ML seems like a minor update?

motorazr said:

I think this may go hand in hand with the question of "is it going to be free" (obviously not)... but does anyone else feel like ML is really just a minor update? Looking back, I'd say it reminds me of Leopard to SL ... but at least SL was designed to refine the inner workings of the system (64 bit performance, re-written finder, major safari update, quicktime x [well, that's arguable on good or bad, occationally] ..)-- but at least there were things to optimize how your system you already loved ran.

But with Lion to ML .. I don't see anything that looks useful as such. Just tacked on features from iOS or something of the sort (unlike back in the 10.2/3/4 days of hundreds of new features designed into the system).

Am I completely wrong? Messages and airplay are the only things I see that make sense...

Click to expand...

This is only a developer preview. Its not going to be everything about Mountain Lion. I'm sure there will be much more added.

I do see this as a huge push in the right direction by making developers make their apps 64 bit. Some apps are currently limited because of 32 bit support and could really benefit from being 64 bit. (*cough* ZBrush *cough).

Not to mention its a huge push into integration between desktops and mobile device. For some unknown reason people panic over it but its a huge convenience for those of us working at the desk, and needing to go on the road and use our mobile devices. There is absolutely no downside.

I myself am hoping for a newer OpenGL implementation. Thats my BIGGEST wish with Mountain Lion.

I think it's just that the desktop has matured to the point where there's not that many "mind-blowing" things that can be added. It was bound to happen eventually.

Most of the big new things are happening on mobile platforms.

Lion seems like a minor update. So does Mountain Lion. I really haven't see a legimately compelling reason to upgrade past Snow Leopard except for the artificial restrictions like no iCloud sync. And iCloud sync isn't worth $29. All of the minor features of Lion together aren't worth $29. Nor does Mountain Lion look any better.

I'm hoping that we can skip upgrades, like go from Snow Leopard straight to Mountain Lion, get all the features of both Lion and Mountain Lion, for the same price as people going from Lion to Mountain Lion. That's the only way I see any of my Macs getting Mountain Lion, and even then, I might wait and do that jump until we're offered whatever comes next. Even Lion + Mountain Lion doesn't look like a $29 value.

I thought Lion was quite substantial. Snow leopard and Mountain Lion seem to follow the pattern of have a nice minor update after a major one (like iPhone 3 vs 3S).

Even so, just as Snow Leopard brought us a few kernel tweaks, ML appears to bring full ALSR at the kernel level (https://securosis.com/blog/os-x-10.8-gatekeeper-in-depth). So while minor overall, they are certainly worth the $.

-d

I think ml is what apple wanted lion to be.

motorazr said:

But with Lion to ML .. I don't see anything that looks useful as such. Just tacked on features from iOS or something of the sort (unlike back in the 10.2/3/4 days of hundreds of new features designed into the system).

Am I completely wrong? Messages and airplay are the only things I see that make sense...

Click to expand...

Apple's not going to telegraph it for you. There are "always" low level improvements that ripple up to the higher levels. If the changes were all surface we'd see these features in a 10.7.x update.

Even something as basic as
Reminders, To-Do and Notes branching off into their own apps is more involved. Previously they were both bolted to CalDav or IMAP for syncing. Now they use iCloud

I suspect that we will see further gains in newer API and Apple already delivered a new Xcode with an improved compiler.

There are always improvements despite the lamented wailing of users made about losing a feature or two.

redscull said:

Lion seems like a minor update. So does Mountain Lion. I really haven't see a legimately compelling reason to upgrade past Snow Leopard except for the artificial restrictions like no iCloud sync. And iCloud sync isn't worth $29. All of the minor features of Lion together aren't worth $29. Nor does Mountain Lion look any better.

I'm hoping that we can skip upgrades, like go from Snow Leopard straight to Mountain Lion, get all the features of both Lion and Mountain Lion, for the same price as people going from Lion to Mountain Lion. That's the only way I see any of my Macs getting Mountain Lion, and even then, I might wait and do that jump until we're offered whatever comes next. Even Lion + Mountain Lion doesn't look like a $29 value.

Click to expand...

What is "Compelling" is subjective and thusly not worth debating along with what perceived value is. Most computer users can easily afford $29 for even even incremental improvement. Those that choose to stay behind do so on their own. Penny wise pound foolish.

chrono1081 said:

I'm sure there will be much more added.

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Beg to differ but what you are seeing now is pretty much the gist of it. I really doubt that anything earth-shattering is on its way.

nuckinfutz said:

What is "Compelling" is subjective and thusly not worth debating along with what perceived value is. Most computer users can easily afford $29 for even even incremental improvement. Those that choose to stay behind do so on their own. Penny wise pound foolish.

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I can afford $29 for upgrade to Lion but I wouldn't like to setup the entire system again... I've spend a lot of time configuring development software, researching the guts of BSD-Darwinism to get all the things working. Learning how to do everything in Lion would be a time waste as the new features aren't too appealing to me. Also I would have to download a lot of separately support apps that Apple probably will not provide in the standard package like the Workgroup Manager. A lot of bandwidth consumed to get practically the same thing.

redscull said:

I'm hoping that we can skip upgrades, like go from Snow Leopard straight to Mountain Lion, get all the features of both Lion and Mountain Lion, for the same price as people going from Lion to Mountain Lion. That's the only way I see any of my Macs getting Mountain Lion, and even then, I might wait and do that jump until we're offered whatever comes next. Even Lion + Mountain Lion doesn't look like a $29 value.

Click to expand...

I don't you should expect get 2 OS upgrades for the price of one.

I do think, however, that it would make sense for Apple to have an easy way to do it by offering a $59 upgrade (price of Lion + Mountain Lion) that lets you go from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion in one shot rather than having to upgrade to Lion, then to Mountain Lion.

Now, Apple could let you do it for $29, perhaps if they want to get as many people off Snow Leopard as possible. But like I said, I wouldn't expect it.

rorschach said:

I don't you should expect get 2 OS upgrades for the price of one.

I do think, however, that it would make sense for Apple to have an easy way to do it by offering a $59 upgrade (price of Lion + Mountain Lion) that lets you go from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion in one shot rather than having to upgrade to Lion, then to Mountain Lion.

Now, Apple could let you do it for $29, perhaps if they want to get as many people off Snow Leopard as possible. But like I said, I wouldn't expect it.

Click to expand...

If you're a Snow Leopard user planning to upgrade to ML also reserve some money to upgrade RAM and acquiring a SSD. I doubt it will look as fast in the newer system without any hardware upgrade.

motorazr said:

I think this may go hand in hand with the question of "is it going to be free" (obviously not)... but does anyone else feel like ML is really just a minor update? Looking back, I'd say it reminds me of Leopard to SL ...

Click to expand...

It does feel like Snow L., doesn't it?

However, it offers more. MORE, I SAY! However, it's all kitsch-social-type stuff and minor improvements. That's my perspective, and ultimately it depends on the user. A LOT of people probably see these additions in ML as something amazing, awesome, brilliant, expected, needed, etc. I think the messaging stuff should have come along years ago, and puzzled me why it hadn't arrived yet. The mirroring is completely brilliant, but is only of use to ATV owners, which is a minor slice of MacOwners.

It will NOT be free. I can guarantee that. We'll see if it is less than $29. Sad to see the USB stick backup media will not be available for those that want it.

motorazr said:

Well, I hope there's more coming. It just worries me because the others OS X releases have talked about all of the major features by the time of preview (unless i'm forgetting something.. possible... but I was the kid who stood in line for 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, and purchased 10.6 same day it came out ). 10.7 was the first OS X I've been hesitant to purchase, and 10.8 is looking like a skip for now...

and Zbrush.. I just looked that up... I can't believe a program like that hasn't gotten 64bit support yet! Jeez!

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The worst part about it not being 64 bit is its a very special program. It doesn't use your graphics card to draw its graphics, it uses its own special system that lives completely in RAM. (This is actually a good thing since it escapes OpenGL's limitations). It uses all kinds of tricks to allow you to sculpt up to a billion polygons ( ! ).

I can't imagine how much more amazing it would be as a 64 bit app! (It can only use up to 4 GB of RAM as of now since its only 32 bit )

From my perspective it's far too early to judge Mountain Lion. That said, it's the direction that Apple is headed that I find discouraging. In this case, one size does not fit all.

But it's obviously one that the consumer is excited about, and one Apple is bent on creating, so I will sit back and see what plays out.

Good Mountain Lion article on MW


Stuff that stood out to me

Backups to multiple disks/drives (assuming Time Machine)
Sounds like an improved OpenGL/OpenCL stack
Improved Gestures API
Selective Notifications
Account sync in iCloud (Passwords and Prefs sync yeah!)
iWork support for Documents in the Cloud


I'm guessing that eventually I'll be able to do Time Machine backups to the cloud for a fee and I'm all in when that happens.

nuckinfutz said:

I'm guessing that eventually I'll be able to do Time Machine backups to the cloud for a fee and I'm all in when that happens.

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Nice... however bandwidth plans usually give more download than upload speed. So would take days to backup a few GBs. Maybe bandwidth providers will be the newer partners of Apple in the Mac area together with carriers in the smartphone/tablet world.

brdeveloper said:

Nice... however bandwidth plans usually give more download than upload speed. So would take days to backup a few GBs. Maybe bandwidth providers will be the newer partners of Apple in the Mac area together with carriers in the smartphone/tablet world.

Click to expand...

This is where the Apple stores come into play. On my iPhone and iPad my backups are small because most of my music/apps/video content is from the iTunes stores and thus aren't sent over my WAN when I use iCloud to back them up.

Apple can do the same thing with the Mac App store. By reducing the amount of data that gets uploaded I only need to worry about what data is essential to backup to iCloud and the hope is that the backup is more portable.

I ran into an issue where I tried to help a friend restore a Time Machine backup to a newer generation of hardware and it failed. Ooops.

We need Cloud Backup that isn't tied to specific Apple hardware. Much like someone can take an iCloud backup of a iPhone 3GS and restore to an iPhone 4s. We need this kind of flexibility...I hope it's coming.