Here’s how to get your Mac ready for the imminent release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion
As an aside, although you can use any traditional input device with Lion, Lion’s new systemwide gesture support makes a trackpad very, very useful. If you’ve got a desktop Mac without a trackpad, you should consider splurging on Apple’s Magic Trackpad. I personally prefer a mouse or large trackball for everyday “mousing,” but I’ve added a Magic Trackpad to my setup just to take advantage of Lion’s gesture-based features. Apple’s Magic Mouse also supports many of Lion’s gestures if you don’t want both a trackpad and a mouse.
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Pre-install tasks
Although Apple portrays the process of upgrading to Lion as a simple “download and install,” those of us who’ve been around the block a few times know that a major OS update is never that simple. Perform these tasks before the upgrade and your chances of a pain-free experience will increase substantially.
Make sure your Mac’s startup drive is in good health. To do so, open Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities), select your startup disk, click the First Aid tab, and then click Verify. If Disk Utility finds problems, you’ll need to boot from a different volume to perform the actual repairs using the Repair Disk button. If you’ve got access to either your Snow Leopard Install DVD or the Mac OS X install DVD or thumb drive that shipped with your Mac, you can use that. Alternatively, once Lion is released, you can create a bootable Lion installer volume (just copy the Lion installer onto a bootable DVD, hard disk, or thumb drive) and boot from it, as the installer includes Disk Utility. If you’re feeling especially cautious, you can also opt to run Apple Hardware Test.
Back up your Mac, and test that backup. Let me say that again: Back up your Mac, and test that backup, before installing Lion. (See our article on Mac backup plans for more info on backing up your Mac.) I personally recommend creating a bootable-clone backup — I use SuperDuper for the task, although a Time Machine backup will do as well. To test a clone or other bootable backup, use the Startup Disk system preference to boot from the backup drive. To test a Time Machine or other non-bootable backup, try restoring several files to make sure the process works.
Run Software Update. To to be sure you’re running both the latest version of Mac OS X — version 10.6.8, for example, included fixes specifically for the Mac App Store in preparation for Lion’s release — and the latest versions of any other Apple software that might be affected by Lion, you should run Software Update (from the Apple menu). You should also check for updated firmware for your particular Mac model.
Disable FileVault. If you’re using FileVault, Mac OS X’s built-in account-encryption feature, on any of your Mac’s accounts, I recommend disabling FileVault before upgrading to Lion. Why? For one thing, Lion uses a different (and allegedly new-and-much-improved) approach to encryption, and although Apple says you can keep using the Snow Leopard implementation for previously encrypted user accounts, Lion’s approach is likely the better way to go. Plus, I prefer to not test Murphy’s Law by risking any incompatibilities between the two versions of FileVault. Similarly, if you’re using third-party disk encryption, you should probably disable that before installing Lion.
