Is it safe to run OS X ML on a primary computer?

gjac0m said:

Hi guys,

I'm currently waiting for the refresh of the iMac line and one of my friends asked me if I would like to install OS X ML but I have a few questions to ask before.

First, is it safe and reliable to use everyday as a main computer? Will it work well?

Secondly, when ML will be officilally available in the Mac App Store, will it be possible for me to just buy it and install it without problems over the developer preview that I'll be running?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

No. It's in beta which means it shouldn't be used as a primary system. Trust me and wait for the official release this summer. Yeah, it'll be available for purchase from the Mac App Store and will simply install over your current Lion setup.

gjac0m said:

...
First, is it safe and reliable to use everyday as a main computer? Will it work well?
...

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It's a developer preview, it has bugs. It may or may not work well, some of the people who say they are using it as a primary OS have admitted to living with issues.

In summary. Wait for Mountain Lion to be released before upgrading.

The only people that need to run ML right now are those who want software that they wrote to work on ML when ML is released to the public.

There is no reason for anyone else to be running it now.

xlii said:

The only people that need to run ML right now are those who want software that they wrote to work on ML when ML is released to the public.

There is no reason for anyone else to be running it now.

Click to expand...

Well said! We need sanity!

gjac0m said:

Hi guys,

I'm currently waiting for the refresh of the iMac line and one of my friends asked me if I would like to install OS X ML but I have a few questions to ask before.

First, is it safe and reliable to use everyday as a main computer? Will it work well?

Click to expand...

1. If you're not a developer you shouldn't be running it - it isn't licensed for general release to the public
2. Software may not work, it may crash, functionality may change prior to release, it may kill your dog, back up your toilet, etc.

It is pre-release software for DEVELOPERS to get to know what is coming in the future release.

It is not ready for prime time.

You might be OK running it, but there is no guarantee.

Im not suggesting as well to run it on primary machine even you are just browsing a web. There are bugs, which may occur unexpectedly and more importantly its not licensed for public.

Is it safe to run a beta OS as a main OS? Have IQs dropped sharply since I last visited?

It's as safe as you make it, based on your personal situation. I used ML as the primary OS on my primary computer during a few weeks, and I really liked it. Then all of a sudden I experienced huge problems with permissions... Not really having the time to dive deeper into it, I tried a few solutions with no luck, then I just switched back to my Lion install and removed ML. Keeping both online and on site backups of all my files (of importance), I didn't have to revert back to the last time I used Lion but I just picked up where I left off.

Without precautions like that I wouldn't recommend anyone to even consider installing it on a primary machine.

roadbloc said:

Is it safe to run a beta OS as a main OS? Have IQs dropped sharply since I last visited?

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Apparently. Especially noticeable in some other threads in the forums.

I run ML as my main OS...

Booted from an external (backup) HDD...

On my spare Mac mini.

Have IQ's dropped? It's not clear. Perhaps with more Mac/OSX market share there are more Windows users in the forums these days and after all, many Windows users are accustomed to paying for the privilege of running a beta OS.

r0k said:

Windows users are accustomed to paying for the privilege of running a beta OS.

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You mean through Microsoft's developer program? Kind of like Apple requiring people to be part of their paid developer program for the beta?

bogatyr said:

You mean through Microsoft's developer program? Kind of like Apple requiring people to be part of their paid developer program for the beta?

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Probably, because he can't be talking about the public and free Consumer Preview of Windows 8...

hafr said:

Probably, because he can't be talking about the public and free Consumer Preview of Windows 8...

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For some reason I kept thinking the CP was the RC and not the beta. However, after checking, I am incorrect on that.

Used to be, to access the beta versions, you needed either TechNet (testing for I.T. guys) or MSDN subscriptions (testing for developers).

bogatyr said:

You mean through Microsoft's developer program? Kind of like Apple requiring people to be part of their paid developer program for the beta?

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I was talking about the OEM, retail and upgrade versions of every MS OS since Windows 95. The only one I've run that didn't feel like beta software was 95. Everything since then (except Vista which I wouldn't go anywhere near) has felt like a beta (or worse). For instance, as I sit here in front of "not responding theater" otherwise called Win 7 Enterprise SP 1, I have the feeling that I'm sitting in front of a beta but I've given up on anything ever being fixed. When our IT guys finally allowed SP1 to come down a few weeks back, I hoped something would be fixed. Nope. It just got e v e n s l o w e r...

When I first switched to OSX, I was bothered by the lack of a "refresh" button in Finder. Years of Windoze had beaten me down and spoiled my expectations. Why on earth would an operating system update the contents of a file browser? That's the user's job! If you want to see what it looks like now, click refresh to be shown what it looks like now.

I even installed some stupid third party hack so I'd have a refresh button in Finder. And it's a button I haven't clicked in five years. I had to click refresh in Windows Explorer 3 or 4 times yesterday and once today. If an OS is too busy changing 14000 meaningless registry entries per second to put some priority on updating the currently foreground file list window, then that OS doesn't deserve to be called beta. Alpha maybe. Or perhaps just plain junk. One way or the other, I (or my employer) had to pay to use MS software whose quality reminds me of something Apple wouldn't even refer to as DP0.

And yes the Consumer Preview of Win 8 was free. I was intrigued with it even though I saw it was just a wrapper around 7. I hope MS does well with it. There needs to be some competition to Apple now that they are about to be worth more than the rest of the software industry... Combined.

But to impress me MS has to start taking usability seriously. I shouldn't have to wait 90 to 180 seconds for Word 2010 to drag itself bit by byte off my hard drive just to read a meeting notice. On my Mac I have quick view. On Win 7 I simply wait. I shouldn't have to wait 5 to 10 minutes for my bluetooth mouse to start working after every hibernate even after applying a half dozen obscure registry fixes (which did improve the wait from what used to be 15 to 30 minutes). What computer companies sell me is time. Apple has literally added months to my life that would normally have been wasted on "are you sure?" or spent staring blankly at some sort of hourglass. This is a phone call the folks up in Redmond continue to let go to voicemail. Give us our time back, please! Take your multi-gigabyte Office and your multi-megabyte registry and put it on a freakin' anorexic diet already. Until you do, at best it's beta. At worst it's junk.

And yes I had to pay to have access to the developer preview of ML which to me works more reliably than Win 7 SP1. Which isn't saying much.

Sorry that my comment made it sound like I was a member of MSDN. I haven't been involved in that since 2002.

r0k said:

I was talking about the OEM, retail and upgrade versions of every MS OS since Windows 95. The only one I've run that didn't feel like beta software was 95. Everything since then (except Vista which I wouldn't go anywhere near) has felt like a beta (or worse).

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It's either your choices of hardware or you then. I love OS X, but Windows isn't an inferior product. If you feel like they're all beta products then you're doing something wrong.

Back on topic, I've been using ML as my primary system for a while now and, to me, it feels much better and more stable than any Lion point release so far.

Obviously, some 3rd party drivers won't work, and of course you MUST take a backup of your running Lion system first.

If you've not been invited to testing it by Apple Care or by being a developer, you're not licensed to use it.
If you are eligible, by all means, do use it as your primary system.
Else, how are you supposed to find bugs and report them?

Apple do explicitly recommend using it as your primary system, but for obvious reasons they do advise against using it in a "productive environment" because of liability issues. Where you draw that line is up to you...

gjac0m said:

First, is it safe and reliable to use everyday as a main computer? Will it work well?

Click to expand...

Sure, it's fine. Nothing very catastrophic will happen. It's quite stable and pretty fast. There are some bugs here and there, though. But nothing preventing anyone from running it as a daily OS, as long as the apps you use work under it. It's got some good stuff that's worth checking out.

Just keep your files backed up (you should be using Time Machine or an equivalent *anyway*, that's why it's there) and you should be ok.

I'm running it on:

Early 2008 MBP, 15-inch, 2.4Ghz
6GB RAM

Tozzi said:

Back on topic, I've been using ML as my primary system for a while now and, to me, it feels much better and more stable than any Lion point release so far.

Obviously, some 3rd party drivers won't work, and of course you MUST take a backup of your running Lion system first.

If you've not been invited to testing it by Apple Care or by being a developer, you're not licensed to use it.
If you are eligible, by all means, do use it as your primary system.
Else, how are you supposed to find bugs and report them?

Apple do explicitly recommend using it as your primary system, but for obvious reasons they do advise against using it in a "productive environment" because of liability issues. Where you draw that line is up to you...

Click to expand...

Maybe it's me misinterpreting something, but I see a distinct difference between using ML as a primary system and using it as a primary system on the main computer.

I'm not tied to what I see as my main computer to do work, I could do it on either of the computers I have. I could install ML on one of them and use that one for work, or during time off, or however I choose and trying it out as a primary system without ever having ML on my main computer. But then again, maybe I'm missing something in the translation

All I'm saying is, if you don't use it in your everyday work, how do you expect to find bugs and help Apple fix them?

I guess the same happened with Lion (which still crashes my Mid-2011 17" MBP on switching graphics cards; a bug that has since been acknowledged by Apple as such).
Apparently, developers just went to see if their apps still worked, and noone really tested it before its release.

I don't see the problem, really.
Take a backup, then install ML and use it (if you're entitled to).
If it doesn't work for you, file a bug report, restore the backup and wait for the next DP (or GM or Release).
If it does, keep using it and take backups of the files you're working on, just in case...

gjac0m said:

I'm currently waiting for the refresh of the iMac line and one of my friends asked me if I would like to install OS X ML but I have a few questions to ask before.
...

Click to expand...

Something that should've been mentioned earlier is that you're asking for advice on pirated software. That is not allowed here.

And yes if your friend gives it to you, it's pirated.

i run OS X ML on a primary on my computer