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You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > macOS > Is It Worth Upgrading from Snow Leopard to Lion?

Is It Worth Upgrading from Snow Leopard to Lion?
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ghporter
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May 21, 2012, 07:04 AM
 
Yes, I'm quite late to this party, but I've been holding back because, unlike the upgrade to SL, there was WAY more griping and there are still way more "Lion messed this up" posts flying about. I have a Core 2 Duo 21" iMac and a "last unibody with a removable battery" MacBook (as well as a first gen MBP that isn't an upgrade candidate) all happily running Snow Leopard, and everything works nicely. My wife and I don't do any heavy lifting with our computers; no serious video editing, coding, encoding, etc., and no real graphics work either.

I haven't seen anything that seems compelling for an upgrade for either of us. Is there something I'm missing, or is Lion just not worth our bothering?

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
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May 21, 2012, 08:06 AM
 
I think the only real reason to upgrade is that you need Lion for iCloud, and MobileMe dies soon. As for features... The new way that Spaces are organized means that they're actually useful to new users (as opposed to old UNIX hands), especially on a laptop with a small display. This in combination with fullscreen mode and the new multitouch gestures is quite nifty. On a desktop, I have a bigger display and this doesn't make so much sense. Mission Control has its uses, but it means that the old Exposé is gone, and that hurts - in particular I tend to forget minimized windows. I have to use single program Exposé much more now, and that's another key combo to remember. Mail and iCal are better, I guess, but nothing revolutionary. Safari has seen big changes, but it has been buggy (even though the latest patches seems to fix most of that). The Cocoa text boxes autocorrect now, which is disturbing at first but quite useful after a while.

In all, it's the fullscreen/gestures/Spaces thing that really strikes me as a useful innovation. There are few points here and there - Finder has seen some love - and I might find a use for Versions at some point, but really: The MBA came with Lion and I liked it enough there that I upgraded the iMac, but I might as well have left the iMac alone.
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May 21, 2012, 08:16 AM
 
An issue here would be the absence of Rosetta, hence dropping legacy support for older software. So, before upgrading you should verify Lion compatibility with software you currently use and own, e.g. Office 2008. Same applies to hardware like printers, scanners…

Also, Mountain Lion Developer Previews let you update from Snow Leopard and while this might or not be the case with the final version, you could skip Lion.
     
gooser
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May 21, 2012, 09:56 AM
 
if you haven't seen anything compelling you may have answered your own question.
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Spheric Harlot
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May 21, 2012, 10:04 AM
 
Originally Posted by gooser View Post
if you haven't seen anything compelling you may have answered your own question.
Some things aren't apparent until you start using them. Ask a Windows user what he finds compelling about the Mac, and he'll start talking about the pretty hardware. Ask him after he's been using the Mac exclusively for three months, and his answer will probably be totally different.


I like Mission Control, I like the new gestures, being able to directly convert media files in the Finder (context-menu) is HUGE, Finder's QuickLook no longer cutting out when I switch to a different application is nice...

Bunch of little things.

No support for Rosetta is kind of annoying, because I need to install Logic 7 on another Mac and copy it over to this one (may need it occasionally for backwards compatibility).
     
Thorzdad
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May 21, 2012, 11:17 AM
 
Personally, I'm staying with SL until I have no other choice but to switch. I was never a MobileMe user, so iCloud has no draw for me (sorry...just not a cloud person, I guess) I've played around with my wife's work MacBook that was upgraded from SL to Lion, and I didn't come away impressed. I just don't see any point to upgrading.

FWIW, my wife's office is all-Mac. And they use the heck out of Pages to create documents. After they upgraded all of their iMacs and MacBooks from SL to Lion, they all, to a person, found that they revile the change Lion brought to saving documents. The Duplicate rigamarole is a real speed-bump for them and their productivity. It's an idiotic change, frankly. I get that it makes perfect sense to geeks, but it's a big PITA for civilians who happen to use Apple apps in their work.

Oh, and having to uncheck the Restore toggle every time you log out is ridiculous.
     
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May 21, 2012, 11:26 AM
 
Originally Posted by Thorzdad View Post
FWIW, my wife's office is all-Mac. And they use the heck out of Pages to create documents. After they upgraded all of their iMacs and MacBooks from SL to Lion, they all, to a person, found that they revile the change Lion brought to saving documents. The Duplicate rigamarole is a real speed-bump for them and their productivity. It's an idiotic change, frankly. I get that it makes perfect sense to geeks, but it's a big PITA for civilians who happen to use Apple apps in their work.

Oh, and having to uncheck the Restore toggle every time you log out is ridiculous.
Versions and that isn't really a stupid change per se. It was shoved down everyone's throat, and it is a bit magic in the sense that the what settings there are are hidden (one in Time Machine), but the idea that everything is always saved and you have to make a copy if you want to avoid it is actually perfectly analogous with how the real world works. More of a problem in execution than a problem in idea.

I think the Restore toggle thing was a bug that was fixed in 10.7.4?
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Thorzdad
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May 21, 2012, 11:42 AM
 
Originally Posted by P View Post
Versions and that isn't really a stupid change per se. It was shoved down everyone's throat, and it is a bit magic in the sense that the what settings there are are hidden (one in Time Machine), but the idea that everything is always saved and you have to make a copy if you want to avoid it is actually perfectly analogous with how the real world works. More of a problem in execution than a problem in idea.

I think the Restore toggle thing was a bug that was fixed in 10.7.4?
I disagree about Versions being analogous to the real world. Electronic files are the real world, and simply Saving over the existing file or Save As... if you feel you need a new version is how the real world has worked for decades now, and worked very well. Versions should be an option that the user can toggle on/off, and not be imposed. I agree that the execution is poor, but I don't see any movement to make it work as smoothly as the Save/Save As... paradigm does.
     
Spheric Harlot
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May 21, 2012, 03:44 PM
 
Originally Posted by Thorzdad View Post
FWIW, my wife's office is all-Mac. And they use the heck out of Pages to create documents. After they upgraded all of their iMacs and MacBooks from SL to Lion, they all, to a person, found that they revile the change Lion brought to saving documents. The Duplicate rigamarole is a real speed-bump for them and their productivity. It's an idiotic change, frankly. I get that it makes perfect sense to geeks, but it's a big PITA for civilians who happen to use Apple apps in their work.
They'll get over it.

It's actually better this way.

Habit is a bitch.

Originally Posted by Thorzdad View Post
Oh, and having to uncheck the Restore toggle every time you log out is ridiculous.
As mentioned, this is apparently one of the bug fixes in 10.7.4.

I really appreciate that I can install updates, and everything is *exactly* where I left it (including unsaved or even unnamed! documents) one reboot later.
     
Spheric Harlot
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May 21, 2012, 03:45 PM
 
Originally Posted by Thorzdad View Post
I disagree about Versions being analogous to the real world. Electronic files are the real world
Woah, woah, WOAH.

You've actually missed the last 28 years of Apple history?

The whole point is to make technology analogous to real-world experience, and damn others' conventions and habituations.
     
CharlesS
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May 21, 2012, 06:14 PM
 
Frankly, unless you're a developer, I'd say no, it's not worth upgrading. Most of Lion's new features are really annoying; I'd go so far as to say that Lion is Apple's Vista. Mountain Lion is much better, and I'd recommend waiting for it to be released before upgrading.

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Spheric Harlot
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May 21, 2012, 06:51 PM
 
Originally Posted by CharlesS View Post
Lion is Apple's Vista.


No, that was Tiger. No wait, Leopard. No, Snow leo...oh, never mind. Just google it. They were all Apple's Vista.

I agree though: Before you upgrade now, why not wait until Mountain Lion (if they let you)? It looks like ML will be the Snow Leopard to Lion's Leopard.
     
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May 21, 2012, 10:40 PM
 
I like Lion, and I look forward to Mountain Lion.
     
CharlesS
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May 22, 2012, 01:21 AM
 
Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post


No, that was Tiger. No wait, Leopard. No, Snow leo...oh, never mind. Just google it. They were all Apple's Vista.
No previous OS X release has introduced so many features that have caused frustration and workflow disruption to the level that Lion has. Go ahead and Google all you want — you won't find nearly the level of blowback for any other version of OS X short of 10.0 and 10.1, which were terrible (although more due to their incompleteness than anything else). I'd be really surprised if you found many people claiming Snow Leopard was Vista coming from sources other than trolls. SL didn't break backward compatibility with anything and hardly changed anything at all UI-wise (excluding the new developer features, which were awesome), so it's hardly compares. I remember SL being compared to Microsoft's Service Packs more often than anything else.

I'd be even more surprised if you found anyone comparing Tiger to Vista at launch, since it was released almost two years before Vista hit retail, so such a comparison would require a time machine, and we all know that didn't get introduced until Leopard.

[edit: okay, I did the "is snow leopard apple's vista" Google search. The first page of results turned up more pages about Lion than Snow Leopard. I think this should tell you something, if nothing else does.]

Mountain Lion makes things a lot better, though. Let's have this discussion again after the NDA is lifted, and I'll show you what i mean.
( Last edited by CharlesS; May 22, 2012 at 01:40 AM. )

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May 22, 2012, 04:04 AM
 
All versions from Tiger on have broken compatibility, but Lion is unique in that it has deliberately removed major features that were added new since 10.0 (Rosetta and all-program Exposé, at least) and in that there isn't really a tentpole feature otherwise. Anyone complaining about 10.5 could make a mental tradeoff between whatever broke and Time Machine. Anyone having problems with Tiger can balance that with Spotlight. Anyone who doesn't like Lion can just skip it, and say why bother, because the gains are small enough if you don't plan on using iCloud.

Vista was unique in that it was the first mainline Windows version since forever that never became the most used version. Lion might very well become the first Mac OS X version that never becomes the most used version, if Mountain Lion is good enough. In that sense, the perjorative might actually stick this time.
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ghporter  (op)
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May 22, 2012, 08:30 AM
 
Well since I do not use any legacy apps, I don't need Rosetta, but the machine that would make the most sense for iCloud, my first gen MBP, won't update to Lion because it's only got a Core Duo processor.

So far, I seem to have chosen well at the beginning by sitting out this OS upgrade (the first I've skipped since getting my wife her iBook in 2004).

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
Spheric Harlot
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May 22, 2012, 09:38 AM
 
Originally Posted by P View Post
All versions from Tiger on have broken compatibility, but Lion is unique in that it has deliberately removed major features that were added new since 10.0 (Rosetta and all-program Exposé, at least) and in that there isn't really a tentpole feature otherwise. Anyone complaining about 10.5 could make a mental tradeoff between whatever broke and Time Machine.
That's kind of a weird argument. Maintaining backwards compatibility is technically a feature that is "added", but certainly not from user perspective. And by the same token, Classic support was "added" to OS X (ahhh - but pre 10.0, you sly fox! Well, Lion didn't remove anything that was added post-10.4, so...).

In Mission Control, they traded all-window Exposé for usability and less confusion.
Incidentally, you can two-finger swipe up over an app's windows in MC to see them fan out.

I'd argue that Auto-Save, Versions, and Restore are pretty major improvements for most everybody. There's a vocal minority that is complaining, like Thorzdad above, but they really don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Remember that graphics pros were completely unable to work in the presence of gumdrop-colored window widgets.

Also, Trackpad gestures and full-screen mode do change the way we use our machines.
     
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May 22, 2012, 10:35 AM
 
Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
That's kind of a weird argument. Maintaining backwards compatibility is technically a feature that is "added", but certainly not from user perspective. And by the same token, Classic support was "added" to OS X (ahhh - but pre 10.0, you sly fox! Well, Lion didn't remove anything that was added post-10.4, so...).
The way I see it, the user feature is the ability to run programs. The ability to run Classic programs were added long before 10.0, and they were always obviously not native programs. They stuck out like a sore thumb. Lion removes the ability to run programs that the average user would not have noticed were old.

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
In Mission Control, they traded all-window Exposé for usability and less confusion.
I disagree. They sacrificed it to add control over Spaces. That may have been a good tradeoff, but they did remove a useful feature.

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
Incidentally, you can two-finger swipe up over an app's windows in MC to see them fan out.
I know, but not even that will show the minimized windows. There are only two ways to show them (assuming they're minimized to the app icon, which I think is the default on a new installation): Right-clicking on the Dock, and single program Exposé. If the application has a Window menu, you can find them there as well. There is actually a hacky way to trigger single program Exposé, except you have to do some defaults hacking to enable it. I forget the exact command, but if it is set, doing a swipe up/scroll up when over the program icon in the dock will trigger single program Exposé. Sounds contrived, but it works rather well in practice.

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
I'd argue that Auto-Save, Versions, and Restore are pretty major improvements for most everybody. There's a vocal minority that is complaining, like Thorzdad above, but they really don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Remember that graphics pros were completely unable to work in the presence of gumdrop-colored window widgets.
They're a major change, but my problem is not the lack of a major change - it's the lack of a tentpole. A tentpole is a short answer to the question "Why should I upgrade?". That answer has been Time Machine, Spotlight and Exposé. In each case it is one feature that is easily described, and is a good answer to the question. It may or may not be worth $130 to you, but it's definitely an answer. Lion has "Back to the Mac", an ill-defined collection of features, out of which half are controversial changes that you can't opt out of.

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
Also, Trackpad gestures and full-screen mode do change the way we use our machines.
On a laptop I agree, and they could have been a tentpole if they were packaged alone. Now they were bundled with the new paradigm for saving, which is much less of a feature. I note that there have been no moves by anyone else to copy this paradigm - interesting, given how everything else Apple does is copied. I think that the new paradigm is inherently more natural, but that doesn't really matter when everyone is used to doing it the other way.
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Spheric Harlot
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May 22, 2012, 11:00 AM
 
You're falling into the marketing trap.

Marketable features != worthy upgrade, and the converse, as well.

I was in Mac sales for six years, and I remember exactly the same arguments for the Tiger/Leopard and Leopard/Snow Leopard transitions.

There were always people who considered the improvements "minor" and not worthy of upgrading.

Spotlight changed the way I work, but it didn't do so until 10.6 (or 10.5?), when it became *instant* and an app launcher.

Exposé *completely* changed my window management efforts (from an OS 9-style pixel stickler to couldn't-give-a-****), but Spaces didn't become genuinely useful to me until Lion.

And since they broke Exposé in 10.6 by killing off the relative sizing, Mission Control arguably makes it MORE useful to me by grouping applications.

And they ADDED functional/usable Spaces.

And full-screen mode (which I consider an abomination, but still...).

Also, saying that removing Classic isn't the same as removing Rosetta because of the cosmetic difference is a kinda-sorta point.
     
CharlesS
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May 22, 2012, 01:35 PM
 
Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
I'd argue that Auto-Save, Versions, and Restore are pretty major improvements for most everybody.
Spending just five minutes searching the Internet will disprove that notion quite quickly. Auto-Save is a seriously annoying feature:

- Accidentally changing files that you just wanted to view without realizing it is astonishingly easy to do.

- In an attempt to protect against the previous problem, trying to edit a file that you want to change has a good chance of interrupting you by throwing a "Duplicate or Unlock" sheet in your face.

- Saving an open document to a new location, a common operation which used to take one step (Save As) now takes four (Duplicate, wait for the animation, Save, close the old window), and one of those steps doesn't even have a keyboard shortcut by default, forcing the use of the mouse. This is really, seriously, annoying.

Now, Versions and Restore are nice. Unfortunately, no one but geeks will ever discover these features, because the way to invoke them is to hover the mouse over a tiny, invisible area next to the filename in the window, causing a tiny little triangle thing to appear, which presents a Versions menu when you click on it despite no prior indication of what it is. The "Lock" feature to present against accidental edits is hidden in here too. This is just terrible UI. The settings for Autosave/Versions are hidden in the last place you'd ever look — the Time Machine prefs — is bizarre as well.

Autosave, as implemented in Lion, is about on the level of Clippy as far as intrusive features go, and has caused problems for plenty of people. The main thing separating it from Vista at this point is that Apple has much better PR than Microsoft at this point, and a much more rabid fanbase that will defend its missteps. You can do so if you like, call the above objections "backward thinking" or some such, but I'd really recommend you wait until Mountain Lion is out.

As for the other features, they tend to range from extremely irritating (apps quitting on you and disappearing from the Dock without warning) to mixed bag (loss of Exposé functionality) to simply useless (full-screen mode, although I'll grant that this one probably has some appeal to Windows switchers). And then there's the loss of backward compatibility, which despite your claims is fairly unique to OS X versions starting with "L" — neither Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, nor Snow Leopard broke many apps other than the ones that will always break, such as disk utilities and haxies. Broken apps, I need not add, were another very common complaint about Vista.

Annoying UI changes plus broken backward compatibility pretty much equals Vista. It's a shame, because some of the new developer features are simply excellent (Cocoa Auto Layout is a huge improvement, although the documentation really needs work). Mountain Lion is better, though.
( Last edited by CharlesS; May 22, 2012 at 01:43 PM. )

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panjandrum
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May 22, 2012, 01:56 PM
 
I work with a large number of Mac users every working day (currently that number is 200+ users on ~50 Macs, although the number can be substantially higher on occasion). The overwhelming consensus among users is that Lion, from a UI point of view, is a disaster. People *hate* it. Yep, an Apple product that long-term Apple users actually admit to *hating*. That should give you an idea just how awful it is. I've had to "upgrade" machine after machine back to Snow Leopard after users installed Lion because, let's face it, in the past you usually didn't have to worry that the new version was going to be horrible. And this is definitely not a case of "They'll get over it. - It's actually better this way. - Habit is a bitch." This is a case where, from any objective point of view the features that worked properly in prior versions of the OS no longer work properly, no longer work well, or are completely missing. The list goes on and on and on, and you can google and find plenty of examples (some are already mentioned in the thread). The number of detrimental UI changes is simply staggering, mind-boggling, and worrying. I will give one example that I think goes undermentioned however: Active buttons (those you can currently click) and Inactive buttons (which you can't currently click), are now close to the same shade of grey; forcing you to hunt about to figure out what you are supposed to be clicking on. Seriously, just how stupid do you have to be to redesign a UI and include the "feature" of making it hard to tell what is clickable and what isn't??? Only the most diehard and true "Apple faithful" (you know who I mean), claim to "like" Lion. And to be honest, I've never met one of them in real life, literally not one, no exaggeration - I've only read posts from them online. So, IMHO, unless you want to spend time and money making your very nice very useful computer much less nice and less useful, don't downgrade to Lion. As mentioned over and over online, it's definitely Apple's Vista.
     
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May 22, 2012, 02:35 PM
 
Please add me to the list of those who think Lion was a disaster -- a move in the wrong direction by Apple.

I've been using Macs since before System 6. I made the switch to OS X at 10.04, and never looked back.

I have happily updated to each version of the Operating System and never had a significant problem until Lion. I couldn't stand it -- and after two weeks had to upgrade back to Snow Leopard. The awful interface and inefficiencies were costing me time and money.

I can't really complain about the new features, but what I do complain about is the fact that for many of the dumbing-down features there was no way to turn them off.

Frankly, I only upgraded to Lion out of habit anyway. When I looked at the new features that were advertised, there were very few that sounded useful to me -- and most of them fell under the "I'll never use those" category. I'm just hoping that Mountain Lion fixes some of the mess that's been made of things.
     
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May 22, 2012, 02:45 PM
 
FWIW, I do recommend that users wait for Mountain Lion at this point.

I guess saying that I, personally, appreciate a number of the changes made (I've been stopped from overwriting bills and things due to auto-lock, and had important things automatically recover due to auto-save (of a completely unsaved document, among them), and the gestures are just awesome—way faster than active corners) leaves me open to all sorts of accusations and conclusions.

Meh.

I think natural scrolling makes sense.
I think Duplicate makes sense.
I think auto-restore makes sense.

Maybe they'll fix the problems some people are having when Mountain Lion rolls around. From what it looks like, they'll have patched the most vicious kinks (I really dislike the current Address Book), plus they'll add multiple-Time Machine-backup capability, which is a HUGE plus.
     
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May 22, 2012, 03:39 PM
 
Although I don't like some features like the auto-save feature, overall I DO like Lion. I like the new gestures - I like swiping to move stuff up/down and pinch zooming and all of that and I especially like the way that extended characters are supported on the keyboard now similarly to how they are handled on the iPhone/iPad. That feature alone has made typing in multiple languages MUCH easier.

I definitley wouldn't classify Lion as a "disaster" or "Apple's Vista". It's different, and definitely not perfect, but it is FAR from a disaster and some of the features (like the new extended tap-and-hold characters) are amazingly useful to me.
     
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May 22, 2012, 04:15 PM
 
Originally Posted by CharlesS View Post
Spending just five minutes searching the Internet will disprove that notion quite quickly. Auto-Save is a seriously annoying feature:

- Accidentally changing files that you just wanted to view without realizing it is astonishingly easy to do.

- In an attempt to protect against the previous problem, trying to edit a file that you want to change has a good chance of interrupting you by throwing a "Duplicate or Unlock" sheet in your face.

- Saving an open document to a new location, a common operation which used to take one step (Save As) now takes four (Duplicate, wait for the animation, Save, close the old window), and one of those steps doesn't even have a keyboard shortcut by default, forcing the use of the mouse. This is really, seriously, annoying.
I couldn't agree more with the above. It takes so much more effort and concentration to avoid these things. It would be relatively easy for Apple to allow a preference to opt out--but they obviously know more about how I work than I do. I've been flipping back and forth between LibreOffice (OpenOffice before) and Pages/Numbers for the past years; however, with Lion, I went exclusively back to LibreOffice because I HATE versions/autosave so much. And I literally mean HATE!
( Last edited by Thorzdad; May 22, 2012 at 04:29 PM. )
     
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May 22, 2012, 04:44 PM
 
Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
You're falling into the marketing trap.

Marketable features != worthy upgrade, and the converse, as well.
I know. I'm discussing from the point of view that Lion == Vista, to see if there are any similarities. The most notable one is that they both seem to be versions that people are quite happy to skip, and I think the reason people are fine with skipping Lion is the lack of that tentpole. I still hold that Vista is an epic clusterF and Lion is a stumble, but there are similarities.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
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May 22, 2012, 05:44 PM
 
There is a tent-pole feature of Lion, though it wasn't ready when Lion shipped, and that's iCloud. Unfortunately I find the rest of Lion so distasteful that I am seriously considering migrating to Linux.
The scroll bar changes are annoying, the window resizing changes are annoying and there's a lot I don't care about (Launch Pad etc). The new gestures are not intuitive. (A touch-screen interface is.) Hiding the Library folder makes tech-support more difficult. The new auto-save scheme makes things more complicated (since many apps don't subscribe to it, users must now understand two conflicting strategies). Full screen doesn't give you much... all in all, yuck.
That being said, I do understand the motivation in wanting to harmonize the experiences between iOS and OS X. I just don't agree with how they're going about it.
     
Spheric Harlot
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May 22, 2012, 06:17 PM
 
Originally Posted by graxspoo View Post
The new gestures are not intuitive. (A touch-screen interface is.)
The gestures aren't. There is nothing "intuitive" about learning two- and three-finger gestures.

The scrolling direction, however, IS.

The fact that your scrolling habit evolved from a background of dragging proxy scrollbars up and down the screen to move the document in the opposite direction doesn't make it, or the scroll wheel itself "intuitive". If the scroll wheel were "intuitive", you wouldn't see sooooo many newbs move the mouse over to the scroll bar and THEN scroll using the pre-Lion or scroll-wheel scrolling function.

To be fair, the first thing I did when Lion came out was to buy a Magic Trackpad for desktop use.

It makes a huge difference to Lion, IMHO.
     
kakman
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May 22, 2012, 06:32 PM
 
Short answer for the OP is no, it's not worth the upgrade. Just google for threads about reverting back to Snow Leopard for an idea of how many people have moved to Lion but want to move back. There's one thread alone on the Apple boards with over 80,000 views.

I agree with noibs and CharlesS and many others - the auto-save is a decent concept with a woeful implementation - that alone will keep my company at Snow Leopard for the foreseeable future. It was trying to fix a problem that didn't exist in a way that destroyed 20 years of users' experience. I'm all for moving forward but I'm not for breaking a perfectly functional system.

Lion has iCloud and gestures which I used when I switched - sadly they weren't compelling enough to keep me on Lion - after 3 weeks I reverted back to Snow Leopard, predominantly because of the auto-save debacle, and I haven't missed anything from Lion since.
     
graxspoo
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May 22, 2012, 06:58 PM
 
Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
The gestures aren't. There is nothing "intuitive" about learning two- and three-finger gestures. The scrolling direction, however, IS.
I would agree with you if you're using a track-pad. However, I think it's arguable at best if you're using a mouse-wheel. Physically I imagine the bottom of the mouse wheel (opposite side from my finger) pushing the "sheet" that is being scrolled.
     
graxspoo
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May 22, 2012, 07:36 PM
 
Arguments pro and con aside, while I found the the new scrolling direction disconcerting at first, there's a preference for it, so no big deal. However, there are plenty of things about 10.7 that you can't revert or opt out of which are deal-breakers.
     
Spheric Harlot
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May 22, 2012, 07:56 PM
 
Originally Posted by graxspoo View Post
I would agree with you if you're using a track-pad. However, I think it's arguable at best if you're using a mouse-wheel. Physically I imagine the bottom of the mouse wheel (opposite side from my finger) pushing the "sheet" that is being scrolled.
If I used anything with a scroll wheel, I wouldn't have natural scrolling.

With a scroll wheel, like you, I always get the idea of a wheel resting on the content. When I pull down, the wheel moves the content upwards.

On any smooth scrolling surface, like the Magic Mouse or the trackpad, natural scrolling is the way to go.
     
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May 23, 2012, 02:12 AM
 
Originally Posted by panjandrum View Post
The overwhelming consensus among users is that Lion, from a UI point of view, is a disaster. People *hate* it. Yep, an Apple product that long-term Apple users actually admit to *hating*.
I told an Apple Store employee that I have been using OS X since the beta and absolutely hated most of the changes in Lion. He basically shrugged and had no reply, as if he had heard this over and over again. My MBA came with Lion and I never downgraded it, but my desktop remains on Snow Leopard because it's just so much better. Every time I even think about upgrading, working on the MBA reminds me why I shouldn't.
     
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Jun 18, 2012, 01:30 PM
 
Also I have several clients stuck on SL Server. While far form perfect at least it's not Lion server. Basically they are al now stalled with effective server software from apple now EOL. This means they can't buy any new Apple server machines (well Mini servers, who in their right mind would buy a MacPro server, or indeed any other new Mac that won't boot in SL.

oops
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Jun 18, 2012, 05:14 PM
 
@Doc HM

2011 Mini Servers boot in SL. I have three for precisely this reason. Stock up before Apple "upgrades".
     
subego
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Jun 18, 2012, 05:16 PM
 
I actually like Lion, but SL is a tighter OS.

Overall though, I concur with the "don't bother at this point" crowd.
     
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Jun 23, 2012, 06:58 AM
 
Given that ML is now just a month away and will apparently upgrade from 10.6.8 then installing Lion now is looser play.

Given that the ML launch is now so close to the end of MobileMe I think Apple really should extend the deadline for the shutoff to allow users to go to ML. As it is any remaining MobileMe users will need to go to Lion for only a few weeks just to avoid breaking mobile me.
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Jun 23, 2012, 11:36 AM
 
Originally Posted by Doc HM View Post
Given that the ML launch is now so close to the end of MobileMe I think Apple really should extend the deadline for the shutoff to allow users to go to ML. As it is any remaining MobileMe users will need to go to Lion for only a few weeks just to avoid breaking mobile me.
This really, really irks me.

It would really seem like a shitty cash-grab, but for the fact that Apple really doesn't need to pull this kind of schtick for peanuts.

Somebody just ****ed up, I think. But dammit, a four-week MobileMe extension would be in order.
     
gregfripp
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Jul 4, 2012, 05:29 AM
 
use mountain lion, which will be MUCH BETTER than lion was...
greg
     
ariellauthentic
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Jul 7, 2012, 06:06 AM
 
Lion is the first version of OS X that didn't feel good to upgrade too. It was also the message communicated by Apple that its NEW users, which will go into their new operating green, are a higher priority.

It's a transition OS that starts to paint touch/iOS features and ideas into a desktop platform, which favours touchpad based laptops. It wasn't well executed because all new features were FORCED upon desktop OS X users where they were left feeling if they were being punished for being a desktop with a mouse and not a laptop with touchpad. But, this makes business sense for Apple because:
1-Their growth is mostly from new users
2-Their growth is mostly from new Macbook series purchases
3-These new Macbook users are very likely to have discovered Apple through their iPhone/iPod touch (existing iOS experience)

It just sucks that they're stepping on long-term customers to cater to the next new. I see it as a marketing-glitz OS more than a desktop-productivity OS. It doesn't add anything that leads one to feel like Snow Leopard was lacking in functionality, features or the ability to build workflows.

I bought Lion on the day it was released and within a month ditched it out of confusion and often disgust. It's just not an OS X experience, as we've know it from 2000-2011 (including the public beta). Here's an article I wrote last year about my first-use experience: http://ariellabaston.com/2011/08/22/os-x-lion-too-wild-to-touch/

Lion is cranky. It creates more WTF moments than any prior version of OS X. I've had more freezes, kernel panics, and awkward moments with Lion than my entire history with OS X since the PB. Mountain Lion will hopefully be a matured/tamed animal but instead of being hopeful and excited like I was for every other version of OS X, it will have a mountain to climb to earn my respect.
     
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Jul 7, 2012, 06:20 AM
 
I've been using Lion since about a month after it was released, and I've been a Mac user since 1985. I really like Lion, and I don't feel as though Apple is forcing anything on me. Except for Auto-Save, everything in Lion works about as it did pre-Lion. Exposè was really neat, but Mission Control provides the same functionality for me. I really prefer the new Spaces over the old Spaces, and the multi-touch gesture to switch them. LaunchPad isn't so great, but I expect it to get better, and it's not forced on the user at all. Auto-Resume is nice. In summary, I just don't get the Lion hate. I do think it's a stepping stone OS. We'll see what Mountain Lion brings, and then a year later we will see the next cat. I do not worry that Apple is trying to iOS-ify the Mac.
     
ghporter  (op)
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Jul 7, 2012, 07:55 AM
 
I'm simply holding pat until Mountain Lion is released, and then I'll reassess whether I want to make any changes to what I'm running. I see a lot of for arguments, and a number of against arguments, but so far nothing has made me feel that I "need" Lion, even iCloud... I hope I'll feel better about Mountain Lion, since I haven't felt that Snow Leopard has been maintained as thoroughly (or at least as regularly) as it was pre-Lion.

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
chabig
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Jul 7, 2012, 08:00 AM
 
One thing you can do to "prepare" for Mountain Lion if you use a trackpad is to install Scroll Reverser on your Snow Leopard and get used to the natural scrolling. It takes a few days, but it does feel very natural not long after you start doing it.
     
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Jul 7, 2012, 10:26 AM
 
I'm with Glenn in the "hold and wait" camp. I have no problems with Snow Leopard, but, after spending time on my wife's lion MacBook, I knew I'd be putting my fist through the screen if I had to actually spend my day with Lion. I'll look at Mountain Lion, but somehow I doubt it will change the things I really detest about Lion.
     
amazing
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Jul 7, 2012, 11:16 AM
 
I'm also waiting for Mountain Lion--but even then, I'll be waiting to see the reviews of the actual released OS.

Apple has admitted that it messed up in the Save As mess by including it via key-command, but with their usual arrogance, it's not in the menu.

Lion is like this new forum interface--there's way too many "Why did they do THIS? moments."

Sure you can get used to it. But there's really no reason to unless you support other users.
     
MacinTommy
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Jul 9, 2012, 08:48 AM
 
Does anyone else think it's bogus that only Mid-2011 Macs support AirPlay mirroring? That was something I was REALLY looking forward to but I have an iMac from 2008... I think the only way I'm going to upgrade is by buying a new Mac. Hopefully Vegas is nice to me in a few weeks...
     
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Jul 10, 2012, 12:14 AM
 
I think AirPlay mirroring is only Apple's rename of Intel's WiDi Wireless Display system - that, or it uses the QuickSync features of the Sandy Bridge CPUs somehow. If it is the latter, it should be possible for MPs from the Nehalem/Westmere generation and quadcore iMacs to do so as well - they are powerful enough to just throw cores at the problem - but the logical use for AirPlay mirroring is probably from a laptop.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
finboy
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Aug 6, 2012, 05:57 PM
 
I'm trying to stick with Snow Leopard, but it's getting tougher all the time, especially b/c of Safari. My university uses an older SP of Blackboard that doesn't support Safari 5.x.x, and it's a big hassle to do some things (as a prof) in Firefox and others in Safari. So if I have to drop Firefox again I may have to switch to Lion just to run a newer version of Safari.

Otherwise, it's always more hassle than it's worth. My main machine is a 2007 MacBook and it runs just fine without Lion or ML, thanks very much.
     
Thorzdad
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Aug 7, 2012, 06:12 AM
 
Why would a newer version of Safari be supported by an older version of Blackboard
     
finboy
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Aug 8, 2012, 11:20 AM
 
Because BlackBoard is written and supported by morons is all I can figure.

My Safari in 10.5.8 is "compatible" with SP 5 BlackBoard, but there are some things that won't work. "Certified" is the higher designation.

I heard from one of my support folks that PC students have been complaining to her all summer about the cut-and-paste issues in IE and Chrome (and Safari), so maybe our IT folks will update BlackBoard at some point. As it is, IE9 is unsupported on this version, as is Chrome, as WAS Firefox for Win7. There are still some things that Firefox cannot do, but I can't remember them off of the top of my head. The whole situation is FUBAR.
     
 
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