Address Book: Birthdate Year Optional
Many of us know the month and day of our family and friends’ birthdays, but we might not know the year. Thankfully, Lion’s Address Book couldn’t care less, allowing you to enter just the month and day, which will carry over to iCal just fine -- without displaying their age. No one likes to get older, after all.

Address Book: FaceTime Calling
OS X Lion also adds FaceTime to the Address Book to make it easy to keep up with friends and family. With a contact open, click next to any email address, choose FaceTime and enjoy your chat.

Address Book: iPhoto Faces
OS X Lion makes it easier to attach images to your contacts in Address Book by linking to iPhoto’s Faces feature. Double-click on a contact’s photo and after a moment, click on the Faces icon at the bottom left to browse from your iPhoto library. Make your selection, zoom and crop and you’re good to go.

Dashboard: Lose the Space
By default, OS X Lion makes the Dashboard one of your desktops, much to the chagrin of longtime users. But it’s easy to undo, simply by opening System Preferences > Mission Control and unchecking the very first option, “Show Dashboard as a space.”

Dock: Access Recently Opened Files
The OS X Lion Dock just got a little more useful with the addition of recently opened files for applications. To access them, Control-click on any app in your Dock and up pops a list of recently used files for that selection.

Dock: Assign Your Desktops
All apps in OS X Lion can now be assigned to specific desktops, all desktops or none at all, right from the Dock. To do this, simply Control-Click on the app in question, maneuver to Options in the pop-up menu and select the appropriate choice from the “Assign To” options at the bottom.

Dock: Lose the Indicator Lights
Love the Dock but not feeling it for those indicator lights below each open app? OS X Lion now allows you to turn them off by opening System Preferences > Dock and unchecking “Show indicator lights for open applications.”

Dock: Quick Look Stacked Files
Finally, stacks are made more useful! From any folder stack in your Dock, simply mouse over the one you’d like to Quick Look and hit the Space bar -- in a jiffy, you’ll get a nice preview of that file, same as you would from a Finder window.

FileVault 2: Volume Encryption
FileVault 2 got a major overhaul with OS X Lion, and one of the biggest features has to be the ability to encrypt an entire volume rather than just a user’s Home folder. Simply turn it on, enter a recovery key and sit back while a blanket of security is applied to your entire volume.

FileVault 2: Encrypt External Disks
In addition to encrypting your entire system volume in OS X Lion (instead of simply a user’s Home folder in the prior version), users can now choose to encrypt external USB or FireWire drives as well, which happens in the Disk Utility app at the time of disk formatting.

Finder: Emoji Added to Special Characters
This tip actually works from any app that uses the Edit menu. To get your Emoji on, simply go to Edit > Special Characters and browse to the new Emoji section of the sidebar. Double click or drag a selection to insert it into the active text field.

Finder: File Sorting
OS X Lion introduces a new toolbar method for sorting files based on a variety of options including name, kind, application, four date-related options, size, label or none, which keeps things the way they were in Snow Leopard. Now you can separate folders from documents and much more, making it easier than ever to find what you’re looking for.

Finder: Gesture Navigation
If you prefer to view your files as icons, OS X Lion now allows for gesture-based navigation as it displays Finder items. Files in each group are now displayed in rows of icons, allowing you to easily swipe through them with a trackpad.

Finder: Keyboard Shortcut To Downloads Folder
Once a file you’ve downloaded has vanished into Safari 5.1’s tiny Downloads window, how can you find it again? There are several ways, but one of our favorites is using the Command-Option-L keyboard shortcut in the Finder, which pops it open -- even if you were just browsing another folder.

Finder: Merge Folders
In the past, dragging a folder with the same name to a new location was strictly a no-no. That’s all changed in OS X Lion, and now you’ll get the option to merge folders or keep both folders when doing so. Oh, how we love the little things in life…

Finder: Move Instead of Copy
We’ve always been able to move files by dragging and dropping with the Command key held down, but now keyboard junkies have even more options. Simply use Command-C as always to copy one or more files, then use Option-Command-V when pasting, which will actually move the file from its original location to the new destination.

Finder: Multiple Selection Animation
This one is mostly eye candy, but it does come in handy for showing a user what will happen when they drag and drop. Select more than one item to drag to a new location and you’ll see the selections collapse into one as you do so, then separate again as you hover over the new destination.

Finder: Navigate with Gestures
With all of the new gestures flying around in OS X Lion, it’s no surprise that Apple removed the previous method of navigating back and forth through Finder windows. But it’s still there -- simply hold down the Option key while you swipe left or right with three or four fingers (depending on how you have it configured) to navigate Finder windows instead of spaces. This trick also works in iTunes and many other apps as well.

Finder: New Folder with Selection
If you frequently move files into folders, you’ll love OS X Lion’s new ability to select one or more files, then pull up a contextual menu with a Control-click. At the top of the menu you’ll see “New Folder with Selection” -- select it and watch as your files literally jump into a new folder, no keyboard shortcuts necessary.

Finder: No More AirPort
Not everyone has the extra money to spend on Apple-branded wireless routers, which is probably why OS X Lion has changed the AirPort menu in the Finder to simply “Wi-Fi” -- which, when you think about it, makes a whole lot more sense anyway.

Finder: No More Looping App Switcher
Prior to OS X Lion, using the Command-Tab keyboard shortcut to open the application switcher would result in a potentially epileptic situation as the switcher moved the selection across your available apps in an endless loop. The good news is, Apple has changed this behavior and the app switcher will now stop at the end of the row -- without you having to do a thing.

Finder: Reveal the User Library Folder
While holding down the Option key is one -- well, option -- you can get your user Library back more permanently by heading to Applications > Utilities > Terminal and typing “chflags nohidden ~/Library” (no quotes) and hitting Return. Welcome back, Library folder.

Finder: Queue Up Your Trash
You’ll be seeing one less unwelcome notification in OS X Lion: Have you ever been in the middle of a lengthy trash emptying session and tried to drag other unwanted files inside at the same time? OS X would refuse to move those files, but with Lion, the trash now forms a queue -- if it’s busy being emptied, any new trash will simply queue up behind the current dump, ready to act on them when it’s finished.

Finder: Sidebar Icon Size
Aghast at the size of your Finder sidebar icons after opening OS X Lion? Thankfully, Apple has a setting for that which you can find under System Preferences > General and choose between Small, Medium or Large for “Sidebar icon size.” Note, however, this also affects the size of the sidebar icons in the Mail app as well.

Finder: Visit the User Library Folder
Apple has decided a user’s Library folder should be none of their business with OS X Lion, which has made many longtime users nervous. But it’s easy to access it: From the Finder, hold down the Option key as you select the Go menu and you’ll see Library sandwiched between Home and Computer. Select Library to open it in the Finder.

Finder: Window Edge Resizing
Apple comes through again, with the ability to resize application windows from any edge -- gone is the little corner graphic in the lower right corner of each window. Better yet, power users can hold down the Shift key to maintain the current window’s aspect ratio while resizing, or hold down the Option key to maintain the center point.

Gestures: Call Up Dictionary or Wikipedia
Need more information about a specific word? Select it and double-tap with three fingers to immediately highlight it in yellow and call up the dictionary, thesaurus and Wikipedia information for said word (note you may not see all of those options for some words).

iCal: Quick Add
Apple makes it easier than ever to add new events to iCal in OS X Lion with the use of regular language phrases. For example, typing “Benji’s birthday at 4pm” allows iCal to parse the name, time or location into the proper data using Quick Add.

iCal: Two-Finger Drag Between Months
Frustrated that Apple has made it more difficult to move between calendar months in iCal? Forget the clicking and use a two-figure drag left or right to get the job done, complete with a page turning animation.

iCal: Year Heat Mode
Want to see at a glance which days are busier than others for an entire year? OS X Lion’s new year mode shows 12 months at a time, using colors to represent your availability for each day, with busier days appearing more “hot” than others.

iChat: iPhoto Faces
Address Book isn’t the only OS X Lion app to gain the ability to quickly and easily add photos to your contacts. Click a buddy icon in iChat, click Edit Picture and then the Faces button at the bottom left, where you can browse through all available iPhoto Faces and choose the best one for your buddy.

iChat: Unified Buddy List and Status
OS X Lion adds Yahoo! Messenger to the iChat party, but buddies who have multiple chat services will only appear once, keeping your buddy list clean. What happens when you want to IM them? You’ll be asked which service you wish to connect through first. You’ll also get one unified status update across all of your services as well.

Launchpad: Drag Favorites to Dock
If you find yourself frequently visiting the Launchpad to open a particular app, it might be time to add it to your Dock for even faster launching. Thankfully this is as easy as selecting the icon in Launchpad and dragging it straight to the Dock.

Mail: Favorites Bar
Find yourself accessing certain folders in Mail more than others? Keep them a click away by dragging the folders to the new Favorites bar, which is sandwiched between the toolbar and the main Mail window. Easily access subfolders by clicking on the downward triangle instead.

Mail: Formatting Bar
Formatting your rich-text emails is a snap in OS X Lion. Simply start a new email, then click the “Show Format bar” button (sandwiched between attachment and photo browser at the upper right). Now you’ll have easy access to font, size, formatting, paragraph structure and much more.

Mail: Lose the Widescreen Layout
OS X Lion has a new look for Mail which takes a nod from the iPad, but it’s not to everyone’s taste. Get things back to the way they were in a jiffy by going to Mail > Preferences > Viewing and check “Use classic layout.”

Mail: Separate Conversations
OS X Lion Mail now groups your emails by conversation, which helps reduce clutter and stay organized with your recipients. Inline controls make it easy to reply, forward or delete messages, but if you want to access emails one at a time, click the number to the right of your conversation and you’ll be able to quickly get to any of them with just a click.

Mail: Show Mailboxes
Mail defaults to hiding all of your mailboxes in OS X Lion, but you can get them back quickly by using View > Show Mailbox List. Keyboard aficionados can do the same with a Shift-Command-M shortcut, or use a simple click on the “Show” button at the far left of the new Favorites bar.

Mail: Show Related Messages
With so many emails flying back and forth, it’s easy to get confused. That’s why OS X Lion’s Mail app adds the ability to show messages related to others in your inbox. You can turn this feature on by going to the View menu and selecting Show Related Messages, which will now display previous replies or even messages you’ve filed or trashed.

Mail: Sidebar Icon Size
Looking to squeeze more folders into view in your OS X Lion Mail sidebar? There’s no preference for this in the app itself, but strangely Apple has incorporated it into System Preferences > General. Change “Sidebar icon size” to your choice of Small, Medium or Large, but be forewarned -- this also affects the Finder sidebar as well.

Mission Control: Browse Your Desktops
Want to flip through your open desktops to see what’s active on them before committing to a switch? Simply hold down the Option key as you select the desktop in Mission Control, which will slide the new desktop into view without actually opening it for you so you can preview first.

Mission Control: Different Backgrounds For Each Desktop
Working with different desktops and want to enjoy a different look for each one? Visit each desktop, open System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver and choose a new background image, then repeat for your other desktops. Perfect for those times where one simply isn’t enough!

Mission Control: Drag Entire Apps To Another Desktop
You probably know that a three-finger swipe up puts you in OS X Lion’s Mission Control, where you can selectively drag windows between your desktops. But did you know you can move entire apps there as well? Instead of dragging a window, simply click and hold on the app icon and all of its open windows will come along for the ride.

Mission Control: Take Control of Desktop Arrangement
With OS X Lion, Apple tries to help users at every turn, no matter how jarring it might be. Take for example, Mission Control, which by default will automatically rearrange your desktops based on what’s been used recently. Take more control of the situation by going to System Preferences > Mission Control and unchecking “Automatically rearrange spaces based on most recent use.”

Mission Control: Viewing Gestures
A trackpad coupled with Mission Control is a user’s new best friend, with plenty of new gestures for getting around. Swipe two fingers up to spread out a cluster of app windows (or enlarge a single window), swipe three fingers (or four, depending on your Trackpad preferences) to the left or right to move back or forth through desktops or exit Mission Control entirely by using a three finger swipe down.

Photo Booth: Lose The Screen Flash
Users have always been able to temporarily disable the white screen flash in Photo Booth by holding down the Shift key as a photo is snapped, but now there’s an option under the Camera menu to disable it for good, should you dislike this feature.

Preview: Show Magnifier
Need to get a closer look at an image or document in Preview? Apple now includes a Magnifier tool with OS X Lion -- simply type the tilde key (that’s the one under Esc) and it will pop up. Pinch to increase or decrease your view inside the Magnifier.

Preview: Signatures
Adobe is going to lose a lot of potential Acrobat Pro customers with this one! Preview now allows you to add your signature to documents simply by signing a white piece of paper and using your FaceTime camera to capture it. The magic happens in the annotations section, and you can even add multiple signatures for a variety of uses.

Quick Look: Preview Links Without Opening
Next time you receive a URL in Mail or iChat, no need to click on it and head to Safari to see what it is -- simply hover your cursor over the link for a moment, then click on the small black square that appears with a white arrow inside. This will use Quick Look to open the linked web page without having to leave the app at all. Hit the Esc key as usual to close the preview.

QuickTime Player: Merge Clips
At last, OS X Lion’s QuickTime Player makes it easy to assemble multiple video files into one. Open the first file, then simply drag another clip onto the same window -- QuickTime Player even automatically scales or crops files to match. You can even trim the head or tail of any clip before committing to the new file. It’s a thing of beauty.

Safari: Add to Reading List
Next time you spot a link to an article that looks interesting and you don’t have time to read it at the moment, let OS X Lion’s new Safari 5.1 feature Reading List take control of things. Simply Shift-click the link in question and watch it fly up the screen and into the Reading List icon, where it’s now safely saved for later consumption.

Safari: Smart Zoom
Gestures have gotten quite a bit of the lion’s share of the press (pun intended), but a few of them may have been overlooked. One of our favorites is the “Smart zoom” which emulates iOS by allowing you to double-tap with two fingers in Safari to zoom into your web content. Make sure this option is turned on under System Preferences > Trackpad first. Works great in full-screen Safari, too!

Safari: New Downloads Window
Click a download link in Safari 5.1 on OS X Lion and you’ll see an animation fly up the screen and into a new tiny icon -- this is now the home for Downloads, which is no longer a separate window that creates confusion. Click on the downward arrow button and Safari’s Downloads window will now pop open, where you can act on the files accordingly.

Safari: New Tabs Stay Close
We love this one! In the past, clicking a link to open a new tab meant the window would open at the end of the line, often far away from the tab that spawned it. With OS X Lion, such new tabs will pop up right next to the original, pushing the others down the line accordingly. What can we say? It’s awesome.

Safari: Swipe Through Page History
Although we miss having a two-finger swipe available for Finder windows, Safari 5.1 benefits from the change in a big way by allowing the same gesture to swipe through your page history smoothly and easily. Just need a quick peek at your previous page? Swipe the existing one over enough to see it and hold your fingers in place, then swipe back to return where you just were.

Screen Saver: Pause Slideshow
If you have your screen saver set to show a slideshow of images, this trick will come in handy. Want to check out a particular slide or move through them manually? Simply hit the Space bar to stop (or restart) the show, then use the back and forth arrow keys to navigate between images.

Screen Sharing: Toolbar
If you frequently make use of Screen Sharing to access other Macs in your network, OS X Lion adds a new toolbar to the mix, allowing for quick access to send or get remote clipboard contents, snap a screenshot or fit the screen in your window. View > Show Toolbar will slide it into view for you.

Screen Sharing: Apple ID Authentication
Don’t want to create user accounts for others to access your computer via Screen Sharing? With OS X Lion, you can simply add another user’s Apple ID to the list of authorized users and they can log in with the same credentials used by iTunes or the App Store.

Screen Sharing: Observe Only
Want to keep an eye on a Mac in your network without accidentally disturbing it? Use OS X Lion Screen Sharing’s View > Switch to Observe Mode to see the remote computer without taking control of its window.

Spotlight: Drag and Drop
OS X Lion makes searching in Spotlight far more usable with the ability to drag and drop found items right from the Spotlight window to another location -- including an open email or via AirDrop.

Spotlight: QuickLook Previews
Here’s one that Spotlight users are really going to enjoy. After doing a search, simply hover your mouse over a selection and in a moment, up pops a QuickLook preview of that item. Even better, hold down the Command key while doing so to see where the searched string is located in that file, or hold down Command-Option to see where on your hard disk the file resides.

Spotlight: Web or Wikipedia Search
Want to do a quick web search without switching over to Safari? Type your search into OS X Lion Spotlight and click the “Search Web for” option at the bottom -- Safari will jump to the front and open the search request using your default search engine. This also works for Wikipedia searches as well.

System: Accented Characters
Taking a nod from iOS, users can now simply hold down a letter and up comes a list of alternatives for the character just typed. Click on one to select it, or type the corresponding number under each option. e

System: Automatic Termination
This new feature requires no user interaction -- literally! If you haven’t used an app recently and there are no open windows for it, OS X Lion will politely quit the app in question to free up resources for the rest of the system. Of course, this works with Lion’s new autosave features to make sure you don’t lose any data, and developers must specifically add it. Apple’s own apps such as TextEdit and Preview already support this.

System: Enhanced Clamshell Mode
Notebook users may recall the decidedly un-Apple way of attaching an external display to use their Mac in what’s called “clamshell mode.” That’s all gone with OS X Lion -- simply attach an external display, close your notebook and the external display remains on without having to fidget with sleep mode.

System: Login Display
OS X Lion’s login window now features a handy display of the clock, Wi-Fi status and on portable Macs, even the battery charge level and status -- before you even log in to your system.

System: Lose the Zoom
OS X Lion introduces new animations for many functions, including a zoom effect that many users have found less than desirable. But it’s easy enough to get rid of with a trip to Applications > Utilities > Terminal, typing “defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool NO” (no quotes) and hitting the Return key. You’ll have to log out or restart to get it working, or quit and relaunch the apps in question.

System: Restore Key Repeat
enter “defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false” (no quotes) and hit Return. Want to revert to Lion’s default behavior again? Enter the same command but change “false” to “true”.

System: Temporarily Disable Resume
If you’re quitting out of an app in OS X Lion and don’t want it to remember your previously opened windows, simply hold down the Option key while quitting (or using Command-Option-Q on the keyboard). This will make “Quit” become “Quit and Discard Windows” without having to disable it permanently using System Preferences.

System Information: New and Improved
OS X Lion completely overhauls the “More Info” option found under Apple Menu > About This Mac. You’ll now get a more visual look at your system via the Overview, Displays, Storage and Memory tabs -- but fear not, the old-school method is still there by clicking “System Report” under the Overview tab.

System Preferences: Display A Message On A Locked Screen
Want your co-workers to get the message that your Mac is not to be fondled? Head to System Preferences > Security & Privacy, select the General tab and check “Show a message when the screen is locked.” Now type a terse but friendly note to ward off unwanted intruders or even offer contact information should your computer ever get lost.

System Preferences: Hide Unwanted Options
Once you’ve installed more than a few third-party apps, the System Preferences pane tends to get overwhelmed with options. In Lion, you can hide unwanted icons by clicking and holding on the Show All button, then selecting “Customize” at the bottom of the pop-up menu. Uncheck the ones you’d like to hide and click Done.

System Preferences: Kill the Resume
Resume is a great OS X Lion feature for many, allowing users to pick right back up where they left off. If you’d rather boot up from a fresh start, visit System Preferences > General and uncheck “Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps.”

System Preferences: Lose Natural Scrolling
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of OS X Lion is Apple’s new “natural” scrolling, which mimics iOS by tracking your finger movement. Needless to say, this is the opposite of the way things have worked since the dawn of the Macintosh. But it’s easy to get back to the old way of doing things: Go to System Preferences > Trackpad > Scroll & Zoom and uncheck “Scroll direction: natural.”

System Preferences: Mail, Contacts & Calendars
Apple has added a new option to the Internet & Wireless section of System Preferences which finally keeps your email, contacts and calendar accounts in one place. For example, log into Gmail via Safari and OS X Lion will ask if you want to set up the account to work with Mail, iCal and iChat. The prefs pane will give you full control over these accounts at any time.

System Preferences: New Text to Speech Voices
OS X Lion adds a ton of new text to speech voices, but they require a download to acquire. Head to System Preferences > Speech > Text to Speech, then click on the System Voice pulldown and select Customize. Scroll through the massive list, click Play to preview, check the boxes for the ones you want and click OK to have them downloaded via Software Update.

System Preferences: Recent Documents in App Exposé
If you’ve enabled your trackpad to use App Exposé (as either a three or four-finger downward swipe), you’ll have the added ability to quickly access recent documents from many apps like TextEdit, Preview, iWork and more. Simply open System Preferences > Trackpad > More Gestures, select App Exposé and choose three or four fingers.

System Preferences: Restart with Resume
The ability to resume where you left off in OS X Lion is awesome, but it works even better when coupled with the ability to restart your computer automatically if the system locks up. To enable this option, open System Preferences > Energy Saver and make sure “Restart automatically if the computer freezes” is checked.

System Preferences: The Scroll Bar Lives
One of the most high-profile OS X Lion features are iOS-style scroll bars, which appear and disappear as needed. Many longtime Mac users are wringing their hands over the change, but they needn’t be. A trip to System Preferences > General now shows three options for “Show scroll bars” -- the system will choose automatically based on your input device (the default), or you can show them only when scrolling or always.

Time Machine: Enable Encryption
With OS X Lion’s beefier FileVault 2 encryption, users may be concerned about securing their Time Machine backup as well. Thankfully, Apple made it easy. Simply head to System Preferences > Time Machine, click on Select Disk and with your Time Machine disk selected, check “Encrypt Backup Disk” toward the bottom, then click Use Backup Disk.