Why I bought OSX Lion, and why I've not installed it on my Laptop

I bought OSX Lion on the launch day, which is unusual for me. On paper it seems to offer quite a lot of things that I would use, in particular the server tools for use on the Mac Mini I use as an iTunes server at home. I don't object to paying the extra for the tools but it has been disappointing to utterly fail to get them to work correctly, especially the VPN connectivity which would give me secure access to files, folders, movies, music and so on from remote locations. At the moment though I have no intent to install it on my MacBook Air which I use for work or on my Macbook Pro which is my main machine I use at home. There's just too many things I don't like yet that has made me stop and think what should probably be a golden rule: if it ain't broke don't fix it.

I despise two features in particular. First up is the change in scroll direction when using the so-called 'magic' track pad on the Mac Mini; I can forgive this one because at least it's configurable but the general consensus is 'you will get used to it'. I don't want to. I like it the way it is. As I mentioned, this is configurable but it did catch me out and confused me greatly until I realised this was a deliberate change. It's really minor too compared to those god-awful scrollbars. What on earth have they done to them? Stupid tiny disappearing things that are meant to look like those from iOS on the iPad and iPhone. They are appropriate on a touch device but not on the desktop, and I've seen no evidence of how to change them back.

So, I've not really used this new version of the operating system for the Mac much yet as it's primarily a home server but I can already say that I care about 'Launch Pad' and 'Mission Control' about as much as 'Dashboard' and 'Expose' - not at all. More features I won't use. And I can't say I care much for the changes to the Finder too; it now seems harder to find what I need to use. It was much clearer before they jazzed it up. Finally, the new iCal and Address Book don't do much for me. If I wanted a paper book, I wouldn't have bought something high tech. Tan leather is just a bit... icky. They say that perfection in design is when nothing more can be taken away, and it would be so easy to remove these fake veneers from these applications and make them much better.

At the moment, I'll stay with 10.6 Snow Leopard. In the long term I will probably move to Ubuntu Linux for serious usage, or possibly even Windows 8 when that appears. I want my Apple Mac to be a Mac, not an iPad with a keyboard which seems to be the general direction they are trying to go.