OS X Lion has absorbed some user interface idea from iOS. Disk storage info is one example. In OS X Lion, the system info for storage now lists usage grouped by Audio, Movies, Photos, Apps, Backups and Other. To access this info, from the system menu, select “About This Mac”. Click on the button “More Info…” and select the tab “Storage”.
The four corners of screen in OS X can be setup to be active “Hot Corners”, which will carry out defined task when the cursor is moved into a corner. To configure Hot Corners, open System Preferences and look under Mission Control.
Click on the button “Hot Corners…” at left-bottom of window, which will bring up the setup pane for the four active screen corners.
Select the task you would like to be activated when the cursor is moved into a particular corner. Click “Ok” button to save the settings. As an example, in the above screenshot, the left-top corner is defined for “Mission Control”. When you move the cursor to the left-top corner of the screen, Mission Control will be run. Test it out. You might prefer this way of activating Mission Control or Launchpad instead of using keyboard shortcut or the trackpad.
Reminders is a useful new todo app in iOS 5 with its location aware alerts and iCloud support. You can view your reminders on all iOS devices and on Mac OS X Lion.
There is no Reminders app for OS X Lion. Instead Apple has taken the todo lists found inside the old iCal and change it to be Reminders. It is not so obvious at first as Reminders by default is not shown on iCal’s main window.
In order to view the same Reminders as in your iOS devices, you need to enable iCloud on OS X Lion. This feature is not available on OS X Snow Leopard as OS X Lion is the minimum OS X for iCloud.
Next, under System Preferences->iCloud, check the “Calendars” to enable iCloud sync. And wait for a moment for the sync to complete.
To view Reminders on iCal, select from menu View->View Reminders or toggle Reminders on/off using Option Command T. Reminders will appear as a right side pane on the main iCal window.
To create a reminder, right click on the Reminders pane for a popup menu and select “New Reminder”. Or press the Command-K key. Check off reminder by clicking on the checkbox. Command-Delete to remove reminder. And double click on a reminder to bring up the edit window.
With the launch of iCloud, many native apps in iOS and OS X are updated to support the latest cloud service from Apple. Apple iOS apps such as Pages, Numbers, and Keynote are updated as well. Notable missing is an update to Pages, Keynote and Numbers on the Mac to support iCloud.
It is inevitable that Pages, Keynote and Numbers on the Mac will eventually support iCloud. This is just a delay. And we suspect that brand new version of Pages, Keynote and Numbers for Mac is looming on the horizon.
Apple probably just had its greatest software updates in its history. For the past 2 days, Apple software relating to iOS 5 and iCloud are updated, together with few new apps. Here are the list:
Apple has released iOS 5 which includes new Notification Center, iCloud support, iMessage, Newsstand, Twitter integration and more than 200 features. iOS 5 requires iTunes 10.5 for the upgrade and is compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad, iPad 2 and third & fourth generation iPod touch.
Together with the launch of iCloud and iOS 5, Apple updates OS X Lion to 10.7.2 which has support for iCloud. OS X 10.7.2 comes with Safari 5.1.1 which includes improved JavaScript performance.
Apple will release later today iOS 5, iCloud and OS X Lion 10.7.2 with iCloud support. Without a doubt, iCloud is the core feature of these releases. So what is iCloud? You might have read many things about it. This is a concise layman’s guide to what is iCloud.
“Cloud computing” is a buzz term used by tech geeks to describe computing services provided over the Internet. iCloud is Apple’s service to provide you ways to store and sync your data on the Internet. Once your data is in iCloud, you can access them via Internet on Mac or any iOS devices.
iCloud can be loosely view as an upgrade of MobileMe. However iCloud is so much more than just MobileMe. Apple integrates iCloud tightly with iOS 5 and OS X Lion, to give users seamless data sync across Apple devices. For developers, iCloud is also a data store and sync platform with API to allow development of apps and services.
Apple off course is leading the pack with a number of native apps riding on iCloud. You can store your mail, calendar, contacts, notes, reminders, Safari bookmarks on iCloud and access them from multiple Mac or iOS devices. “Find My iPhone” is one of the earlier MobileMe app ported to iCloud. You can find out your device’s location with this app, remotely lock or even wipe the data of the device. Apple is also launching a new “Find My Friends” app that allows you to check out your friends location.
PhotoStream is another new service in iOS 5 from Apple riding on top of iCloud. PhotoStream will sync your photos in iOS devices’ camera roll to the iCloud, so that you can view them from multiple iOS devices and also from AppleTV. iWork is the first major productivity apps that can store your documents in iCloud. So you can compose your Keynote file on the Mac, and pop over to show the presentation using your iPhone.
iCloud is also an internet website at iCloud.com. This website as shown above allows you to access your iCloud data over a browser. Essential when you do not have an iDevice with you.
Apple is also storing the music, apps, books that you purchased on iTunes App Store on iCloud. If your music and books are all from iTunes App Store, you can essentially bypass iTunes app on the desktop and access those content from iCloud. You can now choose not to use iTunes desktop app. iOS 5 is the first iOS that can be operated without first plugging into your Mac/PC and iTunes.
For many years, iTunes app on your Mac/PC is considered the hub where you store your iTunes data, and sync the data over to your iOS devices. iCloud is poised to take over this place to be the central hub for these data.
Apple will be launching iTunes Match end October for US. This subscription based iCloud service will match your iTunes library, allowing you to convert your private music collection over to iCloud, and download them as and when needed over iCloud for listening.
With an API opens to third party developers, we expect more and more apps and services will be build on top of iCloud.
Mail app in OS X is more than just email. You can use Mail app as a RSS reader. Mail app lists RSS feed items similar to email, with a pane displaying the feed content.
If you rely heavily on inbox to manage your emails and todo, you might find it convenient to display incoming RSS feed items in your email inbox. This allows you to manage both emails and feed items with one inbox.
To enable this, right click on the RSS feed for the popup menu. Select “Show in Inbox”. Mail app will now display the feed items in your inbox. To disable, simply select the menu item again to uncheck the “Show in Inbox” option.
Launchpad in OS X Lion brings the iPad’s user interface to the Mac. Apps that are installed from the App Store or into Applications folder will appear in Launchpad. While in Launchpad, you can toggle between normal, normal blurred, black & white and black & white blurred version of desktop wallpaper by pressing Command+B key.
When you delete files using the Finder, the deleted files are placed in the Trash folder. You can easily recover deleted files from the Trash folder. When you choose to empty the trash, there is no way to recover the deleted files from the Trash folder. This gives the perception that the files are permanently gone and not recoverable.
However the content of the deleted items are still lying around on the disk until they are overwritten by other data. And with low level tools, someone could potentially recover part, most or all of the deleted content.
Many Mac users do not realise that there is an option to remove items in Trash securely under OS X. When this option is turned on, the Finder will overwrite on the disk random data onto the file content, making recovery using low level tools impossible.
The secure option takes a couple more computing cycles but is a worthwhile option if you’re working on sensitive confidential data. To enable empty trash securely, open Finder Preferences. Select the “Advanced” tab, and check the option “Empty Trash securely”.
