OS X: 10.7 Post-Upgrade checklist

I just upgraded my OS X Snow Leopard install to the new Mac OS 10.7 Lion and I am stunned: never before the upgrade process was so easy and fast! Once again it’s amazing what job the Apple Developers achieved, considering it’s a full operating system upgrade.

There are enough posts and reviews about 10.7 Lion, so I am not going to write anything about it in general. But I provide a (happily) short post-upgrade checklist of the things I had to take care after upgrading.

• System Settings & Look’n’Feel
  • Unhide the user Library folder with the Terminal-command
    chflags nohidden /Users/<username>/Library
  • Permanently show Scroll Bars via
    System Preferences > Appearance
  • Deactivate the “natural” scrolling behavior under
    System Preferences > Trackpad
  • Disable the feature to have the Dashboard as a separate “Space” (or Desktop, how they call it now) under
    System Preferences > Mission Control
  • Update the list of Messaging services under
    System Preferences > Mail, Contacts & Calendars
  • Change the wallpaper for each Desktop space via
    System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver (needs to be applied PER desktop!)
  • Start Spotlight so it updates the index-cache of the harddrive
• Applications
  • Update iTunes
  • Open iPhoto to update the image cache
  • Open Mail to update the mail boxes and data
  • Open iCal to update calendar cache
  • Re-install BOINC (yes, I still believe in the SETI@home Project ;-))
  • Re-install MAMP (there is no more MySQL with OS X Lion)
  • Update Adobe’s Flash Player
  • Deactivate/uninstall the Citrix Access Gateway Plug-in
• Security
  • Disable the “Automatically open secure files after downloading”-feature in Safari’s “General” preferences

References used:
Se7enSins | Unhide Library Folder in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion
iHackThatiFone | Mac OS X Lion – Supports Per Space Wallpapers
Macworld.com | 10.7: Different Desktop Picture on Each Space
Citrix Knowledge Center | Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) – Known Issues with Citrix Receiver
Adobe Support | Flash Player Known Issues with OS X Lion