OS X Lion Coming Soon

We all knew that Apple Mac OS X Lion will be out in the mid of July, according to the rumors, should be 14 July 2011. I’ve been reading about it and what are the things on OS X Lion that interested me on the upcoming Apple Mac OS X Lion?

New Things on OS X Lion

All My Files

Organize you own views on all your files by kind, name, date and modification times on OS X Lion. At times, I found it’s hard for me to look at my files/scripts/e-book in a organize manner. I hope that with All My Files, it is a useful tools for me to have the View I wanted to display my massive messy files in the hard drive

Mission Control

It sounds like mission impossible stuff, isn’t it?

Compare to current Active Application view, Mission Control gives you an overview of “real time” running applications on the “space” effect on OS X Lion. Activate via Single Swipe on the trackpad, no more hot corner pointing on my Mac

Apple Mail

Apple Mail! One of the features I was hoping it to release on the new Apple Mail in OS X Lion is the threaded conversations. It’s very useful when comes to reading on threaded mailing list, which can ease my reading by grouping the message at one thread. But, I also hope that the community will have updated Open PGP for new Apple Mail. Else, it’s the major stopper for me to upgrade new Apple Mail.

Air Drop

I guess it will be very useful for me to share files with colleagues in the office who are running on Lion. Just one drop into their box, the files will be transferred into their machine. It can save my time to open up terminal and do SCP (file transfer over SSH).

I foresee more sharing stuff is happening when this option is available for Mac to Mac.

Launch Pad

It looks like a Short Cut to me, which most people running on iPhone/IOS. I am not sure how Launch Pad can benefit where myself is a Quicksilver user. I still like the swipe thing which activate the Launch Pad instantly. Well, we will see.

Obtain Apple Mac OS X Lion

You don’t need to buy a DVD this time for OS X Lion. Apple Mac OS X Lion will be available via App Store. I am bless that where I work in an ISP Environment, downloading the update shouldn’t take much of my time Right now, I am ready for the download, just waiting for the day of shipping.

Well, what does Apple Mac OS X Lion interested you the most? Check out list of features on new Apple Mac OS X Lion and share with me.

I guess most people use iTerm in Mac OSX, me too I do have a lot Chinese character file, or rather MP3 to view in Chinese character.

To enable Chinese character in iTerm, change the encoding to UTF-8

Open your iTerm Terminal
Press Apple Command key + i
Encoding, select UTF-8
Remember to click on Update Default

Other than locking screen with Expose, there is another way to lock you Mac OSX by shutting off the screen

Ctrl + Shift + Eject

The short cut key is to turn off your monitor screen. Before that, do make sure password lock is enabled by follow below.

• Go to System Preferences > Security
• Check “Required password immediately after sleep or screen saver begins

Happy to get myself a 23″ LED monitor, never realize how convenient it is to use 1920 x 1080 resolutions, I can now multiple on 9 terminals at one time, crazy huh?

Here is how you can extend your Mac OSX display to external monitor only. Well, don’t forget you need an external keyboard to make yourself comfort at sitting posture

• on System Preference > Displays, choose mirror display
• Put your laptop into sleep by closing the lid
• Clicking and clicking on your keyboard/mouse to wake up your OSX, when it’s awake, your external monitor will become the only display
• In order to wake your display on your Macbook, just press the keyboard on your Macbook

Unfortunately, I can’t find any tools/apps can switch the display to external monitor. If you found one, do let me know.

I couldn’t find my best touch with the Mouse Sensitivity setting for Magic Mouse in System Preference. Ended up I decided to write the configuration directly to the system config file. I find the value -31000 fit me the best. To set the sensitivity, follow the steps below.

• Open Terminal, it can be found at Application -> Utilities
• Enter line below
• defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling -31000

There is another application can do more setting on Magic Mouse. It’s called Magic Prefs. Download link is here.