Is Buggy Lion an OSX Antenna-gate?

tom5304 · Aug 1, 2011

Okay, we remember Antenna-gate, one of the names given to the attenuation problem some found when holding their iPhone 4 a certain way.

That antenna "problem" never bothered me much, because I've always just assumed that when you have a weak cell signal, you have to hold any phone in a certain way to keep the signal. No big deal, at least to me.

But the widely-experienced (if not widely-reported) bugginess of OSX Lion is an entirely different problem for Apple. I realize many (certainly a majority) of Lion upgraders are experiencing no problems with OSX Lion. However, a growing crowd of discontented users are taking to the internet and pointing out the many, many bugs being experienced in Lion.

My inability to maintain a Wifi connection in Lion can't be solved by holding my Airport card a certain way. The lagginess and delayed keystrokes and mouse-clicks I experienced in Lion can't be solved by holding my keyboard or mouse a certain way.

Searching through the many Apple and tech forums on the 'net, I am seeing a rising chorus of complaints about many obvious bugs in OSX Lion. I'm sensing that OSX Lion has created a lot of unhappy Mac users, and I'm just getting a feeling that their (our) complaints about Lion's broken bugginess may just reach critical mass within the next week.

So, is OSX Lion the Mac version of Antenna-gate? Will the many problems seen by so many in Lion go viral and become a PR problem for Apple?

P.S. And please, for the love of almighty God, spare us from your two line post that says: "Lion is working fine for me. Therefore, Lion has no problems." That's boring. I'm just asking if you think the bugginess is about to become more widely discussed, or if it's going to stay below the radar.

LinMac · Aug 2, 2011

Every piece of software exceeding a certain level of complexity will have bugs. Add to that the infinite combinations of software in use (including modifications that muck about at low levels) and you get something that is next to impossible to be 'bug free'.

Now, on a practical level OS X Lion seems to be fine for the majority of users. There has been no major outcry except for parts that have been removed (Rosetta comes to mind), but Apple moves forward. Just remember the number of news reports about Windows Vista problems (caused by a major last minute change by Microsoft to implement DRM) and compare that to the reports about Lion.

Yeah, there aren't any.

The court of public opinion about Lion is indifference or mildly positive. That is just how things will be for Snow Leopard 2.0.

Icy1007 · Aug 2, 2011

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

Lion is working fine for me. Therefore, Lion has no problems.

Seriously though, every .0 version of Mac OS has issues. Wait for apple to update it.

tom5304 · Aug 2, 2011

LinMac said:
Every piece of software exceeding a certain level of complexity will have bugs. Add to that the infinite combinations of software in use (including modifications that muck about at low levels) and you get something that is next to impossible to be 'bug free'.

Now, on a practical level OS X Lion seems to be fine for the majority of users. There has been no major outcry except for parts that have been removed (Rosetta comes to mind), but Apple moves forward. Just remember the number of news reports about Windows Vista problems (caused by a major last minute change by Microsoft to implement DRM) and compare that to the reports about Lion.

Yeah, there aren't any.

The court of public opinion about Lion is indifference or mildly positive. That is just how things will be for Snow Leopard 2.0.

It's true that public opinion on Vista really exploded from about day one. But I think we can agree that Vista was much more of a disaster than Lion. Vista sucked for everyone. Lion just sucks for a small (unknown as yet) percentage of users.

marc11 · Aug 2, 2011

tom5304 said:
That's boring. I'm just asking if you think the bugginess is about to become more widely discussed, or if it's going to stay below the radar.

It is a dot zero release that no one forced you to upgrade to and was sold at an amazingly low price compared to any other OS from any other company save for the open source versions out there. It, like every type of software out there will have some bugs, but the release is far from unusable for most people and has the promise to only improve at no cost to the user in the near future. It has the backing of a company that is far from a fly by night and isn't about to let its OS stay like it is. This point alone makes the upgrade worth while. Just ask ANY XP user who paid to move to Vista at about $100, and then paid again to move to Win 7 for another $100 to $200 just to have the bugs fixed!!!

The software brings to the user many new and innovative ways of interacting with the UI, some like it, some do not, but it is new and often innovative to say the least, not to mention complex to code.

The release of Lion and associated bugs is a far cry from the issues seen with some hardware and often like the "my MBP is overheating" and countless threads about poor wifi or poor iPhone reception is blown far out of proportion thanks to the focus of the negative that internet forums seem to highlight.

It is working fine for me! It has bugs, I have discovered them, I can deal with them until .1 or .2 comes out. I view Lion as an iterative upgrade and jumped in at .0 knowing such.

tom5304 · Aug 2, 2011

Icy1007 said:
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

Lion is working fine for me. Therefore, Lion has no problems.

Seriously though, every .0 version of Mac OS has issues. Wait for apple to update it.

I get jokes, really!

Yeah, first versions are known for their quirks, but the widespread reports of Wifi problems that many of us have experienced go beyond quirkiness.

It's possible that these problems really are affecting a smaller percentage of Lion upgraders than I'm perceiving.

I'm a sucker if there ever was one, so I'm sure I'll do a Time Machine backup of Snow Leopard and try 10.7.1 the first day it comes out.

LinMac · Aug 2, 2011

I just did a quick round of IMs to find out how many people have wifi issues and only one seemed to. He is bitching about how wifi will turn off when he clicks "Wi-Fi Off" then won't turn on without a reboot.

Quick work around #1: Don't click "Wi-Fi Off" until the underlying bug is fixed.

marc11 · Aug 2, 2011

LinMac said:
I just did a quick round of IMs to find out how many people have wifi issues and only one seemed to. He is bitching about how wifi will turn off when he clicks "Wi-Fi Off" then won't turn on without a reboot.

Quick work around #1: Don't click "Wi-Fi Off" until the underlying bug is fixed.

There in lies the issue. One dude, posts on 5 forums and 9000 people think they have the same problem. Just look at the MBP heat reports, every newb on the planet and comes here to post that the PC is running hot and overheating. Things get blown way out of scale on the internet and often bugs are user error.

tom5304 · Aug 2, 2011

marc11 said:
It is a dot zero release that no one forced you to upgrade to and was sold at an amazingly low price compared to any other OS from any other company save for the open source versions out there. It, like every type of software out there will have some bugs, but the release is far from unusable for most people and has the promise to only improve at no cost to the user in the near future. It has the backing of a company that is far from a fly by night and isn't about to let its OS stay like it is.

The software brings to the user many new and innovative ways of interacting with the UI, some like it, some do not, but it is new and often innovative to say the least, not to mention complex to code.

The release of Lion and associated bugs is a far cry from the issues seen with some hardware and often like the "my MBP is overheating" and countless threads about poor wifi or poor iPhone reception is blown far out of proportion thanks to the focus of the negative that internet forums seem to highlight.

It is working fine for me! It has bugs, I have discovered them, I can deal with them until .1 or .2 comes out. I view Lion as an iterative upgrade and jumped in at .0 knowing such.

Well, there are many reports out there of Lion causing iMacs and Macbooks to run hotter. I know Lion was running noticeably hotter on my iMac than Snow Leopard does.

So it looks like we're coming down to the argument that says it's a .0 release, so you should expect your Wifi to not hold a signal for more than 15 minutes (if Lion has broken your Wifi, as it did to me and to others, although not to yours).

I think I just hold Apple to a higher standard than a substantially flawed .0 release. They charge a premium on their hardware for "Just Working," and when it doesn't work for some of us, we do have a right to at least discuss it on a Mac forum. Right?

marc11 said:
There in lies the issue. One dude, posts on 5 forums and 9000 people think they have the same problem. Just look at the MBP heat reports, every newb on the planet and comes here to post that the PC is running hot and overheating. Things get blown way out of scale on the internet and often bugs are user error.

Certainly you're not saying that reports of Lion causing machines to run hotter are all due to user error?

marc11 · Aug 2, 2011

tom5304 said:
Certainly you're not saying that reports of Lion causing machines to run hotter are all due to user error?

No, what I am saying is that one report of some issue suddenly every person on the planet pays close attention to THAT issue and THINKS they have the same issue, when often, there was no change. And even so, if your PC is running a few degrees warmer, because of more background processing, is that a BUG or just the way the OS works? Same for wifi, for every one person that says they have a wifi issue, how many DO NOT? I do not, and I do the same exact steps others say they do and have no issue. Bug? Maybe, but a widespread bug? A bug caused by unrelated software not fully compatible with Lion? Maybe, too many factors to know and consider when someone just comes here and says Lion sucks because THEIR wifi doesn't always work with zero background information.

Well over a million people have Lion now, and we have what a couple of hundred here reporting issues? Even a couple of thousand reporting issues is hard to quantify. Like I said, it has bugs, no doubt, but also, there is a lot of false "me too" posting, a lot of newb user error due to lack of understanding of the new OS and a lot of issues reported that are not really bugs.

stomer · Aug 2, 2011

tom5304 said:
So, is OSX Lion the Mac version of Antenna-gate? Will the many problems seen by so many in Lion go viral and become a PR problem for Apple?

Nah. 10.7.1 will drop soon, going by previous releases this week hopefully, and will likely solve the vast majority of people's issues with Lion.

As written by someone else, all .0 releases have their fair share of niggles. Lion's been no different to the quality of 10.5.0 or 10.6.0.

If these problems are still around after .3, then yeah, there's something seriously wrong.

m7ammed · Aug 2, 2011

The reason I think you see so many negative comments is because people who have things working fine don't come and create threads about not having issues. So when people do have issues and post it seems that they are a lot.

Pressure · Aug 2, 2011

I think most of the things are down to user error, as in, it may be incompatibility with a certain application/s or they really need to do a clean reinstall to rid the operating system of rogue files from old applications and settings.

I have yet to discover something that is a show-stopper.

Well, one weird thing I have noticed on my MacBook Pro is that it will not turn on the screen with the trackpad but that I have to hit a key on the keyboard.

maflynn · Aug 2, 2011

Pressure said:
I think most of the things are down to user error

Based on what I see in this forum, and over at apple discussions. I cannot see how all these problems can be blamed on the user. Clearly apple has released Lion a bit premature.

Do many people not have a problem, yes but many others like laptop users have issues.

harcosparky · Aug 2, 2011

maflynn said:
Based on what I see in this forum, and over at apple discussions. I cannot see how all these problems can be blamed on the user. Clearly apple has released Lion a bit premature.

Do many people not have a problem, yes but many others like laptop users have issues.

Some of the problems I have seen are install related.

Upgrade to LION and some problems occur.

A clean install as opposed to upgrade over top of current OSX seems to be the way to go. ( this is a routine I learned from many years using Microsoft Windows )

I look it at as doing an incremental OS upgrade .... I never let Software Update install an incremental OS upgrade for me, I'd always download the Combined Update and install from that.

I'm still testing LION to see if I want to adopt it on my 2011 17" MBP - I have it installed on an external drive with Snow Leopard still on the internal. So far LION is behaving very well on the external drive, I just have to get used to the changes and decide if they are right for me.

I have several non-Apple programs that I must use and instead of blindly going into the change I decided to do it slowly. My work takes a little longer at the moment from bouncing back and forth between LION and SL but as stated so far LION is behaving for me.

My next move will be a physical HDD swap, leaving SL on the original pulled drive and doing a clean install of LION on the new drive. If in the end I bail on LION I can quickly revert back to SL.

RafaelT · Aug 2, 2011

Lion is for the most part just fine. People who think that most people are not happy with a product because some people complain about issues on a forum are not very smart.

Apple did a good job beta testing Lion. It is a .0 release and there will be bugs. There is no way to catch all bugs in beta. As long as they release .1 soon (this week) I would say it was a well handled release.

maflynn · Aug 2, 2011

harcosparky said:
A clean install as opposed to upgrade over top of current OSX seems to be the way to go. ( this is a routine I learned from many years using Microsoft Windows )

True, but apple designed Lion for upgrade only, so it boils down to apple not providing a stable environment.

With Lion you need to "hack" Lion to install it on to a USB or dvd. I'm using the work hack at its loosest definition as its quite easy to do. My point is that apple design lion to be downloaded and installed over SL. They should have made sure it was stable in that way.

ZipZap · Aug 2, 2011

marc11 said:
It is a dot zero release that no one forced you to upgrade to and was sold at an amazingly low price compared to any other OS from any other company save for the open source versions out there. It, like every type of software out there will have some bugs, but the release is far from unusable for most people and has the promise to only improve at no cost to the user in the near future. It has the backing of a company that is far from a fly by night and isn't about to let its OS stay like it is. This point alone makes the upgrade worth while. Just ask ANY XP user who paid to move to Vista at about $100, and then paid again to move to Win 7 for another $100 to $200 just to have the bugs fixed!!!

The software brings to the user many new and innovative ways of interacting with the UI, some like it, some do not, but it is new and often innovative to say the least, not to mention complex to code.

The release of Lion and associated bugs is a far cry from the issues seen with some hardware and often like the "my MBP is overheating" and countless threads about poor wifi or poor iPhone reception is blown far out of proportion thanks to the focus of the negative that internet forums seem to highlight.

It is working fine for me! It has bugs, I have discovered them, I can deal with them until .1 or .2 comes out. I view Lion as an iterative upgrade and jumped in at .0 knowing such.

Do you really think the typical Apple user gets this line of reasoning? Dot zero, are you serious?

Its an OS endorsed by Apple and released. If Apple wants users to be their extended beta testers then include some guidance for upgraders.

ZipZap · Aug 2, 2011

tom5304 said:
I get jokes, really!

Yeah, first versions are known for their quirks, but the widespread reports of Wifi problems that many of us have experienced go beyond quirkiness.

It's possible that these problems really are affecting a smaller percentage of Lion upgraders than I'm perceiving.

I'm a sucker if there ever was one, so I'm sure I'll do a Time Machine backup of Snow Leopard and try 10.7.1 the first day it comes out.

I called Apple. They said that from their perspective there are no issues with Lion, as there were no antenna issues, and no WIFI issues and not Battery issues with the iphone 4.

They conclude that any issues are on the users end and not caused by the OS.

xlii · Aug 2, 2011

I'm loving Lion. Sure there is a small learning curve as you get used to the new way of doing things. The average user does email, internet, games, documents. They don't have any problems. It's more advanced users who hit the edges of things rarely done who hit the bugs. These will be fixed as they are discovered and reported.

Keep the faith.

aristobrat · Aug 2, 2011

tom5304 said:
I think I just hold Apple to a higher standard than a substantially flawed .0 release.

Why? Did you have no substantial problems with 10.5.0 and 10.6.0?

Resist · Aug 2, 2011

LinMac said:
Every piece of software exceeding a certain level of complexity will have bugs. Add to that the infinite combinations of software in use (including modifications that muck about at low levels) and you get something that is next to impossible to be 'bug free'.

I would agree with this if it were Microsoft, which uses its OS with many combinations of different hardware. But, Apple is using its software with its own hardware. Doesn't sound like Apple properly tested Lion before releasing it. And in that sense, they are getting more like Microsoft.

Come on Apple take the time needed to properly test your software prior to release!

hakuryuu · Aug 3, 2011

The only problems I have run into have to do with 3rd party hardware and software and they are minor issues to say the least. Ok so Parallels 6 crashing every time I have my Apogee Duet plugged in is not so minor.. it could be due to the Duet's drivers not being fully compatible with Lion. Overall Lion has been pretty good.

CyBeRino · Aug 3, 2011

tom5304 said:
Well, there are many reports out there of Lion causing iMacs and Macbooks to run hotter. I know Lion was running noticeably hotter on my iMac than Snow Leopard does.

Those occur with every OS release. It's also almost always nonsense, caused in most cases by spotlight re-indexing, if it's even there at all.

I think I just hold Apple to a higher standard than a substantially flawed .0 release.

Why? First of all, it's not "substantially flawed". The earlier DPs were substantially flawed. That's what they're for. The .0 is not.

That all said an done, it is impossible for Apple to find and fix all bugs when releasing a giant upgrade like Lion. They simply cannot, in-house, do testing that is the equivalent of letting millions of clueless users loose on the OS.

Work in software development for a bit. You'll figure this out pretty quickly.

Certainly you're not saying that reports of Lion causing machines to run hotter are all due to user error?

Lion does not make my computer run hotter. I have a 2009 macbook pro. I think most of those reports are bull shît. If they are really hotter, I doubt it has anything to do with Lion.

aristobrat · Aug 3, 2011

Resist said:
I would agree with this if it were Microsoft, which uses its OS with many combinations of different hardware. But, Apple is using its software with its own hardware. Doesn't sound like Apple properly tested Lion before releasing it. And in that sense, they are getting more like Microsoft.

Come on Apple take the time needed to properly test your software prior to release!

Tons of people on the forums here ran Lion as soon as the GM was "available". I don't recall seeing a ton of threads about WiFi issues.

Is Buggy Lion an OSX Antenna-gate?

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