Is Mountain Lion worth it?

I am using ML and have found it to be very stable and a nice upgrade
For the cost, you can't go wrong with the new features and enhanced performance

SHiFT. said:

Hello Macrumors Members,

I have noticed that alot of you have purchased Mountain Lion(ML). Would you say its worth it. I have been using Lion since it released and very unhappy with the OS. I would rather not make that mistake twice.

Thanks
SHiFT.

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if you are unhappy with Lion you should take the plunge. i was too unhappy with Lion and have found ML to be an excellent upgrade. definitely worth the $20.

i would recommend you do a clean install just in case any Lion garbage is left behind.

Installed on 2007 MacBook pro, 2011 MacBook pro and 2009 mac pro. Have reverted back to Snow Leopard. Mountain Lion much slower, better than Lion admittedly ,but the whole iOS thing is a little too much for me, just seems a bit toy like i'm afraid. Boot time on i7 MacBook pro went from 24 secs to just over a minute, the whole experience over the last week or so has been disappointing. Just my opinion/experience. Going to keep an install on a spare disk to monitor how things progress....but not convinced at all.

I've upgraded my late 2011 MPB and have been pleased so far. I've got an early 2011 MPB, a 2011 iMac and a 2008 MPB waiting for the upgrade but I'm going to testdrive this initial install first.

ML Perspective

Not to act like I know it all, but I thought sharing my experience here might help a bit.

I've upgraded for Lion to ML on both my 2008 Duo-Core iMac and my 2010 white MacBook - not fresh install, but upgrade. My impressions:

1. It's generally much more stable and faster than Lion; SL was the best but, ML is a pretty darn good incremental upgrade over Lion.

2. My boot-up times dropped dramatically when I booted up without being signed into iCloud.

3. Post-upgrade operating speed noticeably increased after clean my caches and repairing my permissions in ML.

4. Safari is a mess. Go with Firefox or Chrome.

5. If you're a Dropbox user, upgrade Dropbox before upgrading to ML. Ditto with your VM if you do that sort of thing (note that Oracle's VirtualBox does not have a version that will run well on ML, according to Oracle).

6. If you're a Dropbox user, signing out of iCloud will also improve performance. If you absolutely must use iCloud with Dropbox, sign out of iClound and sign back in to mitigate performance issues (but your boot-up time will continue to lag while signed into iCloud).

7. iMessage is very limited in who you can text with...really nothing special here yet.

8. I've had great luck with Dictation! Takes a bit to get the hang of it, but it's great once you do.

So, the upshot...am I glad I spent the $20 for the upgrade? Absolutely! While ML does not live up to the hype (and, really, does anything live up to the hype?), my experience has been that it's a great upgrade from Lion in terms of stability and speed. That alone makes it worth the price.

As always, your mileage may vary. But this is my two cents. Hope it helps!

I upgrade for the Airplay mirroring.

Being honest, I cant see much benefit for myself over Lion apart from that.

It was pretty seamless though, I upgraded 5 machines (including 1 mini server) without much of an issue (apart from my QNap needing a firmware update for time machine backups).

And if it wasn't for the notification centre popups it would be hard to tell the difference in day to day activities.

Only $20. The notification syncing and new dock justifies it for me (I like shiny). Mine has been running very smoothly and I feel some snappierness here and there. Especially when logging in/booting my MBP. I did an upgrade install and have no regrets.

Nothing has "broken" for me in ML, so I can say it's a good upgrade for me.

fteter said:

4. Safari is a mess. Go with Firefox or Chrome.

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Surprised to hear that. Firefox has been a mess IMO for a while now on the Mac, I ditched it a long time ago for Chrome. Now with the unified search bar, gestures, tabs, and overall speed of Safari I've dumped Chrome as well. I never liked the look of Chrome, it always felt like it was chunky with oversized bars (admittedly this is just a perceived difference to me, they aren't actually larger).

Is it the Activity Monitor being removed that drove you away? It's not like it's that hard to download an FLV without it...

Personally love it over Mountain Lion. It's worth the $20. I just can't wait for the software updates though - like Facebook Integration and all that extra goody stuff.

I have a Mac Mini I purchased new in early 2012 (I guess it's a mid-2011 model?). Lion's performance was in a word, terrible. Launchpad, Mission Control, swapping full-screen apps... video performance was often the pits.

In ML, the UI is much smoother. It feels like the way it should be.

I don't really notice any difference from Lion - aside from the notifications. Everything runs the same - very fast - on my MBA laptops. I use iMessage which I didn't have before I guess, but it's not a killer item to me. Airplay mirroring is meh, flash/silverlight/web videos don't play over it very well and any other video could have been sent to the Apple TV using iTunes as before.

I received it as part of my developer account. Had I not had the developer account, I would have bought it to be on the latest version and wouldn't have worried too much about the lack of differences as $20 isn't much.

It certainly is a minor update - in my opinion.

I have this nagging feeling that Apple deliberately, allowed Lion to be buggy and annoying.

Then shortly thereafter they release Mountain Lion with just enough improvements to draw the responses you're getting. By luring people in with Lion and yet making it fairly miserable, they knew that the relief brought my Mountain Lion would be more than enough to pull people deep into the web of the new iOS/OS X blend of operating systems.

As Apple continues towards full convergence, the money saved by having just one OS, designed to pull iToyz users into new Macs... will be a significant savings in the number of developers and engineers required to build out a single OS.

Many publications and web sites, have talked about how much more like iOS Mountain Lion is. Revealing that Apple is well on their way to bringing the mobile experience to newbies, selling them "cool "computers" that look and function via "apps" just like an iPhone or iPad.

Dumbing down the Mac... such a dreadful thought.

Never been a Chrome user, always Safari, with an install of Firefox in case I needed it for some reason.

But I did read how Chrome I think reduces tabs for known sites to icons, shrinking the tab size for stuff like Gmail, NY Times, etc. I think that would definitely be a welcome addition to Safari.

I upgraded on my 2012 Air but held off on my 2011 iMac. Wanted to see stability and app compatibility. However, I did notice a couple days ago a strange flickering issue when scrolling in Safari in ML on my Air. A reboot did not solve it. But it was with one particular site and I have not done any research or tests to see if this is a known issue or if it even happened on any other sites. Actually come to think of it, some of the flickering wasn't even during scrolling.

I installed it on my 2009 Macbook, upgrading from Lion. I'm not a power user and some features may not apply to me since I don't have a new machine, but for me it works fine. Very few "gotta have it" features for me, but in general I like to have current software even if its just for under the hood improvements and security fixes. ML is an enhancement to Lion. In the Windows world you might refer to that as a service pack, but for only $20 it met met my expectations.

fteter said:

4. Safari is a mess. Go with Firefox or Chrome.

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Really? I thought Safari was better on mountain lion.

I have a Spring 2011 MBP running Snow Leopard. Is a clean install recommended versus a simple upgrade with this scenario? If a clean install is recommended, how would an "advanced" novice best go about this?

advTHANKSance

ixodes said:

I have this nagging feeling that Apple deliberately, allowed Lion to be buggy and annoying.

Then shortly thereafter they release Mountain Lion with just enough improvements to draw the responses you're getting. By luring people in with Lion and yet making it fairly miserable, they knew that the relief brought my Mountain Lion would be more than enough to pull people deep into the web of the new iOS/OS X blend of operating systems.

As Apple continues towards full convergence, the money saved by having just one OS, designed to pull iToyz users into new Macs... will be a significant savings in the number of developers and engineers required to build out a single OS.

Many publications and web sites, have talked about how much more like iOS Mountain Lion is. Revealing that Apple is well on their way to bringing the mobile experience to newbies, selling them "cool "computers" that look and function via "apps" just like an iPhone or iPad.

Dumbing down the Mac... such a dreadful thought.

Click to expand...

You got it backwards there. Take a look at Microsoft to see what an actual "one OS" policy looks like.

Apple has now gone through multiple versions of OS X and iOS side by side, spending lots of resources keeping them both distinct.

If your theory is "cost savings" they're sure doing a really horrible job at it. Is that your argument? That they're trying to save money and just really, really ****** it up?

I you are running Lion I guess it is worth it.
From Snow Leopard not really.

I am one step away from going back because there is so much annoying half backed stuff in there it is annoying. It is not exactly a speed up either on a 2010MBP. Some stuff looks more fluid but overall it is just equally fast or even slower and some stuff is really choppy.
It is not worth 5 $ imo. I thought I get more out of iCloud. Shouldn't have done it.

Small White Car said:

1) You got it backwards there. Take a look at Microsoft to see what an actual "one OS" policy looks like.

2) Apple has now gone through multiple versions of OS X and iOS side by side, spending lots of resources keeping them both distinct.

3) If your theory is "cost savings" they're sure doing a really horrible job at it. Is that your argument? That they're trying to save money and just really, really ****** it up?

Click to expand...

1a) Not at all, read the post again. Dragging in Microsoft is changing the subject, this is about Apple and no one else.

2a) So far, again read the post.

3a) Wrong again, but at least you tried.

ixodes said:

I have this nagging feeling that Apple deliberately, allowed Lion to be buggy and annoying.

Then shortly thereafter they release Mountain Lion with just enough improvements to draw the responses you're getting. By luring people in with Lion and yet making it fairly miserable, they knew that the relief brought my Mountain Lion would be more than enough to pull people deep into the web of the new iOS/OS X blend of operating systems.

As Apple continues towards full convergence, the money saved by having just one OS, designed to pull iToyz users into new Macs... will be a significant savings in the number of developers and engineers required to build out a single OS.

Many publications and web sites, have talked about how much more like iOS Mountain Lion is. Revealing that Apple is well on their way to bringing the mobile experience to newbies, selling them "cool "computers" that look and function via "apps" just like an iPhone or iPad.

Dumbing down the Mac... such a dreadful thought.

Click to expand...

You really need to get out more and stop regurgitating all of the lame blogs you've been reading
They are designed to stir up controversy, negativity and generate hits
And using terms like iToyz, well, I can't take you seriously

Lion was not buggy for me at all, and was a good experience for most of the users
Yes, there were some vocal detractors on this and other forums, but that is to be expected as always

OS X and iOS are not converging into one OS
They share some commonalities, yes, and IMO it is not a bad thing to bring some consistency
But we are a long way from seeing any convergence of the two

I don't plan on upgrading until the software I want requires it. To be honest, regardless of the low cost I was surprised at how little the new OS brings in terms of features/enhancements. I could care less about icloud, imessage or the notification center, so that leaves me with...what ...light performance improvements? No thanks I'll pass.

Depends on whether you'll use the new features I guess. I use the new Notes and Reminder apps all the time so that alone makes it feel worth it for me. But it's also handy being able to send things to Twitter and eventually Facebook from any app. Voice dictation is also fun, although I haven't found a real use for it just yet. It's also faster and smoother than Lion, so yeah I'd say its worth upgrading.