I was delighted to get the new app SCO Tutor for Lion to review from Don McAllister on account of the fact that I met the bloke a couple of times and he is a really good guy. He does some really excellent tutorials for Mac users that he produces every week. Most tutorials go to members because Don does this for a living, but he does make one tutorial available to the great unwashed of the Mac community each month. The SCO Tutor for Lion is a video series which highlights all the new things in Mac OS X Lion. Well done Don! What a super idea.

Doing a video series about Lion, seems like a very good idea to me because of some of the perceived Mac OS X Lion problems. I have seen in Mac news and heard on a number of Mac podcasts that there are a number of people that are not so keen on the latest big cat from Apple. Instead of embracing change and the new and shiny there are some Mac users that are opting to stay with previous versions of the operating system mostly with Snow Leopard and one or two with the Mac OS X Leopard. I have been using OS X Lion since it became available and not really had any problems with it myself. There have been a number of changes that may seem a little drastic because they enforce a new way of doing things and maybe that is what has caused some of the resistance. Is OSX Lion the Vista of the Mac operating systems?

SCO Tutor for Lion a timely product

So given that there is this resistance to Lion, this video series explaining all of the new things within the latest operating system should be very successful for our friend Don in Liverpool. Certainly Apple are not going to move backwards with their operating system development and all new computers from Apple do have Lion installed. Old users of previous operating systems from Apple will eventually gets moved towards the latest and greatest and Don’s explanations will have some effect I think in helping people to move forward. There are some handy features in Lion. When you see what you get then I say, move on and get over it!

Top quality video tuition

When you open up the application you go straight into viewing the introduction to the video and the topic of OS X Lion. When you mouseover the top of the video you will see the usual video controls and to the right of those you’ll see a couple of extra buttons. The first button takes you to the menu system and on my first look at the menu system, seeing the topics covered – I was amazed to see such a long list. There are 15 chapters in total covering just about everything you are likely to need to help you with your conversion to Lion.

I have been using Lion on a daily basis for a few months already and after only a few minutes using Don’s SCO tutor for Lion, I had already learned two new things. I was able to pause the video and I went into Safari browser and also had a try in the Chrome browser of a double tap with three fingers. I really hadn’t realised before that doing that sort of tapping on my Apple Magic Trackpad with the cursor over a word, would give me direct access to the dictionary and thesaurus. I can see that I will have to make one or two notes as I watch these videos of all the new things as I discover them. Of course the other good thing about having tuition like this in a video is the fact that you can watch a video more than once. In fact in the video controls there is a button you can click to take you back 30 seconds for a quick repeat. How handy is that, then? In the bottom right-hand corner of these video viewing controls you may also change the speed of the playback of the video. You can go from half speed, three-quarter speed on through to double speed. Personally I think it is more useful to use the go back 30 seconds and to use that in conjunction with the pause button. It would have been good if the pitch of Don’s voice could have been changed to suit the faster or slower speeds.

Don gets a universal translator or a Rosetta Stone

Don speaks very clearly in his Liverpool accent, although he must come from the posh part of Liverpool. He doesn’t have the accent of Cilla Black or John Bishop. In any case for those that English is not the first language, there are choices available for subtitles in five different languages. You have subtitles in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese. Don is obviously going for world domination here. I can imagine him sitting in his large leather office chair with a large white cat on his lap. He is stroking the large white cat and saying things like “No Mr Bond I expect you to die. – Now, now then… “ Followed by a typical arch-villain evil laugh. Just joking Don, honest…

Great value for money – Start learning about Lion

There are 60 topics covered in these videos and is quite likely that it will cover most, if not all you need to be convinced to upgrade to the latest operating system from Apple, the king of the jungle. The SCO tutor for Lion is well worth getting and a steal at only £3.99. Even if you have already been using Lion then you may well still get some mileage from these videos from the screencast guy Don McAllister. As I already mentioned I learned two new things in the first five minutes of watching and I fully expect to learn more about Lion as I watch the rest of the series. Nice one Don – Very good video tutorial product about OXS Lion.