Mac OS X Lion Almost Ready?

[Insolence]

TRIM Support is already Live, I wouldn't really consider it a Lion Feature.

People have cracked the TRIM Support, you can use it with almost any SSD, Google "Trim Enabler."

Snow Leopard barely brought anything that Leopard didn't already have, it was a minor bump, so they sold it cheap. Was basically Leopard for free + a bunch of minor changes.

Its already been confirmed that there will be Lion DVDs for sale, its too early to go Digital-only. Most people's download speed is still too slow for this, and on Day 1...... It takes me about 2-3 hours to download each Lion Update, so you can only imagine how long it would take to download the whole thing from the App Store, especially with about 100 Million other people waiting at the same time.

I hope they really are secretly working on iTunes. Not a big Cloud fan myself yet, so just want to se what they've got planned, even without the Cloud. Maybe next Build they release to us.

If they're dicking about then they'd better take care of the Safari issues, and Mail is having an issue showing me the amount of Unread Mail I have in that big red circle in my Dock sometimes.

While we might really be on a GM Candidate Build as people say, IMO these Builds are not true Apple Quality GM Material.

Oh and, WWDC will probably have hands-on Final Cut Pro X (hopefully), so yeah. Just throwing that out there. Everyone seems to have forgotten about it since it was first announced. Maybe we'll finally get an introduction to the mythical iWork '11 too.

 

[Cougarcat]

This.

iTunes hasn't even received a single change, no new side-bar, nothing. This is not ready to go Live anytime soon.

While I agree with you that a WWDC release is unlikely, iTunes has nothing to do with it--iTunes updates are divorced from the OS. (And as JerMartin pointed out, iTunes 10.3/11 will most likely have support for the new streaming service.)

 

[Yamcha]

I've been using OSX Lion Developer Preview 3 since it came out, I don't know if Apple can have this ready by June, but I'm sure they'll probably announce OSX Lion in June, and have it released a month or so later, who knows?

So far though some applications and a lot of games are non functional, the ones that do work though are pretty stable, I haven't experienced a crash yet..

No issues with Mail 5, but I do get the nagging reload dialog box on Safari, Time Machine works fine, iCal looks horrid! :S but seems to work fine, iTunes is working fine, I'm pretty sure there will be no GUI updates for iTunes, mainly because they updated the look just a while back and if you open it up you'll see that it matches the look of OSX Lion..

As far as speed is concerned I haven't noticed any improvements over Snow Leopard.. So I don't think there will be any performance boosts, just new features, at least that what I've experienced..

 

[6502usetabe]

Does anyone know how the perceived speed of Lion will compare to Snow Leopard?

It is supposed to be snappier!

 

[Insolence]

I gained 300 or so points in Geekbench personally, but might have something to do with new Drivers.

iTunes has a non-Lion SideBar and the whole "Change Window Size From Anywhere" is missing from it, you can only Expand/Reduce from the bottom right corner, like we used to. It won't get a major GUI Rework, but it needs a bit of an update to current Lion stuff, as-is it doesn't fit in right. Right now it looks like some kind of early Lion Pre-Beta SideBar thing....

 

[nunes013]

i give it a month after WWDC and costs $50-$75. From what ive used it seems ok. Some stuff could be a little more smooth. No crashes. It just really needs a lot of polish, some bug fixes and tons of time with developers to fix their apps.

On itunes im thinking 10.3 (with cloud) and announced at WWDC. Its pretty big but Apple cant wait till September for a release with google and amazon already out. And iOS 5 and or 4.4 will be the support for the cloud on mobile devices.

 

[nick7138]

To anyone who says that it has useless features, it really depends on your needs. If you're a gamer, you'd probably want Lion since it has OpenGL 3.2, which is a major upgrade over Snow Leopards offerings. If you're someone who is fine with the current offering in SL, then you could probably let this one go by. You should also note that since iOS 5 and Lion are being mentioned at the same time in WWDC, you should expect some sort of connection between the two, most likely through iCloud. In that case, new features would be added to Lion. I have used the Developer Preview of Lion and I can say that it is not yet ready for the consumer market. While it is much stabler than DP1, Safari and other applications still have various problems with them, some very serious. On top of that, if Apple announces new features at WWDC, then they'll need another DP, probably a GM release, that has all of the new features before actually releasing it to the public to iron out bugs. Don't expect any release of Lion at least until late July or maybe early August.

 

[lordandrei]

This.

People have started base-less rumors that Lion will be launched at WWDC because they WANT it to be launched at WWDC. Its not ready to be launched at WWDC. I doubt they ever even planned to have it launched in time for WWDC.

The original announcement was Summer. So with Fall starting September 23rd. At this point I'm banking on September 22nd.

 

[gmcalpin]

I gained 300 or so points in Geekbench personally, but might have something to do with new Drivers.

What processor do you have in that Hackintosh? (Just curious how that might translate into improved performance on a real Mac. "Real" sounds condescending, doesn't it? I don't mean it that way. A Mac that Apple makes.)

 

[Insolence]

Intel i7 970, its the old X58 Chipset, never used in iMacs though, sorry

I think if anything, the 300 points I gained are from improved GPU Support. I'm using a GTX 570 atm so yeah. New Fermi stuff I guess. My old 2006 iMac jumped by a couple of hundred points as well though, so I guess thats good.... Kinda.

Apple is still far behind from exciting any serious Gamer. While your casual is fine with anything, your casual also doesn't really usually associate with stuff like "What Open GL Version does your OS run?" Open GL 4.2 is due to be released at some point soon, this is no serious gain in the Apple Gaming Market. Apple is updating their Open GL way too slowly. They should have jumped to at least Open GL 4.0, not 3.2.

The original announcement was Summer. So with Fall starting September 23rd. At this point I'm banking on September 22nd.

Meh. July/August is most likely viable as well, assuming they don't introduce any new (major) features anytime soon. If they take enough time with the upcoming iTunes changes, they should be able to iron out all the Bugs without delaying Lion. Besides, like mentioned above, iTunes and OSs haven't really come hand-in-hand in the past.

 

[MrNomNoms]

Really? Apparently TUAW has never actually used Lion, it's still very buggy.

But that wouldn't stop AOL from manufacturing link bait to get pageviews, it is the "AOL Way" of media engineering after all, right?

Apparently you've never actually read the article because it clearly states that it is NEAR - do you know what near actually means? the article never stated that it will actually be released but it is near, as in nearing, close to, one step before the release. Also, the last update was around 2 weeks ago so for all we know there could have been a tonne of changes being held back but tested internally, it could be another month before Lion is released hence they're testing it internally (dog fooding as they call it in the industry).

Again, the article never stated that it was ready for release but it was getting near release - internal testing is a sure sign that all the heavy lifting has been done and now it is heading into the final stretch - maybe they want to get something stable enough for developers to target then have 1-2 months before it official is released thus giving developers to tweak? its all speculation at this point.

As for people going on claiming there are 'no new features' - way to go not even looking for them. SAMBA has been removed and a complete in house SMB2 implementation with improved Windows 7 and Windows Vista support for starters - I don't know about you so-called 'programming experts' on this forum but in my books that is a decent sized undertaking. Then there are the Finder enhancements including cut/paste of files, merging of folders, refining of the interface which carries over to Cocoa and Carbon applications (which is no mean feat when you consider the various quirks that exist out there in how developers use said frameworks) and I'm sure there are lots more to be pointed to.

 

[HappyDude20]

Really? that means i won't be touching it till it has received at least two service packs...er...i mean point updates. I also agree that the feature list isn't wowing me by any stretch.

Same, but i'm personally waiting for Lion to come out cause I was to do a complete reinstall on my Mac. I normally do it every time a new OSX cat comes out.

 

[asdf542]

Apple is still far behind from exciting any serious Gamer. While your casual is fine with anything, your casual also doesn't really usually associate with stuff like "What Open GL Version does your OS run?" Open GL 4.2 is due to be released at some point soon, this is no serious gain in the Apple Gaming Market. Apple is updating their Open GL way too slowly. They should have jumped to at least Open GL 4.0, not 3.2.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/review...ias-sole-mac-offering-a-promising-start.ars/4

My initial reaction was, "That's pretty underwhelming considering that the Quadro and Radeons already support OpenGL 4.1 on Windows," but I think there's reason to be confident that we won't have to wait as long as we did with 3.2 to reach GL 4.1. The 3.2 OpenGL stack in 10.7 is a completely new implementation, and it's been separated from the existing 2.1 stack, which will be used by apps until code explicitly calls for the "forward context" GL implementation. Even before I knew about Lion's OpenGL 3.2, I'd heard from some reputable people that an "overhaul" of the GL stack was coming, so this need to explicitly call the new implementation suggests it's radically different from the previous one. The low-ish 3.2 might just be to give Apple and developers fewer bugs to squash while moving to this new path.

 

[Yamcha]

What processor do you have in that Hackintosh? (Just curious how that might translate into improved performance on a real Mac. "Real" sounds condescending, doesn't it? I don't mean it that way. A Mac that Apple makes.)

A Hackintosh performs just as well as a real Mac as long as you use the same hardware, and I've had two iMacs before .. The reason it performs the same is simply because Macs use the same hardware as PC's do today.. Same chipset, processor, graphics card, hard drive.. Even PC's today have adopted EFI BIOS.. Hackintosh's use the same native drivers macs do..

 

[MrNomNoms]

http://arstechnica.com/apple/review...ias-sole-mac-offering-a-promising-start.ars/4

Thanks for the link - I heard about OpenGL being given a massive overhaul thus allows Apple to move forward to 4.1 easier given that the move from OpenGL 2.1 to 3.x required a lot of changes. The two co-existing at the same time should result in a good backwards compatibility experience but from what I have heard they're still optimising OpenGL 2.1 given that there are still many applications these days that are reliant on OpenGL 2.1.

This is one of the reason I've held off till now to upgrade my iMac and MacBook Pro - to have OpenGL 4.1 hardware so it is forwards compatible into the future

Big question though, will Apple be adding UVD3 support given that the Video Decode Acceleration framework or have Apple given up on that sort of stuff in favour of writing decoders directly on GLSL instead as Adobe has done with 'Stage Video'?

 

[holden15]

I'm typing this in Lion right now and it's actually very stable. I have ran into many bugs/quirks but nothing major.

And to those saying their not impressed with Lion, you simply need to use it for yourself. (you'll be able to at an Apple Store when it's released) It's amazing, from the UI enhancements, to the full screen apps, to the new Mail, it's incredible. I feel like I'm on an iPad, but everything's so much more powerful. Oh and I just noticed the nice auto correction pop up just like iOS - neat!

Snow Leopard is great but it's blown away by Lion... the thought of using it every day like Snow Leopard is invigorating.

 

[xStep]

My questions are price and method of delivery. Seeing as snow leopard was $29 I am assuming somewhere around that price point which brings me to my second question of method of delivery. Given apples push to online distribution I am betting the update will be exclusively sold through the Mac AppStore. Just a hunch though

I don't expect a $29 price tag. That was a special offer last time under certain conditions and some suckers didn't realize it.

Distribution only on the Mac App Store would leave out many potential buyers running 10.5 and earlier, unless Apple offers their store software for pre 10.6 OS X machines. Not to mention people with crapy internet connections. Leaving millions of potential upgrades on the table seems like bad business to me. I expect a disc option.

 

[42streetsdown]

Apple is still far behind from exciting any serious Gamer. While your casual is fine with anything, your casual also doesn't really usually associate with stuff like "What Open GL Version does your OS run?" Open GL 4.2 is due to be released at some point soon, this is no serious gain in the Apple Gaming Market. Apple is updating their Open GL way too slowly. They should have jumped to at least Open GL 4.0, not 3.2.

Well you'd have to first support 3.2 or 3.3 in order to have it work with older graphics cards, and then 4+ support for newer cards.

It is sad that apple isn't pushing this as aggressively as they could. It'd be really nice if they started appealing to gamers. I mean, they don't need to. They're mac sales are doing quite well, and their mobile market is earning them tons, but i think it would help to increase their market share to focus a bit on gamers.

 

[whw5]

Its been a while

Been a while since i been on dis forum just had mindblowning wif my pencil. Heart you apl>

 

[revelated]

I feel like I'm on an iPad....

This is NOT a plus.

 

[FroMann]

I will wait for the first few patches before buying.

 

[usptact]

We do know the last Mac OS X Lion developer preview was said to be much faster and more stable than the previous releases.

Don't lie. Any new major release IS rather unstable. It takes time to remove sharp edges. It is always like that for non trivial things.

More snappier? Don't kid me. They drop support for Core Duo chips meaning that this Lion requires more computer power.Sure, iX Core users won't see the big difference...

 

[Insolence]

http://arstechnica.com/apple/review...ias-sole-mac-offering-a-promising-start.ars/4

Thanks for that, very enlightening So we might even see 4.0+ Support starting at around 10.7.4, or .5 something. Cool.

Well you'd have to first support 3.2 or 3.3 in order to have it work with older graphics cards, and then 4+ support for newer cards.

It is sad that apple isn't pushing this as aggressively as they could. It'd be really nice if they started appealing to gamers. I mean, they don't need to. They're mac sales are doing quite well, and their mobile market is earning them tons, but i think it would help to increase their market share to focus a bit on gamers.

Yeah. Problem is, Apple's iMac All-In-One isn't enough for a serious gamer. It uses a down clocked i7 2600S at the most, and a Mobile GPU. At the same time, Apple's Xeon Processors aren't intended for gaming either.

If they designed something in the middle, like a tower with high-end CPU + GPU Options and get a Low-MS Monitor Option then they'd be able to attract a crowd of more Professionally-Oriented Gamers. Of course, they'd have to move more Games to the Mac Platform as well.

 

[kwangmod]

Question on new iMac

I will receive my iMac on June 10' 2011 and it will come with "snow leopard" for sure.

In this case, Can i upgrade to be "Lion" without paying some money?? bcoz it look like i buy iMac at the ending period of snow leopard.

thank you answering

 

[Stuipdboy1000]

I can see Apple charging a relatively low price for Lion. After the success of the cheap Snow Leopard, Apple may have realised that pricing their software like that is a surefire way for customers to jump on board. I think they'll do it again but not at exactly the same price, maybe £50-£60 (still cheaper than all the OS releases before SL).