Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Seeds OS X 10.7.3 Build 11D24 to Developers
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I have to disagree, sorry.
I've been a Mac user since OS X Panther, a relative "noob" to some other Mac users here, but as much as a like Lion's features I can't justify the performance drop for so little gain. There is nothing happening in Lion that is far in excess of what Snow Leopard does, yet Lion has some quirky issues on my iMac that it's not worth the hassle. It takes away from the user experience.
Waking from sleep sees scrolling in Safari stammer and general UI navigation is sluggish. A reboot solves this, but again Snow Leopard ran flawlessly every time waking from sleep. And animations, they are woeful on my iMac. Launching "Launchpad" is smooth for the first hour or so of system use, but then it stutters or misses the fade in/out animation altogether and the same goes for going to/from full screen mode, it runs well for a while then turns into a slideshow. They are simple animations, nothing Snow Leopard before it couldn't handle, and the proof of this is that even entering Time Machine can become a stutter-fest once the system has been on for a period of time, yet on Snow Leopard it's smooth every time.
Me going back to Snow Leopard is not a slur against Lion, I want to use Lion, but it's just not the fluid UI experience I've come to love on the Mac all these years. Snow Leopard remains the pinnacle of OS X performance for me. However, I do have a small partition on my internal drive to run Lion, so that I can continue to update it and watch it's progress.
I have to disagree, sorry.
What you are saying here is nothing more than just normal random issues software has and it's perfectly normal since no software is perfect.
Go browse Snow Leopard forums from the day it came out and you'll find same thing.
I'm administrating a network of 67 Macs and it's a new network made up of 27" iMacs with same configuration. It's quite funny that Lion runs so differently on same hardware, why is that? That is because of people that use it and the way they use it and nothing else.
Before that we had Snow Leopard and we had issues, we had issues with Tiger and of course we have issues with Lion, but nothing major.
To any beta testers: Is Disk Utility fixed yet? The lion version's been broken since release, it can't verify or repair a RAID stripe set. The Leopard and Snow Leopard utilities were able to do this so it's not a limitation inherent to RAID stripe sets.
So.. focus on spotlight..
Maybe they have fixed this..
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1282443/
Maybe they have fixed this..
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1282443/
I would love to hear the problems. Please be specific.
As for spotlight, its been pissing me off since 10.5.
The fact, and it is fact, is that Lion does nothing over and above what Snow Leopard does in terms of visual effects or UI graphics, yet comparable effects on Lion begin to lag after basic system use. I'm not talking about Final Cut, iPhoto, iMovie, or anything RAM taxing.
Listen, I'm not making anything up to score points on a daft forum. I've detailed everything above, I'm not repeating it again in a second reply. What summed it up for me is that on Lion, the animation entering Time Machine stutters (not first run, but on a system used for an hour of so doing basic tasks), while Snow Leopard can be running for three days, have gone to sleep and woken up umpteen times, and it's always smooth. Bottom line, Apple don't want to optimise my ****** little 2009 iMac, but Snow Leopard's performance doing identical tasks is in the background giving them the finger.
As for it being "how people use it", well ... a freshly installed copy of Lion with only the most up to date updates installed and nothing else that turns into the above after an hour or so of basic use? If anything a "Vanilla" system should showcase the OS, not slow down. I agree that certain set ups and user configurations affect the system speed, etc ... but the issue here is animations, that become choppy over time, and that shouldn't happen.
And for the record, Snow Leopard nor Leopard before it, nor Tiger before that had choppy UI animations.
Last edited:
Lion's UI animations are not choppy. Lion's Finder is just slower than SL's Finder, which was slower than Leopard's Finder.
It's because Finder is doing more stuff at each iteration of OS when you open/close windows.
Other than that, Lion doesn't have any performance hits over SL. Every app runs as fast/slow, except Safari, which has issues, but that doesn't have anything to do with Lion. It has to do with Safari 5.1 Webkit2 framework, which sucks in SL if you update to it as well.
It's because Finder is doing more stuff at each iteration of OS when you open/close windows.
Other than that, Lion doesn't have any performance hits over SL. Every app runs as fast/slow, except Safari, which has issues, but that doesn't have anything to do with Lion. It has to do with Safari 5.1 Webkit2 framework, which sucks in SL if you update to it as well.
Yes, they are. Well, on my system they are. My issue is that similar animations do not lag on Snow Leopard regardless of how long the system has been in use or what it's been doing. Yet on Lion, after an hour or so of doing nothing but using Safari and iTunes, the animations when opening Launchpad or any of it's Folders, or when going to/from full screen mode in apps, is choppy.
2.4GHz Core 2 Duo and 4GB of RAM ran every animation on Snow Leopard perfectly, yet Lion can't even run the same Time Machine launch animation smoothly after the system's been in use for an hour or so. Something, somewhere, is leaking.
For any given release of Mac OS X i can find you bad as well as good or very good opinions.
My personal and work experience is saying that there is nothing wrong with Lion.
That is all.
Last edited by a moderator:
Lion
I've just bought my very first Mac, a 13 inch (mid 2011) Macbook Air. So I may not be able to compare Lion with older OSX versions, but based on my experiences Lion works like a charm.
It never freezes, it's bloody fast, I never have to wait for anything (for which I can thank the SSD in the first place, I guess), and Mission Control is awesome. I couldn't live anymore without full screen apps and these multi-touch gestures. The whole interface is far more user-friendly and sophisticated than it was in Slow Leopard, I think.
The launchpad itself isn't something that I couldn't live without, so I agree with you in some terms, but its existence doesn't bother anybody, and it can be useful sometimes. I have various apps that I don't use very often, so it doesn't worth putting them on the dock, but when I need one of them, launchpad is a fast way to find and start it.
I've just bought my very first Mac, a 13 inch (mid 2011) Macbook Air. So I may not be able to compare Lion with older OSX versions, but based on my experiences Lion works like a charm.
It never freezes, it's bloody fast, I never have to wait for anything (for which I can thank the SSD in the first place, I guess), and Mission Control is awesome. I couldn't live anymore without full screen apps and these multi-touch gestures. The whole interface is far more user-friendly and sophisticated than it was in Slow Leopard, I think.
The launchpad itself isn't something that I couldn't live without, so I agree with you in some terms, but its existence doesn't bother anybody, and it can be useful sometimes. I have various apps that I don't use very often, so it doesn't worth putting them on the dock, but when I need one of them, launchpad is a fast way to find and start it.
the longer I'm using Lion, the more I'm starting to hate the way auto-save works.
I usually have a lot of files open for reference. Now before I close one, I have to think about whether or not I inadvertently made changes to it, and if so, I'm forced to track back through the painful starry versions thingie.
How is this more convenient than just clicking "don't save"?
Other than that rather major annoyance (plus the reopen checkbox thing on restart) Lion is ok. I don't see the benefit of mission control vs. what we had, at all, but I can live with it. Lion mostly looks a little nicer in most parts, and now that I've gone back to using Word instead of Pages because of the auto-save thing, I'm pretty happy with it.
I love Safari's history-back gesture + animation.
I usually have a lot of files open for reference. Now before I close one, I have to think about whether or not I inadvertently made changes to it, and if so, I'm forced to track back through the painful starry versions thingie.
How is this more convenient than just clicking "don't save"?
Other than that rather major annoyance (plus the reopen checkbox thing on restart) Lion is ok. I don't see the benefit of mission control vs. what we had, at all, but I can live with it. Lion mostly looks a little nicer in most parts, and now that I've gone back to using Word instead of Pages because of the auto-save thing, I'm pretty happy with it.
I love Safari's history-back gesture + animation.
Last edited:
I am sticking with Snow Leopard mainly because I despise the idea of Auto-Save and Versions. I am not too fond of the idea of "Reopen windows when logging back in" either. I guess I like more control over how my system works. I submitted feedback to Apple... I HOPE they let this stuff be more "optional"...
I only used Lion for 3 days before going back to Snow Leopard. While it was stable and fairly fast I hated everything that's been added, especially the shut down tick box, the changing of the 4 finger expose gesture and the inability to sleep the Mac with Internet sharing on (which I leave on all the time on SL as I often connect other systems directly to it to back up, fix etc).
The worst thing is that my next Mac I buy in a year or so probably won't be able to boot SL as the latest Air and mini have trouble installing it and I expect the next iMac will be the same and be Lion only.
The worst thing is that my next Mac I buy in a year or so probably won't be able to boot SL as the latest Air and mini have trouble installing it and I expect the next iMac will be the same and be Lion only.
I am in the same situation as you. My current Macbook no long fits my needs and I'd like to upgrade to a more powerful machine. The Quad mini would have been perfect but it's on Lion and the glossy iMac screen is a no go for me. My only choice now is to find a 2009/10 Pro with SL and stick with it until someone makes a PPC emulator, Save As, and bring back Expose.
First of all, how old is your hardware?
If it's recent, then you should try a clean install and manually restore your saved files rather than doing a migration.
I did this and Lion runs like a dream compared to Snow Leopard.
Launchpad looked gimmicky on first impression, but I now couldn't live without it.
Beats scrolling through an Applications folder or creating a ton of alias folders in the Dock.
Also, it's more technically sound.
Legacy bloat like Rosetta is gone and we finally have OpenGL 3 although we should really have 4.2 but that's another matter.
That's gotta be about the video card drivers for your system, so it's hardware specific. Animations don't have any choppiness on my 2008 Mac Pro, or my 2009 MacBook Pro, compared to SL at least.
Whats the point of running your mouth on the many issues Lion has? Please feedback to Apple so that they can do something about it!!
Indeed. There is no major flaw in Lion. Specific issues will always exist.
----------
Yeah keep convincing yourself.
----------
So a naming issues is why OS sucks? "Save As" or "Export" it does the same thing as it is the same menu just named differently.
For the poster with Graphics issues, it's more likely your GPU is about to carp out on you.
Both my 3rd replacement Radeon2600 and the nVidia8800 decided to blow smoke last week. Thankfully Apple still replaced the Radeon even though, machine is out of warranty and the recall replacement ended in July - that's now the 6th repair on the damn thing.
Although I have many reasons for not liking Lion. The only 2 issues I have are mail is a bloody joke! It never quits when asked. Occasionally causes crashes. The other being cannot install XP on the MacBook Pro now. Even when I restore the system to Leopard.
Both my 3rd replacement Radeon2600 and the nVidia8800 decided to blow smoke last week. Thankfully Apple still replaced the Radeon even though, machine is out of warranty and the recall replacement ended in July - that's now the 6th repair on the damn thing.
Although I have many reasons for not liking Lion. The only 2 issues I have are mail is a bloody joke! It never quits when asked. Occasionally causes crashes. The other being cannot install XP on the MacBook Pro now. Even when I restore the system to Leopard.
I noticed this Mail issues as well, but it's related to the iCloud (at least on my Mac), because if i sign out of iCloud and Mail is left with just Gmail acount it's all fine.