Apple has just released the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, which allows you to turn any USB flash drive into a Lion recovery disk. This useful tool comes in handy in the event of a hard drive failure. In this video, I’ll show you how to set up a Lion recovery drive the right way and how to use it in the event of a hard drive failure.
OS X Lion includes a plethora of new gestures to enhance the user experience. While the majority of these gestures are based around the trackpad, the Magic Mouse still has more than a few new gestures. In this video, I’ll show you how you can use Lion’s new gestures to make the most of your Magic Mouse.
In Mac OS X Lion, Mission Control unifies Spaces and Exposé. Along with this unification comes changes to how Spaces and Exposé work. In this video, I’ll show you the changes with Mission Control and how to use them to your benefit.
Mission Control is one of the big new features in Lion, and like most new features it brings with it some new keyboard shortcuts. One of these is Command+Left Arrow or Command+Right Arrow to move swiftly between spaces.
It’s a sensible shortcut, but on my machine it conflicted with the shortcut I use dozens of times a day to jump to the end of a line of text. If you’re in a similar position, and you’ve found that Command+Right or Left Arrow no longer does what it used to do, here’s how to fix it.
The new full-screen support in OS X Lion is a dream come true for lifehackers looking to squeeze more productivity out of their apps, but one problem for keyboard users is that there’s just no standardized shortcut.
That seems like something of an oversight on Apple’s part, but luckily, there’s an easy to way assign your own universal full-screen shortcut for every app on your machine, even if the devs didn’t provide their own easy keyboard combination for triggering full-screen on your Mac.
One of the subtle changes in Mac OS X Lion was the removal of Front Row, Apple’s media center application. While not an incredibly important loss, it may frustrate some users who enjoyed using the application. Fortunately, it’s rather simple to get Front Row working on Lion, as I’ll show you in this video.
In OS X Lion, Apple redesigned Address Book with a new look that resembles a physical hardcover book binding. This type of design choice is called “skeuomorphic,” because it was, “deliberately employed to make the new look comfortably old and familiar.” Lion’s version of Address Book takes the old look and feel of a physical book and ports that to a virtual application.
While some may like the new look of Address Book in Lion, many have raised complaints. If you’d like to make Address Book look clean and simple again, we’ve got just the trick to unbind Address Book from its brown hardcover.
It’s been rumored that Apple will eventually introduce Near Fields Communications technology in an upcoming iPhone model, but speculation that such a technology will be implemented this year has been all but debunked.
If you’re itching for the ability to have NFC-like “wave and pay” capabilities on your iPhone 4, then it’s your lucky day. A simple hack has been discovered that turns your iPhone 4 into a NFC-capable device.
In OS X Lion, Apple redesigned iCal with a new faux leather look that resembles a physical calendar binding. This type of design choice is called “skeuomorphic,” because it was, “deliberately employed to make the new look comfortably old and familiar.” Lion’s version of iCal takes the old look and feel of a physical calendar and ports that to a virtual application.
While some may like the new look of iCal in Lion, many have raised complaints. If you’d like to make iCal look like it did in Snow Leopard, we’ve got just the trick to return iCal back to its monochromatic glory.
Did you know that in OS X Lion you can get a quick dictionary definition of any word with a simple trackpad gesture? In the past, you would have to look up a definition in Spotlight or through a right click menu.
In Lion, a quick definition is as easy as a three-finger double tap on your trackpad. Just mouse over any word and perform the gesture; a nice little, translucent window should pop up with a definition. No more Google searches when you’re typing in a word processor!
OS X Lion is the best version of OS X yet, but some of its design choices aren’t without controversy… especially the decision to make the whole operating system more like iOS.
Hate that stuff? Over the next few days, we’ll be posting some tips on taking the iOS inspirations back out of your Mac. Today, we’re going to change the default way Lion handles scrollbars to be less like the way they work on the iPhone.
While OS X Lion offers many improvements and new features, it also takes some away. One that jumped out to me right away was the missing Library folder. By default, Apple now hides this folder to prevent users from messing up their system. While this might not seem substantial to the average user, more advanced users might not like this change. Fortunately, this change can be reversed, as I’ll show you in this video.
OS X Lion is the best version of OS X yet, but some of its design choices aren’t without controversy… especially the decision to make the whole operating system more like iOS.
Hate that stuff? Over the next few days, we’ll be posting some tips on taking the iOS inspirations back out of your Mac. Today, we’re going to focus on how to stop your Mac from handling your text input as if you were typing it out on your iPhone.
One of the hallmark user features in OS X Lion is the iOS-like Launchpad. From the Launchpad, you can view, open, organize, and manage all of your Mac apps just like the iPhone and iPad.
While some may love Launchpad, many have voiced complaints over the confusing nature of how Launchpad handles Mac apps. In this post, we’ll show you how to completely clean out your Launchpad and start over.
Editor’s note: This code in this post has been updated from the original to reflect a more targeted animation-disabling conmand line defaults write string. Thanks to reader Phillip Ridlin for the alert.
Are you running Lion on your desktop and finding the new window animation functionality in Mail.app annoying? You’re not alone, apparently.
Now that Apple has released new MacBook Airs, you might be tempted to buy one of them (we recommend this one because of the blistering performance that an SSD provides. You should be: once you start computing on an SSD, you’ll never want to go back, and the MacBook Air is a wonderful introducing to the powers of solid state storage.
That said, if you’re used to have a 500GB or 1TB hard drive to play around with on your laptop, you might be worried that it’s hard to live in a small 64GB or even 128GB footprint.
Don’t sweat it. I’ve been using a 64GB MacBook Air as my main work machine for the last nine months, and I’ve found it very easy to live within that space, after having learned a few tricks. Here’s how to make the most of your MacBook Air’s SSD.
Apple has released Mac OS X Lion in the Mac App Store for $30. Separately, Apple will also begin offering Lion on a USB thumb drive in Apple stores come August. Right now, you can grab Lion from the Mac App Store as a 4GB download.
After you’ve downloaded Lion, it would be wise it back up your install app so that you don’t have to re-download it next time you want to install Lion. You can also make a bootable DVD install disk of Lion to use on your other machines. Keep reading to learn how…
In case you’ve been living under a rock, Apple has released OS X Lion for $30 in the Mac App Store. Lion was made available this morning for download, and will be sold at Apple stores on a USB thumb drive in August.
If you’ve started downloading Lion, you may notice that it takes a lot longer to download than most apps. That’s because it weighs in at a hefty 4GB. Luckily, there’s a way to at least see your Lion download progress as you wait.
With OS X 10.7 Lion now available on the Mac App Store, a lot of people will be upgrading their Macs today. Even though the install process makes Lion the easiest upgrade yet, though, there’s a right way to install Lion to your machine, and a wrong way.
Here’s how to do it right.
Using multiple monitors with your Mac can greatly increase your productivity and workflow. There are many ways to boost the usefulness of secondary monitors, as I will show you in this video.
OS X Lion will likely be released in the next couple days, and with it will come a big change that will affect almost everyone out there: Apple’s flipped multitouch scrolling to be more iOS-like, effectively tossing every Mac user with a multitouch device topsy-turvy.
Many people are going to hate Apple’s decision to turn the way scrolling works on its head, but here at Cult of Mac, we not only love it… we think it’s the future. But it’ll take some getting used to. Here’s our primer on how to start training yourself to use Lion’s “reverse scrolling” right now, today, under Snow Leopard.
iOS 5 beta 3 brings some new and interesting features, including the new Assistive Touch menu. This menu allows you to perform many commonly used gestures as well as simulate hardware buttons. In this video, I’ll show you how to activate and use this menu in iOS 5.
Apple has released the Gold Master build of the next version of of its Mac OS X operating system to developers, meaning that 10.7 Lion could see release to the public as early as next week, exclusively through the Mac App Store.
For users looking to upgrade, this is uncharted territory: the first OS X upgrade to be delivered digitally. To help you prepare for Lion and guarantee your machine is one hundred percent ready to upgrade the second Lion drops, we’ve put together this handy guide.
Here’s how to prepare your Mac for Lion, and do it right.
Recently, I was asked about the custom “bin” overlays that I have on the Applications and Documents stacks in my dock. These bins are cool tweaks that you can apply to any Dock stack to not only customize the look of them, but to also keep things organized and identifiable at a glance. In this video, I’ll show you how you can set up your own Stack bins.
If you’re like me, chances are that you have at least one older computer lying around the house. Maybe you just bought a shiny new Mac and your old, not so shiny one is now sitting unused in the corner. Before you throw it away, you may want to take a look at ScreenRecycler, an application designed to help you use your old computer as a secondary monitor. In this video, I’ll show you how to set it up on both computers and get everything up and running.