17 useful features every OS X Lion user should know about
Computerworld – Apple billed this summer’s release of Mac OS X Lion as having more than 200 new features, but most coverage of Lion in the intervening months has focused on only a handful of them. While iOS-like navigation and app-launching interfaces, autosave/restore capabilities, AirDrop file sharing and an emergency restore partition are by all means important, there are a lot of helpful tweaks and enhancements that can easily be missed.After spending several months really getting to know Lion, I’ve uncovered a plethora of little-talked-about functions that are well worth knowing about. Here are more than 15 new and useful features in Lion for you to explore.
What other unsung features have you discovered in Lion? Share your tips in the article comments.
File grouping in Finder windows
Lion’s well-known All My Files smart folder gives a bird’s-eye view of everything on your Mac with files separated by type — images, PDFs, text-based documents, spreadsheets and so forth. Each type of file displays preview icons of various files that you can scroll through, much as you would using cover flow view in the Finder or iTunes.This file grouping option is the default for All My Files, but you can use it for any folder you’re looking at in icon view (but not in list, column or cover flow views).
Grouping files by type is useful, but the Finder’s new Arrange menu in the Finder window toolbar also lets you group files and subfolders by several different criteria, including by the application that created each file (or that is associated with the file if that application isn’t installed on your Mac); by the date they were last opened, added, modified or created; by the file sizes; and by the Finder label assigned to them.
Using the icon view in any Finder window, you can group
files by a number of different criteria.
