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Let's Stop Avoiding The Hard Truth About Lion

R

ronboutwell

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 26, 2011
9
0
Currently: Kabul Afghanistan. Hometown: Gulfport,
I love my Mac as much as everyone here - really. I'll never own anything else. But let's stop ignoring the Gorilla standing in the corner of the room because we are afraid to let Apple know that we are horribly disappointed in Lion. sure, it has a few cool bells and whistles that set it apart from Snow Leopard but compared to Snow Leopard in is slow as heck and dare I say the word, often unstable. I could not wait to upgrade to Lion and I was never more disappointed afterward. After about 30 days of using it and suffering from almost constant "spinning umbrellas" and an almost brand new MacBook Pro that hangs up during reboots making it necessary to hit the physical power button to complete the operation - I pulled up an old Time Machine backup and gave my Mac what it wanted - a Snow Leopard reinstall. The machine was immediately faster again and I am overjoyed.

Let's see a show of hands - who else finally decided to call Lion a loss of $29 and went back to Snow Leopard? Let's tell Apple what they need to fix to keep "We The Customers" happy.
 
ronboutwell said:
I love my Mac as much as everyone here - really. I'll never own anything else. But let's stop ignoring the Gorilla standing in the corner of the room because we are afraid to let Apple know that we are horribly disappointed in Lion. sure, it has a few cool bells and whistles that set it apart from Snow Leopard but compared to Snow Leopard in is slow as heck and dare I say the word, often unstable. I could not wait to upgrade to Lion and I was never more disappointed afterward. After about 30 days of using it and suffering from almost constant "spinning umbrellas" and an almost brand new MacBook Pro that hangs up during reboots making it necessary to hit the physical power button to complete the operation - I pulled up an old Time Machine backup and gave my Mac what it wanted - a Snow Leopard reinstall. The machine was immediately faster again and I am overjoyed.

Let's see a show of hands - who else finally decided to call Lion a loss of $29 and went back to Snow Leopard? Let's tell Apple what they need to fix to keep "We The Customers" happy.
Click to expand...

I am new to the mac scene so my opinion may not be worth much.

I have a new macbook pro 2011 13 inch. It runs pretty dang smoothly on 10.7.1.

It is lightning fast after putting in 8 gb of ram and a samsung 470 ssd.

No spinning beachballs ...

Maybe you have an older machine that runs better with an older version of the operating system?

My guess is new version of 10.7.2 will have some speed improvements and probably a ton of bug fixes.
 
I have Lion running on an older MBP core 2 duo Santa Rosa and have not experienced any issues either

I don't deny some (vocal) users are having problems, but I would say the vast (silent) majority are not
 
Installing Lion cleanly on my MBP, I've yet to incur any problems. I was pretty harsh on apple/Lion early on but I think they did in fact produce a good OS. Like any initial releases we need to wait until the bug fixes are released.

So to that point I think the gorilla in the corner is more like a chimpanzee :D
 
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I have not installed it but there are a couple of issues that needed to be worked out for me. The Wacom issues and now there's a reported issue with Sketchbook Pro. As a user of both, I want to wait for things to iron out a bit before I jump ship.
 
I'm a new mac user two (6 months maybe, can't pin it down exactly). I had several months of SL usage before Lion and honestly, I don't have any problems with Lion.
 
I learned after the last update to wait to install any shiny-new OS to my production MacPro until at least 2 or 3 rev cycles. I love Apple OSX, and will eventually make the jump to Lion once it is cleaned up. To expect a new OS to run perfectly on every user's mac is folly. No amount of testing is going to catch every possible configuration out there, nor is every piece of the OS going to work perfectly. Apple has always made the adjustments over time, and I still trust in them.

The sole issue that concerns me from the tons of posts here is the move to an iPad/iPhone style experience for everyone, including desktop users like myself. I'd prefer a way/option to disable or not install that part of things, as it does not improve my experience at all. Perhaps desktop users are being seen as dinosaurs-to-be. Hope that will not happen too soon.
 
designer22 said:
I learned after the last update to wait to install any shiny-new OS to my production MacPro until at least 2 or 3 rev cycles. I love Apple OSX, and will eventually make the jump to Lion once it is cleaned up. To expect a new OS to run perfectly on every user's mac is folly. No amount of testing is going to catch every possible configuration out there, nor is every piece of the OS going to work perfectly. Apple has always made the adjustments over time, and I still trust in them.

The sole issue that concerns me from the tons of posts here is the move to an iPad/iPhone style experience for everyone, including desktop users like myself. I'd prefer a way/option to disable or not install that part of things, as it does not improve my experience at all. Perhaps desktop users are being seen as dinosaurs-to-be. Hope that will not happen too soon.
Click to expand...

You don't have to use LaunchPad, and that is the most iOS type thing in Lion
And you don't have to use the gestures

I honestly never even think about Launchpad or Mission Control
 
No problems here with Lion either. In fact I think my iMac was at about 30 days uptime before I had to install some patches this morning which required a reboot. This is daily use, surfing, e-mail, Ripit, Handbrake, Fusion (XP for work), iPhoto, iCal, etc.

Some people like to blow things out of proportion. :rolleyes:
 
designer22 said:
I learned after the last update to wait to install any shiny-new OS to my production MacPro until at least 2 or 3 rev cycles. I love Apple OSX, and will eventually make the jump to Lion once it is cleaned up. To expect a new OS to run perfectly on every user's mac is folly. No amount of testing is going to catch every possible configuration out there, nor is every piece of the OS going to work perfectly. Apple has always made the adjustments over time, and I still trust in them.

The sole issue that concerns me from the tons of posts here is the move to an iPad/iPhone style experience for everyone, including desktop users like myself. I'd prefer a way/option to disable or not install that part of things, as it does not improve my experience at all. Perhaps desktop users are being seen as dinosaurs-to-be. Hope that will not happen too soon.
Click to expand...

As far as I've read, you can turn a lot of those features off...
 
Meh. I've had a few issues with Lion (kernel panic, freezing) but on the whole it's been fine on my mid-2009 13" MBP. I don't love / use all the new features (hello launchpad), but others (versions, natural scroll, recovery partition) I wouldn't want to do without.

I think Lion signals Apple's increasing confidence in doing their own thing & pushing the desktop OS further than other vendors, who are now playing catch up.

So I'm happy - it's still the OS X I know & love, but a little better (apart from the odd issue ... but hey ho)

Mind you, my wife's new screaming fast MBA makes me want to buy an SSD & do a clean install ..
 
The hard truth about Lion is that it works great for some, and not so well for others. Keep in mind, it's still in version 10.7.1. It's still very early, and of course there are going to be problems. Just because it doesn't work well on your particular setup doesn't mean that it's that way for everyone. And I know that just because it's working well for me, that doesn't mean that others aren't having problems. But I never switch to a new OS with the assumption that everything will just be peachy. If you want things that way, you need to stick with an OS that's been around for a few years.
 
OP - the hard truth about Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion... is that some users will not have a smooth transition. They then come on MacRumors and complain, giving readers the incorrect impression that the newest OS is the worst thing since unsliced bread. MOST user are having little to no issues. My 2009 MacPro has new life and is way faster than it was on SL. I've held off on my wife's 2011 iMac because of sore reported issues. And, as mentioned before, most feature you don't like can be turned on/off.

Sorry for your experience. It is the exception rather than the rule.
 
johnhurley said:
I am new to the mac scene so my opinion may not be worth much.

I have a new macbook pro 2011 13 inch. It runs pretty dang smoothly on 10.7.1.

It is lightning fast after putting in 8 gb of ram and a samsung 470 ssd.

No spinning beachballs ...

Maybe you have an older machine that runs better with an older version of the operating system?

My guess is new version of 10.7.2 will have some speed improvements and probably a ton of bug fixes.
Click to expand...
Similar boat as you.

Brand new to the OSx world.

But i bought the 11" AIR with 2gb ram and 64gb SSD.

I have only gotten the Beachball of doom when loading itunes.

Heck, I've been playing World of Warcrack on this thing, and while not the prettiest, it runs smooth enough, and no Spinning beach balls.
 
designer22 said:
The sole issue that concerns me from the tons of posts here is the move to an iPad/iPhone style experience for everyone, including desktop users like myself. I'd prefer a way/option to disable or not install that part of things
Click to expand...
To me, about the only "iOS style" experience in Lion is the Launchpad app, which I think was a very strategic move by Apple, as it makes app launching/management on a Mac instantly familiar to the tens of millions iOS users that have never used a Mac before.

As it doesn't take anything away from desktop users (i.e. you can simply drag the Launchpad dock icon off and pretend it never existed), I don't see its inclusion as having any negative impact. :confused:

The the OP, no Lion issues here. I run it 40 hours a week at work (on a mini) and an hour or so at home every night (on an Air). I get no beach balls, nor does it run any slower.
 
From Leopard to Snow Leopard, and Snow Leopard to Lion--Time will tell

I remember Snow Leopard being pretty slow at outset, and my dissapointment turned into denial, but after time I got used to it. Perhaps with Lion, we will all get used to it as well. Sure, there are some bumps in the road, but with some hotfixes and patches, I believe Apple will right what they have wronged, and the most advanced OS will stand true to its name.
 
I'm new to Mac, and my brand new MacBook Pro had Lion built-in from the get-go, and I must say that the Lion experience is wonderfully -- even leagues above that of Windows 7.

Sorry to hear you're having such a hard time, but Lion is great for me!
 
Tons of issues myself. I am now running Win 7 via bootcamp full time until Apple gets it fixed.
 
The only problem I had with Lion was that my entire system would freeze up when playing some flash videos. However, that problem went way when I updated to 10.7.1.

The hard truth, for me at least, is that Lion works great. It hasn't blown me out of the water with it's new features really (I think the only one I use on a regular basis is full-screen mode), but I think I got my 30 dollars worth.
 
ronboutwell said:
But let's stop ignoring the Gorilla standing in the corner of the room because we are afraid to let Apple know that we are horribly disappointed in Lion.

Let's see a show of hands - who else finally decided to call Lion a loss of $29 and went back to Snow Leopard? Let's tell Apple what they need to fix to keep "We The Customers" happy.
Click to expand...

Absolutely, but have you let Apple know?

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

As for me, I've got 7 Macs and 4 are running Lion. Issues have been minor and seem to be related to performing upgrades rather than fresh installs. The final three systems run Snow Leopard (one the Server version) and since they perform dedicated tasks would see no possible improvement with an upgrade.

I've submitted feedback on numerous issues (slow booting with network login, Aperture full screen becoming awkwardly slow and visually annoying, failure of all four Macs to sleep based on Energy Saver settings, minimized apps don't resume minimized, multiple instances of identical network shares, poor operation of full screen apps with multiple monitors, awkwardness of Mission Control with multiple monitors, documents on network shares don't create versions and there is no warning given, new local Time Machine fills up the drive). If you haven't, you should submit feedback too!

Lion is a really radical change, much more so that the others I've been through (Panther->Tiger, Tiger->Leopard, Leopard->Snow Leopard) and I'm not surprised there are problems.
 
ronboutwell said:
I love my Mac as much as everyone here
Click to expand...
Since this is your first and only post in this forum, I suspect your intentions and I don't take your post very seriously. While Lion isn't flawless (no OS is), your post sounds quite biased and not based on a realistic evaluation of the pros and cons and based only on one individual installation, which may have other factors affecting your performance beyond the OS itself. Is Lion perfect? Absolutely not? Is it as bad as you claim? Absolutely not.
 
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