First off, although I am a regular forum reader, I haven't posted on macrumors in a long time. However, I felt it was appropriate for me to share my thoughts on Lion, as I have been extensively using it for work and school.
Lion Review:
The System: Mid-2010 Macbook Pro 13. 8 gb of ram (upgraded after installing lion because of the slow system response). Everything else stock.
The Good:
1) Graphics: 10.7.3 Fixed a lot of the graphical 'hangs' that I associated with Lion. The bugs are still present, but for the most part, the spinning beach balls are gone.
2) Multi-touch: This is by far the best part about lion. The gestures are amazing (when responsive) and have really meshed with my workflow. I feel much more productive on this system then I did on Snow Leopard (once again, when responsive).
3) Word Auto-correct. I write memo's for a living. The auto-correct typing feature has truly been a god-send. The amount of time saved from this feature alone is more than worth the $30 Lion costs.
4) iCloud. The ability to sync everything, everywhere, without messing with any settings is fantastic.
The Bad:
1) The graphical hangs. Lion still feels immature compared to Snow Leopard, even after 10.7.3. I'm not sure if these problems are isolated only to the nVidia 320m, but they really are a show stopper. The 320m seems to get overloaded after extended use, causing launchpad, mission control, and full screen apps to hang or crash. Plugging the system into an external display seems to exacerbate the problem. After switching between the internal and external display, the system usually requires a restart to behave normally again. For comparison, on Snow Leopard, the system required about once a month. I hope these issues are resolved soon.
2) The memory use. I had to upgrade to 8 gb of memory in order to make lion run smooth on my computer. Before the upgrade, my 4 gb of ram was completely consumed by running text edit, safari, and iTunes. The disk-swap and page-outs were unacceptable for such a light system load. I believe some of these issues have been resolved in 10.7.3, but still why is lion so memory demanding?
3) The persistent bugs. Several bugs, present in Snow Leopard, are still unresolved. For example: When adding a program, why is a restart required before the icon is displayed correctly in the application stack (on the dock)?
4) Restart Resume. I really want to turn this feature off, system wide, but there is no option for it. Every time I restart the computer, I don't want to uncheck that little box. I understand that this is a really useful feature if you have a SSD, but I don't. Small gripe, but very irritating.
Conclusion.
First off, Lion is really great, a much more advanced system then SL.
In sum, it's potential is fantastic, but it is still rough around the edges. If the graphical bugs and memory usage could be resolved, 99% of my complaints would vanish. Here's to hoping 10.7.4 resolves these issues.
Lion Review:
The System: Mid-2010 Macbook Pro 13. 8 gb of ram (upgraded after installing lion because of the slow system response). Everything else stock.
The Good:
1) Graphics: 10.7.3 Fixed a lot of the graphical 'hangs' that I associated with Lion. The bugs are still present, but for the most part, the spinning beach balls are gone.
2) Multi-touch: This is by far the best part about lion. The gestures are amazing (when responsive) and have really meshed with my workflow. I feel much more productive on this system then I did on Snow Leopard (once again, when responsive).
3) Word Auto-correct. I write memo's for a living. The auto-correct typing feature has truly been a god-send. The amount of time saved from this feature alone is more than worth the $30 Lion costs.
4) iCloud. The ability to sync everything, everywhere, without messing with any settings is fantastic.
The Bad:
1) The graphical hangs. Lion still feels immature compared to Snow Leopard, even after 10.7.3. I'm not sure if these problems are isolated only to the nVidia 320m, but they really are a show stopper. The 320m seems to get overloaded after extended use, causing launchpad, mission control, and full screen apps to hang or crash. Plugging the system into an external display seems to exacerbate the problem. After switching between the internal and external display, the system usually requires a restart to behave normally again. For comparison, on Snow Leopard, the system required about once a month. I hope these issues are resolved soon.
2) The memory use. I had to upgrade to 8 gb of memory in order to make lion run smooth on my computer. Before the upgrade, my 4 gb of ram was completely consumed by running text edit, safari, and iTunes. The disk-swap and page-outs were unacceptable for such a light system load. I believe some of these issues have been resolved in 10.7.3, but still why is lion so memory demanding?
3) The persistent bugs. Several bugs, present in Snow Leopard, are still unresolved. For example: When adding a program, why is a restart required before the icon is displayed correctly in the application stack (on the dock)?
4) Restart Resume. I really want to turn this feature off, system wide, but there is no option for it. Every time I restart the computer, I don't want to uncheck that little box. I understand that this is a really useful feature if you have a SSD, but I don't. Small gripe, but very irritating.
Conclusion.
First off, Lion is really great, a much more advanced system then SL.
In sum, it's potential is fantastic, but it is still rough around the edges. If the graphical bugs and memory usage could be resolved, 99% of my complaints would vanish. Here's to hoping 10.7.4 resolves these issues.