OS X Lion

I hear OS X Lion is out today (Wednesday)!

Is it worth the upgrade?

I don't like the idea of things synching in the background like address book and calendar. That is when you get corruptions.

Let me have your thoughts....

Lion sucks.

There are lots of things not to like about Lion unless you like the computer to try and second guess your actions all the time.

The first thing you will want to do is turn off auto correct as you type or that will drive you nuts. I'm not going to bother upgrading as it doesn't offer any compelling reason over Snow Leopard. I somewhat fear for the future of the Mac platform as Apple has found that the mass market is more profitable for them so they seem to be putting all their efforts in that direction, I so hope that this prediction is wrong as I much prefer to use a Mac for my everyday system but things don't look promising.

I just wonder what won't work with Lion [ baaaaaad memories of HP PSC with Leopard and Snow Leopard ]

I'll wait a few months .

Mind you - there is the little problem of Mobile Me , which will go

Always keen to try new things I'll be installing Lion on a MacBook Air that I keep for 'sacrificial' purposes.

Not considering installing on my iMacs for several months until Lion proves stable and functional with my application software.

http://roaringapps.com/apps:table

thanks for that

But at present I'm more interested in things like my printers - I have 3 , all relatively elderly , but they work - for ordinary printing anyway - an HP PSC 1410 [ and also its Deskjet equivalent , which was my husband's ] and a Canon Pixma IP 1600 .

IIRC HP were very slow bringing out updated Drivers for their printers and I'm not techie enough to be able to go and set up generic stuff - I need to wait for the manufacturers updates.

I do use Mobile Me , so it looks as if I'll be forced to Lion at some point

It is going to be fantastic not having to worry about saving documents and never having that sinking feeling of lost work again. Also great to see someone moving forward digital delivery and removing the need for a disc to be posted out - that should be possible in 2011. A others have said not all older software will def work but software developers have had notice that they needed to be ready so it's not Apple's issue if they are not keeping up with progress.
If it ain't broke don't fix it is the mantra of the windoze world in my book and I for one would not rather be using windoze 95 over Lion.

In reply to a post by goldenoldie:

I just wonder what won't work with Lion

If it shows as PowerPC in the process list you'll need a new one

I'll wait and see about Java, but I gather Flash is out.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

If it ain't broke don't fix it is the mantra of the windoze world

That's got to be one of the funniest comments I've read in years

If only there was some truth in it. Bill is just as keen to prise the pennies out of our mitts as Steve is.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

I hear OS X Lion is out today (Wednesday)!

Well, the Apple Store is down at the moment...


edit- Just realised what I said- for "down", read "closed"

Edited by billford (Wed 20-Jul-11 10:44:55)

That would have been whittier if you'd said "Lion bites".

It's live now, along with new minis and MBAs.

Downloaded and installed on an 'old' MacBook Air. I was surprised how quick the download was in view of the possible demand on Apple's servers it took only 20 minutes. The installation process takes another 35 minutes. And now the fun begins...

Did the installation start automatically, or did you get a chance to burn a DVD first?

The installation will try to start 'automatically'. Do not press 'Continue'. Use Finder to locate the most recently created Install Mac OS X Lion installation file and burn it to DVD.

I'm not putting my DVD anywhere near my iMacs in case it self installs. Once I'm sure all my Apps still work I will consider it. Having taken full backups of course.

So far, the MBA is coping ok. All the standard Apps are working. I can hear a groan coming here.. I'm a heavy user of MS Office Mac, also Photoshop & Lightroom. All seem to be working.

Stability/reliability is important for me so that is why I used my oldest Mac.

Thanks

In reply to a post by Kaoshan:

I'm not putting my DVD anywhere near my iMacs in case it self installs.

That makes sense to me

I suppose the main problem with buying from a company that assumes the user is totally stupid is that it tries to do everything for you, even when you don't want to do it. I guess most mac users are happy with that though.

all i have to say to that is lol and true.

Ash

Just spotted:

In reference to www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14221817:

For customers who want a physical copy, Apple is offering a memory stick version for an extra £25.

An extra £25 for a 4gb stick? Is that a joke?

Extremely slow to download right about now. Been at it for around 30 mins and the bar isn't a quarter-across yet.

In reply to a post by SkyFire:

Extremely slow to download right about now. Been at it for around 30 mins and the bar isn't a quarter-across yet.

yes, peak speed here about 2.2MB/sec, less than half of my max.

Ok bought and installed on the Mac Pro.
Download was fast on this infinity line, installation was actually slower, about 30mins. No problems.
Seems like a painless exercise. I haven't found any software that won't work but I'm sure I will.
Spotlight is currently rescanning the disk.
The new look is a bit bland for my taste the coloured buttons are now very faded.
Launchpad actually looks useful, I didn't like the idea of it before but I may use it.
Mail is a shocker, it will take some time to get used to it.
A bit of tweaking with the finder settings was needed but it's fine now.
Overall it's seems like an ok update, nothing outstanding so far.

I kicked Mobile Me many, many months ago -- Am I getting wise in my old days?!

*Guesty doubts this.

Installed about 40mins ago and giving it a tryout now on the MBP. So far computer seems to run cooler than it did under Snow Leopard. I think I preferred to old version of Mail though, I'll get used to it I suppose. So far so good.

Did you never experience autorun on Windows then? something that was only removed recently as it was a big security hole.

Microsoft thought its users were too dumb to run an exe on the disc.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-...

Edited by deleted (Wed 20-Jul-11 22:49:21)

35 minutes for installation? Don't the old Airs have SSDs or is that just my recollection being wrong? My download took about 35 mins (with a bit of tickling - at one point it was telling me somewhere over 16 days!). Installation on my Macbook's third party SSD took... Actually, I'm not sure. It said 32 mins one second and 14 the next. About 5 minutes later it said 5 minutes and about a minute after that it was rebooting.

First impressions include it will take a while to get used to the scrolling. I know I can change this ant that it is the same as my phone, but it is the exact reverse of what I have become used to on a Mac. Excuse me for being a Luddite, but that seems a somewhat unintuitive change as fas as established users are concerned. I do understand completely why the change happened, but it is frustrating at first. I seem to be discovering other gestures more by accident than anything and then trying to work out quite what I did. Going backward in Safari is extraordinarily and satisfyingly and very intuitively fast! For those not using Lion this is literally, like flicking the pages of a book back and forth. There is no waiting for a page to reload. It's just there.

For those who might suggest that this is some sort of minor and trifling update I'd suggest that you are entirely wrong!. Miss this update and you may find that the learning curve for 10.8 is much bigger than you imagined it would be because you missed this step out. This is odd since virgin 10.8 users might find it all totally intuitive. It's just that as a 10.6 user you may find your habits will be way out of date.

The scrolling threw me at first but i'm starting to get used to it. I just try and think of it as what would really happen if you were scrolling a long paper script. What really threw me was that it also reversed mouse scrolling

I have to admit that I have not used a mouse with a Mac for so long that I can't actually remember when this event occurred.... Maybe that last time I reinstalled the OS on my Hackintosh Server.

Running Lion now, and seems not much diff to snow leopard... the launchpad app is handy

I have been a real luddite, but now have a magic track pad. But the mouse is the only option for FInal Cut Pro, especially when manipulating sound, and doing complicated stuff in photoshop

lol, http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-... 'three of these are running'.

Edited by deleted (Thu 21-Jul-11 00:52:34)

In reference to www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/software/368803/apple-os-x-10-7-lion/2:

Indeed, since Lion resolves several major gripes that have traditionally put off Windows users � including any-edge window resizing and full-screen applications � we suggest anyone curious about switching should take a look too. Lion makes the transition to the Mac platform smoother and more tempting than ever.

From a PC magazine...

That window sizing thing must have been a real deal breaker for windows users....

I suppose having to remember which corner to use was the major problem...

Wow, so fullscreen apps are considered an advance?

For me as a mac user it's pretty much a gimmick. Might be nice for videos or something but I will rarely use it.

In reply to a post by 12eason:

Wow, so fullscreen apps are considered an advance?

I thought you'd come back with something like that.

These forums are for helping or advising people, not for you (or anyone else) to use as a soapbox to denigrate others' preferences or to proclaim their own peculiar prejudices.

Quit trolling.

Edited by billford (Thu 21-Jul-11 01:38:05)

I haven't installed Lion yet, hard to say what I'll use or switch off... when I first started using Macs I couldn't get used to the single menu bar at the top, but now when I use Windows I wonder where the menu has gone .

I'll probably like some things and not others, some I'll get used to, others will always grate. Same as always.

In reply to a post by Desmond:

35 minutes for installation? Don't the old Airs have SSDs or is that just my recollection being wrong?

Yes, my MBA has an SSD but it's the basic model. 1.8GHz with 2GB SDRAM. Installation is no quicker on my MBP, also SSD.

In reply to a post by goldenoldie:

thanks for that

But at present I'm more interested in things like my printers - I have 3 , all relatively elderly , but they work - for ordinary printing anyway - an HP PSC 1410 [ and also its Deskjet equivalent , which was my husband's ] and a Canon Pixma IP 1600 .

IIRC HP were very slow bringing out updated Drivers for their printers and I'm not techie enough to be able to go and set up generic stuff - I need to wait for the manufacturers updates.

I do use Mobile Me , so it looks as if I'll be forced to Lion at some point

You remember correctly Goldie. Not only were HP VERY slow off the mark to provide new drivers, they didn't even bother with what they considered OLD printers. My was less than 3 years old and they didn't update that driver. HP saw it as an opportunity to get people to go and buy not just an operating system, but a new printer. Grr!
That's why I'm still on Leopard

TBH Bill, as an old Mac hand I don't usually bother with upgrades until at least the .2 update. By that time all the app revisions will have caught up and any major OS bugs will have been sorted.

Why do you care?

I am happy with what I own, where I live and so on. I couldn't care less what you do with your money and what you have.

You're as bad as some of these muslim extremists trying to convert people.

I installed on a 'getting on' Macbook Pro. It's like using a new machine. I was getting a lot of spinning beach balls in Safari and Firefox and the battery was dying very quickly. Additionally the fans seemed to rev a bit. I intended installing and making a bootable DVD so that I could do a clean install.
But, my battery is acting significantly longer and I'm not hanging at all any more. It's working as it should!
Only one issue - my NAS is not usable for Time Machine but I think Western Digital are aware of the issue.

I started at 10.3.something and have always updated promptly in the past, but this one seems to have more than the usual crop of niggles (though no show-stoppers so far).

So I think I'll do the same as you and wait for an update point or two.

Even the staff in my Apple place [ well the trainers anyway ] say they are waiting for a while before moving to Lion - let's the bugs get out of the system

In reply to a post by 12eason:

I suppose the main problem with buying from a company that assumes the user is totally stupid is that it tries to do everything for you, even when you don't want to do it.

TBH I've always felt that way about Windows.

Any more posts by me itt would be classed as trolling or akin to terrorism in some way, so I'm afraid I can't respond to that.

Yes I used to find each iteration of Windows would become ever more infantlising - a sound for this, an animation for that, the 'start navigation' click in IE - though at least most effects could be disabled. I was starting to get worried Lion was going down the same road, but I find what animations they use to be quite slick

Edited by deleted (Thu 21-Jul-11 14:43:32)

I think it's a shame that Apple hasn't taken the opportunity to update the file system as HFS+ is getting a little long in the tooth now. Time they either revived the ZFS project (now there's a file system!) or came up with something of their own better suited to modern needs.

But Lion looks to be an interesting update. No use to me, unfortunately, with a PPC Mac. And I'm not ready to junk it just yet.

Theres an interesting discussion on this very point in the ars technica review:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-...

Yes, I saw that (which was what prompted my remarks). I do think it's a pity that Apple gave up on ZFS. Perhaps they didn't want to be beholden to Sun (now Oracle).

I use ZFS on my FreeBSD server and it has some really nifty features. For example, built in deduplication at a block level - now that is nice.

Watch this space!

http://tenscomplement.com/z-410-storage-main-features

I just did the install on a newly installed SL Air, and it was nippy.

Did the same install on an i7 iMac, took 45 minutes

Matt

It's difficult to see the benefit for me to update to Lion as it's seems mainly focussed around multi-touch, something which my 4 year old Macbook Pro doesn't have other than two-finger scrolling and tap.

That said I'm pretty sure there are at least several Apps out there that I could use on my iPod touch that would allow me utilise the multi-touch aspect of Lion. That might be worth investigating...

Has anyone done a new install of Lion, then used Migration Assistant to move data back from their Time Machine backup?

I've just tried this and it now kernel panics on boot.

Off to do a over the air install.

Matt

You can get one of those large trackpads.

In my experience it seems better than NTFS which fragments like hell.

Yes. NTFS is also a fairly ancient file system now. Do you think HFS+ is better than ZFS?

If I had a desktop I'd definitely consider one, otherwise I'll wait till my next Mac purchase.

They won't use ZFS. Oracle will just find some way to sue them for it. It's a dead stick now, everything related to oracle is.

ZFS is Open Source.

Yeah, except for some tiny patent hidden away in a safe at oracle.

Whatever.

I loaded it yesterday and have no complaints with it at all - it did seem a bit dozed up with Lunchpad (missed out the 'a' but, I'd posted this before I noticed).

Followed the wise advice here (as always) and backed up the OSX Lion download before installing it - and I had already backed-up my MBP fully yesterday before I even loaded it.

Lion was a shocking price compared to *cough* '..ows..' /*cough*. SL was my first, but will not be my last.

I love it so far tbh.

Starting to like full screen apps, in only pages at the minute.
I know this has been part of writing software for a while but when you can black out the rest of the screen when you are writing something it helps the concentration a lot.

I installed it earlier this week - it took about an hour from purchasing to going live, including five minutes to stick some extra memory in. No problems that I can find so far.

Still undecided whether to download or not - if I do I think I will try it on my MacBook first before doing the iMac. Was thinking about waiting a couple of months for any bugs to be rectified and get further feedback. Also concerned that my Office for Mac (purchased in 2005) may not be supported. I could do without having to fork out more money when I am quite content at present.


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