Is Lion worth it?

[chrisman]

Hey everyone,
I am considering getting Lion and some people have said that it's great and some have said the opposite. I was wondering if everyone who has/has had it would post and leave a reply on the upsides, downsides, and their overall approval of it. Thanks.

 

[treestar]

I think it's worth $30 to stay up to date with Apple support. The few features are an added bonus. It might cost you to upgrade your RAM though, as 4 GB has been under the sweet spot for most.

 

[session101]

i did a fresh install of lion when i first got my macbook so i didn't get to experience Snow Leopard, but from what i can tell im overall happy with the way it performs. The only downside is Powerpc apps dont work with is frustrating but other than that it runs smooth and overall pretty well

 

[MagicBoy]

Lion is fine. No real difference in speed between Snow Lep and Lion on my 4GB machine. If all your Apps are Lion compatible then go for it as keeping up to date is a good thing.

I'm staying on Snow Lep for the moment as I've got a couple of old Apps that need Rosetta.

 

[QuarterSwede]

I like it a lot but there are some things that just downright annoy me. Mission Control isn't well thought out if you're a Spaces/Exposé user. Safari crashes while in the background constantly for me and the Full Screen framework is buggy (I've had issues in all apps that can use it).

I do like some of the other changes though. The new Mail app is fantastic, Resume is amazing, versions are great (no more saving!), scrollbars can be turned off (finally!) and I like the sorting options in Finder (although it's buggy as well).

Overall, Lion is a great experience with a lot of bugs still present. iCloud will make it even better when it's finally released to the public.

 

[session101]

I had lion at first but now after downgrading to Snow Leopard 10.6 i think im liking it a lot more, not a real speed difference but i think that SL is better for now until they fix lion

 

[yusukeaoki]

Lion will be worth it in the future.
Not just this min.
Too much problems and they need to fix it via update.

 

[Nermal]

The best thing to do is to look through the feature list and decide whether you need any of those and what they're worth to you. Personally I don't think it's worth the $40 considering that I'll never use the vast majority of the listed features. On the other hand, other people think it's great. It's really up to you.

 

[blend69]

Lion

It's certainly much faster or seems to be (core i7 , 2.93 GHz, 8GB), although I don't much like the front end, and have tried as much as possible to make it look like 10.6. There are some problems with what comes with Lion though. I think there are big issues with Safari 5.1 and Lion - I am getting lots and lots of "safari can't load page" etc, and misloads of pages where the page disappears to the bottom right hand corner of the window, and may or may not reappear from the top left hand corner. I am still having issues with airport and it dropping my wi-fi connection. You should check if the progs you know and love are compatible with Lion, many simply won't work, or will only part work - fixes often not adequate. Be prepared to dish out more on progs if you are one of the unlucky ones.
I did post something about this on the Apple support website, but the post was refused because the moderator said my comments were ranting! Clearly Apple and free speech don't sit well together. Maybe they didn't like my comment about increasing popularity over Windows, and possibly the problems were down to them employing a few ex Windows "kids" to re-write Safari. Yeah must have been that 🙂
Ah well !
Jon

 

[HawaiiMacAddict]

Personally I don't think it's worth the $40 considering that I'll never use the vast majority of the listed features.

So, because you're so reticent to change, or have no desire to adapt to Apple's newest direction in computing, you would forgo an upgrade? At least the price is so low that upgrading is no real problem. Imagine if Lion were a Microsoft product - it would like be $450 or so 😱

Seriously, don't sell yourself short. I would advise purchasing Lion, backing up your system, backing up the Lion install to a DVD or 8GB thumb drive, installing Lion, then using it for a few weeks. To say the upgrade is not worth the small price makes no sense. You obviously upgraded before, when the price was $129 - what is it about Lion that, now, makes it not worth the price? I will wager that there is a corresponding list of features, of which you'll "never use the vast majority" for Snow Leopard, Leopard, Tiger, etc...

Don't get me wrong. If Snow Leopard is good enough for you, then by all means keep with Snow Leopard. Just don't fall into the same trap as the vocal minority on this forum that only seem to be interested in bashing Lion. That actually seems to be the most popular activity here - bashing Lion, that is, and often with little basis.