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Lion or Snow Leopard?

I like the new Mail interface, so much so that it has replaced Thunderbird on my own MacBook Pro as my client of choice.
The gestures I'm getting used to and are about the one thing that is stopping me going back to Snow Leopard.
Versions I think is a great idea.

The whole app resume thing, I hate. I turned it off.
Reopen windows after restart. I REALLY want to turn that off.
Auto-save I think is a terrible one, especially if you open a doc and inadvertently change something without realising. I'd go as far as to say it's the one thing that is pushing me towards going back to Snow Leopard. You can see somebody in Apple thought it was a bad idea when you look at the description under the Options button in Time Machine: "Lock Documents after last edit. Prevents accidental changes in applications that support Auto Save." That whole description tells you why it's a bad idea.

Anyway, just my tuppence worth.
 
The battery on my Mac Pro 2010 is depleted in a four hours. I used to be able to use it for 9 hours with no issue... settings are still the same.
 
I can't think of any good reasons to upgrade.

I felt much the same when Snow Leopard came out; didn't upgrade until .2 or .3 when most of the bugs had been worked out.

Also Apple got a few things wrong, like full screen support with multiple monitors, eliminating "Save as" and Mission control. The sad thing is I doubt these will be fixed as Apple hasn't been one to make major changes in the OS interface in maintenance updates. :p

So we may eventually get stuck with Lion's problems as we upgrade to newer hardware that can't run Snow Leopard, or need software that requires Lion's APIs. Sigh.
 
jusacruiser said:
Oh no! :eek: Is Lion the "New Coke"?? Maybe they should revert back to Snow Leopard and call it "Snow Leopard Classic!"
Click to expand...

One can hope. :rolleyes:

But alas... I fear iLion is here to stay. Apple is weening us off the desktop metaphor. In 4 years it will all be a single OS.

There's always bootcamp and Windows 8. :D
 
I'd say Lion because of the full screen apps. Also, I use WiFi a lot but I haven't noticed the issue, my wifi is working as good as SL. But mission control is pretty annoying tho, prefer the old Exposé.
 
Snow Leopard

I am staying with Snow Leopard, so much so that when I finally get my MBA for my birthday I will be getting a previous generation one, since it seems I can not downgrade a new one.

For my tastes, my decision has nothing to do with bugs, but with features. I do not like inconsistent UI elements, so iCal and Contacts immediately got on my nerves. I know there is a skin crack, but it's not a perfect solution.

I am not a fan of software making decisions for me, so the new versioning system for file management is not for me.

Some of the features, while "neat" are, for me, useless. There is the classic response of "you don't have to use them" but this is not a reason to upgrade either. Launchpad and Airdrop fall into this category.

Mail was the only application I wish I could have in SL. The improvements there are quite good and if I could have purchased just the mail app for $30, I would have done so without complaint.

To me, Lion does everything power users do not want, which is to take control of your machine and protecting you from yourself, so I don't really see much possibility that future bug fixes will change my mind, since that is not my problem.
 
Normally I'm a fairly early adopter, but after trying Lion I went back to SL.

Things I didn't like were:
1) The loss of Spaces
2) The problem running a MacBook Pro with the lid open, but only using a second screen, and not the laptop screen,
3) The Screen backgrounds resetting constantly on the Spaces replacement
4) The battery level being around half what it was on SL.

When some of the above issues are fixed (I don't expect Spaces will ever return, though), then I might go there again. But not for a while.
 
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not impressed

I honestly have to say (on my Intel 17'' Mac iCore7) that I am not at all impressed with Lion - my system slowed right down, several crashes a day, trouble with my external drive being put to sleep and not being able to wake up once accessed (not a problem on my snow leopard machine); overall very very poor performance; it feels like a windows machine honestly before windows 7, which is more stable than Lion I am sad to say. Apple needs to work on a service pack/update right away...please; for now, I am re-installing snow leopard!
 
Estra said:
Are you having trouble with a macbook regarding wifi issues? Do you have an idea if there are similar issues with the iMac/ it's as worse?
Click to expand...

I am using Lion on a 2011 27" iMac and a 2009 17" MacBook Pro. I have found no WiFi issues with either using Lion. In fact, the iMac that is running Lion now has faster WiFi access (162Mb/s) vs. when I was using Snow Leopard on it (108Mb/s).
 
I was on lion but something went wrong and had to format well i did not have the net at the time and to use the recovery HD to reinstall Lion you need to internet (that's a fail for a recovery HD).

So i had to install SL. i am going to stay on SL until at least 10.7.3
 
I have Lion installed on my iMac and MBP. Except for slower boot times and lower battery life on my MBP my experience has been fine.
 
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Boo The Hamster said:
Colour scheme : Aqua has become a dull grey, which looks boring, and makes active / non-functioning tabs difficult to discriminate between. Not the end of the world, but a step back in my view.

Too many gimmicks : Launchpad, the screen animations, making the traffic lights so small as to be impractical to use
Click to expand...

Grey is way less distracting than aqua. Sure SL is more colorful, but a colorful interface attracts too much attention. I missed the color at first, but after using Lion for a few weeks I find it to be superior. It was a great move to make the interface more "invisible," washed-out looking compared to SL. I find it much easier now to focus on the content inside the window. Same with the traffic lights. They are better now because they are less distracting. The SL traffic lights are bigger and brighter. I wouldn't mind an aqua interface as long as it recedes into the background.
 
Lion 10.7.3 - when does it come, do you think?

chaosbunny said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; de-de) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

Snow Leopard, for now. Wait for 10.7.3 or something and upgrade with ease, once first version bugs and problems with 3rd party software are patched. Same rule for all OS updates.
Click to expand...

Perhaps an impossible question to answer, but does anyone have a clue about when this version or another more mature version of Lion will be available, based on earlier experience?
 
No "Save as..."?!

WSR said:
From what I've read in these forums, since I'm still using Snow Leopard, this is what I've so far concluded.

Don't update to Lion if:
#1 You use Spaces and Expose extensively. You'll find Mission Control to be a downgrade.
#2 You have a 2nd monitor and often you use it to do other things in 1 monitor while having an app in full-screen mode in the other. Lion's full-screen mode makes multiple monitors useless.
#3 You frequently use the "Save As..." option. Lion doesn't have it.

I'm planning on waiting for Apple to fix these bugs before I update. That is assuming I don't hear about others.
Click to expand...

Sorry if I am completely off the point here (due to lack of knowledge). But does this mean that in Word 2011 with Lion OS the "Save as..." option for saving documents is NOT THERE?!?!

Please correct me or inform me!
 
Good News Everybody....Time to buy Lion! :)

Good news everybody!

Mac World gave Lion a favorable review!

For those of you sitting on the fence, it is ok to get the Lion.

Just read the Mac World review and you will be convinced!
 
jusacruiser said:
Good news everybody!

Mac World gave Lion a favorable review!

For those of you sitting on the fence, it is ok to get the Lion.

Just read the Mac World review and you will be convinced!
Click to expand...

I read the review on Friday, and the experiences of the reviewer are pretty much on par with mine. Yes, there are a few bugs, but over all I love Lion.
 
I don't get why there is so much hate for lion at the moment, I'm an average user and it doesn't seem much different from snow leopard in terms of performance.

I don't know if you lot are geeks or whatever, but for the average consumer and user of macs, i would say this is a pretty decent update.

----------
mark28 said:
Snow Leopard.

Lion sucks with WIFI, which is very important.
Click to expand...

what do you mean? I have been on my new macbook air for about 5 hours now. And the WIFI works just like my macbook pro 2010l.
 
Back to SL for me too. Reasons:-
1) Much cooler to use (actually the MacBook is no longer scorching on my wrists)
2) Much faster in general us and now never beachballs - against Lion where it was like looking at a beach scene.
3) Runs Parallels much faster.
4) Has an amazing Windows managment system called Spaces and Expose, Lion may look preety but it is a massive backwards steps. You want to see easily what documents, folders you have open, not a stack.
5) Sleep and then voila i've still got wi-fi.

I don't need gimmicks like Launchpad, for multi-touch gestures I have them in spades, use Multi Touch Tool.
 
I was using bay 4 on my mac pro for a Windows 7 Boot Camp drive. I had a spare 1TB hard drive laying around, so I pulled the Windows drive out, formatted the spare drive, and installed a fresh copy of Lion on it so I can dual boot.

After playing around with Lion for a short time, I made the following observations:
1. Most of the apps that are important to me are Lion-compatible. So that's good. Path Finder seems less stable though.
2. LaunchPad: I don't see the need for it on a desktop or laptop computer. Swiping through pages of apps seems very inefficient to me. Spotlight, Launchbar (which is what I use), Alfred, or simply clicking on a dock icon can get you there faster. On an iPhone, yes, I see its usefulness. On a desktop? Not so much. In fact, it was the first icon I removed from the dock. Apple says that you can delete apps from LaunchPad also, but I haven't had a chance to try it.
3. This is a big one: I'm a heavy Spaces user and the current implementation of it in Mission Control seems unfinished. Not being able to drag an app from one desktop to another without first making it the active desktop is a step backwards. Also, I prefer to arrange my Spaces 2 x 2. I don't have that option anymore. I hope they change this in a future release.
4. Mail: Finally, I don't have to install Widemail to get mail to look as it should (in my opinion).
5. Being able to resize a window from any edge: even though I use a Dell laptop for work and do this all the time on the Dell, I'll have to get used to this on a mac. Instinctively I go for the lower right corner, but it's a welcome change for me.

For me, they're going to have to fix the Spaces replacement before I make this the primary OS on any of my macs. Most of the rest of the changes for my uses are cosmetic, so I'll make the move...just not now.
 
In my opinion, you can't go wrong with either (I like both). I've been using Lion extensively for almost a month now. It's been a super smooth transition for me. Things about Lion which I have found to be a vast improvement over SL:

-- The interface isn't as colorful as SL. In comparison, the Lion UI looks a little drab and washed out. But that's the point. Lion just recedes into the background to let you totally focus on what's inside the window. If I went back to SL, I think I'd find the UI very distracting.

-- Zooming in and out, a feature I use all the time (yes, I probably need glasses), works even better with Lion.

-- Super smooth two finger swiping to go back and forth from page to page within an app, while retaining three/four finger swipe to move from app to app.

-- "Show path bar" in Finder.

-- "New Folder with Selection" in Finder lets you group documents together and move them as a group.

-- Letting me assign a different desktop to each space really makes it seem like I have different spaces rather than different copies of the same space. Having different pictures gives each space it's own unique feel.

-- As someone who forgets to save, auto save and versions are godsends.

-- Those with iMacs as well as those who use peripheral monitors have been bitching about full screen apps, but for those of us who are on notebooks (mine has a 13" screen) and who don't use monitors, full screen is a major plus. I love the way full screen automatically opens a new space. It would've been a huge mistake to have new full screen windows opening in the same space. Mail is so much easier to read in full screen.

-- The new "change item arrangement" feature in the Finder window is great for sorting and ordering all your stuff by kind.

-- Power users have piled scorn on All My Files, claiming it's for people who don't understand how files work in os x. However, for the average user it is a quick way to access your files, especially when you forget where you placed a particular item.

-- The scroll bars only appear when you scroll. Some people miss them. I don't. The fact that they are gone makes windows look less cluttered. Again, this is probably welcomed more by macbook users than imac people.

The most annoying thing about Lion for me is a very minor but irritating thing: When secondary clicking is activated as tapping with two fingers, the secondary menu pane keeps popping up when you scroll with two fingers. The machine all too often reads two finger scrolling as two finger tapping. Although it can be disabled, the alternate method of reserving a corner of the trackpad entails its own annoyances -- namely, losing access to that area of the trackpad for standard clicking.
 
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