You’ve no doubt read a lot about OS X Lion, Apple’s next generation operating system for the Mac. The last few weeks have seen the tech media publishing gobs of information, but some of the new features in Lion aren’t getting the attention that some of the more popular features like Launchpad, the new Mail and Calendar apps, and iCloud are.
A few features that should be in the final release of Lion when it ships in July that you may not have read about include:
- The Finder will offer a way to merge two folders with the same name, rather than replacing the older one when you attempt to combine them.
- You can finally resize Finder and application windows from any edge.
- When using the iTunes Jukebox screensaver, you’ll be able to click on the album cover image to play the songs contained in that album.
- When you’re browsing versions of a document using the new Versions feature, a side-by-side comparison feature allows you to see the current state of a document next to the previous one, so you can easily note the differences.
- All My Files is a sort of Smart Folder for the Finder. Found in the sidebar of Finder windows, the All My Files folder contains ALL your documents, regardless of where they actually reside on your hard drive.
- Holding down a letter on the keyboard will reveal accent characters available. This will be a great feature for those who often must use Spanish accents in their text!
- Lion will offer a “resore partition” to aid in drive recovery in the event of bad moo.
- TextEdit will offer a full formatting bar at the top of the window. This may not sound like a big deal, but because TextEdit can save documents as a Word file, you can basically replace MS Word on your Mac with the built-in text editor. Previously, it was just too much clicking to format documents to be a serious word processor.
- Each Space can have its own desktop wallpaper to aid in identifying which Space you’re currently viewing at a quick glance.
- You’ll be able to use Screen Sharing by logging in with your Apple ID, rather than having to set up a user account on the target Mac.
This is by no means a complete list of “small features” that Lion will introduce. Along with the more popular features that Apple has been publicizing, and iCloud, Lion is set to be the biggest OS X release to date – and at only $30, I suspect it will be the most popular.
These seem like some great small updates. I feel it is always the small details that can make a big difference and make life a little bit easier. I love the way that apple are always thinking this way and pushing new ideas and includes that little bit further with each release.
I am hoping that Lion is a bigger change than Leopard to Snow Leopard. From all my research it looks awesome and very big upgrades have been done. I will probably enjoy the auto save feature the most as I do a lot of work with my Adobe Master Collection and find it a pain to have to do it myself. Should work great on my new turbocharged Mac. Can’t wait till July.
I’m running Lion now, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that it is a MUCH bigger change than Leopard to Snow Leopard was.
easy access to accent characters is huge for me, I can never remember where they are.