OS X 10.7 Lion

• More iPad-like, incl.:
  • Multi-touch. (I replaced my mouse with a trackpad.)
  • Option to hide scrollbars (when you don't need them).
• Resume: Restart exactly where you left off. (⌥⌘Q to quit & lose windows; ⌥⇧ to start w/o them.)
• Auto Save & Versions (click on title): automatically saves change history (on same drive; who needs Time Machine?).
• AirDrop: transfer files wirelessly without a Wi-Fi network (peer-to-peer; if your Mac is recent enough).
• Recovery HD is separate partition (rather than CD/DVD), available when holding down the option key during reboot; Lion can be re-installed over internet from Apple servers.
• All Finder views can group by filetype, etc. (as only list view now does); in icon view, each group has its own Cover Flow.
• Quick Look for: Spotlight, URLs in Mail & TextEdit.
• Preview:
  • views Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, & Word files. (TextEdit still edits Word.)
  • does more annotations: filled shapes, outlined text, word balloons.
  • photographs your signature with Signature Capture.
• Mail
  • Conversations: groups messages in threads even when the Subject header changes, hiding redundant text (but click on "See More", especially with the Shift key).
  • Includes 2-line (or more) preview of messages in listings column.
• Text
  • Hold down key when editing text to get popup with special characters.
  • Emoji (😄 ), including many "hidden" under "Unicode" as "MIscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs": 🐜 🐝 🐞; & "Emoticons": 🙈 🙉 🙊.
  • Better text-to-speech voices with dialects (download).
• New effects in iChat video & Photo Booth based on facial recognition.
• Click-&-hold on app in Dock to see recent files.
• Remote login (with Apple ID): separate screens.
• iCloud ☁ :
  • free email @me.com (login on icloud.com)
  • can backup Calendar, Address Book, Safari Bookmarks
  • Back to My Mac for remote access (turn on sharing)
  • Find My Mac if it's missing (will set up Guest User account)
  • I replaced my disk drive with a solid-state drive; soon I won't need even USB sticks.
• But...
  • Requires @ least Core 2 Duo.
  • Rosetta is dead.
  • iWeb & iDVD have been discontinued.
  • Need to install Java (for anything that needs it).

Freeware

Safari 5.1

1. Safari Extensions (link in Safari menu) install automatically from Apple's site (see also longer list):
   1. Franker translates selected text/whole page, inserting translation following original.
   2. autocomplete prevents blocking saved usernames/passwords.
   3. Tabletoy allows floating table headers & sorting by columns.
   4. arXivTeXifier (included in spires.app) TeX's (see below) in the arXiv listing abstracts of people too lazy to get rid of all those $'s.
   5. ClickToPlugin:
      1. Blocks flash. (Flash bug : If you get an "Adobe Flash Player Settings, Local Storage" window, you can't click on it. Instead, you need to go to System Preferences > Flash Player > Storage & change the "Ask me before..." setting to "Allow sites...", or go to Local Storage Settings by Site & change Storage Access from "Ask Me" to "Allow" for the listed sites.)
      2. Replaces it with HTML5 when available (e.g., on YouTube), & allows downloading it. (Also Media Center downloads HTML5 stuff more generally. Note: GarageBand will convert ≤ 40 sec. segments of videos into ringtones.)
2. Ad blocking: GlimmerBlocker (Java), http proxy (in System Preferences; for all all browsers). When subscribing to filters, note the preference "Automatically update subscription". When upgrading to Lion, install Java 1st, then deactivate & reactivate GlimmerBlocker. Here's a useful filter written for me by the author based on some related code I found on the web, for making text bigger on Wikipedia; after making a new filter, paste this in "Rules in":<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <glimmerblocker-rules> <rule priority="2" host="wikipedia.org" host-type="domain" type="modify" whitelist="1"> <comments><![CDATA[Set font-size in Safari.]]></comments> <transform language="js" version="1" content-type="html"><![CDATA[var ua = gb.request.headers['User-Agent']; if (ua && ua[0].match(/Safari\//)) { gb.addStyleElement("html, body { font-size: 16px; }"); }]]></transform> </rule> </glimmerblocker-rules>
3. MathML (needs work).
4. Downloads Popover.
5. QuickTime (7) Plug-in will view QuickTime Virtual Reality & MIDI files, which QuickTime (X) Player won't. (GarageBand will import & edit MIDI.)

TexShop

1. Front end for MacTeX.
   • See doc: paste this link by hand.
   • A minor bug : If you have Build 151 of the Preference Pane (& ever use it), revert to Build 150.
2. SyncTeX: ⌘-click on input/output to find same spot in other window; works with Full Screen.
3. Auto Save & Versions.
4. Find bar.
5. To convert pdf → eps, open the pdf in TeXShop, choose the "Selection" tool in the Preview window toolbar, select the desired rectangle (or all, either with ⌘-A or manually), choose "Preview>Save Selection to File...", & save as eps.

Graphics

1. Vector graphics ("draw"): LibreOffice or OpenOffice (Draw)
   • Lots more tools than basics: e.g., gradient shading, transparency, primitive 3D.
   • Retuns to Select tool after use of any other tool.
   • Uses click, click-&-drag, & double-click instead of left, middle, & right mouse buttons.
   • Includes text editor (Writer) that's better at reading MS Word files than TextEdit (but so is Quick Look).
   • Oracle PDF Import Extension (included in LibreOffice) allows editing of PDF.
2. 3D graphics (raytracing, etc.): Art of Illusion (Java); saves as JPG (e.g.), but Preview will convert to PDF.
3. Bitmap graphics ("paint"):
   • Seashore
   • Gimp X11 is more powerful but more awkward.
   • Hugin is a GUI for Panorama Tools to stitch overlapping photos together.
4. JaxoDraw (Java) draws Feynman diagrams with just the mouse. (Others require programming & specifying coordinates.)
5. STIX fonts have TeX characters for use elsewhere, e.g., figures. ("STIXGeneral.otf" & "STIXGeneralItalic.otf" have TeX math numerals as roman, math letters as italic.) Also, Computer Modern Unicode fonts (Latin/Greek/Cyrillic only; "cmunrm.otf" and "cmunti.otf".)

Other

1. MacFusion is an interface to FUSE for OS X (OSXFUSE; include MacFUSE Compatibility Layer), which mounts (s)ftp volumes as the Finder should, so you can add files, & edit with TextEdit.
   • MacFusion has a bug : You can't delete entries in the server list. Instead, go to ~/Library/Application Support/Macfusion/Filesystems & delete them there (by date).
2. BetterTouchTool assigns more stuff to trackpads, etc. I use it to allow tapping in the upper-left & lower-right corners to replace the Home & End keys (which don't exist on my new wireless keyboard).
3. Xcode (from the Mac App Store, also in  menu) includes:
   • FileMerge compares 2 text files (& merges) with a nice interface,
   • Xcode.app itself can edit hidden preferences: E.g., to change the default alarm sound in iCal, open ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iCal.plist (when iCal isn't running) & add a new line with Key "Default alarm sound", Type "String", & Value the name of the aiff sound (w/o extension). (New sounds can be added to ~/Library/Sounds. iTunes will convert to aiff, if the Preference General > Import Settings... > Import Using is set that way.)
4. Screensavers
   • Electric Sheep, modified by internet sharing
   • Really Slick screensavers: Hyperspace & Helios; Lattice
   • RandomExtra chooses which screensavers to randomize.
5. Radar in Motion: weather widget
6. Fortran & related stuff; CERNLIB & other HEP.

Tips

Text

1. Substitution, built-in (e.g., 1/2 → ½) or added (e.g., ^2 → ²). Set up in System Preferences…>Personal>Language & Text>Text. Use menu item Edit>Substitutions>Text Replacement. Great if you like to type math (in email, e.g.) as Unicode.
2. Option-delete deletes words.
3. Control-click on selected word(s) to look up in Dictionary (or use ⌃⌘D) or Google.
4. Control-clicking on a typo to choose a correct spelling is easier than retyping; control-T between 2 letters to transpose them.
   Also note the menu item Edit>Spelling and Grammar>Correct Spelling Automatically.
5. Click & drag to select text as contiguous letters, double-click & drag to do it with words, triple-click with paragraphs.
6. Character Viewer for all Unicode characters (e.g., math in Mail): "Edit>Special Characters...", or add directly to Title Bar by selecting in "System Preferences…>Personal>Language & Text>Input Sources". (See also my Unicode page.)

Finder

1. Screen Sharing (also in iChat) allows remote control of your Mac (even over the internet).
2. ⌘⇧4 to select portion of screen for snapshot, or hit space for camera to select window (or dock, menu bar, or desktop for all).
3. When a file won't delete because it claims it's in use, Secure Empty Trash.

Other

1. News/rumors: 9T🕘 5Mac (RSS), AppleInsider (RSS).
2. Apple keynote coverage: engadget.
3. Preview beeps if you move too fast with the spacebar; use instead the arrow keys, or page up/down.
4. TextEdit needs the setting "Format>Wrap to Page" to get the magnification bar in the lower-right corner.
5. Grapher (in Applications>Utilities) also does equations nicely; for arithmetic, just delete the "x=" (or whatever) & type.
6. Quicktime Player does screen video capture.
7. Terminal turns picture into icon with "sips -i". (Cut & paste icons in Finder with Get Info.) Useful to give icons transparency.
8. Reload a widget by selecting it & using ⌘R. (Found in Help under "Shortcuts for Dashboard.".)
9. If a program gives some weird error message doing something it did fine the day before, and seems to run fine otherwise, restart it.