Mac OS X Lion : Features & More

In this post, I will discuss some of the features which make Lion irresistible. Lion is launched as an upgrade to MAC OS X Snow Leopard and has borrowed lots of feature from iOS, the OS powering iPad. It has an intuitive touch control interface using the builtin touch pad which allows various multi touch gestures, touch / swiping /tapping with single, double, triple fingers or Palm. Initially it may take little while to unlearn what you have learned in Windows World, ex: Scrolling the screen is done by swiping two fingers up and down in the touch pad, click the mouse controls will not work.

Mission Control

Mission controls brings everything running in to a single screen, a bird’s eye view of everything and with a single click you can go to anywhere you want. Apple says “Sees everything and go anywhere”

Full Screen Apps and Switching between them

With Lion it is easy to make any application running full screen and switching between them. With three finger swipe horizontally you can switch between screens. I am sure that your will find it easier to learn these by experimenting yourself rather than reading this.

Launch Pad

Launch Pad brings all the application into an iOS style screen which you are familiar in iPad or iPhone. It works exactly like that with multiple pages and grouping. Using two fingers you can switch between pages. With Launch Pad you do not have to search for your applications, it is right there.

Auto Save and Version control

While working with a docs in Lion it automatically saves it with every pause or five minutes. It does this in the background and stores in the iCloud a copy so that you can stop and restart your work in any of the iOS devices. So if you are working on a document in your iMac you can just leave it and resume your work on the document while travelling in your iPad or MacBook Air. No need to copy between devices, it does it automatically. It does version control too so that at any time you can go back to your previous version or browse through all the previous versions in a Cover flow style and pick the exact version you may like to work with.

Apple App Store

Applications can be bought from online Apple App Store which is an easy and fast method of acquiring any apps. Those who are familiar with iTunes Stores feel at home, it is very similar with almost all the same features, the major difference is that MAC applications are costlier compared iOS apps.

Air Drop : Lion’s new way to transfer files

Lion has more than 250 new features which makes it impossible to discuss even important ones. So I have l am liming to one of interesting feature called AirDrop.

It's a way to leverage your home or office Wi-Fi network to send files to others who are also running Lion by just dragging and dropping those files onto an icon representing the other person. It is a zero configuration file transfer tool, you do not have to really need any setup or even a Wi-Fi network to run this. It works on Wi-FI adhoc mode. Once you open the Airdrop apps it presents a radar screen with photos of those who are around with AirDrop enabled in close Wi-Fi range. Now it is very easy to transfer any files to anybody, just drag and drop in the icon intended.

There are many more features which really help you to do the work faster and better. It is easy to share the files between MAC machines and Windows machines.