Is anyone else very impressed with Lion?

[OW22]

I know I'm risking the wrath by many by saying this!

Let me start by saying I do not use my iMac for work. I don't have advanced apps on it like Photoshop or other video or photo editing software. I can appreciate how those advanced users have had issued with upgrading because of probable issues with incompatibility issues. And I know others have had issues with Wifi, something I had an issue with in SL and had to reinstall it, doing a clean install, to get it right again.

I played it safe. Made a new partition on my HDD and kept SL in case Lion didn't work out. Did a clean install of Lion via the boot disk and it installed without any issues. Manually dragged music, photos etc over then from the Time Machine external drive. Downloaded then the usual programs like handbrake, RealPlayer etc

Been running it for just a day as well so I'll need to wait a week or more and make sure I use it totally and use sleep, wake etc continuously.

I have to say my impressions so far are very positive. I love the no scroll bars on display, especially in Safari. It just looks slicker and more modern. And Safari seems to be blazing fast. I love the movement scroll from page to page.

I'm no slavish, Mac fanboi. Bought in 2006, the Intel iMac 20in and it lasted me until this summer when the HDD died and got the new iMac. I have used iPhone from the off and also love my iPad. So I can see why Apple are taking features from iOS and brought them into the Mac. It's no big deal to me, but I can see what many might not like them. The reverse scrolling takes getting used to and the Launchpad is an obvious tip of the hat to iOS and doesn't really seem necessary for a Mac seeing as you have the Dock there and Spotlight is already an excellent way of launching. Plus your apps folder is already on the dock anyway.

I loved exposé and Spaces and I actually like Mission Control. The desktop spaces at the top is fine imho and easy to work. The new expose you could say is a bit meh, things can get cluttered there compared to the old way. but overall, I like it.

Only quibble about Finder is the lack of color icons in the side bar, I miss that and I think many others do as well.

I love the new mail, a great app for sure.

What I really like about Lion is gestures. I have the trackpad and love the control gestures now gives. Moving from desktop to desktop, scrolling from page to page in Safari, I love it.

Resume, I could take it of leave it. It could be a lot more useful If I used my mac for work purposes and were creating and editing a lot of documents. But then again, many users have made it clear that they don't like this and would like "save as" back.

All in all, so far, I'm impressed. It feels slick, it seems stable (for me) and I like the new features built on from SL which was a great version of OSX.

 

[BlackMangoTree]

Lion should have not been released with the digital audio bug. I find this absolutely pathetic. I buy a new Mac Mini and audio is totally screwed on it. It has been fixed under Snow Leopard so why the wait for Lion. Apple hang your head in Shame.

 

[Internaut]

Very impressed (and I was even writing a post about my experience this week at the same time you wrote the above). Apple seem to let some fairly horrendous faults slip through though.

 

[BlackMangoTree]

I now have a MacMini 2011 sitting under my TV which is useless for watching video with. Thanks Apple. I'll be in for a refund on Monday.

 

[tigres]

No, I am not at all. Left it behind.

 

[*LTD*]

Sure. It's got some wonderful features that even on their own make it worth the upgrade:

- Fullscreen
- Swiping between Spaces

and to a lesser extent, Versions.

It's $30. You can barely buy dinner for two for $30. And then it's gone. You've eaten it. There are Applications that cost $30, if not more, but for that same price you're getting an entire OS that forms the basis for a lot of Apple's technologies moving forward (iCloud, etc.)

 

[OW22]

I have a hunch that maybe Apple underestimated how complex the typical Mac users system now is. Complex in terms of the amount of software, partitions, RAID set ups, VPN's for work access etc etc and this upgrade has conflicted with other apps and set ups. The upgrade is designed to simply upgrade SL, but it seems the foolproof way is to start from scratch with a clean drive and then once installed, manually move your files etc over. But Apple didn't design Lion to do that so there are clearly issues there that causes so many people to have problems.

I think what most will agree on is that once the bugs have gone, it will be seen to be an extremely good OS update.

 

[*LTD*]

I have a hunch that maybe Apple underestimated how complex the typical Mac users system now is. Complex in terms of the amount of software, partitions, RAID set ups, VPN's for work access etc etc and this upgrade has conflicted with other apps and set ups.

You've just described the atypical Mac user.

 

[OW22]

You've just described the atypical Mac user.

I should have deemed them the "Power" users I suppose.

 

[lfc]

Yep I'm loving Lion. It's prefect for me. Everything about it is great and I'm finding Mission Control to be a massive part of my workflow much more than expose+spaces ever was to me. It's amazing.
The new gestures also simplify a lot of things for me, and the little features like 3-finger double tap for dictionary comes in handy often.
Even LaunchPad is great for me, it's completely replaced my Applications Folder. I even removed the folder from my dock.

I've only ran into one bug and two problems so far.

The bug is iTunes sometimes isn't completely full screen.
The problems are boot time got 10 seconds longer and youtube videos freeze safari (probably a youtube problem though since all other video sites work perfect). Fixed that with ClickToFlash though, it makes youtube load the videos in h.264 and uses the native Quicktime web player.

 

[50548]

Sure. It's got some wonderful features that even on their own make it worth the upgrade:

- Fullscreen
- Swiping between Spaces

and to a lesser extent, Versions.

It's $30. You can barely buy dinner for two for $30. And then it's gone. You've eaten it. There are Applications that cost $30, if not more, but for that same price you're getting an entire OS that forms the basis for a lot of Apple's technologies moving forward (iCloud, etc.)

ZERO problems here apart from very minor bugs (such as the Launchpad dock icon returning to the dock after being deleted, Safari's Private Mode disregarding past saved logins and other unimportant things); there is absolutely no coming back to SL now.

NO audio, Mail, sluggishness, Flash, compatibility or scrolling issues whatsoever...quite the opposite: Safari zips through everything, Misson Control is great, the new scrolling paradigms are fine.

I really don't know how people can face so many problems after installation of a new OS...their setups must be full of haxies, or else.

Lion is, since the debut of OS X, by far the least troublesome major Mac OS upgrade ever...trust me.

 

[kasakka]

Not that impressed. Don't have any real problems with it but I'm surprised how half-baked many of the new features are.

Fullscreen mode doesn't work with multiple monitors at all since the second is blanked with a texture wallpaper. Mission Control is worse because it doesn't support a grid (slower switching with ctrl+arrows) and is broken for showing applications with many windows. Generally the new stuff is way too laptop centric.

 

[Patrick J]

I am loving Lion

 

[sjinsjca]

Lion improved the responsiveness of my early-2010 MBP by 20-30%. It's like a new machine. And I'm loving the UI tweaks. And FileVault 2 is a freakin' marvel-- no performance hit at all.

 

[nadaclue]

Impressed? Really? Filevault 2 I really like. Can't get used to the new look of Mail. Add to that I am now having wifi problems and my keyboard keeps disconnecting so I would have to say it doesn't meet my expectations, I am a little disappointed.

 

[fortheloveofmac]

I'm beyond impressed and in love with both my MBP and Lion.

 

[Gemütlichkeit]

I love it. I'm not getting any bugs and i've been using it for two weeks now.

Love the new track pad gestures, launch pad, and more.

I'm just looking for optimizations in the future releases.

 

[Steve's Barber]

Let me start by saying I do not use my iMac for work...

Didn't read past your first line above. It kind of sums it up and nullifies your endorsement of iLion IMO. That said... you probably represent the typical Mac user these days. iLion is now a "casual" OS that appeals to leisure users.

I also think iLion is the first of many OS renditions that will make it pretty much meaningless in the enterprise market. Kind of sad really.

 

[gentlefury]

I now have a MacMini 2011 sitting under my TV which is useless for watching video with. Thanks Apple. I'll be in for a refund on Monday.

And what makes it useless??? I have a MacMini in my living room...and I use it for watching video ALL THE TIME....

I love Lion...I think its one of the best additions they have ever had in the OSX library.

Love it so much I decided to buy a MacBook Air.

 

[JKK photography]

Didn't read past your first line above. It kind of sums it up and nullifies your endorsement of iLion IMO. That said... you probably represent the typical Mac user these days. iLion is now a "casual" OS that appeals to leisure users.

I also think iLion is the first of many OS renditions that will make it pretty much meaningless in the enterprise market. Kind of sad really.

Enterprise market? When has Apple ever had a large footprint there?

Apple added features to Lion, comared to Snow Leopard. Yet somehow these added features make Lion a step back, and that it is more akin to it's iOS brethren?

I sucked it up, adapted my workflow, hated it for an hour, and then figured out that I love Mission Control for writing blog posts in one full screen app, and then editing a photo in Pixelmator in another.

 

[Macshroomer]

I was impressed alright....

Impressed at how bad an OS can be at launch. I usually check them out, dual boot from the old one, adapt until revisions and then start enjoying it being more stable by version .4 or so, but not this monster...

The last straw was a finder lockup during deleting 1,800 photographs from a commonly used work folder on a 2TB drive, it totally fried it, had to be replaced this week.

Nothing like exposing your high profile name in the photo biz and $8,000 of 6 month old hardware to some iOS imitating POS software...

 

[casdev]

I am impressed. I'm running 3 macs + 1 mac server, using them both for fun and professionally. Yes, Lion is very buggy and it has issues which have potential to drive people nuts but overall it's a great leap forward in terms of security, user experience and usability.
And please if you find a bug/glitch just report it to Apple, don't troll the forums.

 

[Watabou]

I would say that I'm fairly impressed. I like some of the new features like full screen and the ability to resize a window from any corner. And I actually like the monochrome finder icons. Mission control is a hit and miss for me but I do like that too.

There are a lot of bugs though and it does feel like a beta. I have 2GB of ram and in SL it was fine since I barely ever used 1.5GB. But now somehow, Activity Monitor says I'm somehow using 1.98GB. And as you might imagine, Lion feels slow some of the time.

But I don't think I would go back to SL though. I'll just wait for Apple to update Lion and hopefully it will run better. I wonder what's taking Apple so long to release 10.7.1. I remember they released 10.6.1 after just a week or something. I don't really mind though. The more time they take, the more bugs they will squash hopefully.

 

[Macshroomer]

And please if you find a bug/glitch just report it to Apple, don't troll the forums.

Yes, do keep it to your self, so that way no one coming on here to read what they might be exposed to in moving to this OS can see it, LOL!

I have used Mac's and their OS systems for over 20 years professionally, from what I have encountered, what my advertising and editorial agencies have encountered, this is by FAR the most bug ridden and dangerous OS to put on a professionally used Mac any of us have ever encountered in terms of early adotption.

That my fellow Mac user, is not a troll....

 

[OW22]

Didn't read past your first line above. It kind of sums it up and nullifies your endorsement of iLion IMO. That said... you probably represent the typical Mac user these days. iLion is now a "casual" OS that appeals to leisure users.

I also think iLion is the first of many OS renditions that will make it pretty much meaningless in the enterprise market. Kind of sad really.

Well I'm sorry, but it does not "nullify" it. Don't be so patronizing. "Power users" may well actually be in the minority of overall Mac users. And having said that, there are still plenty of those who have reported in with no problems.

Yes, do keep it to your self, so that way no one coming on here to read what they might be exposed to in moving to this OS can see it, LOL!

I have used Mac's and their OS systems for over 20 years professionally, from what I have encountered, what my advertising and editorial agencies have encountered, this is by FAR the most bug ridden and dangerous OS to put on a professionally used Mac any of us have ever encountered in terms of early adotption.

That my fellow Mac user, is not a troll....

Is that true? That's it's caused that much grief to you? Well then you have my sympathies for sure. If it's affecting you professionally then that's a different ballgame.