This looks long, but it's worth your time. John Carter gives a lot of info on Lion. He starts out, "Jim Hamm brought an article to my attention wherein the author thinks that Lion might be too much for his senior parents to make the switch to from Snow Leopard.
"Yes, and no. There are features that have change dramatically from 10.6 to 10.7. Spaces and Expose for one (or rather two into one). When I discovered that you needed either a Magic Mouse or a Magic Trackpad on an iMac to use all those complicated finger motions, I rushed right out and bought the trackpad. I was doing just fine without it.
"In fact, for a two-finger, mouse-pushing geezer like me, a standard two-button mouse with scroll wheel is all I really need. I had trouble with the Magic Mouse when I had it, because my fingers like to tap and wiggle on the surface of things when I’m thinking about what to do next, and lo and behold if those taps and wiggles don’t mean something on a Magic Mouse - and a trackpad!
"Okay, so now my iMac has both a standard mouse right next to my keyboard and a trackpad up above it. So far, there are very few things I’ve needed the trackpad for. Let’s see if I manage to keep the trackpad past the 30-day return period.
"And my MacBook Pro? It also sports a two-button mouse with scroll wheel. That’s one gadget I can’t do without on any computer.
There's more coming as John goes on, "Anyway, back to the other features of Lion.
"If you don’t like the way Mail looks, you can switch back to the classic view.
"If you don’t like scrolling down in order to scroll up (depending on your point of view), you can change the direction of the scroll based on the direction of the scroll wheel or the direction of the fingers on the trackpad.
"If you don’t like swirling around on the trackpad to get from one Desktop to another looking for your apps, just ignore the fact that you have more than one Desktop and don’t bother trying to figure out which Desktop you’re in - it doesn’t matter as long as you know how to use CMD-Tab to switch between applications and CMD-Space to bring up Spotlight to then key in the name of an application you want to launch.
"And what does it matter that you no longer need to exit from an application when all that is needed is to close the window of an app? If the window is gone, do you really care if the app is still active or not? Well, in one way it does matter. Each app that is launched uses some memory, even if there is no window open. But, if no window is open (and that means not even hidden from view), there is virtually no processor resource used - so who cares?
"One real problem for anyone is figuring out how to get out of full screen mode so you can see that old familiar menu bar across the top of the display. Well, just press the ESC key.
"In other words, the only thing that’s changed for me so far is that I really do like the facelift in Mail.
And, wrapping it up John states, "And what about the author’s article? How did the readers take to it? You’ll have to read them to see what I mean by it doesn’t make any difference whether you upgrade to Lion or not. What you use and how you use it is all up to you. Don’t be afraid to venture into the unknown, because if you start out with fear, it will only lead to anger."