Built-in Apps

Mail, Safari, and the other Apple apps got fresh new looks—and features—for Lion

With its latest OS update, Apple took the opportunity to revamp the built-in applications (iChat, Safari, Mail, and others) to better match the aesthetics of corresponding apps in iOS, which seem designed to be “touchable.” Address Book looks like a paper address book, for example, and iCal’s views actually have tiny chunks of torn-paper trim that make it look like you’ve been ripping pages off a paper calendar. But the changes aren’t all in the looks department.

Mail

Mail searches are more powerful than ever thanks to tokens.

Think of Mail as the MacBook Air of Lion’s new apps, redesigned to be sleeker, faster, and easier all around. The two-pane design puts the focus on your inboxes and your messages, especially in full-screen mode. Important folders are conveniently stashed in a Favorites bar, and the optional third pane holds your Trash, Smart Folders, and more. Everything stays out of sight until you need it. Generous message previews give you the gist of new emails at a glance, and you can preview embedded links in roomy, scrollable popups before opening them. The new Conversations view is an elegant way to follow back-and-forth discussions, even across multiple mailboxes.

The upgrades to search may take some getting used to, but the results are worth it. Safari-style autocomplete now dynamically suggests matches as you type contacts, dates, subjects, and more. Selecting a suggestion turns it into a “token,” a persistent (and editable) search term that can be combined with other tokens to build detailed, refined searches. These, like any Mail queries, can be saved as Smart Mailboxes with a click, letting you quickly get back to your messages.

iCal

iCal’s new yearly view says August is busy. How’s September for you?

Apple’s scheduling app got an iOS makeover, ditching the space-hogging sidebar for a very functional desk calendar motif. A new color-coded yearly view shows your busiest days at a glance, and the revamped daily view rocks, displaying your day’s schedule, upcoming events, even a monthly mini-calendar, so you can skip through dates without jumping though hoops. Creating events is easier, too, thanks to natural language input that can turn “Apple Genius appointment tomorrow 2pm” into an item on your schedule. Faster, simpler to use, more functional? Yeah, we can make time for that.

Address Book

Looks like someone’s been hanging out at the stationery store too much.

Before Lion, you picked a group in Address Book, viewed its contacts, then clicked a contact to see its information, all in one convenient window. What was unspectacularly functional is now...well, it’s a clone of the iPad’s Contacts app, and we have to click a bookmark-like icon to see our contact groups, then click again to view contact info in that group. If Apple’s designers keep up this literal streak, we’ll be browsing websites in Safari through the mud-spattered windshield of a Jeep Wrangler. But iOS users will be right at home here, which we suspect is the point.

Safari

Beyond under-the-hood improvements that increase compatibility, speed, and security, Cupertino hasn’t added much to Safari’s bag of tricks. Full-screen mode makes for a cozier, more iPad-like experience during lengthy browsing sessions. New Multi-Touch gestures include tap-to-zoom, which brings iOS-style focus to reading busy webpages. Text automagically looks sharp even at high magnification, unlike the jaggy zoomed text in earlier versions of OS X.

When you’re overloaded for time, Reading List can keep your stories straight.

Downloaded files are now whisked with a cool animation to the toolbar, where you can watch their progress in a pop-up window that not only eliminates clutter, but also lets you move files from the Downloads folder to any location in the Finder. We approve. But we’re still warming up to Reading List, which saves pages you’re interested in today for perusal tomorrow. It’s a nice feature, but right now it feels a little like Bookmarks Pro -- at least until iOS 5, when pages saved to Reading List will sync across all our devices. Until then, we wish we could simply click an icon in Safari’s toolbar to add pages to Reading List (as with Instapaper’s bookmarklet). Having to burrow through the menu bar’s Bookmarks menu feels so 20th century.

Photo Booth

We’ve fallen in love with Photo Booth’s new effects. You will, too.

Photo Booth’s new face-detecting, head-tracking effects are awesome, turning you and your friends into bug-eyed aliens, love-struck sweethearts, and more. But full-screen mode changes up Photo Booth’s interface a little more than we’d like. At least you can disable the screen flash when you absolutely, positively have to shoot goofy pictures without disturbing other passengers on your red-eye flight. They’ll appreciate it.

Time Machine

Purple text on a purple background off to the side of the screen, huh? Mmmkay.

When you’re on the road with your laptop, away from your Time Capsule or backup drive, Time Machine keeps local copies of files you create, modify, or delete so revisions don’t just disappear. When you get home, changes are merged with your main backup drive as if you never left. Naturally, Time Machine supports Lion’s new Versions feature, allowing you to set when documents are locked to prevent accidental revisions in Auto Save–aware apps. Now if Apple would just fix the purple-on-purple text in the new Time Machine window, we’d feel even better.

FaceTime

FaceTime? Built into Lion? Good show, old boy.

Freed from the Mac App Store and bundled with Lion (there’s $0.99 we’ll never see again!) Apple’s iOS-and-Mac video chat app is much the same as in Snow Leopard. You’re still stuck viewing contacts organized in only one way, but now at least the contact search field pops up automatically. Full-screen calls appear in their own Spaces and pause when you swipe to another app.

The Mac App Store

We miss the Dock  animation, but we still love us some Mac App Store.

Once a bold experiment in software distribution, the Mac App Store earned its stripes by serving up a million copies of Lion on launch day. We kinda miss the old Snow Leopard animation that lobbed apps into the Dock to be downloaded. More practically, we’d like to see better organization and -- dare to dream -- the ability to gift applications. But until then, we’ll remain loyal customers. After all, where else are we going to get the next version of OS X?

How to Make a Lion Install Disc & Thumb Drive

If not having an emergency backup disc makes you nervous, don’t sweat it. You can make one.

Lion is Apple’s first disc-less distribution of Mac OS X. That’s great if you have broadband, but a pain if you don’t. Apple sells a Lion USB drive for $69, or you can create your own install disc or drive. Note: After Lion is installed, the installer file in your Applications folder is deleted automatically. So either follow these steps before installing Lion, or move the installer from the Applications folder to prevent the auto-delete. If it’s already gone, try signing into your Mac App Store account on a Snow Leopard Mac and downloading the installer again.

What You Need

A blank DVD-R or 8GB or larger USB thumb drive

Lion installer ($29.99, Mac App Store)

1. Crack Open the Installer File

Drag this to the Desktop.

The first thing you need to do is locate the Install Mac OS X Lion application icon in your Applications folder on your Mac. Right-click it and select Show Package Contents. In the resulting folder, navigate to Contents > Shared Support. Drag InstallESD.dmg to your Desktop -- this is the file that we will burn to the blank DVD.

2. Open Disk Utility

Ready to burn? Click Burn. That was easy, wasn’t it?

If you are using a USB thumb drive, skip this step and go to Step 4. Insert your blank DVD and launch Disk Utility. Click the Burn button in the toolbar to open a file chooser. Select InstallESD.dmg on the Desktop. In the resulting window, click the Burn button to begin the burning process. It’ll take a while because it’s writing over 3GBs of data to the disc.

3. Burn, Baby, Burn

The burn will take a while. Ours took about half an hour.

After the disc has been successfully burned, it will be ejected from your Mac and ready to be placed in another Mac for installation. Insert the disc and restart your Mac while holding down the C key to boot into the installer disc you just created.

4. Portable Lion

You could buy a Lion thumb drive from Apple for $69. Or make your own.

If you want to create a bootable USB thumb drive installer instead of a DVD, Disk Utility will gladly oblige. Open Disk Utility, select your blank thumb drive in the sidebar, and click the Restore tab. In the Source area, click the Image button and select the InstallESD.dmg file on your Desktop. Next, drag your thumb drive from the sidebar to the Destination field. When you have done this, click Restore to have the image “burned” onto your thumb drive. The only thing left to do is to plug it into you Mac, boot up your machine while holding down Option, and choose your thumb drive to install Lion.