Whether you’re an early adopter, or a “wait till version 10.7.1” type, we’ll show you how to get your paws on the best of Mac OS 10.7 Lion.

It’s probably a little too poetic (slash dramatic) to say that Mac OS 10.7 is as mysterious as the big cat it’s named after. Still, many of its best improvements lurk under the hood -- security enhancements, for example. And a good chunk of its 250 new features are cosmetic or inconsequential at best. (Plus, who did the counting? Full-screen apps is one feature, then full-screen Terminal is cited as a separate feature? Whatever.) One of the biggest differences is how it’s sold -- only via the Mac App Store, only to users of Snow Leopard, and only as a digital download -- until Apple starts offering a $69 thumb drive with it installed, which we were still waiting for as we went to press, but should be out by the time you read this.

Still, the king of the OS jungle was a success out of the gate, with Apple boasting one million sales on the very first day. And whether you’re still on the fence, you’ve taken the plunge and are still getting used to things, or you just wanna know how to make a backup DVD like we always had before, our guide has the answers.

Sharpening the Claws

Lion brings with it a litter of new features -- here’s how to get started with them

Mission Control shows you every open application window, full-screen app, and Desktop you have going.

Lion’s Mission Control is perhaps the best reason for desktop Mac users to shell out $69 for the Magic Trackpad. Swipe up with three fingers (mouse users can also click the Mission Control icon in the Dock or set up a keyboard shortcut in System Preferences > Mission Control) to invoke the Mission Control screen, which shows all your open apps and their windows. From there you can also navigate to your Dashboard, or other Desktops -- each app you have running in full-screen mode counts as its own Desktop, or you can hover over the upper-right corner for a plus sign that lets you add more Desktops, which work like Spaces (just drag apps from one Desktop to another). But you don’t even need Mission Control to switch between Desktops; just swipe left or right with three fingers on your trackpad. And if you want certain applications to stay in certain Desktops, just right-click (or tap with two fingers) on the app’s Dock icon to assign it to This Desktop, All Desktops, or None.

Launchpad

If you’ve used an iPhone or iPad, this should look familiar…

This totally optional bell and/or whistle is essentially an iOS home screen for your Mac. Launch it by clicking the Dock icon, and your Desktop clears, making way for a grid of apps in your Applications folder. You can swipe between pages with the trackpad, and click any app to open it. And just like in iOS 4 and later, you can drag one app icon over another to put them in a folder. (The folder isn’t re-created in your Applications folder, only in Launchpad.) To reorder items (icons or folders), click and hold one until they all wiggle, then drag them to their new locations. And once the icons are wiggling, you can tap the X at the top-left corner of an icon to remove it from your Mac -- but only apps bought from the Mac App Store have that X. Weirdly, you can’t invoke Launchpad with a key command, but the free System Preferences pane application Launchpad-Control (donations accepted, chaosspace.de) at least lets you hide apps you don’t want to show up in Launchpad but you also don’t want to delete entirely.

AirDrop

Dropping files like they’re hot.

MobileMe’s iDisk and Back to My Mac work just like they always have, until the shutoff date of June 30, 2012. And Snow Leopard and previous iterations of Mac OS X had a Public folder set up for every user, which other users could find via Bonjour and drop in files. So AirDrop isn’t really new, just a spiffier presentation. To access it, open a Finder window and click AirDrop in the sidebar. Other Macs within 30 feet or so show up once they open AirDrop, and you can drop files onto their profile pictures to send ’em over. The recipient clicks Decline, Save, or Save and Open, and all incoming files are saved in the Downloads folder.

Resume

If you don’t want your session saved, press Command-Option-Q. It doesn’t work with every app, just the Apple ones so far.

The Resume feature is awesome -- when you restart your Mac, everything you had open before you shut it down…opens right back up. It’s particularly great when you want to apply a Software Update that requires a restart. Windows you had open in your apps also reappear the next time you relaunch that app. Of course, if you’d rather start fresh, you can head to System Preferences > General and uncheck the box that says, “Restore windows when quitting and reopening apps.” Or quit apps with Command-Option-Q when you don’t want the windows restored next time you launch it.

Auto Save & Versions

Go back, back, back to old versions.

Auto Save is another built-in timesaver, but it’s not in every app on your Mac -- just the Apple ones, like iWork and TextEdit. Other developers need to add it to their applications in updates. But in those apps, you just save it once, then click the tiny triangle (or the word Edited) you’ll see when you hover over the title bar to quickly jump to the last saved version. Selecting Browse All Versions opens the Time Machine-like Versions screen, where you can browse through every version of the document and get back the one you want.

Finder

The Finder’s All My Files view lets you scroll through categories with a Cover Flow-like carousel.

The Finder should be mostly familiar, with a few differences. Your main hard drive and attached drives are no longer shown on the Desktop, but that’s reversible in Finder > Preferences > General. Your Finder sidebar has a new view, All My Files, that sorts every file on your Mac into categories. If you’re using the icon view (Command-1), you can even navigate them with gestures, scrolling up or down the categories with two fingers, scrolling left or right with two fingers in each category, and double-tapping a file to open it. And you can right-click a file or folder in the Finder for a New Email With Attachment option in the contextual menu. Select it, and your Mac will launch Mail and start a new message with the selected file or folder already added as an attachment.

Spotlight

Lion’s Spotlight lets you search for information, instead of just searching for files.

Spotlight (the magnifying glass at the top-right corner of your screen, or Command-Space) is still a great place to search your Mac and launch applications, but it’s got a few more teeth in Lion. Press Command-Space to open a Spotlight query popup, and start typing some text. Toward the bottom of the search results window you’ll see “Search Web for,” which launches a Google search for that text in your default browser, and “Search Wikipedia for,” which launches the Wikipedia entry in Dictionary.app. You can also hover over any item in the Spotlight search results for a Quick Look–like preview popup.