Some basic settings after installing MacOS X 10.7 Lion

After installing Lion, you may need to customize the OS for easy to use. The tips listed here are simple yet useful.

1. In the first time, wait some minutes before using

After installing and restaring, MacOS X Lion needs sometime for indexing the contents in your computer. During this process, your computer may run slowly. It’s better to wait until this process is complete.

2. Run Software Update

The Software Update will check whether or not you are running the latest versions of OS and programs. You may download and install other packages from this function. To launch the Software Update, click Apple icon > Software Update.

3. Move Dock to left or right position

This step is optional. Since the screen is wide, you may think of moving the Dock to the left or right position of the screen. By performing this action, you may have more space on the screen for other tasks.

4. Modify the Preferences of Finder

 

In default, the hard disk and portable disks are not displayed on the screen. You can display them by changing the Preferences of Finder. Furthermore, Preferences allows you to display or not display the SlideBar of each Finder window. To access the Preferences, from desktop press Command and ‘,’.

5. Customize the System Preferences

System Preferences is similar to Control Panel in Windows. You can control all settings for your computer here. To access System Preferences, you can click on the System Preferences icon on Dock or click on Apple icon > System Preferences. There are many things that you can modify here.

5-1. Desktop & Screen Saver

- Add a background image by click +

- Change picture (and time).

- Random order: the images are randomly displayed.

- Translucent menu bar: control the transparent of the Top menu.

5-2. Dock

Dock allows to quick access apps. To add an app to Dock, you may drag and drop this app into Dock or when the app is running, right click and choose “Keep in Dock”. You can remove an app by drag its icon out of Dock.

- Size: You can change the size of Dock.

- Magnification: the size of Dock may change when you move the mouse cursor over it.

5-3. Mission Control

You can customize the windows and screen of Lion.

5-4. Language & Text

You can change the system language here. The default language is English. Besides, you can change the format of windows, clocks, dates.

5-5. Security

You can set the password to wake your computer from sleep or screen saver and the password to unlock each system preference pane.

5-6. Trackpad

The Mac is more and more intelligent. You can use 1 finger for left click, 2 fingers for zooming and rotation, and 3 fingers for moving to next song or photo. Lion provides you many options.

- You should choose “Tap to Click”.

- Click “Dragging” if you want to move a window with 1 finger.

- Choose “Secondary Tap” if you want to use 2 fingers as the right click.

- Tracking Speed: you can change the speed of Trackpad.

- Scroll direction: this is the scrolling feature as in iPhone/iPad.

- Swipe between pages: the default setting is using 2 fingers. You may change to “swipe left or right with three fingers”.