
• TextMate
• MAMP & MAMP Pro

These Apps have visual problems that need fixing for Lion:

• Versions (opens main window & other regardless, sidebar cut-off)
• Espresso (desktop background seeps into interface)

Regarding official release date for OSX Lion my gut feeling says mid-July, in all the builds done and dusted just up to Apple to sign-off on things so you may be lucky and find it in the App Store this Tuesday.

Nice work Apple.