First Developer Preview of Lion Hits The Mac App Store

Apple has just dropped the first developer preview of OS X 10.7 Lion and is now pumping it out to applicable devs through the Mac App Store. At the same time, they’ve updated their Mac OS X Lion page, revealing some new features including universal auto save, a possible new version of Safari, some new multitouch gestures, a new way to wirelessly transfer files between other Mac users, and much more.

Here’s what’s caught our eye.

• Launchpad, a more iPad-inspired interface for opening apps.

• Universal Auto Save, which will automatically save updated documents in any app without it being programmed in. As a writer prone to computer crashes, this’ll be a life saver.

• Versions allows you to track your changes through any document via a Time Machine like interface.

• AirDrop, which allows no-setup wireless file transfer between Macs, just by dragging and dropping files on a user’s name. This seems a lot like DropCopy.

• MacStories thinks the new gesture to slide between tabs in Safari indicates a new version of Apple’s browser is incoming.

• Mail 5 brings the iPad approach to Mail to the Mac, ditching the three-pane view of previous versions of Mail as well as introduces a new, threaded conversations view.

There’s doubtlessly more changes afoot, and we’ll let you know what they are once we have a chance to play with OS X Lion’s first developer preview later. For now, if you are a member of the Mac Developer Program, you can download and install Lion from the Mac App Store using a redemption code attainable from the Mac Dev Center, as long as you are running a 64-bit Intel Mac running Snow Leopard 10.6.6.

John Brownlee

John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.