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Is it "safe" to upgrade to Lion now?

L

lgfaver

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 6, 2011
68
0
been waiting for a while to upgrade... i heard a LOT of bad things/complains about Lion.
I decided it was best to hold off and stick with Snow Leopard so that's what i did.

what were some of the major issues with the new update--that have now been resolved?
Would it be fair to say that now it is finally the time to upgrade for those of us who were playing the wait-and-see game?
 
I think its safe to say yes, but theres hardly any noticeable change besides Mission Control and gestures.
 
I've taken a wait & see approach that has served me well.

Rather than rely solely on reports here, I've also purchased a 13" 2011 MBA with Lion installed. After a few weeks with it, I'm still glad I waited and didn't disturb my fully optimized and fast 10.6.5 machines.

While I'm now happy I took this route to experience Lion first hand, I'm not going to bash it. The facts are it's simply different which will appeal to some, just not to me.

My suggestion to the OP, is wait. Give Apple some more time to continue to debug Lion. It's still too early if you're interested in a more stable experience. Anytime there's a major point upgrade, that's to be expected.
 
Like you I was waiting for the bugs to be fixed before doing the upgrade. I just made the change last week but only after cloning my drive so that i could easily go back to Snow Leopard.

My machine was very slow the first day but once indexing had been completed it ran quite well. I also did a memory upgrade and quite happy with it thus far. I had a couple of legacy APPS that would not run but they were not critical ones.

Mission control and Launch Pad are of no interest to me but I just ignore them.
 
nebo1ss said:
Like you I was waiting for the bugs to be fixed before doing the upgrade. I just made the change last week but only after cloning my drive so that i could easily go back to Snow Leopard.

My machine was very slow the first day but once indexing had been completed it ran quite well. I also did a memory upgrade and quite happy with it thus far. I had a couple of legacy APPS that would not run but they were not critical ones.

Mission control and Launch Pad are of no interest to me but I just ignore them.
Click to expand...

exactly, im not interested in those 2 features either.
and yes, i had heard about the machines running slower and hotter? idk...
my MBP is the Feb 2011 release, i was considering selling and buying a new one, would this be worth it? or is Lion miles away from the please experience that is Snow Leopard?
 
lgfaver said:
exactly, im not interested in those 2 features either.
and yes, i had heard about the machines running slower and hotter? idk...
my MBP is the Feb 2011 release, i was considering selling and buying a new one, would this be worth it? or is Lion miles away from the please experience that is Snow Leopard?
Click to expand...

Pretty far. Just stay with SL till theres a later version of Lion.
 
If you like a reliable wifi connection i'd say hold off. Given me nothing but problems.
 
On the flip side, I upgraded a Core 2 Duo Santa Rosa MBP to Lion with no issues at all

And I have a 13" Air with Lion also with no issues

Your mileage may vary, but I have been very pleased with Lion
 
andylyon said:
If you like a reliable wifi connection i'd say hold off. Given me nothing but problems.
Click to expand...

I've been having trouble with the Wi-Fi connection on my first-generation MacBrook Pro, which can't run anything later than Snow Leopard. Do you also suggest I should hold off, too? If so, what's your "expert" advice? Should I install Leopard on it? Perhaps I should content myself with, say, Boot Camp and install MS-DOS 6.22? Would that satisfy your Wi-Fi stability expectations?
 
This is just my personal experience but the wifi has been awful under Lion. I have reinstalled it twice from scratch and still it got no better. It's definitely a Lion problem as my connection works fine under Snow Leopard, Windows XP and 7.

If I was offering advice I would say that if you are in no hurry to upgrade I would wait until at least 10.7.3 and see if it fixes people's problems.
 
I have an early 2011 MBP and Lion runs very well, no bugs at all for me. I do suggest doing a clean install if you decide to upgrade. Also, I suggest maxing the RAM out at 8GB. As far as the gestures, Mission Control, etc go, it takes a few days to get used to them, but after that I really like them.
 
I mentioned in another post recently that I now am comfortable with Lion. I have a mid 2010 15 inch MCP and Lion with all the updates. Initially I had problems with the freezing however that has been resolved after upgrading to the latest version of Flash and the latest update from apple.
 
I'm staying with SL because there are some major work flow changes in Lion that I know I won't like. I know some like the changes, but I'm waiting until they give us the choice.

Some things to consider:
If you are a heavy Spaces/Expose user in SL, you will probably find Mission Control to be a downgrade. In Lion, Spaces isn't in fixed grid, which I find makes it easier and faster to switch between Spaces.

If you have a 2nd monitor, be aware that in Lion if you put an app in Full-Screen mode, your 2nd monitor will go blank making it useless unless the app has more than 1 window.

Make sure you research Resume, Versions or AutoSave. Users have limited to no control over these. So in you don't want them, you might not be able to turn them off.

Finally, be aware the Lion drops "Save As..." and "Do you want to Save?" for what I think is a more complicated Duplicate, then change name or format, and always save.
 
lgfaver said:
Would it be fair to say that now it is finally the time to upgrade for those of us who were playing the wait-and-see game?
Click to expand...

Don't do it. Your macbook will burst into flames. Or maybe not. Upgrade only if you need iCloud.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.
 
A brand new iMac that come with Lion 10.7.2 preinstalled freezes up constantly. Don't do it.

I don't know why your voting me down, if you don't believe me pm me and I will send you that Apple Support ticket number and you can verify it yourself. Lion is GARBAGE.
 
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Great!..if you do a clean install.

Lion is running great on my C2D iMac and my buddy's C2D 2007 White Mac Book; both upgraded via clean installs.


Note: I originally upgraded using the delta (download) install and it ran OK but not near as smooth as Snow Leopard had before. I had already made a DVD from my download so I wiped and re-installed and it's been running great ever since.
 
Disappointed

lgfaver said:
been waiting for a while to upgrade... i heard a LOT of bad things/complains about Lion.
I decided it was best to hold off and stick with Snow Leopard so that's what i did.

what were some of the major issues with the new update--that have now been resolved?
Would it be fair to say that now it is finally the time to upgrade for those of us who were playing the wait-and-see game?
Click to expand...

If you are used to running Aperture 3, I would say NO!

I too have been having this problem with Aperture 3 running under Lion. In order to work any photos at all, I have to close every app before opening Aperture. Once in Aperture, my 8GB of memory just disappears quickly. I have to use an automator script to free up my memory (or close and reopen Aperture) in order to free up my 5GB+ of stollen memory back. My fix still doesn't help me much as I like to keep Chrome running for Gmail, Facebook, etc alerts.

If I could go back in time, I never would have screwed myself by installing Lion. Snow Leopard was rock solid with Aperture running. I was even able to have multiple apps open at once too.
 
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i would wait as well

i ran Lion for about a month. battery life was halved, sub menus in Firefox are broken (still are), i reverted back to SL and my Air has been much happier since. aside from iCloud, theres no compelling reason to go to Lion...
 
I've had no big issues. Don't like how 'Versions' is implemented, maybe just not used to it. Expose has been nearly ruined, I could GAF about 'spaces'. Would like to have some ability to control those, hopefully that's coming in the future either from Apple or some smart dev out there.

I do like gestures and have switched to the magic trackpad.
 
I moved all our computers to Lion. This includes older Mac minis that needed a RAM upgrade. All are running fine. Macbook Pro, Macbooks and several Minis all running fine. The reason I did this was to get iCloud and Photostream. I had been using eyefi to get pics off my phone but I like Photostream better.
 
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