It’s been over a decade since Apple dropped Mac OS X 10.7, better known as Lion. Back in 2011, it felt like a massive risk. Honestly, it kind of was. Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller stood on stage and basically told us that the iPad was the future of the Mac. People freaked out. The "Back to the Mac" marketing campaign wasn't just a catchy slogan; it was a fundamental shift in how we interact with computers. You might remember the chaos of "Natural Scrolling." Suddenly, moving your fingers down on a trackpad moved the page up. It felt backwards to every long-time user, but it was the first step in bridging the gap between mobile and desktop.
Mac OS X Lion wasn't just another incremental update like Snow Leopard was. It was a demolition crew. It tore down the wall between iOS and OS X, for better or worse.
The iPadification of Your Desktop
Before Lion, your Mac felt like a workstation. After Lion, it started feeling like a giant iPhone. This wasn't an accident. Apple saw that people loved the simplicity of the iPad and decided that the Mac needed some of that magic. Enter Launchpad. It’s that screen full of app icons that most pro users ignore now, but back then, it was a radical attempt to move away from the traditional "Applications" folder. It was Apple's way of saying, "Hey, maybe you don't need to dig through directories to find your software."
But the real MVP was Mission Control. Before this, we had Expose and Spaces, and they were... fine. But they were separate. Mission Control mashed them together. You could see everything at once: your open windows, your full-screen apps, and your various desktops. It gave us a bird's-eye view of our digital mess.
Let's talk about full-screen apps for a second. In 2011, this was a revelation. Most people used a 13-inch MacBook Pro or the then-new MacBook Air. Screen real estate was precious. Being able to throw Mail or Safari into a dedicated full-screen space with a single click—and then swipe between them with three fingers—completely changed the workflow of millions. It made small screens feel huge.
What Everyone Got Wrong About the Tech
People love to complain. When Mac OS X Lion arrived, the tech forums were on fire. The biggest gripe? The death of the "Save" button.
Apple introduced Auto Save and Versions. The idea was simple: you shouldn't have to remember to hit Command-S every five minutes. The computer should just do it for you. If you messed up, you could use a Time Machine-style interface to go back in time and find an earlier draft of your document. It was brilliant in theory, but it broke the brain of every veteran creative. We were used to "Save As," and Apple replaced it with "Duplicate." It felt clunky. It felt like we were losing control.
However, looking back, they were right. How often do you think about saving a Google Doc today? You don't. Lion was the precursor to that "always-on" state of mind.
Then there was AirDrop.
Yes, AirDrop started here. Before 2011, if you wanted to send a file to the person sitting next to you, you either used a USB stick, an annoying email attachment, or some weird local network file sharing that never actually worked. AirDrop was supposed to be the "it just works" solution. In reality, the first version of AirDrop in Mac OS X Lion was a bit finicky and only worked between Macs. It didn't even talk to iPhones yet! But it set the stage for the ecosystem we live in now.
The Technical Debt and the "Heavy" Feel
If Snow Leopard was the "refined and fast" version of the Mac, Lion was the "heavy and experimental" version. It was the first version of OS X to drop support for PowerPC applications entirely. This was the end of Rosetta. If you had old software that hadn't been updated for Intel processors, Lion killed it. Period.
🔗 Read more: Space In Real Life: Why It’s Actually Harder (And Weirder) Than The Movies
It was also the first version of the OS that you couldn't officially buy on a physical disc. You had to download it from the Mac App Store. For people with slow internet in 2011, this was a nightmare. Apple eventually sold a $69 USB thumb drive version for the desperate, but the writing was on the wall: the optical drive was dead.
The software also felt a bit "bloated" compared to the lean, mean machine that was 10.6. There were skeuomorphic designs everywhere. Notes looked like a yellow legal pad. Calendar had faux leather stitching. It was the height of the Scott Forstall era of design, which looks incredibly dated now but felt "premium" at the time.
Why Mac OS X Lion Still Matters Today
You can't understand modern macOS without looking at Lion. It introduced the Recovery Partition. Before this, if your hard drive failed or your OS got corrupted, you needed a physical DVD to fix it. Lion carved out a tiny piece of your drive and hid a "mini" OS there for emergencies. If things went sideways, you could boot into Recovery, jump on Wi-Fi, and download a fresh copy of the OS straight from Apple’s servers. That was futuristic.
It also introduced FileVault 2. This wasn't just an update; it was a total rewrite of Apple's disk encryption. It moved from encrypting just your "Home" folder to encrypting the entire drive. This is why your Mac is so secure today.
Surprising Facts You Might Have Forgotten
- Lion was the first Mac OS to support Emoji. It was a tiny menu hidden in the "Edit" tab, but it started the revolution.
- It brought "Resume," which allowed apps to open exactly where you left them after a restart.
- The "Scroll Bars" disappeared by default, only showing up when you were actually scrolling—another iOS hand-me-down.
- It was the last version of OS X to be called "Mac OS X." After this, it became just "OS X" starting with Mountain Lion.
Navigating the Legacy
If you are a collector or someone trying to revive an old 2010 MacBook, you’ll find that Lion is a weird middle child. It’s too new for the old G5 apps and too old to run any modern web browser safely. Safari on Lion is basically a security sieve at this point.
However, it serves as the bridge. Most older Macs that started on Snow Leopard need to go through Lion (or at least the Mac App Store it introduced) to get to newer versions like High Sierra. It’s the gateway software.
Mac OS X Lion proved that Apple wasn't afraid to annoy its power users to reach a broader audience. They took the lessons from the iPhone—gestures, app stores, sandboxing—and forced them into the desktop experience. It was messy, it was controversial, and it changed the trajectory of personal computing.
Moving Forward With Legacy Hardware
If you are currently dealing with a machine running Mac OS X Lion, you have a few practical options to make it usable in the current year.
- Check for "El Capitan" Compatibility: Most machines that can run Lion can actually run OS X 10.11 El Capitan. This is a much more stable, modern-feeling OS. You should check your serial number at EveryMac.com to see your maximum OS.
- Upgrade the RAM: Lion was the first OS that really struggled with 2GB of RAM. If you're stuck on Lion, bumping to 4GB or 8GB (if your model allows it) will make a night-and-day difference in how the animations feel.
- Swap to an SSD: If you are still running Lion on a spinning mechanical hard drive, the "Resume" and "Auto Save" features will feel incredibly slow. A cheap SATA SSD will make a 2011 MacBook feel like a new machine.
- Use Legacy Browsers: Since Chrome and Firefox have dropped support for Lion, look into projects like "InterWeb" or other back-ported browsers if you absolutely must go online with it.
The biggest takeaway from the Lion era is that the Mac is never static. Apple is always willing to kill its darlings—like the save button or the optical drive—to move toward a more unified vision of technology. Lion was the growing pains of that vision.