Not even a week ago, Apple released it’s eighth and current major release of Apple’s latest operating system. With over 1 million Lion sales on the first day of its release, I was certainly NOT going to miss out on being one of the first to own the highly reviewed and anticipated OS.
While Lion has over 250 updates, here are the top 11 features that I love most.
1. AirDrop: Drag and drop files directly with other Lion users via Wi-Fi Direct. This makes it super easy to share files with your employees or coworkers.
2. FileVault: A really great security upgrade. Mac OS X Lion can encrypt Time Machine backups as they are created and external disks as they are formatted. This means that anything a user saves to is encrypted. Pretty cool.
3. Full-Screen Apps: This allows for native, system-wide support for full-screen applications. Supporting applications display a new button at the top right of application window, this button opens applications in full-screen mode.
4. Mail 5: What a great way to view your email! This feature uses an iPad-like user interface, has a fullscreen-optimized view, uses chronological “Conversations” to organize messages, and supports Exchange 2010. Love this.
5. Multi-Touch Gestures: Similar to iOS devices, additional gestures performed using a multi-touch input device will allow the user to scroll, swipe to different pages, and enter Mission Control.
6. Multi-User Screen Sharing: This allows users to log into a separate user account from the one that is currently logged in. Basically, this means that while one user is logged into a machine, a second person can login to the same machine remotely, seeing the same desktop.
7.Versions: Do you ever accidentally save a document and access it later only to realize that you accidentally deleted your original content? Versions allows for time machine-like saving and browsing of past versions of documents.
8. Manage Your Location Privacy: One of the many concerns about Mac OS X thus far is that the operating system can tell where you are located, at any given time, based upon your Wi-Fi access point. In the latest edition, a privacy pane lets you turn off location detection and choose which applications can (or cannot) access your location data.
9. iPad like iCal: While this is more of a visual upgrade – I still think it’s very cool. Lion features a visually redesigned iCal, allowing you to view your appointment details similarly to iPad counterparts (quick and easy pop-ups).
10. Automatic iOS Device Syncing: Instead of manually syncing your ebooks, apps and music purchases across devices, Lion now takes all of the legwork of it for you! With Lion, new content appears on each device so that you can choose whether to download it from Apple.
11. Previews when you Search in Spotlight: This new feature makes it easy to locate a document that you may have accidentally saved under the wrong file name. Now, If you hover over a document in the results sheet, a popover opens and displays a preview of that document.
These are just 11 of the numerous features that Mac OS X Lion has to boast. Here’s a full list. The upgrade is only $29.99 and I highly recommend it if you own a Mac. Tell us what you think about Mac’s new operating system in the comments below!
[hs_action id="660"]
