New in OS X Lion’s Finder is the ability to quickly group items into a folder. You can select multiple items (file or folder) under a Finder window or on the Desktop, right click for the menu and select “New Folder with Selection”. This saves the one step of creating a folder first and dragging the items into it.
Apps that are installed into the system folder “Applications” will appear in Launchpad. This include apps from the Mac App Store.
To remove the apps from appearing in Launchpad, you have to remove the app. There is no way to hide an app installed into ”Applications” from appearing in Launchpad.
To remove the app, simply remove it from the “Applications” folder. To remove the app from within Launchpad, click and hold on the app icon until you see all icons jiggle. The click on the “x” button on the app icon to delete the app. Mac App Store apps that are deleted can be easily reinstall from Mac App Store under the “Purchases” tab.
If you have too many apps, one way to organize the Launchpad is to make use of folder. For example, create a folder to keep apps that you seldom use. To create a folder in Launchpad, simply drag an app icon into another app icon. A folder will then be created that houses the two apps.
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.
Growl is one of the most popular notification app on the Mac, with many apps such as Firefox, Adium, Skype etc using it for desktop notification. Growl is also one of our featured App of the Week. With its latest version 1.3 release, Growl app is breaking few grounds.
Growl 1.3 is now exclusively on the App Store and is a paid app at $1.99. Growl used be be freely downloadable, but it is still a bargain at this price. Growl 1.3 is for OS X Lion only, Growl 1.2.2 is still available for free download if you’re running older OS X. Reportedly Growl 1.2.2 is running fine under OS X Lion.
Growl 1.3 is now a menu app, it is no longer a Preference app working behind the scene. This is most likely a requirement for apps on the App Store. Other changes include a new notification center that will display past notifications, useful to peek at notifications that you missed while away from the desktop.
Mail and Preview app in OS X Lion default to display icons only for the toolbar. Some of the icons are new and you might not know what they do.
The above shows the default toolbar for Mail app (top) and Preview app (bottom). You can customize the toolbar to display labels if you find the buttons not so obvious in meaning:
That’s all that is required to display informational text explaining the buttons on the toolbar. The following shows the toolbar with both icon and text for Mail app (top) and Preview app (bottom):
You can always go back to View>Customize Toolbar… and change back to the default “Show Icon Only”.
If you do not need the full power of Photoshop, there is a capable Pixelmator. For vector image editing, iDraw could be all you need to replace Adobe Illustrator, especially if you are not a professional graphic designer. There is a version of iDaw for the iPad too.
When you press-and-hold a key when editing in OS X Lion, instead of the usual key repeat behavior in previous version of OS X, you get the accented character popup for your selection of alternate characters.
This behavior might not be desirable for most apps. To change it back to Key Repeat behavior, enter the following command in Terminal.app.
defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false
This will change the behavior system wide. To change it back to the default accented character popup, enter the follow in Terminal.app:
defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true
If you’ve not played Portal before, there is no better time now to check out this game. Portal is free for a limited period till September 20 on Valve’s Steam platform.
