Lion - Not really for iMac users

[OW22]

This is obviously just my feeling. But this more "iOS" based OS is better suited to MacBooks.

Why would an iMac user, especially a 27in user need full screen apps? Yes, on an MBA I'm sure it's very useful but not for an iMac. Expose and Spaces were fine the way they were in SL. Launchpad again is better suited to Notebook users. On the iMac, a Mouse click on the apps folder in the dock does the same thing as LP. I can see the benefit for Notebook users in using a gesture to open LP alright, but for Desktop users it's not really needed.

You wonder should Apple have made two versions, one more geared to Desktops which would have a very subtle upgrade of SL with options to turn off any of the superfluous gimmicks you don't want and go back to normal spaces etc and then leave Lion as is for Notebook users?

Lion seems to be as buggy as hell judging by the posts on this site and others. I got my iMac last week and will not use the redemption key to upgrade to Lion yet, certainly until a lot of the bugs are sorted. I use a trackpad as well and the gestures are perfect for SL on the iMac imho.

 

[tersono]

Yes, Lion brings many benefits to laptop users, but there's lots of goodies for desktop users too. Hell, I'd have paid the upgrade fee for the improvements to Mail alone.

As for being 'buggy as hell', that's the usual clarion cry whenever a new OS comes out. Yes, there are a few little gotchas here and there, but nothing showstopping.

I'm using Lion on a macbook pro 17, 21" iMac and a 27" iMac - the latter being in a production environment. Both iMacs have trackpads, so finding the new gestures useful. No real issues worth worrying about.

 

[OW22]

Yes, Lion brings many benefits to laptop users, but there's lots of goodies for desktop users too. Hell, I'd have paid the upgrade fee for the improvements to Mail alone.

As for being 'buggy as hell', that's the usual clarion cry whenever a new OS comes out. Yes, there are a few little gotchas here and there, but nothing showstopping.

I'm using Lion on a macbook pro 17, 21" iMac and a 27" iMac - the latter being in a production environment. Both iMacs have trackpads, so finding the new gestures useful. No real issues worth worrying about.

I know what you are saying, but if you follow the threads here and on the Apple discussions forum and elsewhere, you will see a lot of very cheesed off people. This has gone beyond the usual few bugs and people have been rolling back to SL after bad experiences. Of course any new upgrade is going to have some bugs, but too many users are having issues with Lion. I've read many who say they've been on to Apple for hours to try and resolve the issues. On the Apple Discussion forum one user said one of the Apple Geniuses in the store advised rolling back to SL until fixes come out.

I wonder is this in a small, way a consequence of Bertrand Serlet leaving Apple.

 

[sth]

This has gone beyond the usual few bugs and people have been rolling back to SL after bad experiences. Of course any new upgrade is going to have some bugs, but too many users are having issues with Lion.

That's not the impression I get. Having tested the preview releases, I expected more of a FCP-X style ****storm, to be honest. So far, I mainly see a people in "Geek Panic" (©JS), some people complaining about incompatibilities and some people having driver problems. All of that is not unprecedented in the Apple world. Whenever a new version of OSX was released, there were always some people rolling back to the previous release because of bugs or incompatibilities.

As always: If you depend on it, avoid the .0 release (applies to just about anything technological these days)
And especially for OS upgrades: Check application compatibility first.

I've read many who say they've been on to Apple for hours to try and resolve the issues. On the Apple Discussion forum one user said one of the Apple Geniuses in the store advised rolling back to SL until fixes come out.

There seems to be a driver bug affecting some iMac models – which is very bad because there's not much you can do about that except wait for a fix. But I guess 10.7.1 is just around the corner. Looking back, it took them less than two weeks to release 10.6.1 back in the day.

I wonder is this in a small, way a consequence of Bertrand Serlet leaving Apple.

At this time, things are going the same way they did with every recent OSX release, so I don't see anything that would suggest that.

 

[OW22]

As always: If you depend on it, avoid the .0 release (applies to just about anything technological these days)
And especially for OS upgrades: Check application compatibility first.

I agree with that absolutely. If you're dependent on your mac and could not afford any downtime, don't upgrade yet.

My mac is for personal use, but personally speaking, I won't upgrade either. There's no rush, I don't need Launchpad, Mission control etc. My System is running great at the moment so I'll wait a couple of months and do it then.

 

[MonkeySee....]

Aperture/iPhoto are beautiful full screen. (which they were before lion) But its nice that you can stick them on their own desktop incase you need to check other things.

 

[solowmodel]

I installed Lion on a 27" iMac and I agree with some of your points. Full screen apps are unnecessary for one. However, I quite like Mission Control on the big screen, and I actually quite like Launchpad with it's extra big icons. Don't regret upgrading tbh.

 

[sth]

I agree with that absolutely. If you're dependent on your mac and could not afford any downtime, don't upgrade yet.

My mac is for personal use, but personally speaking, I won't upgrade either. There's no rush, I don't need Launchpad, Mission control etc. My System is running great at the moment so I'll wait a couple of months and do it then.

Same here (except that I use this machine primarily for work). Still running 10.6.8.
I do have Lion installed on a seperate disk but only for testing application compatibility before the upgrade (looks good so far).
Waiting for 10.7.1 before switching.

 

[fhall1]

I purchased my copy of Lion, but won't install for a couple releases....I think I waited until 10.6.3 before installing SL. Gives Apple and third party software and hardware developers plenty of time to squash the bigger incompatibilities anyway.

 

[Winni]

I use Lion on a 27" iMac i5 and don't have any major or show stopping issues with it. It has a few bugs and annoyances, but Lion is a MUCH better dot zero release than Leopard and Snow Leopard were when they came out.

I don't use Mission Control, but I never used Exposé and Spaces either. In my book, those are completely useless features and I just don't see any benefit in them - especially not when you have a 27" iMac or a system with two or more displays connected to it.

I occasionally use LaunchPad and although it looks quite ridiculous on a 27" screen - the application icons are almost as big as big as my "noiseless" mouse - it's not as bad as I originally thought it was. But it's also not really useful either; a Mac is not an iPad and Apple shouldn't pursue that idea any further. But anyway, LaunchPad with its gigantic icons is good for a laugh now and then.

The new version of Apple Mail has become quite good, by the way. I like the "conversations" view very much, the app feels much faster than its predecessors when you have a couple of thousands of emails in your folders and the search function also works very well. Apple Mail is now good again.

On the other hand, I have zero need for FaceTime.

The "new" Finder is horribly ugly and even more chaotic than the "old" Finder was. Here, I'm going to say it: I wish they would port Windows Explorer over to the Mac. Microsoft got it, but Apple never understood what a file manager should be like.

If Lion would have been a 129 bucks update like Leopard, it would have been a complete rip off. Because, actually, we now have LESS important features in the operating system than we had before: Rosetta is gone, and that alone can quickly be a killer argument against Lion. 32-Bit Intel CPUs are no longer supported, and when you still use one of those early 2006 Macs, you'll probably be rather pissed off that you cannot even stay up to date for five years with that hardware. And five years are the minimum lifespan for business hardware. And then there is this unlucky situation with Java on a Mac. Apple's own Java is officially deprecated and will only be downloaded should there be an application requesting the Java VM and Oracle's implementation for Mac OS X is nowhere to be seen. And Java still is important, especially in a business environment.

That really leads to the question WHY one should upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion in the first place. Snow Leopard also had a 64-Bit kernel and although Lion feels generally a bit faster, it's not nearly enough performance gain to justify an upgrade. Also, Snow Leopard currently is definitely more mature and has less bugs. And it runs Rosetta, comes with a Java VM pre-installed and still supports 32-Bit CPUs. But, as always, Apple will simply make more and more software incompatible with Snow Leopard and people will sooner or later be forced to upgrade to Lion.

 

[aliensporebomb]

iMac

I've been running Lion on my Corei7 iMac 27" (late 2009) with 16 gigs of memory. In all truth if you "ignore" the additions it's similar to Snow Leopard in every way and in fact I'm getting better math performance (benchmarks bear it out) and I get more OpenGL performance.

The things that everyone are complaining about can be ignored (don't like launchpad or mission control? don't use them) or changed (don't like the gestures? There are ways to switch it back the way it was).

 

[Sodner]

Poeple come to forums and such to COMPLAIN and GET HELP. People do not come her to say "Lion is working perfectly for me!".

There are NO major show stopping bugs in Lion. Sure a few apps may no be compatible but 99% of Apple's user community is probably perfectly happy with Lion.

Sorry YOU don't like it on your iMac, but on my iMac with trackpad I find it to be just as useful as it is on my Air.

 

[John T]

I too can see no advantage in upgrading to Lion. Snow Leopard suits me just fine. What's more I have a few apps like MS Word, Photoshop and Toast which, being the Power PC versions, are obviously incompatible with Lion.

 

[cooky560]

I dont think that Lion is that unusable on iMac, most of the gestures are still replaceable by the row of F keys on the keyboard (F3 for mission control etc), the abomination that is LaunchPad can easily be removed from the doc (or trashed entirely if you feel so inclined), and it's pretty easy to turn off the strange new scrolling behaviour also

 

[sth]

...

The downsides you describe are true, but mostly apply to geeks and power users.
Apple has repeatedly shown that these are not their primary target. Therefore, a lot of the new features in Lion (e.g. Launchpad) specifically target the non-geeks out there. Other features, such as Autosave and Resume, may seem strange to power users at first but could end up being quite useful – if we learn to break with some decades-old habits.

Anyway, I think the Lion review by John Siracusa pretty much nails it.


PS: Your posting contradicts your signature.

 

[AndersThyme]

@Winni

I use Lion on a 27" iMac i5 and don't have any major or show stopping issues with it. It has a few bugs and annoyances, but Lion is a MUCH better dot zero release than Leopard and Snow Leopard were when they came out.
- I agree

I don't use Mission Control, but I never used Exposé and Spaces either. In my book, those are completely useless features and I just don't see any benefit in them - especially not when you have a 27" iMac or a system with two or more displays connected to it.
- That you don't use features has no relevance what so ever on a discussion like this. The features are perfectly suited to make your work easier on the iMac.

I occasionally use LaunchPad and although it looks quite ridiculous on a 27" screen - the application icons are almost as big as big as my "noiseless" mouse - it's not as bad as I originally thought it was. But it's also not really useful either; a Mac is not an iPad and Apple shouldn't pursue that idea any further. But anyway, LaunchPad with its gigantic icons is good for a laugh now and then.
- Your idea of a computer is very old school it seems, there is nothing wrong with pursuing ideas that will combine the best from the different platforms. Launchpad is just a better applications folder for iMac users, but a HUGE upgrade for Air's and Pro users..

The new version of Apple Mail has become quite good, by the way. I like the "conversations" view very much, the app feels much faster than its predecessors when you have a couple of thousands of emails in your folders and the search function also works very well. Apple Mail is now good again.
- Agree

On the other hand, I have zero need for FaceTime.
- Again, that you don't use it, does not make it useless.. I use it daily..

The "new" Finder is horribly ugly and even more chaotic than the "old" Finder was. Here, I'm going to say it: I wish they would port Windows Explorer over to the Mac. Microsoft got it, but Apple never understood what a file manager should be like.
- Okay if you feel that way.. I, personally, would never choose the windows file manager over a mac..

That really leads to the question WHY one should upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion in the first place. Snow Leopard also had a 64-Bit kernel and although Lion feels generally a bit faster, it's not nearly enough performance gain to justify an upgrade. Also, Snow Leopard currently is definitely more mature and has less bugs. And it runs Rosetta, comes with a Java VM pre-installed and still supports 32-Bit CPUs. But, as always, Apple will simply make more and more software incompatible with Snow Leopard and people will sooner or later be forced to upgrade to Lion.
- For the price of Lion you could hardly expect an upgrade bigger than this.. Be reasonable lol

 

[Vantage Point]

Why would an iMac user, especially a 27in user need full screen apps? Yes, on an MBA I'm sure it's very useful but not for an iMac.

I understand your point but keep in mind that laptop users may also use an external monitor. I use a 26" high end NEC monitor, mostly for photo editing.

As a side note I did not upgrade nor am I in a rush. I did go to my local Apple store check it out and was not impressed at all - feel more like they just rearranged the furniture for a new look (actually I didn't like it at all and couldn't get a straight answer from the Apple guy about the tangible advantages). The gestures really threw me and slowed me down, especially something as simple as scrolling a web page in the opposite direction.

What struck me the most is that Macs are supposed to be simple and intuitive. I move to macs in 2010 and loved it. Now, I suspect that the learning curve for Windows users will be far more involved and thus partially negates the desire for a windows person to make the higher cash investment to make the move. Explain all this to grandma....

I guess eventually I will make the move but no rush. Plus, I think I will also need to wait for 'How to Lion' books to start shipping.

 

[MacHamster68]

i guess you are right there , long time computer users dont need most of those gadgets , they are happy with a very simple operating system as they know where everything is anyway ..some might even know how to use the terminal, ..like me i love terminal commands ..ok i am a linux user too ( red hat ) and OS9 and Tiger are my prefered Mac OS and windows 3.1 and windows 2000 (not to be confused with that crappy windows millenium)is still my prefered windows OS
and i dont feel its a good idea to make operating systems to simple to use , sorry i feel it takes the fun out of it, i just dont want to do things with just a few mouseclicks

i admit i drive only manual cars , automatic or those paddle things are nothing i would ever want in a car , just because i think i want to be in control , not some little computer

 

[MacBoobsPro]

Full screen in Safari on my 27" does look a bit ridiculous. I've never been a 'full screen guy' as it just slows your workflow but for just messing around and looking at iphoto or iTunes etc its ok. I wouldnt want my design apps fullscreen as I need quick access to the desktop for dragging and dropping etc. For me its just a gimmick, it doesnt really add that much (to a large screen anyway).

 

[TheBaconKing]

I like iTunes full screen, but that is about it for me. Safari would be nice (sometimes) full screen if I could see the bookmark bar always.

Even though there is auto save, I will probably still use the cmd-s shortcut a bunch when working.

 

[Spike88]

Not too sure if Lion is for laptops or laptops / desktops.

I'm seeing way too many "it runs hot with Flash", "it now hangs" type posts with Lion. Both of these items worry me. Since my iMac works and its cool using SL, I'm going to leave "as is". Probably leave "as is" (using SL) until many of these threads stop appearing...

.

 

[jjvdhoef]

I always used expose on my iMac, but that has been replaced by swiping to different spaces. I'm loving Lion, and none of my apps have had serious problems. I use statistical software a lot (spss) which tends to be flaky, but no problems whatsoever.

I seriously love mission control and the new spaces. Launchpad hasn't seen much use, but then again I didn't use the application folder either. cmd space to the finder is the way I launch apps.

@winni
Really, windows explorer? :s I use windows 7 as well and its pretty great, but finder works just as well.

The five year cycle still applies, snow leopard is still supported. Rosetta should have been abandoned years ago.

 

[OW22]

Poeple come to forums and such to COMPLAIN and GET HELP. People do not come her to say "Lion is working perfectly for me!".

There are NO major show stopping bugs in Lion. Sure a few apps may no be compatible but 99% of Apple's user community is probably perfectly happy with Lion.

Sorry YOU don't like it on your iMac, but on my iMac with trackpad I find it to be just as useful as it is on my Air.

Well they do actually come to forums to say their Lion is working fine. It's usually in response to people who are reporting issues. Just becuase there are users out there who have had no issues upgrading, you can't extrapolate that to the entire mac user base and just assume that either there are no real issues, or that those who have upgraded are IT dolts who did something wrong. If you read the issues, they're from all angles. People who did clean installs, people on relatively brand new machines, people on older machines, people who do know what they're talking about, people who are a little bit more green then others and so on.

It seems to be very hit and miss. Some are having no problems and some are and it's driving them mad.

Apple's iOS has been such a success, it's just inevitable that a lot of features from there will arrive on the PC's. And a lot of the features are very good, the trackpad with gestures is excellent as is the App store as a simple way to buy apps and keep them updated. The money is in iOS devices, that will increase and that tail will wag the Mac dog from now on imho. Serlet leaving Apple will just increase that further.

But I'm sure Apple will give users the ability to tweak their OS versions in the future, to keep the Mac users who don't want all the fluff happy.

 

[sth]

i guess you are right there , long time computer users dont need most of those gadgets , they are happy with a very simple operating system as they know where everything is anyway

On the other hand, I know a lot of people that have used computers for more than 20 years and still don't know their way around the filesystem.

i dont feel its a good idea to make operating systems to simple to use , sorry i feel it takes the fun out of it

The problem is: If everyone felt like that, computers would still look like this and almost noone would be able to use them.

The only thing that enables "normal people" to use all this technology around us right now is abstraction, and Apple has always been a pioneer when it comes to that. Lion is only the latest step.

 

[MacHamster68]

thats true , , i know a couple mates who cant even handle their database of 1 gb and need a hour to find a app , so for those and for children i guess lion is perfect

btw can i get the altair, it would fit great next to my pet ,no not the fur type one, my pet is made by commodore and still in use for general office tasks , just for the fun