CategoryTechnology

Lion – Getting Some Leopard Back

I installed Lion yesterday and found a few annoyances. When you open something like a disk image that has an “accept this legal stuff” type window, it seems that nothing happens. In Snow Leopard this would mean that the dmg is corrupted or something. Apparently in Lion it means that the window popped up somewhere and did not pop to the front. I haven’t found out how to fix that bit. When I open something I want something to visibly happen.

Also, a new feature lets you minimize to an app icon … but, again, there is no visual cue that there is anything open there. There probably should be some icon variation.

Then, this new “natural” scrolling a la iStuff is intuitive if you conceptualize that you’re on an iPad, but for a mouse it’s just weird and it makes me fear looking the moron when on someones MSFT machine and being so obviously incapable of scrolling. For this reason it may not be something I want to get used to. Of course, this can be changed in System Preferences, but the change affects both trackpad and mouse without letting you have a different behavior for each.

I’ll be updating this at least for my own future reference, but thought I may as will stick it up here in case someone finds it useful as well (I would quite welcome any other advice). So …

Show the library:

Show User ~/Library in OS X Lion

Launch Terminal from Spotlight or Launchpad -> Utilities, and enter the following command to show or hide the directory:

chflags nohidden ~/Library/

Obviously change it back with “hidden”

(osxdaily)

It might be better to just remember you can always press the option key while in the Finder “Go” menu and it will show up there. This seems the best of both worlds.

Get your back/forward swipe back for Chrome (and maybe more):

Three finger swipes still work in Chrome. The issue you’re having is that default swipes in Lion are two fingers. Go into System Prefs, then into trackpad and change the swipes from 2 fingers to 3. You can also make it both 2 and 3 finger swipes to accomplish the same thing, in which case swiping will work in Chrome and you’ll see get the cool two finger swipes in Safari that have special animations. (google forum response)

To me, the best option is to just set it to 2 and 3 finger swipes to maintain constancy.

Get Front Row back:

Front Row Enabler for Lion

posted Jul 17, 2011 1:02 PM by Ralph Perdomo [ updated Jul 21, 2011 10:36 PM ]

Since its introduction in OS X Tiger, I have been using Front Row (along with the Perian plugin) as a media center solutions for my Macs. Once I discovered that Front Row was removed from the betas in Lion I took this as an ominous sign that it would not be making the final cut. Mucking around however, I discovered that there are only a few core files necessary to get Front Row to work in Lion. Those files are:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/BackRow.framework

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/iPhotoAccess.framework

/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.RemoteUI.plist

This little pkg will fix all this automatically as well as stick Front Row back in the Applications folder from whence Lion quietly deleted it: (frontfowenablerforlion)

Manually Enabling Front Row for OS X Lion

This will require access to a Mac OS X 10.6 installation. The following Front Row files from OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard must be moved into the exact same locations in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/BackRow.framework

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/iPhotoAccess.framework

/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.RemoteUI.plist

/Applications/Front Row.app

(osxdaily)

 

iTouch as iPhone?

Pogue’s latest post about Line2 seems too good to be true. A dollar app that gives your iPhone a full second number with voicemail, texting and all that. Even when it’s not running it rings to your regular phone number. If you’re in a wi-fi zone, it uses that instead of AT&T without using any minutes. You basically save 30-50 a month even after the 10 a month fee for Line2! Additionally, and amazingly (since the new iTouch/Pad have a mic) it turns your iTouch into a full functioning phone that will even take a voicemail (and email you about it) when you’re not wi-fi covered. Incredible.

Mac OS 10.6.3 Update

Ever since I picked up a MacBook Air I’ve been disappointed in my 17″ MacBook Pro. The Pro has better specs, more memory, more everything. It should be faster than the “underpowered” Air? NO. Maybe it’s the solid state drive or maybe I just ask it to do less, but the Air has consistently been more snappy than the other … until today.

In the latest software update (along with iPhoto and a new iTunes supporting the iPad) Apple pushed out 10.6.3 complete with eighty-something fixes at ~800 MB. Generally when an update comes along, it’s “fine, an update.” It’s just that this one seems to have rejuvenated the poor Pro. Hopefully the feeling lasts … but, just in case, I’m holding off touching the Air for fear it may have improved as well (though I don’t see how it could).