Top 12 Reasons to Upgrade to Lion

By Jazmin Hupp, Tekserve Staff

Here are the top 12 features I'm looking forward to in the new Lion operating system. Before you run screaming in excitement, remember an operating system upgrade requires some time and planning. Don't attempt it in the middle of a big project or on a mission-critical machine. There are always some hiccups at launch, so you may want to wait for the dust to settle before you upgrade an important Mac.

1. Auto Save and Versions 

Have you ever lost hours of work on a document when an Application crashed? Lion will automatically save changes to your documents every five minutes. You can view past versions of your document and revert to a previous version if you need to. We expect this to work with current Apple applications out of the gate, but it may take a few months for the third-party document applications to catch up.

2. Multi-Touch Gestures

Apple has leapfrogged the two-button mouse with two and three fingers gestures to navigate your Mac faster. For example, place three fingers and your thumb on the trackpad and then open them to view the desktop. Close them and you'll see all your Applications. You'll want to visit your Trackpad System Preferences to learn the new gestures but once you try them, they're totally intuitive and fun! Your laptop's trackpad or desktop's Multi-Touch Magic Mouse will work, but grab Apple's Magic Trackpad to easily use these new features. Believe me, your carpel tunnel will thank you.

3. Resume

Resume is one of those "duh" features. Now when you shut down your Mac, there's no need to quit your applications. When you start up the Mac again, everything you had open will instantly appear in the same state as when you left it. This also works with individual applications, so I can have four different Pages documents open and quit Pages. When I restart Pages, those same four documents will open automatically to right where I left them. A genius time saver!

4. Mission Control

Swipe up three fingers to view every open application and window on your Mac. Makes it silly easy to find that window you thought you had open but was hidden behind something else. If you use Dashboard widgets or Spaces, this makes accessing them even easier.

5. Launchpad

If you're familiar with using an iPhone or iPad to access Apps, Launchpad will feel extremely familiar. Instead of looking through your Application folder, Launchpad will use your full screen to display all your Application icons and allow you to open any one with a click. Just like on Apple's touch devices, you can organize your Apps into folders too.

6. AirDrop

Have you ever needed to send a file to a Mac user near you but didn't have a flash drive or Wi-Fi network. Now with no setup you can drag and drop files to Lion Macs within 30 feet of you. Once the user accepts your file, the encrypted file is transmitted with no Wi-Fi network required.

7. Buy Lion Once, Install On All Your Macs

Gone are the days of software "Family Packs." Once you purchase Lion from the Mac App store you can install it on all the Macs authorized to your iTunes/Mac App store account.

8. FileVault 2

The new FileVault looks like it will be a great leap forward. It encrypts the entire hard disk (not just your user data) with an "imperceptible performance impact" according to Apple. FileVault can do it's initial encryption in the background while you continue working. Also awesome is FileVault 2 can encrypt external USB and FireWire drives.

9. Mail

If you've been using Mail on an iPhone or iPad, this will feel familiar. The new layout shows you a preview of the first two lines of each email and groups related replies. You can view a thread of messages (conversations back and forth on the same subject line) in an elegant window that keeps the conversation flowing without all the repeated text at the bottom of each message. The new Mail search allows you to look for messages using multiple elements (geek speak is "tokens"). So you can search for messages from a particular person, on certain dates, when only certain phrases appear in the subject line and so on.

10. Safari

Safari continues to improve but Chrome and FireFox work well in Lion too. A reading list has been added, which allows you to temporarily bookmark web pages to read later. The new downloads list is better formatted and allows you to drag and drop files directly from it. Sandboxing helps prevent malicious websites and applications from accessing information on your system.

11. iChat

iChat's new unified buddy list allows you to have one buddy list no matter how many chat services your friends use. Also Yahoo! Messenger support has been added to AIM, Google, MobileMe and Jabber.

12. Restore Without Discs

If you've ever had to use your System disc to restore your Mac's operating system, you might be wondering how you'd restore Lion. Lion makes a restore partition on your hard drive so you can reinstall or repair OS X without discs.

Pssst. If your Windows friends are getting jealous, Lion can import most Windows systems automatically. It makes switching even easier.

Published July 13, 2011 11:58 AM
Last modified on July 20, 2011 4:30 PM