Multi-Touch Gestures

The first big change is Multi-Touch Gestures. This is a feature that definitely seems like it was ported directly from iOS. More often than not, people own laptops instead of desktop computers, and because of that, people are more apt to be using a trackpad than a mouse. For people who use the iPhone and iPad, doing Multi-Touch Gestures is an easier adjustment. For me, I still struggle going back and forth between the iPad and MacBook, automatically expecting both to be Touch Screen. This just seems to have me getting it mixed up even more.

Two fingers can be used to scroll through documents and websites, and scrollbars only appear when necessary. Tapping the screen will zoom, as will pinching. Swiping with two fingers will flip through pages. Swiping up with three fingers will take you to Mission Control, and going side to side with three fingers will allow you to switch between full-screen apps. The scrolling works in the opposite direction – the way you normally do in iPhone and iPad (you can revert the scrolling direction in the settings). I will also add that in trying to upload this article in Firefox, the multi-touch gestures wouldn’t work to add the images in. I had to go back and add the article with Safari instead.

Full-Screen

There seems to be a big press in the computing world to do things big and full-screen. For some time, they have been making apps that promise to block everything out to allow you to focus on the task at hand. Now the apps built specially for Lions all have that in mind. These apps have a double diagonal arrow in the top right corner. Toggling that double arrow adjusts the display to full-screen and back. Not only does it eliminate distractions, but it also gives you larger pictures and type, which is almost always appreciated on smaller laptop screens.

Mission Control

One of the better aspects of using a mobile device is the easy interface. Lion works to put that ease into Mac OS X as well. This is done with the Mission Control screen. Everything you are doing on your Mac is seen in Mission Control. All your open applications and windows, as well as your desktop, are available here. As basic as it is, it can also be a little bit confusing at first to make your way around. The best part is that you can create multiple desktop views.

You can have a different desktop view for each one of your projects. I plan to have one just for my Make Tech Easier writing that stays open to the site, and also includes my photo editing software. This way, whenever I upload an article, I don’t have to navigate to that website, open the software, etc. This way, I just open up the desktop that already has it all ready.

Launchpad

Launchpad works exactly like it does on an iPhone or iPad. All the apps are lined up by icon in an orderly fashion. I love nothing more than apps, so I have four pages of them on here. It could take forever to find the one I want. However, you can organize them into folders, which is just what I’ve done with my iPhone and iPad.

For instance, I have been using Postbox for all my emailing, as I like the calendar function it uses. However, I do want to give the new version of the native Mail application a chance. I want to keep them both in the same place for better organization. I create a folder by dragging the two apps on top of each other. I can set a name for the folder as well, so I’m just calling it “Email.” I can set any number of folders I want to have everything easily accessible, and probably condense it down to just one page. I have multiple writing apps. Why not put them all in the same folder?

Mail

Now that I have my mail organized, I’m going to try out that Mail app. The first time you open it, providing you have upgraded from an earlier OS to Lion, it migrates all your data over and cleans it up to get it ready for you. It offers up an email experience very similar to that of the iPad. It offers it up in a simple two columns, a listing in one and a view in another, and has a Favorites bar just like a browser. The listing has a two line preview for each message, and the messages have a conversational view. It’s all very simple and clean.

Auto-Save and Versions

This certainly isn’t the only way to control this function, yet it is another option. Auto-Save and Versions help control your work so that you don’t lose it. It automatically saves all your work for you every five minutes. You don’t need to worry about it. Additionally, it saves all the different versions at the five minute increment. If you want to go back to a previous version, it’s no problem. It also allows you to lock down a certain version so that it can’t be changed, and duplicate a document from within, instead of having to do it from the finder, so that you have two working copies.

Conclusion

Lion is definitely on the right track. It’s far from being the perfect operating system, but it certainly makes a lot of necessary improvements. If you have not noticed, the more time you spent on your mobile devices, the more you want to turn your computer into mobile-like device; and as can be seen in OS X Lion, Apple is trying to make that process as seamless as possible.

Being a long term release, Ubuntu Lucid comes with plenty of design changes that make all our previous Ubuntu to Mac OS X tutorial obsolete. Nevertheless, with a modified Mac4Lin theme and the maturity of the Global Menu, I am now able to make this tutorial a much simpler, quicker and easier one than all its previous iteration. If you are looking to transform your Ubuntu Lucid to Mac OS X, this is also the most complete one around. Continue after the break.

Installing Mac4Lin theme

Download the modified Mac4Lin theme (the original Mac4Lin theme is outdated).

Extract it to your Home folder.

Open the MacLin_Install_Mod folder and double click “Mac4Lin_Mod_installer.sh“. When prompted, select “Run in Terminal“.

It will then proceed to change your theme. When it prompts you if you want to install the components that require root access, type ‘y‘ (without the quote)

When it asks you for a choice to select the bootup screen, type ’0′ (without the quote).

When you see the message “Type any key to continue…“, you should have transformed 80% of your system interface to Mac OS X.

Configuring the Global Menu

Open a terminal and type the following:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:globalmenu-team
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gnome-globalmenu
killall gnome-panel

Once done, remove all stuffs from top left panel (Right click on the panel and select “Remove from Panel”).

Right click on the top panel and select Add to Panel. Select Main Menu, follow by the global menu panel applet.

Close the window. Now move the two items (right click and select Move) to the left hand corner and make sure they are side by side.

You should see something like the screenshot below:

Configuring the Dock

There are several dock applications that you can use, but personally I prefer to use Cairo Dock as it is easy to install and configure.

sudo apt-get install cairo-dock

Before you launch the Cairo dock application, remove the bottom panel (right click at the bottom panel and select Delete This Panel).

Cairo dock needs a compositing manager to work, so make sure that your system support Compiz before launching the app.

(Only if your system does not support Compiz: You can activate the in-built metacity compositing manager with the command:

gconftool-2 --type boolean --set /apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager TRUE

)

Launch Cairo dock (Menu -> Accessories -> Cairo Dock). Make sure to set it to launch everytime you startup your computer.

Configuring the Login screen

To change the background of the login screen, simply follow the instruction at the change Ubuntu Lucid login screen tutorial or use Gdm2Setup.

Other optional tweaks

Expo

Expo effect is part of the feature in Compiz. You can easily enable the feature in Compiz Config Settings Manager (if you have not installed, click here to install).

Once you have activated the Expo feature, you can press Win + e button to bring up the expo window.

Dashboard

The Dashboard effect can be emulated using Screenlets and Compiz Widget layer.

Install Screenlets and the Compiz Widget layer plugin

sudo apt-get install screenlets compiz-fusion-plugins-extra

Open CompizConfig Settings Manager and activate the Widget layer feature.

Launch Screenlets (Menu -> Applications -> Accessories -> Screenlets) and start the widgets that you want to use. Right click on the widget and select Properties. Go to the Options tab and check the box “Treat as widget”

You can now press F9 to see your widgets in the dashboard.

Screenshots

Uninstallation

To uninstall the Mac4Lin theme, simply run the uninstaller in the Mac4Lin_Install_Mod folder.

Double click the Mac4Lin_Mod_Uninstaller.sh. When prompted, select “Run in Terminal”.

You will be asked to log out and login again for the uninstallation to be completed.

Image credit: louisvolant

I don’t.

Services is a little used but extremely useful feature of Mac OS X that has been around since a long time but only recently with the release of 10.6 became useful enough to be used by regular users like you and I.

What has changed with the release of OS X 10.6 is that Apple has now made the services menu context aware. So, for example, if you have a line of text selected in TextEdit, only the services for working with that selected piece of text will be visible. Similarly, if you have a file selected in the Finder, only the services useful at that point will be visible.

Another useful thing that Apple has done is that they’ve added support for creating services to Automator, the workflow automation utility that is bundled with OS X. So, creating services has also become that much easier.

Today we’ll take you through the simple process of creating your own service using Automator that will password protect any PDF file that you select in Finder and then let you email them to a friend.

1. Launch Automator from the Applications folder and select the Services template when asked to.

2. From the right hand side of the Automator window, select the context in which the service applies. We’ll select PDF files from the first drop menu and Finder from the second.

3. Now, you’ll have to select the actual workflow that makes the service possible. The workflows are categorized in the Library on the far left sidebar of the automator window according to the type of service that they provide.

Double click the Encrypt PDF Documents workflow and it’ll appear in the right hand sidebar as a part of the service that you’re creating.

Now, enter the password that you want the PDF documents to be encrypted with.

4. At this point, our service is capable of taking a PDF document and encrypting it using the password that we provided. The second step is the email this PDF file. For that we’ll need another workflow from the Library.

Under Library go to Mail and double click the New Mail Message workflow and it’ll be added to your service.

If you have more than one accounts defined in Mail.app, select the one that you want to use for this service, or let the Default Account be used for all emails sent using this service.

What Automator will now do is that it’ll use the first workflow and encrypt the PDF document that is selected in the Finder and then pass that document to the second workflow. The New Mail Message workflow then creates a new email with this document as an attachment and waits for you to enter an address in the To, CC or Bcc fields and then send the email.

Save the service with a descriptive name and automator automatically registers it with the Finder.

You can test it by selecting a PDF file in Finder and calling the Service from the Services menu in the Finder.

As soon as you click the Encrypt and Email PDF service, the selected PDF file will be encrypted with the password that you chose and Mail.app will automatically launch with the encrypted PDF as an attachment.

What other ways do you use Services to improve your efficiency?

At least that’s what I used to think till about last month when I found myself in a hotel with no WiFi and just one Ethernet port that I was expected to share with two of my friends. Now, we could all do what others at the venue were doing. Sharing the Ethernet port, finish up our work in a given time and hand over the port to the next in line.

Or we could just make one of the computers act as a WiFi hotspot and let the other PCs access the Internet through the first one.

It isn’t too difficult to guess the option that we chose, and for our little setup we decided to use my Mac as the router, since the setup was the easiest on the Mac.

In this post today, I’m going to detail the steps that are needed to share the Internet connection on a Mac effectively turning your Mac into a WiFi router.

Setting up custom network

First of all, you need to create a network of all the computers that are going to share the connection. In networking terms, this is called an adhoc network.

The good thing is that you don’t need to do anything special to create an adhoc network in OS X. OS X will prompt you when it needs to create one, if you’re using the Airport Card (WiFi) for sharing.

To enable Internet Sharing, open System Preferences (Apple -> System Preferences) and click Sharing.

Select Internet Sharing from the list of Services.

From the Drop down menu, select the Interface which is connected to the Internet source and from the list below it, select the interface which you want to share with the other computers. In my case, that was the Ethernet and the Airport (WiFi), respectively.

The third and final step is to create an adhoc network which the other computers can connect to.

Click on Airport Options.

OS X will then prompt you to type in a name for the new network.

Unless you want all the freeloaders in the neighborhood to piggyback on your network, I’d suggest that you select the Enable Encryption option and provide a password for the network.

That’ all there is to it. Click Ok and OS X will enable Internet Sharing on your Mac, from the Ethernet to the Airport Interface.

The only thing left now is to search for a new networks in all the other computers that you want to connect, and our adhoc network should show up in the list. Select and join this network.

All the client machines should now be able to browse the Internet as if they’re directly connected to the Internet over WiFi.