Why should I buy Lion?

Lion's biggest benefits, relative to Snow Leopard, are: a better Mac App Store; Versions / Auto Save; FileVault 2 (full disk encryption, as well as Time Machine backups); and Mission Control.

Lion's biggest annoyances, relative to Snow Leopard, are: Changes in functionality for file system searches (takes some getting used to), reverse scrolling (also takes getting used to, as it's backwards compared to all other computer OSes but the same as iOS, can be disabled); applications that depend on legacy technology (Rosetta, QuickDraw, versions of SDL prior to 1.2.14) no longer work; and Java isn't included by default anymore (affects anyone who uses Java or develops with it).

Only you can make the final decision, but at least now you're more informed.

I personally have yet to see a reason to upgrade to Lion. Snow Leopard is running great and I'm sticking to the philosophy of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
Just my opinion.

I wouldn't upgrade to Lion if I were you. I think Apple made a lot of mistakes with the UI and workflow. I have Lion on a new Macbook Air and Snow Leopard on my old Macbook Pro. I am a lot more efficient on my old Macbook Pro...

RichardI said:

Keep in mind that I have no mobile devices so I don't care about accessing the internet outside my home. I don't have the need to synch any devices, or go into a "cloud".

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Based on those points you've made I wouldn't bother upgrading to be honest. If you don't need integration with iCloud or iOS 5 then it's a nice upgrade-but no real speed improvements etc. I like Launchpad a lot, but I know many think it's a feature dragged over from iOS and looks a bit cheap on OS X. Mission Control's great, but Expose and Spaces did the job well enough. I mean we all went through Snow Leopard for nearly 2 years. And survived. It wasn't bad. In fact to was a great OS. Don't just follow the crowd for the sake of it.

I only upgrade to a new OS version if it offers something I need that I don't already have. Lion offers nothing that I don't already have in Leopard or Snow Leopard. I see nothing in Lion that would motivate me to upgrade. In fact, some extremely useful tools I use daily won't work on Lion, so I'd be losing, rather than gaining, functionality.

No hurry..

I have to agree with the posters here. I have 10.5.8 on my trusty G5 and 10.7.2 here on my new i5 macmini. To be honest, they both feel about the same speed wise, the reverse scrolling did take a bit to get used to, but I actually like that.

I would suggest going to the mac store near you and mucking with some of the new macs, and take your time.

~Drake

I upgraded to Lion because i kinda like the Full-screen button and the new window gestures, more efficient now i just hate how u have to use 3 fingers and thumb for desktop view, the os gets mixed up with 4 finger gestures

Subjective post. The only answers you're going to get are:

"I like it"

"It sucks"

Seriously. If I were getting commission on Lion sales I'd feel obligated to sell you a copy. Otherwise... nobody really cares if you upgrade or not.

I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion on the day Lion came out. TBH, I wouldn't bother with it. Most of the new stuff is either just not a very good idea, or it's poorly implemented, or there are still bugs. Probably the only compelling new feature is iCloud integration, and that's only really useful if you also have an iPhone or iPad on iOS5.

I prefer Snow Leopard to Lion

I got Lion with my new Macbook AIR; I find both a little disappointing. I had intended to use the AIR and let my husband have my old MacBookPro 13".

Lion doesn't work very well and iCal is hopeless - I can't seem to get it to work.

Maybe Lion was rushed because of Steve J's illness, but it could have done with more time in development.

A friend helped me change the hard drive in my MacBook Pro 13" to an SSD and that has given it a new lease of life (and more speed!), so I am hanging onto that and giving my husband the AIR instead!

RichardI said:

Why should I buy Lion?

Rich

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Because it offers features that you cannot now use on Snow Leopard or applications you want or need require Lion. Simple as that, Lion has a polished the UI in a number of ways, some people hate it, some people love it. Some people think the ipadification of OSX is a bad idea while others like the features.

Ultimately if you do not have a burning desire to upgrade and the software you use doesn't require it, stay on your current version of OSX.

GGJstudios said:

I only upgrade to a new OS version if it offers something I need that I don't already have. Lion offers nothing that I don't already have in Leopard or Snow Leopard. I see nothing in Lion that would motivate me to upgrade. In fact, some extremely useful tools I use daily won't work on Lion, so I'd be losing, rather than gaining, functionality.

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This. I purchased and installed Lion on a external HDD just to play around with it and at the end, it didn't offer anything new that would be of benefit to me and workflow was a step back for me (Mission Control).

I'm still using Snow Leopard because of:

#1 The downgrading of Spaces and Expose. I find Mission Control to be less powerful, and I'm sure Apple can give us a choice between Classic Spaces/Expose and Mission Control.

#2 Lion's Full-Screen mode makes multiple monitors nearly useless. Snow Leopard's Full-Screen mode is in general better. True this is specific to the app. I just noticed the other day that even in SL, Itunes' Full-Screen mode behaves like Lion.

#3 The loss of the "Save As..." option.

#4 The loss of "Do you want to Save?"

#5 I don't want Resume, Versions or AutoSave and not all of these can be turned off.

I resisted the upgrade to 10.7 until iOS 5 came out, The ability to sync contacts and calendar through iCloud convinced me to upgrade and I've not been disappointed.

Prior to upgrading I used an iOS app that used Google Calendars. All well and good until one wants to add a calendar event from email or a website. That goes in to the native calendar program. Meant having to sync multiple devices, or syncing to my Mac and changing the type so it could get to Google Calendars.

With iOS 5, Lion and iCloud, I no longer have to do that dance.

As OP mentioned there are no iDevices, I would not spend the money at this time. Wait until a must own software title comes out or an existing one no longer supports your OS, then upgrade.

Later,

I think GG said it pretty much as well as it can be said.

I can't speak for everyone but I also look at it from the perspective of what I'm gaining from upgrading taking into consideration what I'm also losing in the process.

None of Lion's showcased features like Inverse Scrolling, Mission Control, Launchpad, Safari 5.1.x, Mail/iCal/Address Book, iCloud, Fullscreen Apps have proven to me that I'll get more done or simply make my Mac experience better. In fact most of what I've tested has shown to make me less productive and more frustrated.

Security, Lion is supposed to have improvements in that area but we've seen some really big exploits show up regarding serious LDAP issues accepting any passwords to users with simple local access (not necessarily physical access) gaining access to root admin passwords being able to extract and decode the hash and/or change the password.

Battery time, is Lion better than SL? In almost every situation where I was able to do a SL to Lion test, battery time was between 1-1.5 hours less with Lion. This is critical for me since the only reason why I bought a MBP is not because I feel it's better than a PC, it's because of the battery time.

Lion may be the more advanced/newer OS over SL, but with all the gimmicks and bugs, SL is still the more refined and well-tuned OS.

Lion, in my mind, is not worth it. Mission Control is a screaming mess, Launchpad is useless compaired to stacks, Autosave and Versions are more trouble than they're worth, Resume is pretty annoying, Natural Scrolling is pointless to be honest, the features are very fragmented compared to previous OS X's and it's buggy as hell to boot. (Not to mention that the System Requirements are astonishingly high.)

I'm skipping Lion. I'm hoping that the next OS X will be worth buying a new Mac for.

RichardI said:

Now that all the initial hype is over surrounding Lion, why should I buy it?

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Linux is free.

You buy Lion if you want to run latest operating system on a mac.

roadbloc said:

Lion, in my mind, is not worth it. Mission Control is a screaming mess, Launchpad is useless compaired to stacks, Autosave and Versions are more trouble than they're worth, Resume is pretty annoying, Natural Scrolling is pointless to be honest, the features are very fragmented compared to previous OS X's and it's buggy as hell to boot. (Not to mention that the System Requirements are astonishingly high.)

I'm skipping Lion. I'm hoping that the next OS X will be worth buying a new Mac for.

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If Apple follows history, Lion will eventually reach a point of being actually decent enough to use, maybe 1 or so years from today. Snow Leopard was also pretty crappy during release and it took Apple a very long time to make it better enough to move on from Leopard. Seems to me that Apple hasn't learned from their mistakes yet.

By the time they get it right with Lion, it'll likely be time to get ready for 10.8's release.

I have Lion on 2 of the 3 Macs that I use. I absolutely hate the "versions" shenanigan. I've been using computers since the days of Multics and really don't want someone monkeying around with my files. I like having a base file for letters or lists and then "save as" for a new file. With Lion I either have to copy the file to a new file with finder or cut/paste to an empty file. It's very annoying.

Otherwise I don't have any issues; I switched the scrolling back to "normal".