9 ms·

What tiny thing in Lion makes you smile or has caught you off guard?

68 points by acangiano 15y ago

mmuro 15y ago
The Finder's "Arrange by Kind" has been updated to actually group the different files. Folders, Documents, Developer, Images, etc. I really like this.
tree_of_item 15y ago
You can have different backgrounds on different Spaces. It's great to be able to organize a little mental model of your workspace by using differently colored backgrounds. I find I'm using the swipe gesture to change spaces frequently, and it can get a bit disorienting; every space looks almost the same except for a slightly different arrangement of rectangles.
- makecheck 15y ago
  That's true; although the desktop background pane in System Preferences can be quite buggy, to the point where it's far from obvious that it would even be possible to make the backgrounds different. For instance, it will only appear by default on the displays you have on the desktop you're using, and it shows the background of that desktop in its mini-rendition even if you try to switch desktops. It can also sometimes show the wrong background in the preferences pane even after you've changed it. So although it does work, it hardly gives the user confidence. The most reliable method seems to be to use the Finder's "Change Desktop Background..." contextual menu from the desired desktop, to force System Preferences to open in the right state.
sebbi 15y ago
Everybody talking about little details of an otherwise not so significant update makes me smile (or has caught me off guard) ... you people are crazy and need to realise that you spend way too much time with your OS ...
- president 15y ago
  Sure it's not a major update but it is the little things that makes an OS great. After being a long time power Windows user, switching to Mac OS made me realize how the little things can really improve productivity and workflows.
  - sebbi 15y ago
    No they don't ... if you spent this much time with your OS you are doing it wrong, sorry.
    - rimantas 15y ago
      You know, some jobes are done on things called computers. And OS pretty much is required for them to be useful. And then when you spend some eight hours (too much, according to you) each day, small details suddenly are not so small and unimportant.
      - Bootvis 15y ago
        The GP didn't put it very eloquently but he has a point. Most days I start with booting my computer, start one application and the browser and do all my work in those. When that happens I really don't care about the amount of polish the window manager has.
        frou_dh 15y ago
        As if spending 5 minutes picking up some tips is a big outlay?
        Bootvis 15y ago
        That isn't what I meant and I myself do read the docs. But: if YAGNI then YAGNI.
  - jmreid 15y ago
sheffield 15y ago
"How about ability to resize windows from all edges of the window. That alone is worth the 30 bucks." That made me smile...
- jmreid 15y ago
  Love that you can hold option while resizing to change the size from the opposite ends. Very handy.
  - jodrellblank 15y ago
    Or hold shift to keep the width/height ratio the same.
    - jmreid 15y ago
      Ahh, very nice! It's crazy to think how many of these little touches are hidden in OS X.
manuelflara 15y ago
Of all the "big features" Lion has, the one that I find a good reason to upgrade is Mission Control. Still, not being that big of a deal, I've been lazy about actually upgrading. Funnily enough, reading about some of the really awesome small details that people are talking about there really make me want to upgrade!
tehjones 15y ago
The quality of the badges on apps seems very low right now, it seems really grainy on mail.app (to be fair I havent seen a badge of anything else).
- spicyj 15y ago
  Yep, the pixelation is something I've noticed all around. Hopefully it will be fixed in 10.7.1.
- waterside81 15y ago
  Thank you - I thought I was going nuts. I kept staring at it trying to remember what it looked like on SL, convinced that it had got worse. And the close/hide/zoom buttons in the top left are smaller too.
cj 15y ago
I actually regret upgrading at this point mainly because of Mission Control. 2d spaces and painfully slow switch-screen animations has hurt my productivity.
- AlexandrB 15y ago
  After seeing the Lion previews, I thought the 2d spaces would be a problem for me as well. However I was pleasantly surprised when I found that my keyboard shortcuts still worked (I use Cmd+# to switch to a space). Since this takes me directly to a space the animations is no worse than that in Snow Leopard.
  - bretthoerner 15y ago
    The difference is that you could disable the animation in Snow Leopard, defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-swoosh-animation-off -bool YES && killall Dock If anyone knows how to do the same under Mission Control please, please do tell.
    - tvon 15y ago
      Does anyone know how those settings are discovered? I've tried running 'strings' on a few binaries but haven't uncovered anything.
      - cpenner461 15y ago
        defaults read EDIT: Hmm, that shows all of the defaults that are currently in the system, but I guess doesn't show you what extra settings you could set. E.g. that setting in the grandparent doesn't show up in my defaults.
      - simonb 15y ago
        http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-secrets/wiki/FindingSecrets http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-secrets/wiki/FindingSecre...
- makecheck 15y ago
vmmenon 15y ago
I miss expose ...
- doctoboggan 15y ago
  Expose is gone in Lion? has it been replaced by something similar?
hskf 15y ago
Anyone else have a problem with the clicking on the trackpad when waking from sleep? Sometimes when opening my air, the mouse is unable to click on anything - I can only move the cursor and right click. Closing and re-opening the lid will solve the problem, but it is pretty damn frustrating
- mark_l_watson 15y ago
  You just need to press either shift key.
jodrellblank 15y ago
As seen on ArsTechnica, "Hey! OpenBSD's PacketFilter is in Lion!" - http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1151707 http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=115170...
bdhe 15y ago
This is not a criticism, just a curious enquiry. How does Apple manage to get so much support and discussion that seems very organic and grassroots in nature about its product releases, but somehow Microsoft and Windows get the short end of the stick? It is in no sense a scientific observation, but I did not notice so much interest when Windows 7 was released, even on Hacker News.
- sid0 15y ago
  This site should be renamed Apple Fanboy News, that's why. I'm tired of these worthless submissions. There are lots of things I like about my OS, but I'm not insecure enough to need to justify any love I might have by telling everybody on Hacker News about it.
  - Maro 15y ago
    It's actually a very good submission. I didn't know Leopard had all these neat features. Now I want to upgrade. I also have a Windows box, and I wouldn't mind a similar SE about Win7 niceties, and of course Win7 having such niceties...
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - bkudria 15y ago
    This is a fascinating goldmine of interesting little things for UI or UX people.
  - schlomie 15y ago
    The spell checker auto-detects the language you're writing in and switches to the correct dictionary for a sentence. How cool is that?
  - sid0 15y ago
    Hah, looks like I touched a nerve here. -9 points and counting.
- radley 15y ago
nomdeplume 15y ago
Pros: generally "feels" faster than 10.6 - repairing permissions seems to stick whereas 10.6 would always have 10000 broken permissions. cons: - Removed ability to use resize icons by clicking and dragging slider bar. now you have to set in view options - stubborn settings like having windows reappear upon restart despite disabling feature. - you STILL have to get plugins like totalfinder to set up finder with tabs. default is like opening up a new browser window each time you want to go to a new link.
- philfreo 15y ago
  The slider in finder is still there, but you have to turn on the status bar to see it
  - nomdeplume 15y ago
    tnx for the tip. Turns out that opening finder was clipping off the bottom part where slider is. The only way I found out was by clicking and dragging the window downward an inch or two. Definitely needed that.
MostAwesomeDude 15y ago
That method of entering accents seems really backwards to me. Why not a Compose key?
- gchpaco 15y ago
  It has a compose key already in Option; this is more discoverable. (or can you figure out how to write ē easily on a US keyboard?)
- julian37 15y ago
  Agreed. I don't have Lion installed yet, but in SL I can enter "ä" by typing option-U, then A. The article makes it sound like the new behavior can be disabled so I'm hoping that means the current behavior, which I'm very happy with, still works!
  - spicyj 15y ago
    It does. ü < crude attempt at a smiley face ;)
Limes102 15y ago
Actually didn't realise how many things I like in Lion... "When you do things right, no one will notice you've done anything at all"
necubi 15y ago
My favorite new feature is the revamped FileVault. The old version of FV was a huge mess: it only encrypted your home directory, it didn't play nice with TimeMachine (since it saw your home directory as one giant encrypted file) and was generally a nuisance. Lion's FileVault is full-disk encryption and operates at the file-system level. This means that every program sees your encrypted file system as just ordinary files, while HFS+ is transparently encrypting and decrypting on every read and write from the hardware. This makes full disk encryption so simple and problem-free that I recommend everybody turn it on, immediately. Ars has more information on how this all works (http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.ars/13#lion-file-system http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.a...).
- kalvin 15y ago
  Agreed, this is my favorite too. And, after you encrypt your primary drive, you can either leave your Time Machine drive alone (which seems silly, but it's an option now, whereas before using FileVault created an encrypted disk image, which meant Time Machine could no longer backup changes-only, defeating the purpose of TM), or you can go into TM settings and encrypt your TM drive too. You can also encrypt secondary disks on the command line. It all runs silently in the background until encryption is done. There is a 20-30% disk performance hit (that I haven't noticed, on an SSD): http://www.anandtech.com/show/4485/back-to-the-mac-os-x-107-lion-review/18 http://www.anandtech.com/show/4485/back-to-the-mac-os-x-107-...
protomyth 15y ago
Do people like or hate that the order of labels has changed when sorting by label? (labeled items now appear first, but in a reverse alpha order)
nomdeplume 15y ago
If upsidedown smiles count, I would have to say that Launchpad makes me smile with its duplicate entrys and no intuitive method of organization/removal of entrys.
micampe 15y ago
My absolutely favorite feature is "Show related messages" in Mail conversations. 10 years after Gmail did it right, I can start using a desktop client again.
nostromo 15y ago
I love the "sign without printing" feature in preview. I've already used it to sign some legal docs. The one problem is my lawyer then asked for originals... d'oh!
mmariani 15y ago
I really like Mission Control, specially two of it's features. First, creating spaces on the fly. Second, dragging an app icon and dropping in another space moves all of it's windows to that space. It's like Apple read my mind! Sweet. Another thing is UI update as a whole. Aqua has been outdated for quite a while. Now all objects look and feel more real. Also I'm enjoying the new windows' subtle lighting and texture, they look like anodized aluminum. But the top feature on my list are the new APIs, of course.

68 points by acangiano 15y ago

mmuro 15y ago

The Finder's "Arrange by Kind" has been updated to actually group the different files. Folders, Documents, Developer, Images, etc. I really like this.

tree_of_item 15y ago

You can have different backgrounds on different Spaces. It's great to be able to organize a little mental model of your workspace by using differently colored backgrounds. I find I'm using the swipe gesture to change spaces frequently, and it can get a bit disorienting; every space looks almost the same except for a slightly different arrangement of rectangles.

makecheck 15y ago
That's true; although the desktop background pane in System Preferences can be quite buggy, to the point where it's far from obvious that it would even be possible to make the backgrounds different. For instance, it will only appear by default on the displays you have on the desktop you're using, and it shows the background of that desktop in its mini-rendition even if you try to switch desktops. It can also sometimes show the wrong background in the preferences pane even after you've changed it. So although it does work, it hardly gives the user confidence. The most reliable method seems to be to use the Finder's "Change Desktop Background..." contextual menu from the desired desktop, to force System Preferences to open in the right state.

sebbi 15y ago

Everybody talking about little details of an otherwise not so significant update makes me smile (or has caught me off guard) ... you people are crazy and need to realise that you spend way too much time with your OS ...

president 15y ago
Sure it's not a major update but it is the little things that makes an OS great. After being a long time power Windows user, switching to Mac OS made me realize how the little things can really improve productivity and workflows.
- sebbi 15y ago
  No they don't ... if you spent this much time with your OS you are doing it wrong, sorry.
  - rimantas 15y ago
    You know, some jobes are done on things called computers. And OS pretty much is required for them to be useful. And then when you spend some eight hours (too much, according to you) each day, small details suddenly are not so small and unimportant.
    - Bootvis 15y ago
      The GP didn't put it very eloquently but he has a point. Most days I start with booting my computer, start one application and the browser and do all my work in those. When that happens I really don't care about the amount of polish the window manager has.
      - frou_dh 15y ago
        As if spending 5 minutes picking up some tips is a big outlay?
        Bootvis 15y ago
        That isn't what I meant and I myself do read the docs. But: if YAGNI then YAGNI.
- jmreid 15y ago

sheffield 15y ago

"How about ability to resize windows from all edges of the window. That alone is worth the 30 bucks." That made me smile...

jmreid 15y ago
Love that you can hold option while resizing to change the size from the opposite ends. Very handy.
- jodrellblank 15y ago
  Or hold shift to keep the width/height ratio the same.
  - jmreid 15y ago
    Ahh, very nice! It's crazy to think how many of these little touches are hidden in OS X.

manuelflara 15y ago

Of all the "big features" Lion has, the one that I find a good reason to upgrade is Mission Control. Still, not being that big of a deal, I've been lazy about actually upgrading. Funnily enough, reading about some of the really awesome small details that people are talking about there really make me want to upgrade!

tehjones 15y ago

The quality of the badges on apps seems very low right now, it seems really grainy on mail.app (to be fair I havent seen a badge of anything else).

spicyj 15y ago
Yep, the pixelation is something I've noticed all around. Hopefully it will be fixed in 10.7.1.
waterside81 15y ago
Thank you - I thought I was going nuts. I kept staring at it trying to remember what it looked like on SL, convinced that it had got worse. And the close/hide/zoom buttons in the top left are smaller too.

cj 15y ago

I actually regret upgrading at this point mainly because of Mission Control. 2d spaces and painfully slow switch-screen animations has hurt my productivity.

AlexandrB 15y ago
After seeing the Lion previews, I thought the 2d spaces would be a problem for me as well. However I was pleasantly surprised when I found that my keyboard shortcuts still worked (I use Cmd+# to switch to a space). Since this takes me directly to a space the animations is no worse than that in Snow Leopard.
- bretthoerner 15y ago
  The difference is that you could disable the animation in Snow Leopard, defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-swoosh-animation-off -bool YES && killall Dock If anyone knows how to do the same under Mission Control please, please do tell.
  - tvon 15y ago
    Does anyone know how those settings are discovered? I've tried running 'strings' on a few binaries but haven't uncovered anything.
    - cpenner461 15y ago
      defaults read EDIT: Hmm, that shows all of the defaults that are currently in the system, but I guess doesn't show you what extra settings you could set. E.g. that setting in the grandparent doesn't show up in my defaults.
    - simonb 15y ago
      http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-secrets/wiki/FindingSecrets http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-secrets/wiki/FindingSecre...
makecheck 15y ago

vmmenon 15y ago

I miss expose ...

doctoboggan 15y ago
Expose is gone in Lion? has it been replaced by something similar?

hskf 15y ago

Anyone else have a problem with the clicking on the trackpad when waking from sleep? Sometimes when opening my air, the mouse is unable to click on anything - I can only move the cursor and right click. Closing and re-opening the lid will solve the problem, but it is pretty damn frustrating

mark_l_watson 15y ago
You just need to press either shift key.

jodrellblank 15y ago

As seen on ArsTechnica, "Hey! OpenBSD's PacketFilter is in Lion!" - http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1151707 http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=115170...

bdhe 15y ago

This is not a criticism, just a curious enquiry. How does Apple manage to get so much support and discussion that seems very organic and grassroots in nature about its product releases, but somehow Microsoft and Windows get the short end of the stick? It is in no sense a scientific observation, but I did not notice so much interest when Windows 7 was released, even on Hacker News.

sid0 15y ago
This site should be renamed Apple Fanboy News, that's why. I'm tired of these worthless submissions. There are lots of things I like about my OS, but I'm not insecure enough to need to justify any love I might have by telling everybody on Hacker News about it.
- Maro 15y ago
  It's actually a very good submission. I didn't know Leopard had all these neat features. Now I want to upgrade. I also have a Windows box, and I wouldn't mind a similar SE about Win7 niceties, and of course Win7 having such niceties...
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- bkudria 15y ago
  This is a fascinating goldmine of interesting little things for UI or UX people.
- schlomie 15y ago
  The spell checker auto-detects the language you're writing in and switches to the correct dictionary for a sentence. How cool is that?
- sid0 15y ago
  Hah, looks like I touched a nerve here. -9 points and counting.
radley 15y ago

nomdeplume 15y ago

Pros: generally "feels" faster than 10.6 - repairing permissions seems to stick whereas 10.6 would always have 10000 broken permissions. cons: - Removed ability to use resize icons by clicking and dragging slider bar. now you have to set in view options - stubborn settings like having windows reappear upon restart despite disabling feature. - you STILL have to get plugins like totalfinder to set up finder with tabs. default is like opening up a new browser window each time you want to go to a new link.

philfreo 15y ago
The slider in finder is still there, but you have to turn on the status bar to see it
- nomdeplume 15y ago
  tnx for the tip. Turns out that opening finder was clipping off the bottom part where slider is. The only way I found out was by clicking and dragging the window downward an inch or two. Definitely needed that.

MostAwesomeDude 15y ago

That method of entering accents seems really backwards to me. Why not a Compose key?

gchpaco 15y ago
It has a compose key already in Option; this is more discoverable. (or can you figure out how to write ē easily on a US keyboard?)
julian37 15y ago
Agreed. I don't have Lion installed yet, but in SL I can enter "ä" by typing option-U, then A. The article makes it sound like the new behavior can be disabled so I'm hoping that means the current behavior, which I'm very happy with, still works!
- spicyj 15y ago
  It does. ü < crude attempt at a smiley face ;)

Limes102 15y ago

Actually didn't realise how many things I like in Lion... "When you do things right, no one will notice you've done anything at all"

necubi 15y ago

My favorite new feature is the revamped FileVault. The old version of FV was a huge mess: it only encrypted your home directory, it didn't play nice with TimeMachine (since it saw your home directory as one giant encrypted file) and was generally a nuisance. Lion's FileVault is full-disk encryption and operates at the file-system level. This means that every program sees your encrypted file system as just ordinary files, while HFS+ is transparently encrypting and decrypting on every read and write from the hardware. This makes full disk encryption so simple and problem-free that I recommend everybody turn it on, immediately. Ars has more information on how this all works (http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.ars/13#lion-file-system http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.a...).

kalvin 15y ago
Agreed, this is my favorite too. And, after you encrypt your primary drive, you can either leave your Time Machine drive alone (which seems silly, but it's an option now, whereas before using FileVault created an encrypted disk image, which meant Time Machine could no longer backup changes-only, defeating the purpose of TM), or you can go into TM settings and encrypt your TM drive too. You can also encrypt secondary disks on the command line. It all runs silently in the background until encryption is done. There is a 20-30% disk performance hit (that I haven't noticed, on an SSD): http://www.anandtech.com/show/4485/back-to-the-mac-os-x-107-lion-review/18 http://www.anandtech.com/show/4485/back-to-the-mac-os-x-107-...

protomyth 15y ago

Do people like or hate that the order of labels has changed when sorting by label? (labeled items now appear first, but in a reverse alpha order)

nomdeplume 15y ago

If upsidedown smiles count, I would have to say that Launchpad makes me smile with its duplicate entrys and no intuitive method of organization/removal of entrys.

micampe 15y ago

My absolutely favorite feature is "Show related messages" in Mail conversations. 10 years after Gmail did it right, I can start using a desktop client again.

nostromo 15y ago

I love the "sign without printing" feature in preview. I've already used it to sign some legal docs. The one problem is my lawyer then asked for originals... d'oh!

mmariani 15y ago

I really like Mission Control, specially two of it's features. First, creating spaces on the fly. Second, dragging an app icon and dropping in another space moves all of it's windows to that space. It's like Apple read my mind! Sweet. Another thing is UI update as a whole. Aqua has been outdated for quite a while. Now all objects look and feel more real. Also I'm enjoying the new windows' subtle lighting and texture, they look like anodized aluminum. But the top feature on my list are the new APIs, of course.