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good riddance os X Lion

J

josh1231

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 24, 2010
130
0
I just formatted my drive and installed Snow Leopard.

Having always been a person who has to have the latest gadget/computer/software, I purchased OS X Lion the day it came out. What a mistake. A few of my least favorite features.

Though I googled several different articles about disabling the opening of documents and apps during a reboot, I never could get it to completely stop opening them. It would still have the check box that I would inevitably forget to check upon rebooting that would then cause a 10-minute delay (not really but it seemed like it) when booting up while acrobat/photoshop/indesign/word/excel/outlook started. I don't get this feature. If I want a program to start, I can pretty easily click it on the dock and start it.

The one I really enjoyed was the software update a few weeks ago that disabled my HP Color Laser printer, and made it impossible to print to it even with the generic PCL 5 driver. It simply stopped working. This wasn't on the lion install, it worked for 3 months after installing lion, it just stopped one day after an update. No mind you this printer was just released in May 2010.

My Canon printer also doesn't work any longer. This was released 3 years ago, so it is not that new, however the canon download from apple states that it will work. When installing the printer though, I point to the newest downloaded driver, both from canon and the apple web site, and get an error when the OS attempts to download its own driver.

I feel better now as I write this from my fresh Snow Leopard install.
 
Did you install Lion from scratch or was it an update?

I have no major problems with it.

And sooner or later you will have to update to Lion, so why wait? Better to get used to it now.

Sometimes after you update you'll need to reset the PRAM too.
 
I bought it from the App Store, so it was an upgrade. It wasn't so much a problem getting used to it, it was just a problem of it not operating correctly. I was able to live with Apple reversing the scroll direction of my mouse instead of simply allowing me to choose scroll direction... (please let me know if anything I'm complaining about has an easy fix, I'm not an OS 10 Expert by any means).

I might have to break down and buy a disk and do a fresh install, unless someone knows of a way to do it without the disk. I have been rather disappointed with it, however, both at work and at my home. My work computer crashes on a pretty regular occasion, and I haven't installed a piece of software on it since installing Lion.

Who knows, maybe a fresh install is what I need. If anyone can let me know if a fresh install is possible through the App store, I would appreciate it.

Amazing Iceman said:
Did you install Lion from scratch or was it an update?

I have no major problems with it.

And sooner or later you will have to update to Lion, so why wait? Better to get used to it now.

Sometimes after you update you'll need to reset the PRAM too.
Click to expand...


----------
Amazing Iceman said:
Did you install Lion from scratch or was it an update?

I have no major problems with it.

And sooner or later you will have to update to Lion, so why wait? Better to get used to it now.

Sometimes after you update you'll need to reset the PRAM too.
Click to expand...

btw, what is updating pram? Never heard of that before.
 
iDuel said:
Everything you mentioned can either be easily fixed or changed in System Preferences.
Click to expand...

The fact that my Color Laser printer does not work, unfortunately cannot be easily fixed. I did actually put some time into researching this. That being said, I did sell that printer because it did not work, so I no longer have it.

Lion still is significantly less stable than Snow Leopard, however having just done a fresh install, I'm going to download it again and see if I have better luck this time.
 
MisterMe said:
Did you have a reason to reformat your hard drive?
Click to expand...
After resetting my printing system among other attempted fixes, my Canon MP620 still would not install. Being that it worked fine prior to the printing update that was installed ~ a month ago as well as Apple's documentation stating it did work with Lion, I felt the easiest course of action was a format.

MisterMe said:
Which HP Color Laser printer?
Click to expand...

The 1525NW
 
iThinkergoiMac said:
That's one of two ways to install an older version of OS X overtop a newer one. You can either Archive and Install, or Erase and Install. The latter option reformats the drive/partition.
Click to expand...
That's just it. Reformatting is the more radical of the two options. It erases all of your applications and all of your data. If you are not a working person and don't have a lot of data and applications, then I suppose that you have the time to do the job. But if you are a working person who relies on your Mac, then restoring your applications and data from back-up or original distribution [if you have them] will put you in for a bag of hurt.
 
MisterMe said:
That's just it. Reformatting is the more radical of the two options.
Click to expand...

It's also faster, and doesn't matter if you have a good backup system.

At pretty much any given moment I wouldn't really hesitate to reformat my internal drive if I thought it needed it. I have a nightly clone going, so I'd be set back, at most, 24 hours.
 
josh1231 said:
I bought it from the App Store, so it was an upgrade. It wasn't so much a problem getting used to it, it was just a problem of it not operating correctly. I was able to live with Apple reversing the scroll direction of my mouse instead of simply allowing me to choose scroll direction... (please let me know if anything I'm complaining about has an easy fix, I'm not an OS 10 Expert by any means).

I might have to break down and buy a disk and do a fresh install, unless someone knows of a way to do it without the disk. I have been rather disappointed with it, however, both at work and at my home. My work computer crashes on a pretty regular occasion, and I haven't installed a piece of software on it since installing Lion.

Who knows, maybe a fresh install is what I need. If anyone can let me know if a fresh install is possible through the App store, I would appreciate it.
Click to expand...

How to do a fresh install of Lion has been covered many times:

http://mashable.com/2011/07/20/lion-clean-install-guide/

Download, copy the dmg out of the installer, grab a 8GB thumb drive, make sure that the 8GB is formatted using HFS+ Journalled, restore the DMG to the thumb drive and then boot off it by holding down the option key during reboot and select your thumb drive. Again, this issue has been covered many times.

Quite frankly Apple promoting an upgrade is probably the stupidest idea they've had so far - the pain and grief caused by upgrades far outweighs the few extra minutes spent backing up your documents, formatting with a clean install then restoring everything back again.
 
MisterMe said:
That's just it. Reformatting is the more radical of the two options. It erases all of your applications and all of your data. If you are not a working person and don't have a lot of data and applications, then I suppose that you have the time to do the job. But if you are a working person who relies on your Mac, then restoring your applications and data from back-up or original distribution [if you have them] will put you in for a bag of hurt.
Click to expand...

I guess I used Windows Vista too long, because I don't consider a format that radical of a move. The only part I dislike about it is the 200GB backup of my documents, and reinstalling all of my applications. It's really a pretty easy process, though all told did take about 6.5 hours, an hour of which I was actually at the machine, 3 to backup, .5 to install Snow Leopard, .5 to download Lion, .5 to install Lion, 1 to re-install all of my applications and 1 to download and install the 2GB worth of updates (I was really regretting my decision to downgrade my internet from 25/25 to 8/8 at 3:00 in the morning). It was a pain, however my printer now works fine even after doing all the updates, and the machine runs so much better.

Actually the whole process was very Windows Vista'esque, complete with the 2GB OS update.

For the person who said I could switch to Windows 7, I do use Windows 7 a lot and do prefer it easily over Lion because it doesn't crash nearly as much as Lion does, at least in my experience. Hopefully my new experience with Lion will go much better. I'm so happy with how much better it is running at home, that tomorrow I am going to do my iMac at work.
 
Amazing Iceman said:
And sooner or later you will have to update to Lion, so why wait? Better to get used to it now.
Click to expand...

Why do so many of you think this? No we won't have too. We can skip lion all together... And if apple doesn't get there crap together by 10.8 (or 11.0...) we can use a different OS all together. lion is a joke... An iOS themed sales pitch for their notebooks. If people don't like it, then we wont use it. And based on the growth rate... that's quite a few people. Especially considering apple forces you to run it on new hardware.
 
jameslmoser said:
Why do so many of you think this? No we won't have too. We can skip lion all together... And if apple doesn't get there crap together by 10.8 (or 11.0...) we can use a different OS all together. lion is a joke... An iOS themed sales pitch for their notebooks. If people don't like it, then we wont use it. And based on the growth rate... that's quite a few people. Especially considering apple forces you to run it on new hardware.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Couldn't have said it better myself. I love apple, but as a professional, I don't care for the choices they have made regarding the direction of Mac OS.
 
jameslmoser said:
Why do so many of you think this? No we won't have too. We can skip lion all together... And if apple doesn't get there crap together by 10.8 (or 11.0...) we can use a different OS all together. lion is a joke... An iOS themed sales pitch for their notebooks. If people don't like it, then we wont use it. And based on the growth rate... that's quite a few people. Especially considering apple forces you to run it on new hardware.
Click to expand...
Are you willing to make the investment in software and hardware simply to run a different OS? Do you know if Windows 8 (or future versions) won't frustrate or annoy you as much as Lion does? Do you really think that Lion is an iOS sales pitch? If so, that's a foolish idea. Lion may have a few elements borrowed from iOS, but they're ones that you do not HAVE to use if you don't want to. For some people they're useful, and for the ones who hate them, they're out of the way.

Oh, I'll also note Snow Leopard got a huge amount of hate after it was released, too. Just in case some of you are thinking of saying, "But Snow Leopard was NEVER this bad!"
 
Mackilroy said:
Oh, I'll also note Snow Leopard got a huge amount of hate after it was released, too. Just in case some of you are thinking of saying, "But Snow Leopard was NEVER this bad!"
Click to expand...

Here here! When Snow Leopard came out it got MUCHO bad press. I just love how people here hate Mission Control and have a short memory of Snow Leopard's big problems and then pretend like it's the end-all OS. Snow Leopard's Expose was changed from Leopard and many people hated Snow Leopard's version and complained so badly about it that I actually though Apple was going to change it back out of pressure.
Snow Leopard also had massive install issues. Most people couldn't even get it installed. It wasn't until 10.6.3 before people calmed down with all the Snow Leopard complaints.
Lion is a very stable OS and it is much more stable than Snow Leopard was when it first arrived.
 
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Mackilroy said:
Are you willing to make the investment in software and hardware simply to run a different OS? Do you know if Windows 8 (or future versions) won't frustrate or annoy you as much as Lion does? Do you really think that Lion is an iOS sales pitch? If so, that's a foolish idea. Lion may have a few elements borrowed from iOS, but they're ones that you do not HAVE to use if you don't want to. For some people they're useful, and for the ones who hate them, they're out of the way.

Oh, I'll also note Snow Leopard got a huge amount of hate after it was released, too. Just in case some of you are thinking of saying, "But Snow Leopard was NEVER this bad!"
Click to expand...

I switched from Windows to Mac because of Windows' poor UI. There is no reason I can't switch again in the future. This is a likely scenario if OSX continues to decline in usability and an alternative OS provides a superior experience.

OSX's decline is even more likely given the fact that Steve Jobs was probably the primary "NO" person at Apple and had strict standards for simplicity and usability. For example, would iOS centered around a touch screen without Steve's instance on a one button phone and no keyboard? I don't see anyone at Apple that loves UI the way that Steve did. The closest similarity is Jon Ives, and his focus is on hardware.

Those of us rallying against Lion tend to have specific UI expectations that used to be met but appear lacking in Lion, which was not under the full scrutiny Steve's watchful eye. Thus, Lion serves as evidence for a painful decline in the UI experience of OSX. Hopefully, someone at Apple will step up to the plate, but if not, well, we switch to something else when it presents itself.
 
these threads are at least worth a laugh. i mean, why go back to snow leopard? why not 10.3? 10.2?? os9??

there are things i do not like in lion, but...there's enough TO like.

working great here (both late 2008 macbook, new macbook pro).
stable, fast. and there are some hacks to trick things out
(like killing the ugly in ical).

sure there's room for improvement, so will wait for 10.7.3, 10.7.4, etc.
either way, the world moves forward, and we can choose to move with it..
or be left behind.
 
Joos24 said:
Here here! When Snow Leopard came out it got MUCHO bad press.
Click to expand...

Even though Snow leopard is easier to use, works more like a real desktop OS and definitely looks better than Lion the fact is that Apple's new software releases are often buggy. Considering how few hardware combinations Apple has to write for the fact that they release beta quality software just baffles me to no end.

The poor quality of the initial Snow Leopard release definitely caused some problems. Lion's bad press seems to come from a double punch of buggy release and just plain stupid OS design decisions some which seem to be designed more for kids than adults.

Also note that despite being available in public beta for Aperture 3 was especially crappy causing lost libraries and really lousy performance. Let's be honest here. As much as I like Macs it is a fact that Apple's software engineering is really sloppy. "It just works" is not a motto that can be applied to Snow Leopard, Lion or Aperture 3 at release. Even Microsoft's products often work better at release.
 
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fisherking said:
these threads are at least worth a laugh. i mean, why go back to snow leopard? why not 10.3? 10.2?? os9??
Click to expand...

Simple

1) You can't. Apple does not release drivers for new hardware. If I could put Snow Leopard on my Macbook Air I would.

2) Normally Apple improves the experience. i.e. OS9 < 10.2 < 10.3 < 10.4 < 10.5 ≈ 10.6 > 10.7
10.7 is the first time there has been a major decrease in UI quality. Most of the other releases were merely buggy until the .3 release or so. The problems with Lion are not bugs; they are symptoms of a poor design philosophy.
 
I disagree I find the new ui to be great and the use of gestures to be very fluid once you adapt. UI is perhaps a matter of opinion and not fact.
 
marc11 said:
I disagree I find the new ui to be great and the use of gestures to be very fluid once you adapt. UI is perhaps a matter of opinion and not fact.
Click to expand...

It is a matter of opinion.

Some like it, some don't.
Just like some people approve of the new iCal desk calendar skin while I find it tasteless.
 
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