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Lion or Snow Leopard?

klaxamazoo said:
I also have found Lion to be a big stop below Snow Leopard in terms of usability. It has a lot of good ideas but is really, really low on polish. Things like iCal and Address Book look like absolute crap while also providing lower levels of usability. I find that Versions add more work and worry to my workflow as opposed to making my life easier, which is what is supposed to do.

Mission Control really killed Lion for me and I am actually looking forward to selling my Macbook Air next week because I just hate using it. Which is sad because the hardware is amazing.

Tim Cook just doesn't have the "NO" mind set that Steve Jobs had and it really shows. The engineers aren't being pushed to do better or think things through and get things polished to perfection.
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I don't buy this excuse as Steve was still around when Lion was was released and was certainly around while it was being developed.

All I can say is that Leopard was the first OSX that was noticeably slower than its previous release (all others had been faster along with more powerful) and at least for me, Snow Leopard was slightly slower than Leopard on my late 2008 Macbook Pro (at least according to XBench). It wasn't noticeable, but I was expecting a tuned up/faster release like Tiger since they were marketing it as a cleanup version (the only thing they cleaned up on was taking PPC out to trash as far as I can tell). I've yet to upgrade my MBP to Lion since I've read so many bad reviews. I like Spaces as it is. I don't want Mission Control. Why can't Apple offer the new modes as OPTIONS and keep a preference setting for those of us that like the Snow Leopard interface for those features? Windows has offered classic compatibility and visual modes for ages and you can get 3rd party software to make it look any way you want (Linux is even more configurable). Whereas OSX is "take the new look or go somewhere else" every freaking time. It's very irritating.

I just assumed it was Steve Jobs forcing "his view" as the ONLY view. But he's gone now so it's time for Apple to stop the "crazy/paranoid" crap and put Apple back into the Professional standing it used to have for so many years until Steve's obsession for the iPhone turned it into the unwanted 3rd cousin.

Let's see NAS and standard networking support for AppleTV. Let's see the TimeCapsules offer their own storage for it. Let's see Final Cut Pro return to its full glory in features. Let's see an update to Logic Studio or at least Logic Pro. How about Blu-Ray support at least for professionals that need it for their job? How about supporting the freaking customer instead of the other way around? Apple has become complacent because their iOS products are selling through the roof. That brings a lot of secondary sales to the Mac that it probably doesn't deserve lately.

Even so, I actually want a new Mac Mini for once in my life to replace my aging PowerMac PPC whole house audio/video server, but only god knows how much longer I will have to wait for them to release one with USB3 on it (I won't buy one any sooner) and because it will come with either Lion or Mountain Lion, I'm not sure I'll be thrilled with it, even so. But it's a replacement server first and foremost, but then because that machine is on 24/7, I end up using the server for e-mail and web browsing most of the time.
 
I have no issue with lion.

I prefer mission control to spaces/expose, i like running apps full-screen when not plugged into a second display, and mobile time machine backups/versions are helpful.

I've even given launchpad a go (i thought it was totally pointless on release) and it is a good way to be able to launch apps from within another full screen app - no need to get out of full screen, navigate to apps folder, or use spotlight, etc - simply 5 finger pinch..


Yes, it needs more ram. RAM is about 100 bucks for 2x 8gb so-dimms. If you can't get 8gb+ then maybe stick with snow leopard. If you don't use a trackpad, maybe stick with snow leopard.

But if you are willing to adapt to mission control, and have the hardware, I say go for it.
 
I am an avid linux user with part time use of Windows. With great hopes with the Mac OS X environment i switched to Macbook Pro 8,1 last year. It's been one year for me using this machine. I upgraded from SL to Lion somewhere in December. I could not have been more disappointment with Apple's approach. They have made their OS feel more bloated and slow. Every app takes more time for a start. Preview takes years to open a pdf. Finder is so feature incompetent compared to competing file browsers in other OS environment. And the iOS thingies that Apple thought would be cool to bring on to the Desktop just suck. Come on man that Launchpad thing. Has ever anybody used it? And too many ziggly animations throughout the OS just make it more intolerable. And they are bringing more of this **** in the next version of OS X Mountain Lion.

And they have started closing down of their env. further. In Mountain Lion we still have the option to turn on the ability to install third party apps. But I am pretty in the coming years they will remove this completely. We will be limited to the ****** Mac Store where we have to pay for everything. And believe me on this one, apps on Apple domain are costlier compared to the competing app stores like the play store.

I am really not the shape Windows 8 is taking on the deaktop front. But on account of more openness of the platform there are so many free tools available to tweak it which can completely get rid of the stuff u dont like.

Regarding Mac being more stable compared to the Windows. I have been running Windows 7 since 2.5 years on one of my machine. It has never crashed on me and forget about BSOD. BSOD will come only when u have installed wrong drivers that were not for your system or u have filled ur C:> drive to full with almost Zero space left and try a hibernate.

I never felt that anything in Mac OS X was more stable faster or better. Instead I am of the opinion that Mac OS X is completely counter - intuitive with their dock and such features. I was so comfortable when i switched from Windows to Linux as my working OS. But when I switched from Linux to Mac OS X. It was hell. It was so not intuitive for switching between the apps if u dont use Cmd + Tab. If by mistake u minimize one of the multiple windows then it was so.difficult to switch to it. And the ugly double tab for right click was one hell to learn. But now I have found my way through it. And learned the tricks. I am.just saying that dragging files from one window to another if u want to move files is just too messy when Linux and Windows have been doing cut and paste without flaw since ice age.
 
jusacruiser said:
I did a search and could not find a thread with this topic. Please forgive me if it turns out to be a duplicate post.

I can't decide whether to upgrade to Lion or not.

My question is this.....Are most people liking Lion? Or are they sticking with Snow Leopard?

Or maybe there are some people who have switched to Lion and wished they could go back to Snow Leopard.

Please weigh in and give me your evaluation of Lion vs. Snow Leopard.

:confused:
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When Lion was released, I was in my upgrade cycle, so it was time to buy new MBP and I also bought an MBA. Both of these came with Lion pre-installed of course, and have never caused one jot of trouble. My iMac was not due to be upgraded, and so was running SL. I decided that it would be best to upgrade it to Lion for the sake of uniformity.

I like Lion, but miss certain things about SL too. I'm a little concerned about the way Apple is dumbing things down. Many postings here about the Airport Express "Update" which removes all advanced options from the interface. Other utilities and applications seem to be heading in the same direction. I'll stick with Lion, but am hoping for improvements in ML.
 
Vote for Lion. It is not perfect, but it is really good and much more HW optimized than SL. But I understand that some people prefer SL for day to day work due to memory leak issues in Lion especially in Safari.
 
throAU said:
I have no issue with lion.

I prefer mission control to spaces/expose, i like running apps full-screen when not plugged into a second display, and mobile time machine backups/versions are helpful.

I've even given launchpad a go (i thought it was totally pointless on release) and it is a good way to be able to launch apps from within another full screen app - no need to get out of full screen, navigate to apps folder, or use spotlight, etc - simply 5 finger pinch..


Yes, it needs more ram. RAM is about 100 bucks for 2x 8gb so-dimms. If you can't get 8gb+ then maybe stick with snow leopard. If you don't use a trackpad, maybe stick with snow leopard.

But if you are willing to adapt to mission control, and have the hardware, I say go for it.
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I've never understood why the fanboys insist on running full-screen apps on a 27" screen ... it seems like a complete waste of screen real estate.
 
no problems with Lion here. I prefer the graphic updates (icons etc) and mission control. I am using launch bar a lot more now also. Apart from that it is just the feeling of being up to date. The biggest feature in Lion for me is the new file sorting options lol. I will upgrade to mountain lion on release just to have a fresh feeling even if it is buggy. Bugs don't stop my money income so yah :p I think bugs are a good trade off to be with the in crew of the next cool thing and having fun.
 
colourfastt said:
I've never understood why the fanboys insist on running full-screen apps on a 27" screen ... it seems like a complete waste of screen real estate.
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I run a macbook pro, not a 27" iMac. When i'm plugged into a bigger display, i don't use full screen.

No harm in having it for when I'm NOT on a massive display.

Learn to read perhaps?
 
Snow Leopard.

Lion broke too many things. several crucial fundemental stuff: like Joining to a AD Domain... Lion just kept disconnecting.
 
I've had more system freezes since upgrading to lion a few weeks ago than I've had in the past 5 years. Unfortunately I need lion for developing on iOS 5.1
 
I really do not understand why Mac laptop users like Snow Leopard? Interface looks horrible, performance is not superb, bottom enclosure is quite hot and battery life is much worse than in Leopard.
 
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limo79 said:
I really do not understand why Mac laptop users like Snow Leopard? Interface looks horrible, performance is not superb, bottom enclosure is quite hot and battery life is much worse than in Leopard.
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I don't notice much difference either way from Leopard (Xbench says Leopard is slightly faster than Snow Leopard for the same tests). I upgraded to Snow Leopard because I'd like to keep getting software updates for various programs that no longer support Leopard. But frankly, if you're going to go that way, I could point out that Tiger ran circles around Leopard on my PPC machine. OTOH, Leopard did add some nice features (e.g. The same "Spaces" that got ditched in Lion in favor of Mission Control). But on PPC, it ditched Classic and several games did not run glitch-free in Leopard that ran fine in Tiger (e.g. No One Lives Forever 2). It's always unpleasant to find your existing software library broken in the next OS release.

I have little interest in "upgrading" to Lion, however. It'd be nice if Apple would recognize that some users like different setups/arrangements for things like Spaces versus Mission Control and the like and let the USER decide which way to go in the settings rather than them forcing the change on you. Beyond that, I think they need to concentrate on QUALITY releases, not adding crappy iPhone features in some giant hurry, leaving the OS buggered.
 
wpotere said:
If you have Lion and you liked Spaces, check out this...

http://switchstep.com/ReSpaceApp/

I have been using ReSpace for about a week now and really like it.
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That's cool. It's a shame a developer has to recreate a feature that Apple foolishly removed, though. Apple just doesn't like to listen to its users. I keep hoping that will change with Steve gone, but I doubt it. I'm sure Steve made sure the fascist brigade is in charge in all the right places at Apple to continue his "vision" of a world where everyone's desktop looks just like Steve would want it to look.
 
MagnusVonMagnum said:
That's cool. It's a shame a developer has to recreate a feature that Apple foolishly removed, though. Apple just doesn't like to listen to its users. I keep hoping that will change with Steve gone, but I doubt it. I'm sure Steve made sure the fascist brigade is in charge in all the right places at Apple to continue his "vision" of a world where everyone's desktop looks just like Steve would want it to look.
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I agree, but I am glad they did!
 
Does anybody know if i can install Snow Leopard on 2011 Macs that came with Lion?
 
If Lion was to be like the Tiger of yesteryear which literally sucked every bit of power possible from the machines it was running on, I would.

If it ran on practically every Intel Mac like Tiger did with almost every G3 and beyond, I would.

If it didn't autosave a picture I tweaked in Preview just to see what it looks like, I would.

If there were still COLORS instead of nasty sterile grey, I would.

If Expose wasn't butchered and mixed in with rat meat, I would.

Until something magical happens I'm staying on Snow Leopard.
 
I never thought I would say this but I would vote for Lion (10.7.3 release only), I reinstalled Snow Leopard on my MacBook because I thought that I missed it, but once it was installed I thought no I don’t miss this at all, it just felt dated and I went back to Lion. I think Lion is now pretty solid.
 
Either is good personally. Sometimes I miss the way SL was set up, sometimes I enjoy the little tweaks in Lion.

I guess if I new then what I do now I probably would not of bothered as there has been some hassle.

Doubt I will go for ML unless it has something that it amazing.
 
I do wish that Lion's new APIs for Autosave,Resume,Versions etc. were more widely utilized by 3rd party developers by now, 'Automatic Termination' especially. The inconsistency of some apps working the new and most other apps still working the old way is a bit annoying.
Although Lion can still feel a bit rough around the edges and could use some refinement, I wouldn't want to go back to SL now – there are simply too many things I'd miss from Lion. Among them:


- Quicklook previews in Stacks and Spotlight, Drag&Drop support in spotlight, Quicklook previews for web pages, addresses, etc. in Mail
prev.png

- being Apple to do a Spotlight search for content in "unsaved" documents
unsaved.png

- not having to worry about apps crashing, since all windows, including "unsaved" documents will automatically be restored
- having apps restored to their former state after a restart - especially useful when system updates requiring a reboot are released, or when I switch between different operating systems.
- being able to quit apps without losing open documents or making decisions about saving or not saving changes in documents
- generally not having to care about whether documents have been saved or not (more or less wysiwyg with regard to the document you see and the corresponding file on disk)
- being able to compare parts of a document to other parts from older versions of the file/ being able to copy snippets between different versions back and forth / being able to restore a former version without ever having to manually save or take care of versioning
- apps like Preview, Quicktime, Textedit and Automator automatically terminating themselves when there are no more windows open (with the process hanging around so that the app can be quickly restarted)
- Safari's "Web Content" process automatically terminating itself shortly after there are no more Safari windows open (might be in SL as well)
- having the last-used documents shown when performing the four-fingered "app exposé" gesture over a Dock icon, regardless of whether the app is running or not (i also use this all the time with the Screen Sharing app to start a VNC session with a particular computer)
- fullscreen apps for when I want to keep all distractions away
- hidden scrollbars resulting in a cleaner UI with fewer distractions, and more space for content
- reversed scroll direction (seems logical and natural to use to me)
- multiple desktops with different desktop backgrounds and gestures for switching between them and fullscreen apps
- four-finger tapping to switch between the last used desktops or last-used full-screen apps (requires terminal "hack")
- windows that are shown in their correct size relative to each other in MC (unlike in SL's version of Exposé)
- app icons for easier identification of a set of windows in MC
- ability to easily pick out windows of an app with few windows open among apps with many windows open (I always have tons of Safari windows open which makes it harder to find other apps' windows in SL's Exposé)
- Seamless Full Disk Encryption
- swiping to go back and forth in Safari, pinching to zoom in
- pinch out gesture to show the Desktop
- Ability to quickly duplicate an open document (I also assigned a keyboard shortcut to the menu entry)
- improved search / search tokens in Mail
- Grouping files, especially grouping by type or date, in Finder
- Favorites bar in Mail with keyboard shortcut access to individual folders (Cmd-1/2/3…)
- Full-screen Preview !! (awesome for distractionless reading as well as annotating PDFs or sorting through pictures)
- Full-screen screen sharing (why is this only now possible?! )
- Full-screen terminal :)
- Resize windows from any side (can't believe how often I use that now – Apple was simply wrong about this one before)
 
AtmChm said:
You've got to be kidding me! That's like saying text books should go back to b&w so that figures and words in color for emphasis are "less distracting".
Click to expand...

Apple isn't stripping color from the content, but just the UI (chrome). And they're not alone in that regard:

green.png
adobe.png
ms.jpg
 
tkermit said:
I do wish that Lion's new APIs for Autosave,Resume,Versions etc. were more widely utilized by 3rd party developers by now, 'Automatic Termination' especially. The inconsistency of some apps working the new and most other apps still working the old way is a bit annoying.
Although Lion can still feel a bit rough around the edges and could use some refinement, I wouldn't want to go back to SL now – there are simply too many things I'd miss from Lion. Among them:


- Quicklook previews in Stacks and Spotlight, Drag&Drop support in spotlight, Quicklook previews for web pages, addresses, etc. in Mail
Image
- being Apple to do a Spotlight search for content in "unsaved" documents
Image
- not having to worry about apps crashing, since all windows, including "unsaved" documents will automatically be restored
- having apps restored to their former state after a restart - especially useful when system updates requiring a reboot are released, or when I switch between different operating systems.
- being able to quit apps without losing open documents or making decisions about saving or not saving changes in documents
- generally not having to care about whether documents have been saved or not (more or less wysiwyg with regard to the document you see and the corresponding file on disk)
- being able to compare parts of a document to other parts from older versions of the file/ being able to copy snippets between different versions back and forth / being able to restore a former version without ever having to manually save or take care of versioning
- apps like Preview, Quicktime, Textedit and Automator automatically terminating themselves when there are no more windows open (with the process hanging around so that the app can be quickly restarted)
- Safari's "Web Content" process automatically terminating itself shortly after there are no more Safari windows open (might be in SL as well)
- having the last-used documents shown when performing the four-fingered "app exposé" gesture over a Dock icon, regardless of whether the app is running or not (i also use this all the time with the Screen Sharing app to start a VNC session with a particular computer)
- fullscreen apps for when I want to keep all distractions away
- hidden scrollbars resulting in a cleaner UI with fewer distractions, and more space for content
- reversed scroll direction (seems logical and natural to use to me)
- multiple desktops with different desktop backgrounds and gestures for switching between them and fullscreen apps
- four-finger tapping to switch between the last used desktops or last-used full-screen apps (requires terminal "hack")
- windows that are shown in their correct size relative to each other in MC (unlike in SL's version of Exposé)
- app icons for easier identification of a set of windows in MC
- ability to easily pick out windows of an app with few windows open among apps with many windows open (I always have tons of Safari windows open which makes it harder to find other apps' windows in SL's Exposé)
- Seamless Full Disk Encryption
- swiping to go back and forth in Safari, pinching to zoom in
- pinch out gesture to show the Desktop
- Ability to quickly duplicate an open document (I also assigned a keyboard shortcut to the menu entry)
- improved search / search tokens in Mail
- Grouping files, especially grouping by type or date, in Finder
- Favorites bar in Mail with keyboard shortcut access to individual folders (Cmd-1/2/3…)
- Full-screen Preview !! (awesome for distractionless reading as well as annotating PDFs or sorting through pictures)
- Full-screen screen sharing (why is this only now possible?! )
- Full-screen terminal :)
- Resize windows from any side (can't believe how often I use that now – Apple was simply wrong about this one before)
Click to expand...

Some of those features you listed are negatives for me. :) Particularly auto termination, recent docs in app expose, reverse scrolling, hidden scrollbars, auto restore and the versions ui is clunky and slow (why only show 2 versions at once?). I also find copying large amounts of files to and from usb to be a bit quicker on snow leopard.


The positives are the improved screen sharing (observe mode and full screen are not in snow leopard) , improved quick look and full screen programs (why no textedit full screen?). Lion has also never crashed on me either. Even 10.8.0 never crashed. Early .0 to .2 releases of Leopard and Snow leopard froze on me (probably about 3 or 4 times overall).

The auto termination drives me mad because I used to always leave textedit and preview running to quickly open files. Under heavy load in Lion, these programs sometimes take 5 to 10 seconds to re-open and are sometimes accompanied by a lengthy beachball so I would prefer to disable this new feature. Most of the other features can be changed back except this one.

Disabling the new window animations and speeding up the mission control animation with terminal commands really make lion feel a lot more responsive on a slow graphics card. Make for a much more pleasant experience

Its close but I prefer snow leopard.
 
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