Updating to Mac OS X Lion for the vast majority of users is a painless experience and everything works great. But for others there can be trouble, there are various user reports in our comments and around the web on Apple’s Support forums and elsewhere, that suggest that wireless networking in OS X Lion is a bit more sensitive than Snow Leopard. This could be an issue that only occurs on some wireless cards, or some routers, or some combination of the two, but nonetheless we’ve found a few workarounds and fixes to resolve this annoyance.

Some of these tips are borrowed from our Mac wireless problems troubleshooting guide, which is an excellent resource with many more solutions and fixes if the following tips don’t work for you.

Basic WiFi Troubleshooting

First try out these tips, they’re basic but work in some cases:

• Turn wireless on & off – the first thing you should try, this alone fixes many cases of dropping wireless connections
• Reboot the Mac – this is the classic Windows troubleshooting tip, but if you haven’t rebooted since the first Lion boot, this can clear up some troubles too
• Reset the Router – just unplug the router for about 15 seconds and reconnect the power supply to cycle most routers, assuming it’s an issue with the router and how Lion is corresponding with it, this will fix the problem

More Advanced WiFi Troubleshooting Tips

Still dropping? The next set of tips pertain to the Network preferences, accessed through System Preferences > “Network”

Set a manual IP address with DHCP – if all else fails, use “DHCP with manual IP address” in Network > Advanced > TCP/IP settings. Pick an IP that is in range of the router, but out of range of conflict. For whatever reason, this has worked for years to resolve Mac OS X wireless problems with some routers
• Move Wi-Fi to the top of the Service Order list – This is an old tip that simply prioritizes WiFi as the primary method that your Mac should connect to the internet, and it seems to help maintain connections
• Move the primary router to the top of “Preferred Networks” list – this is accessed from the “Advanced” menu in Network settings. There is some speculation that if you are in range of multiple routers, the connection will juggle between the two causing WiFi to drop. Drag your primary router to the top of this list.
• Delete existing WiFi connections and re-add them – this is done by clicking on the ‘minus’ icon in the Network settings lower left corner, then just click on “+” and add a new WI-Fi connection
• Add an extra DNS entry – it’s not clear why this works, but many users report success with just adding an additional DNS address to the list. 8.8.8.8 is Google’s public DNS and is reliable
• Add a New Network Location – from the Network control panel, do the following:

• Pull down the ‘Location’ menu and navigate down to ‘Edit Locations’
• Click the + sign to add a new network Location
• Give it a name, click OK
• Select the “Network Name” (wireless router) and click Apply

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I love Mac OS X Lion like the rest of us, but I found this Joy of Tech comic strip hilarious, it touches on everything from natural scrolling, the lack of PPC support, new scrollbars, downloading from the App Store, and more.

On a more serious note, if you plan on upgrading to Lion soon, don’t miss our recommended upgrade steps walkthrough.

Maximizer is a free utility that brings Full Screen app mode to all Cocoa apps running in Mac OS X Lion 10.7, even if they don’t technically support the feature yet.

Lion is needed, as is the following to get this working:

• Download SIMBL – SIMBL stands for “SIMple Bundle Loader” and basically allows app and OS modifications to be made in the form of plugins, which is exactly what Maximizer is
• Get Maximizer from chpwm.com – Uncompress the zip file and drop the .bundle in ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins

You will then need to relaunch any open apps for the plugin to load, but be aware that Full Screen won’t work in some apps as anticipated, if at all.

Is this necessary? That depends on who much you like Full Screen. Quite a few apps don’t support true full screen yet, ranging from Firefox and Chrome to even apps that ship with Lion like the App Store, TextEdit, Address Book, iWeb, Disk Utility, iChat, and many more. Admittedly, some of these apps don’t make much sense to be full screen, but some would be good and just haven’t been optimized for Lion yet. This should hold you over until then.

The 2011 Mac Mini is blowing away early benchmarks, in some cases doubling their predecessors and even outperforming the impressive MacBook Air 2011 benchmarks. Not bad for a tiny Mac are they? Unsurprisingly, the Mac Mini Core i7 model is the most impressive, with a whopping 9573 GeekBench score, but the Core i5 is no slouch at 6395.

The above chart compares the new 2011 Mini GeekBench scores vs 2010, 2009, and even the 2005 mini, courtesy of MacMiniColo, but these are not rogue results, as a quick search on GeekBench‘s website shows us several more 2011 Mac Mini killing it in the benchmarks:

With the 2011 Mac Mini performing so well, it looks like the hardest decision many prospective buyers will have to make is exactly which model they want to fly with, but the Quad-Core i7 Server model is a certified screamer. We’ll update as we get more benchmark results and hopefully we can see some real-world tests soon too.

This will be the funniest thing you will read all day. An apparent excerpt from Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN quotes an epic exchange between Steve Jobs and the ESPN president:

The story goes that ESPN president George Bodenheimer attended the first Disney board meeting in Orlando, Florida, just after the company had bought Pixar, the innovative animation factory, and spotted Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a hallway. It seemed like a good time to introduce himself. “I am George Bodenheimer,” he said to Jobs. “I run ESPN.” Jobs just looked at him and said nothing other than “Your phone is the dumbest fucking idea I have ever heard,” then turned and walked away.

Steve is a champion who is not afraid of speaking his mind.

What an awesome find from Gruber of DaringFireball, who points out that the “dumbest” phone in question is this ESPN branded Samsung flip-phone from 2006, shown here:
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One of the great unsung features of Lion is the personal use license which allows you to download OS X Lion once and then install it on all of your authorized personal Macs. This makes the $29.99 purchase an even better deal than it would be already, because one single purchase lets you upgrade all of your household computers.

There are several approaches to installing OS X Lion on all of your own Macs, these include:

• Copying the OS X Lion installer to other Macs – this is the primary focus of this article by using the following methods

• Copying the Lion installer with an external drive or DVD
• Transferring the Lion installer over a network

Several of these we have already covered before and you are welcome to check those out, but for the purpose of this article we are going to discuss transferring the OS X Lion installer to the other Macs. This allows for easy upgrades of all your Macs and prevents you from having to re-download the app or create any installation drives.
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You might have heard that Mac OS X Lion ditches Front Row, the easily accessible media player that was activated by hitting Command+Escape on a keyboard or by pressing play on an Apple Remote. If you like Front Row and are disappointed in Lion leaving it behind, you can easily get it working again just by copying a couple files over from the prior OS version.

Manually Enabling Front Row for OS X Lion

This will require access to a Mac OS X 10.6 installation. The following Front Row files from OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard must be moved into the exact same locations in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Front Row.app
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/BackRow.framework
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/iPhotoAccess.framework
/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.RemoteUI.plist
/Applications/Front Row.app

If you have Snow Leopard installed and laying around, you can preserve and move these files yourself quickly with Finder or by using cp, just be sure to place them in the exact same locations. This is very easy if you have a dual 10.6 and 10.7 boot config going, but if not don’t worry there’s a simple alternative.

Get Front Row Working in Mac OS X Lion with an Installer

Alternatively to moving the files yourself, you can use use a free package installer that contains the 10.6 Front Row files and places them automatically into the appropriate locations in Lion. This is easier.

Download the free package installer by MacHatter.

The MacHatter package does all the work for you and has been confirmed to work. If you click on “Custom Install” you can double check that the Front Row files exist:
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Did you buy a new Mac between June 6, 2011 and July 20, 2011? If so, don’t grab Lion from the App Store quite yet because you qualify for a free download of Mac OS X Lion, directly from Apple. All you need to do is visit Apple’s Up-To-Date page to claim your copy, just be sure you have your Macs Serial Number, date of purchase, and place & location of purchase ready.

Head over to Apple’s Up To Date page to claim your free copy

Any Macs bought July 20 won’t need to do this because they’ll come with Lion preinstalled. If you bought a Mac before June 6, well, you’ll just have to buy Lion from the App Store like the rest of us, it’s $29.99 and includes a very generous personal license that will allow you to install Lion on all of your personal machines.

Don’t miss the rest of our Mac OS X Lion coverage and tips.

The first benchmarks for the MacBook Air 2011 refresh (released alongside Lion) are rolling in, and they show that the Intel Core i5 processor in both the 13″ and 11″ variation are screamers. How fast? Well, just check out the Geekbench scores, which for both models are at least double the speed of the 2010 Core 2 Duo’s they replaced. In fact, the new MacBook Air’s are so fast that the speed of the new 1.7GHz Core i5 13″ model is faster than the 2010 MacBook Pro 17″ that was a 2.6GHz Core i7, as ElectricPig says:

To put these benchmarks into perspective, the 2010 17-inch 2.67 GHz Core i7 MacBook Pro scored 5423. For [$999] the 11-inch MacBook Air offers a benchmark on par with last year’s [$2499] 17-inch MacBook Pro.

Undoubtedly some of the speed increase is due to the ultrafast SSD, but it also shows the new Intel Core i5 contained within the 2011 MBA refresh is a screamer.
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First a quick note: if you’re a developer who is running the Lion GM build 11A511 there is technically no need to install the Lion Final, both builds are 11A511 and identical. That said…

If you are running the Mac OS X Lion GM build and you want to buy and install the Final release of Lion through the Mac App Store, you’ve probably noticed that you’ll get an error message in the App Store. The solution? Simple, you just need to hold Option and click on the Install button to be able to install the final release over GM. You can also do this through the “Purchases” tab in the Mac App Store, just hold down Option to enable the “Install” button.

This is also a way for those who inappropriately downloaded Lion GM to ‘come clean’ and pay Apple for the final release. It’s only $29.99, and if you haven’t bought it yet, you really should.

Again, there isn’t much reason for developers to do this, but it’s a good tip anyway from The Loop.

Update: Some users are reporting sporadic issues with this, here is a clarification from our comments:

To clarify for everyone:

Hold option/alt when clicking the App Store icon.

Keep option/alt held down, and navigate to OS X Lion in the App Store.

Keeping alt/option held, you will see OS X Lion is now available for purchase, instead of being marked as ‘installed’.

Click it!

Basically, hold option during App Store launch and during each click through to “Purchases” and then to “Install”

Unless you live under a rock, you probably know that OS X Lion is available to download on the Mac App Store. We’ve been covering Lion for a while now (check out all of our posts on OS X Lion for a ton of tips and relevant information) and we think it’s awesome, but if you’re the type to want reviews before diving in yourself, here’s a handful of the best out there:

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The final version of Xcode 4.1 has been released as a free download to everyone via the Mac App Store. Mostly for developers, Xcode is the Mac OS X-only development environment for creating OS X and iOS apps, but the package also includes various useful command line tools, and even an iOS hardware simulator, making it a worthwhile download for power users as well as developers.

Before you get the latest version of Xcode though, you will need to download Mac OS X Lion and complete that installation.

Get XCode 4.1 free from the Mac App Store

Here are the key changes for XCode 4.1 with Lion support, via the App Store page:

What’s new in Xcode 4.1 for OS X Lion
– Includes SDKs for OS X Lion and iOS 4.3
– Interface Builder support for Auto Layout and new Aqua controls such as NSPopover
– Full screen support in workspace, project, and organizer windows
– Project modernization to identify and resolve out of date build settings
– Behaviors can be customized and assigned to unique key bindings
– Source control enhancements to pushing, pulling, and management of remote servers
– Assistant editor support for display of generated assembly and preprocessed output
– Additional bug fixes and stability improvements

Prior to this release, Xcode cost $4.99 to download.

Alongside the release of Mac OS X Lion, Apple has pushed out iTunes 10.4. The changes are geared mostly towards Lion compatibility, with 64-bit architecture and Full-Screen app support.

Download iTunes 10.4

We will post direct links from Apple when they become available, for now there are two options:

• Open “Software Update” from the  Apple menu or update within iTunes
• Download from Apple.com’s iTunes page

Here are the release notes via Software Update:
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The wait is over, Mac OS X Lion is live and available now on the Mac App Store, ready for everyone to download! The file weighs in at 3.49GB and speeds are so far very quick this morning.

Get OS X Lion from the Mac App Store Now – $29.99

Basic requirements are a Mac that is a Core 2 Duo or better with 2GB of RAM or more, but you can review the full Lion system requirements if you want. If you haven’t backed up already, do that too. Enjoy!

Mac OS X Lion is available now and many of us will be upgrading immediately, while others will be waiting. Regardless of when you decide to upgrade to OS X 10.7, you’ll want to update your existing Mac OS X installation, check app compatibility, and backup your data.

Recommended Steps for Upgrading to Mac OS X 10.7 Lion

Before anything else, verify that your Mac meets the OS X Lion system requirements, which in brief are a Core 2 Duo or higher processor and at least 2GB of RAM.

1) Upgrade to Mac OS X 10.6.8 and get the Mac App Store

You won’t be able to upgrade an existing Mac to Lion without having access to the Mac App Store and 10.6.8:

• Run Software Update and be updated to Mac OS X 10.6.8 including the Mac App Store
• Optional: Run Software Update again and get the latest “Migration Assistant” download if you plan to transfer data from a 10.6 Snow Leopard Mac to another Lion equipped Mac

2) Check for App Compatibility and Update Apps

You’ll want to make sure that Lion supports the apps you are dependent on. Most apps should be updated by their developers to support Lion, but you can also quickly check for incompatible apps by looking at System Profiler to identify any PowerPC applications – these won’t work.

3) Backup your Mac and Data

The likelihood of something going wrong during the upgrade is slim, but that’s not the point, you need to backup your data. It’s always better to be safe than sorry.

There are a few different approaches to data backups, the easiest method is to just use Time Machine and let it run a full backup. You can force Time Machine to perform a backup manually just by right-clicking on the Time Machine drive and selecting “Backup Now”.

Alternatively, you can use a modernized approach to Gruber’s 4-step method:

1. Do a complete backup of your existing hard drive by cloning it to an external hard drive, using something like the free tool Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper
2. Test that the backup is bootable and contains all files as expected
3. Disconnect the backup drive
4. Proceed to install Mac OS X Lion

4) Install Mac OS X 10.7 Lion

Got your data backed up? Good. Installing OS X Lion is very easy, in fact it’s probably the easiest major Mac OS X upgrade ever. All you need to do is download it from the Mac App Store and launch the installer.

Download Mac OS X Lion from the Mac App Store

This will update your existing 10.6.8 installation to 10.7 and takes about 20 to 40 minutes after it has been downloaded, depending on the speed of your hard drive.

If you want to perform a clean install, or you plan on installing Lion on multiple Macs around your house, the easiest way is to just make an OS X Lion installer USB drive or boot DVD. Both methods allow you to do a fresh installation and save you the hassle of downloading the 4GB again on each Mac.

Update: Lion is now available, you can download it now from the Mac App Store for $29.99

Apple has confirmed that Mac OS X 10.7 Lion will launch today, July 20. This was announced today during the Apple Q3 2011 earnings call by Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer, and later reaffirmed by COO Tim Cook.

This confirms at least half of the recent rumor about a Wednesday launch, but it remains to be seen whether a new MacBook Air will be launched alongside Lion as well, or later in the month.

Mac OS X Lion will cost $29.99 and be available exclusively as a digital download through the Mac App Store. You can read more of our Lion coverage here.

Apple has posted some ludicrously huge numbers for their Q3 2011, with quarterly revenue reaching $28.7 billion and a net profit of $7.31 billion, both new records. By comparison, 2010’s Q3 was $15.7 billion in revenue with a profit of $3.25 billion.

Apple’s Q3 2011 Highlights:

• Revenue increased 82% year over year
• Profits increased 125% year over year
• Gross margin was 41.7% compared to 39.1% in the year-ago quarter
• Retail revenue increased 36% year over year
• International sales accounted for 62% of the quarters revenue
• Americas revenue grew 63% year over year
• Europe revenue grew 71% year over year
• Japan revenue grew 66% year over year
• Asia Pacific revenue exploded 247% year over year

Hardware Numbers:

• iPhones sold: 20.34 million, a 142% increase year over year
• iPads sold: 9.25 million, a 183% increase year over year
• Macs sold: 3.95 million, a 14% increase year over year
• iPods sold: 7.54 million, a 20% decline year over year

Two choice quotes included in Apple’s Third Quarter results, published online, include one from CEO Steve Jobs, and another from CFO Peter Oppenheimer:

“We’re thrilled to deliver our best quarter ever, with revenue up 82 percent and profits up 125 percent,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Right now, we’re very focused and excited about bringing iOS 5 and iCloud to our users this fall.”

“We are extremely pleased with our performance which drove quarterly cash flow from operations of $11.1 billion, an increase of 131 percent year-over-year,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the fourth fiscal quarter of 2011, we expect revenue of about $25 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $5.50.”

This information comes directly from Apple PR. You can listen live to the Q3 2011 conference call starting at 2PM today at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/earningsq311.

If the prospect of installing Mac OS X Lion isn’t your thing, you can try running Chromium OS on the MacBook Air instead. Chromium OS is the open-source version of Google’s Chrome OS, which is an operating system based almost entirely around the Chrome browser – you boot directly into a browser, and that’s basically it.

All hardware works with the exception of Bluetooth, but all the brightness, sound, trackpad, WiFi, and it is said to install on both the MacBook Air 11″ and 13″ models, and possibly even nVidia based MacBook and MacBook Pro’s. The major caveat? You lose OS X, so don’t expect to dual boot here.

We haven’t tested this ourselves and you’ll want to be sure you backup Mac OS X before proceeding because it’ll be overwritten. If you’re brave enough to give this a try, you’ll need a compatible MacBook Air, a 2GB+ USB stick, and the Mac OS X USB Installer key that comes with the MacBook Air.

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