“Looking to make your Lion experience that much better, we’ve bundled together a bevy of tips and tricks that you really ought to have ready on your first trip into the new OS,” Greg Kumparak reports for TechCrunch. “Now, something to keep in mind: these tips aren’t one-size-fits-all. Read through the list and pick out the ones that sound good, and be sure to drop a comment if you’ve got a tip of your own.”
Nine things you should do after installing Mac OS X Lion:
• Leave It Alone For A Few Hours
• Check Out PDF Signing In Preview
• Reverse Mouse/Touchpad Scrolling
MacDailyNews Take: Suck it up. Give yourself some time to get used to something new. After a week with it, you might find you like it. You might also find yourself ready for whatever Apple has next. Apple rarely makes such changes without a plan – much of which is yet to be revealed. If, after a week or so, you find you just can’t adapt, then go back to the old way. But, to give up immediately is bad advice.
In OS X Lion, imagine a long sheet of paper; pull it down to see the top, push it up to see the bottom.
• Re-enable Dot Indicators Under Running Apps
• Launch Software update
• Disable Dashboard In Mission Control
• Give Filevault Another Chance
• Learn the new multi-touch gestures
MacDailyNews Take: Exactly our point above and contradictory to Kumparak’s advice to not learn OS X Lion’s default scrolling behavior.
• Disable Autocorrect
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If you use OS X Lion on your desktop Mac, we recommend you take a serious look at Apple’s $69 Magic Trackpad
. We use them with our Mac desktops and OS X Lion just isn’t the same without them.
I wouldn’t know jack ^#%*. I’m still on Snow Leopard. Still glorious. Still working. I’ll get round to it when all the early bugs are worked out.
I downloaded the 64 bit iTunes though. Freaky fast is all I’d say. But I’m having problems doing drag and drop to the iBooks section. Not sure why but for every new revision something funky is sure to happen. Apple makes each revision tighter than a drum.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but iTunes is only 32-bit on Snow Leopard.
Yes, but they reworked the underlying code and threw out the old Carbon junk and replaced it with sweet, sweet Cocoa. So even if it ran in 32 bits, it’s running freakily fast on on my SL Mac. Memory management is a lot better.
And it broke Front Row! 🙁
9to5mac has a workaround to get Front Row back. I did it shortly after installing Lion on my 2.5 i5 iMac. Runs perfectly.
http://9to5mac.com/2011/07/19/os-x-lion-kills-front-row-heres-how-to-get-it-back/
http://9to5mac.com/2011/07/19/os-x-lion-kills-front-row-heres-how-to-get-it-back/
Agreed.
So he’s basically saying make it like Leopard? No thanks. I’ve been waiting for something new.
Amen to the MDN Take. I’d go even further and say far too many of these recommendations, as expected, are reactionary end neophobic. Give the Lion defaults a chance for a while, and only revert them if you find you absolutely must. To switch them back without even trying the new features is lunacy.
I’ve already reversed my touch pad on Snow Leopard and it drives people crazy. I like to click with my right thumb.
No, reverse the scrolling. Why should I change my 20 year old habits because they add this in? I have no intention of using my Mac like a touch device, why should I change?
Change for the sake of change is not good design.
Agreed. Even more, if I do adapt to the new scrolling motions, what happens if I have to use a PC, or my parents iMac? Why learn something that’s counter everything else?
Until Apple releases a Magic Trackpad that’s not wireless, I’m not going to be using touch controls for my Mac. Thus this new scrolling is unnecessary for me.
And to your point, that’s a very good observation.
You WANT extra wires?! Oh well. Some people like liver.
I’ve adapted almost entirely to the reverse scrolling when using a trackpad, but the inability to set a mouse scroll-wheel separately, is what bums me out. Playing games on a portable will require a significant adjustment to your brain-pan, if you use a mouse and a scroll-wheel.
And, to add to that, I’ve found that when I sit at a laptop with an actual trackpad button, my habits immediately revert. The trackpad-as-button concept is perfect for inverse-scrolling and doesn’t catch me up as often as you might think.
scroll bars are gone, so you’re no longer moving the view but the content… Makes more sense to move the content in it’s natural direction.
I reversed this immediately, and do not agree with MDN’s take on this. For iOS, I have no problem with it, but with the Magic Trackpad and a screen _separate_ from the trackpad, I totally want the old method intact. And, you can get the scroll bars back, too, in the prefs, which I also did. And, anyone else find Launchpad a terrific bother and not at all useful?
EXACTLY.
From what I have read, the BIGGEST complaint (valid anyway) that sites like Macworld/MacLife have recieved via twitter/facebook/etc is the “WTF did apple do to my Scrolling”
Even Gizmodo posted a profanity laced tirade about it, and like 3 people defended apple…
it is NOT “Natural” to scroll how apple changed it in Lion.
it IS “Natural” however IF and ONLY IF you use a touchscreen… iOS device? sure it works fine.
If Mac’s were made with a touch screen…. It would be fine.
But you separate the screen and the control device. (trackpad/mouse) and the inverse scrolling doesn’t make sense anymore.
If apple removes the option to go back to the old way in a future OS/Upgrade, there WILL be a 3rd party/terminal hack out there to make it correct again. UNLESS future mac’s are touchscreen only…
Which apple could very well be planning. Imagine only having a Keyboard/mouse/trackpad as an option?…
Inverted/old way for me on ALL PC/Mac.
“Natural” way on iOS touchscreen only.
People are so afraid of change… it’s amazing.
Try it for 1 hour on a trackpad and you’ll see that it is quite comfortable working with the new “natural” way Lion introduced. Although i don’t understand why it is not possible to scroll the usual way on a scrollwheel.
It’s not change for the sake of change. The original scrolling behavior made sense because you grabbed a scrollbar and would drag it to scroll. Now with the advent of touch (and even the rollerball mouse before) it makes more sense to have reverse scrolling because you are grabbing the page and “physically” moving it.
Two different paradigms – two different behaviors.
People, the paradigm has changed from:
Move the scrollbar UP in order to move the page DOWN
to:
Move the page down.
It’s that simple (and now consistent with iOS.
“Moving the scrollbar up” has never made the page move down. Perhaps you meant to say pulling the scroll wheel on the mouse?
Why is everybody so defensive about this? Do what feels comfortable, that’s why Apple gave us the option. I’ve been using Saft in Safari for a long time, which features a very smooth (trackpad-like) scroll action using the mouse—which incidentally is the reverse of the mouse wheel, yet I used both alternately.
I also recently discovered Smart Scroll which offers the Saft mouse function system-wide. (Smart Scroll calls the mouse scrolling “Grab scrolling.”)
I worked with a guy who’d foam at the mouth over every little change. He was a Linux-using propellerhead who claimed to love OS X, but he also had this Derangement Syndrome. I mean seriously, veins would stand out on his neck and spittle would fly. Relax, bud.
Umm…grabbing and dragging the scroll bar up most certainly does cause the page to move down…showing you more page above. It’s always been like this and hasn’t changed.
I would also strikethrough
• Re-enable Dot Indicators Under Running Apps
If you’re upgrading from Snow Leopard, two things I’ve noticed are carried over.
1) Single finger tap to drag still works (wish it didn’t so I can get accustomed to three finger drag)
2) The dot-indicators are active
I’ve read in Ars Technica’s review why Apple has done this… because it’s not supposed to matter going forward. I’ve since turned off my dots and will see if I notice any problems that might arise from that.
My deference is to always set things up the way Apple wants them set. This way, I’m not fighting against every major update to tweak it back to some outdated method. I was only an OS 9 holdout until my PCMCIA card started working under X, and I’m not going to start being a Snow Leopard holdout at this point 🙂
He also just added “Disable Autocorrect”. I’m leaving mine on, again, so with each release or move to a new computer, I don’t have to start with 15 minutes of resetting everything because I haven’t learned to work that way.
Coming from a Windows 7 paradigm to Snow Leopard I always felt that the indicator lights were really useful to tell which programs were active and which were just sitting in my Dock passively.
I use a combination of scrubbing along the Dock and keying Alt Tab to switch programs so the lights are a useful pointer to tell me which program to jump to by visually ignoring those without a light. Saves microseconds and it’s useful to me.
Now that Launchpad provides a quick way to start apps that I use occasionally, I’ve cleaned out everything from the Dock that I don’t use regularly. I’ve found that makes the Dock itself more useful and the indicator lights less important.
Excellent tip, Tim! I hadn’t thought about that (because I’m so used to the old way) but there’s really no need for those icons in the dock anymore to start frequently used applications. I can put everything I have in the dock on the first page of the Launchpad screen.
You’re right, once you know that if it’s in the dock, it’s running, even less need for the lights. I’ll see how that works for me. Another good reason why it’s just good to accept the change and figure out how it “works!”.
You don’t need those lights.
In Ars’s review around this feature, Siracusa mentions that apps properly designed for Lion will be able to cede their resources to more recently launched/used apps that need them. Lion will silently close the program in the background, but its not really closed: its processes are still running if necessary:
“Automatic Termination works hand-in-hand with autosave. Any application that supports Automatic Termination should also support autosave and document restore. Since only applications with no visible windows are eligible for Automatic Termination, and since by default the Dock does not indicate whether or not an application is running, the user might not even notice when an application is automatically terminated by the system. No dialog boxes will ask about unsaved changes, and when the user clicks on the application in the Dock to reactivate it, it should relaunch and appear exactly as it did before it was terminated.”
Read more here: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.ars/8
So the future is not having to matter whether apps are running or not. This is how iOS works already.
MDN should strikethrough this point too.
In theory the memory management is supposed to allocate resources so that it no longer matters if an application is running or if it is not. However, in practice is not that simple. I think we have all come across new iPhone or iPad users who start complaining about their devices becoming really slow, I know I have. After a quick double click, I show them much to their surprise that they have ten to fifteen apps running. Once those apps are closed, then their iPhone or iPad starts running much faster.
I know based on my brothers ongoing experience with Lion on his MacBook Pro with 8 gb of ram, that closing programs down makes a significant difference in the performance of his system. Operations that are normally near instant now take over 15 seconds to complete.
I’ve moved the seldom used apps to Launchpad too, but can’t move ALL non-running apps there, because if I di I can’t drop files onto them. Therefore I do still need a fair selection on the dock, and unless I totally trust the memory management, need the blue dots as a result.
Old way to scroll was counter-intuitive. Change is good, keeps the mind sharp.
Fear is a mind killer.
i agree, although it worked for scroll bars and scroll wheels…
With touch enabled devices, it’s more intuitive to move the content.
Seeking advice: i used to be able to dual finger swipe to go back a page: in itunes, safari, in finder: but now it changes the spaces.
Anyone know how to go back to that? now i actually have to click the button to go back, im not fan of that
This can be altered in System Preferences under “Trackpad”… select More Gestures, notice how you can change how many fingers to suit your style of swiping by clicking on the “down arrow”!
That doesn’t solve the problem, though. We used to be able to do a two-fingered swipe in Safari to go back or forth between pages just like the back and forward buttons do. That no longer works. AND I haven’t been able to find a setting for that in Settings or in Safari Preferences. I’m disappointed. That gesture was SO useful!
It does.
Trackpad>More Gestures.
Top option, select the dropdown box and choose between swipe with 2, swipe with 3 or Both.
I thought Firefox was not 100% compatible with Lion, or at least with the swipes. But it does work.
And check to make sure the 2nd dropdown box, Swipe between full-screen apps… isn’t also set to 3 fingers…
that overrides the swipe between pages.
It’s now a single-finger swipe to go back and forth in Safari.
Well, I tried that and it does not work for me. Is it a setting somewhere?
I didn’t change anything. It just worked. I’m using a Magic Mouse, not the Trackpad.
two fingers swipe from left to right to go back
two finger swipe from right to left to go forward
DANG
That is on a track pad.
Mouse is the same with one finger.
I’ve never tried Filevault. Apple scared me away.
I had a number of large Encrypted Disk Images containing backups that became corrupt. I thought, if I can’t trust them, ho could I ever trust my entire system to the technology.
First thing I did: get Parallels Desktop 5 to run under Lion. It can be done by downloading the Version6 Launcher and then starting version5 with it.
Of course, The Parallels Team claims version5 wouldn’t work on Lion, but that’s simply a lie to sell you version6 of their buggy software. It’s a shame, they should offer some new features, not just kill your purchased software to force you upgrading. (the update costs more than an operating system!)
Using version 6 for my personal and work machine. Works great. They just released another update though so maybe you should give that a go.
I hated the magic mouse now I love it. I’ve kept the “natural” scroll method and my brain is rewiring itself. After 2 days I’m pretty much used to the new scroll direction.
I will definitely get a Magic Trackpad as it’s the future for OS X.
Lion is definitely worth the upgrade money. If you don’t want to be on the bleeding edge wait for 10.7.1 for some minor bug splats.
I was lucky to get Lion as a tester a few months ago and it was weird changing what I was used to with the scrolling.
I’m glad I persisted – it it way more intuitive now the way they have it set up and there’s a lot of advantages long term. I know many will change it back, but honestly, I guarantee you’ll find it an improvement. It takes about a week to make it feel more natural.
As an iPad user I like the new scrolling. This is my third day with it. Today, I find i’m doing it right but then second guess myself. Tomorrow I should be fine.
I have all my apps (and ready-access folders) arranged in piles (stacks) on the right side of the dock. Then anything running shows up on the left side of the dock making the dots superfluous. I still like the dots tho.
There is not and will never be anything “natural” about moving my fingers up to move my view down. It’s not “natural” on my iPhone, it’s not “natural” on my iPad, and it’s not “natural” on my Macs either. I’m not moving a piece of paper, I’m changing which portion of the document I wish to view. Up is not down and down is not up.
Oh, and the tenth thing is to disable the vanishing scroll bars.
Would the 11th thing for you be
• Get those durn kids off’n my lawn, dadgummit?
Ah. I see. You’re looking through a ‘window’ at your document. To see the bottom, you want to push the window down. That’s all well and good and we’ve all done that since Apple taught us how 30 years ago. But now there’s an easier way, push the document up.
So if you’re holding a rabbit in front of you, do you pull it up to see the ears and lower it down to see the bottom of the paws…? Strange. You must be hanging up side down, but then again what is up and what is down 🙂
down to see the ears, up to see the tail. Pull the document down to see the top. Pull it up to see the bottom!
LOL … The rabbit metaphor will help me explain this Windows-breaking change to the non iOS/OS X world. But, wouldn’t it be more germain to say “So if you’re holding a Lion in front of you…”?
I’m no more holding a rabbit than I am a piece of paper. It’s an abstraction, and human brains are supposed to be capable of managing such things.
Agreed! I have yet to find scrolling natural on either my iPad 1 or my iPad 2. (Although I am finally getting close after a years use). I wish Apple would provide a way to change this in iOS.
Second, I wish Apple would provide an easy way to turn off the Launchpad. It is occupying valuable and needed space on my dock. For those who like the Launchpad, great, just provide me with a way to turn it off. It reminds me of Windows 3.1.
Launchpad compared to Windows 3.1
That is taking us back quite sometime, but you’re spot on !
Thankfully the icons are prettier these days.
When you turn the pages of a physical book, which way do you “swipe”? It’s the same on an iOS device…and now in Lion too.
As for getting rid of Launch Pad from your dock…just drag it off. If you can tell which way to drag it, up or down.
Don’t use File vault under any circumstances!!! If your hard drive gets corrupted, your data is gone!!! There is no way to recover data that is in File vault period! If you forget your password your data is not recoverable either. It’s really secure but if something goes wrong it can work against you and your data is gone.
You can have Apple store your encryption code.
I just wrote my password on the back of my computer with a big magic marker. No one will understand what “FileVault PW=12345” means anyway! Oops! Now I told you!
That is the same password as my luggage combination!
President Skroob lives!
With a mouse, Lion’s natural scrolling is counter-intuitive. I’ve changed it back.
Scroll bars have been set to be always there. I can see a lot of people not realizing that there are more items in a folder with the default setting.
What is the rationale for not showing a running app in the dock?
Lion just seems to present a lot of small steps backwards interface wise in the name of making it more like the iOS.
I think there will be a market for themers and interface utilities with the release of Lion.
There is a difference between being counter-intuitive and being different than what you are used to. If you think about it the way the scroll wheel has worked was counter-intuitive you just got used to doing it that way.
The scroll bars are still there if you don’t have a magic mouse or track pad. There is no need to change the default unless you want to see the scroll bars while a mult-itouch device is connected. It just works.
The rational for not showing the running apps in the dock is because it is less important to know under Lion because of state saving. If you feel the need to see it, turn it back on.
The best part is all of your issues can be adjusted with settings. So in the time it took you to complain about the changes you could have set them back to the way you like them.
In the last three years I have helped several of my clients switch from Windows to Mac. Lion is going to make selling a switch much more difficult. I am not sure Apple nor long time Apple users totally understand why users switch from Windows to the Mac.
Here are top reasons I hear from my clients:
– More secure
– No need for expensive, performance degrading anti-virus software
– Neat clean design without cables all over the place – this is BIG!
– Very similar to Windows, so it is easy to learn – this is BIG!
– Windows Vista
Without those first four factors being in place, my clients would not have switched to the Mac. The interface similarities between OSX and Windows encourages many potential switchers to the give the Mac a try because they can be productive on the new platform. Scrolling oddities, Save As oddities, and the infamous green zoom button debates will make it more difficult for Windows users to see themselves using a Mac.
I know Apple will win over more users to the Mac platform by providing options that will make it as easy as possible for Windows users to switch. Normal scrolling, a true Maximize option, and more options to control the speed of the mouse (too slow on the low end and too fast on the top end of the mouse curve).
After the users are on the Mac platform then they can explore some of the other interface options.
its actually a much easier switch for my clients. Most of my clients have iPhones and/or iPads. Getting them to go mouseless with a trackpad is dead easy and they actually pick up the gestures and scrolling pretty easily.
I haven’t had a single problem with Lion. I’m in love with it. Should I run into a problem which would be most likely be my fault, I will post it here and you can explain what I or the system has done wrong. My MBP runs faster and I like what Apple has done. In fairness though you guys are experts which I admit I am not so it’s a learning experience in a sense hearing the complaints. In the meantime, my humble user experience has been excellent.
Sadly, no mention of repair permissions in all that.
One thing people with older Macs should probably do BEFORE INSTALLING:
Make a backup disk of Lion…
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9218547/How_to_make_a_bootable_Lion_install_disc_or_drive?taxonomyId=89&pageNumber=2
Make that: Make a BOOTABLE backup disk of lion BEFORE INSTALLING.. here is the correct link.. the previous link went to page 2 of these instructions…
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9218547/How_to_make_a_bootable_Lion_install_disc_or_drive?taxonomyId=89&pageNumber=1
I do mis my “today” actions picture in Finder, and about reverse scrolling : Have yo get used to it : but how to set it back in the old fashioned way ?
System Prferences>Trackpad>Scroll and Zoom.
First option.
Turn it off and join the rest of the world.
Apple should have left it OFF, and pushed the option as you can turn it on.
without a touchscreen, that option IS counter-intuitive.
MDN buggy today? this was NOT meant to be posted to his post… Did this yesterday as well in a larger thread…
In Finder cmd F and then adjust the search parameters. Then press the “save” button on the right. Give the search a name (like “today”) and make sure you check “Add To Sidebar”
Not sure why they removed those, but you can recreate it with a smart search saved to the sidebar
a Good explanation on why “Natural scrolling” is wrong.
http://www.businessinsider.com/mac-os-x-lion-natural-scrolling-2011-7
“Apple thought they’d bake this same scrolling motion into Mac OS X Lion, but they’re just plain wrong. Because your computer screen is on a completely different three-dimensional axis as the surface you’re touching, “natural scrolling” is jarring.”
“But because your screen is oriented almost perpendicularly to the trackpad, it doesn’t work. It works when you’re touching the actual content (like on an iPhone or iPad), but not if your hands are manipulating a space that doesn’t mentally signify what’s happening on another plane.”
also as one poster pointed out, you move your cursor the exact same way you move the scroll wheel, or trackpad. but with “Natural Scrolling” you scroll the cursor down, but go UP to move the page down.. which is backwards.
If apple inverted your cursor, would you adjust? or would you change it back?
If someone’s mind can’t map a square laying flat on a desk (trackpad) to a square standing up in front of them (display), how the hell would that same person use a mouse?
except the mouse is now OPPOSITE of how every other mouse works since it’s inception in ONE area only. scrolling.
move the cursor, same. scroll, reversed.
with your logic, apple should have reversed the cursor movement as well.
you forget, this “change” is NOT limited to the trackpad.. It reverses the scroll wheel on a mouse as well. and no app by app settings.
I’m just glad it can be changed back to normal. you know, how EVERY PC/MAC/LINUX/ETC computer works.
I don’t want to have to LEARN how to do the same thing, 2 different ways because my Mac is backwards, but every other computer i touch in this world is the other way.
I get used to my Mac, then sit down at ANY other computer i’m not allowed to REVERSE scrolling… and i have to UNLEARN everything else.
iOS is DIFFERENT. cause you ARE actually touching the screen/page. when you separate the two.. the “natural” way is backwards.
It’s ok. Based upon your use of complete sentences and correct grammar, I have full faith you’ll be able to make the leap should you choose to in the future.
I was happy to try the reverse (“Natural”) scrolling and was basically getting used to it on the trackpad. But then I launched World of Warcraft after hooking up my mouse and found that the scroll wheel was also reversed. That’s a bit nonsensical.
A driver update may be able to set the mouse scrolling differently, so I’ll look into that. But for now, I’m back to classic scrolling.
The great thing about Apple is not that they know what’s best for us, as implied by the MDN take. It’s that we have the option to set up the machine as we like it. With Lion, we now of the option of having an incredibly easy to use setup (Launchpad) all the way to a terminal-based uber-geek interface.
Mel..I come half way with Finder cmd > F but not what i was used in Snow Leopard. Very silly that Apple changes habits in Mac using so often. A download is almost unfindable !! because updates for non-Apple software are obviously necessary ! For example Logitec has an update for their products ready for X Lion. Does Apple read this .. ?
I love the new features of Lion and find the new natural scrolling and launchpad is a wonderful incorporation of IOS features to OS X. Just like navigating on an IOS device, now you can navigate on a MAC. Now that Lion has an IOS feel to it, IOS devices will become a “training ground” for the full MAC experience for IOS users who still have a Windows PC. The new natural scrolling in Lion gives the MAC a tactile feeling to navigating like you experience with IOS devices. I enjoy that I have an option to view all my apps, IOS like in Launchpad. The IOS features of Lion could be an indication that Apple will be launching a full MAC tablet, perhaps to replace the discontinued MacBook. Lion fortunately has the ability to turn off natural scrolling for those that do not wish to have a more IOS experience on their MAC. Good job Apple.
You think you’re ZuneTang or somethin’? Mac is not an acronym that should be in all caps, at least not as you’re trying to use it. *smirk*
That being said, glad you’re enjoying Lion! I tend to agree w/your thoughts.
The scrolling should have been the Lion way in the first place! Now its finally right!
But if you like the other way, go ahead and customize.
I have mixed feelings about natural scrolling. Does it really make any more sense than the way we’ve been doing for over 20 years? And is it worth having to figure out every time you use someone else’s computer how to scroll? Is it really more natural to move a page with your hand or to tilt your head up and down back and forth. That’s really the difference in these scrolling metaphors. Both mimic a natural way to manipulate a view point. You can either move your head down to see what’s below or move the paper up to see what’s below. I don’t see this as being any better. And if you work with computers that you share or aren’t on OS X Lion, this can become disorienting.