Lion interface too limiting, can the interface be made to resemble Snow Leopard?

Have you tried the view options, by right-clicking your Desktop and selecting the last contextual menu item? And the Show View Options item under Finder's View menu?

Look around. You can do all of those things.

Look on the internet, there are method to "de-iOS" Lion so it works more like what we are used too in Snow Leopard.

http://lifehacker.com/5824564/how-to-de+ios+ify-mac-os-x-lion

Lion Tweaks is a good program so I hear.

You don't need to tweak anything to do what the poster wants. Display of icons on the desktop is a preference, creating folder trees is the same as it ever way and accessing the user library is a matter of holding the option key while clicking the Go menu.

Most of those options are in the Finder Preferences. Most of what you describe hasn't changed, except what is chosen as the default.

You can view the Library folder by holding down the option key and selecting Library from the Go menu in Finder. If you need it more readily accessible than that, you can unhide it or put it in the Sidebar.

There is not CD, or DVD, or anything like that at all. Lion installs a Recovery partition which you access by holding down cmd-r on restart. All new Macs also can be recovered by logging into Apple's servers. See Introducing Lion Recovery and About Lion Recovery.

Lion Tweaks is here

http://ifredrik.com/applications/

and here

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/39654/lion-tweaks

I will try to answer your question.

You mention being able to see icons of the hard drive and connected drive, create directories and sub-directories, and view library files.

1. If I understand correctly you want to modify the finder preferences to view icons on your desktop. See the Knowledge Base article http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3737 and at the end of the article it explains how to change what items appear on your desktop.

2. If you want to be able to create folders and sub-folders in finder this Knowledge Base article http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2470 goes over the new interface for the finder window. In the beginning of the article it numbers elements of the Finder window and number three is the Action Menu to create a new folder (or directory).

3. Viewing library files is still possible in Mac OS X Lion, however, it has been disabled by default. There are two common ways to view the library files.

First, you can navigate to the library folder by clicking Go in the Finder Menu Bar and choosing Go To Folder… This opens a drop-down dialog box in the Finder window. Enter "~/Library/" (without the quotes) and you will be taken to the user Library folder. Tip: You can drag the Library folder to the sidebar to access it again without going to the Go To Folder… command.

Second, If you want the Library folder to be permanently visible from the Home folder then you need to use Terminal to enable it.

Before entering commands into Terminal please understand entering Terminal commands can be very dangerous if done incorrectly. If you mistype a command things will go wrong and possibly rendering you system unusable. Perform the following if you understand you can harm your system and also do this at your own risk. If you are not comfortable doing this, then use the first option to view your Library folder.

Open Terminal and at the prompt enter "chflags nohidden ~/Library" (without the quotes).

The Library folder will not be visible from the Home folder. To return the Library folder to its default state of being hidden.

Open Terminal and at the prompt enter "chflags hidden ~/Library" (without the quotes).

The last part of your question speaks about globally changing the desktop view. I believe you wish to change the Finder window view/sorting for all Finder windows. To do this open your Documents Finder and click the Action Menu button (See above KB article). Choose "Show View Options". Select the options you want for your global view and then at the bottom choose "Use As Defaults".

Tim Kern wrote:

Thank you ds store,

I will look at your "lifehacker.com" and "Lion Tweaks" after I try modifying the preferences natively.

Thank you for your suggestions,

Tim Kern

I would suggest taking some time to learn Lion as it is (all of the things you miss are present but need to be set the way you prefer), when you are comfortable with Lion is the time to install 3rd party 'hacks' and 'tweaks'

This document may help with acclimatization.