
What tiny thing in Lion makes you smile or has caught you off guard? - acangiano
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/17759/what-tiny-thing-in-lion-makes-you-smile-or-has-caught-you-off-guard
======
necubi
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.a...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-
os-x-10-7.ars/13#lion-file-system)).

~~~
kalvin
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-...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/4485/back-to-the-mac-
os-x-107-lion-review/18)

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

------
cj
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
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
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
Does anyone know how those settings are discovered? I've tried running
'strings' on a few binaries but haven't uncovered anything.

~~~
cpenner461

      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.

------
bdhe
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
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
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...

------
sheffield
_"How about ability to resize windows from all edges of the window. That alone
is worth the 30 bucks."_

 _That_ made me smile...

~~~
jmreid
Love that you can hold option while resizing to change the size from the
opposite ends. Very handy.

~~~
jodrellblank
Or hold shift to keep the width/height ratio the same.

~~~
jmreid
Ahh, very nice! It's crazy to think how many of these little touches are
hidden in OS X.

------
micampe
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.

------
nomdeplume
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
The slider in finder is still there, but you have to turn on the status bar to
see it

~~~
nomdeplume
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.

------
mmariani
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.

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

------
tehjones
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
Yep, the pixelation is something I've noticed all around. Hopefully it will be
fixed in 10.7.1.

------
tree_of_item
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
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.

------
Limes102
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"

------
manuelflara
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!

------
hskf
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
You just need to press either shift key.

------
nostromo
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!

------
nomdeplume
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.

------
protomyth
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)

------
vmmenon
I miss expose ...

~~~
doctoboggan
Expose is gone in Lion? has it been replaced by something similar?

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

~~~
julian37
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
It does.

ü < crude attempt at a smiley face ;)

------
sebbi
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
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
No they don't ... if you spent this much time with your OS you are doing it
wrong, sorry.

~~~
rimantas
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
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
As if spending 5 minutes picking up some tips is a big outlay?

~~~
Bootvis
That isn't what I meant and I myself do read the docs. But: if YAGNI then
YAGNI.

