OS X Mountain Lion Downloaded 3 Million Times in Four Days

[3282868]

I never knew iPhoto and Time Machine were really capable of that. I recall my first impression is that Time Machine was completely integrated into OS X and Apple's own applications. The Time Machine interface would spring to life inside an application and show previous backups. I was rather disappointed with what it really turned out to be.

I guess Versions handles some of that but I would not consider it a backup.

"Time Machine" is great in that it's not just for restoring full OS X systems. Example, it's great that you can open "Contacts" then click on "Time Machine"; "Contacts" opens in "Time Machine" so that you can move through your data as you can in Finder to restore deleted or edited contacts from any restore point. Same works for "Mail", "Calendar", etc (native apps of course). "iPhoto" had this same capability, but that changed when iCloud integration and "Photo Streaming" came into play. For some reason, "Time Machine" support for "iPhoto" was removed, only allowing restoring the full condensed library. This is a fail.


iPhoto '11: Restoring from Time Machine with iPhoto '11 (9.2 or later) and OS X Lion 10.7.2 (or later)

Last Modified: May 31, 2012

When using iPhoto ’11 (version 9.2 or later) and Time Machine with OS X Lion 10.7.2 (or later), iPhoto no longer has the Browse Backups option. This means that instead of restoring specific photos within your iPhoto Library, you must restore your entire iPhoto Library.

 

[Eidorian]

"Time Machine" is great in that it's not just for restoring full OS X systems. I love that you can open "Contacts" then click on "Time Machine", it open "Contacts" so that you can move through your data as you can in Finder to restore deleted or edited contacts from any restore point. Same works for "Mail" and "Calendar". "iPhoto" had this same capability, but that changed when iCloud integration and "Photo Streaming" came into play. For some reason, "Time Machine" support for "iPhoto" was removed, only allowing restoring the full condensed library. This is a fail.

I am still poking along on Snow Leopard, I have never noticed these things. I do not recall the last time I opened the Address Book or iPhoto though...

I do not use iCloud either. Then again that is not on Snow Leopard. I would rather image blast than use Time Machine for a complete system backup.

I am using File History on Windows 8. It appears Microsoft has given up on the complete system backup image approach and gone with userspace file changes + SkyDrive. You can still make those old "Windows 7" backup images though.

 

[3282868]

I am still poking along on Snow Leopard, I have never noticed these things. I do not recall the last time I opened the Address Book or iPhoto though...

I do not use iCloud either. Then again that is not on Snow Leopard. I would rather image blast than use Time Machine for a complete system backup.

I am using File History on Windows 8. It appears Microsoft has given up on the complete system backup image approach and gone with userspace file changes + SkyDrive. You can still make those old "Windows 7" backup images though.

Interesting about Windows 8. I'll have to check that out.

What's funny, I never use "Time Machine" for a restore. I'll fresh install the OS, then drill down into "Time Machine" to manually restore my files. I'll install all my app's from fresh. While "Time Machine" does help in some instances, I feel slightly uncomfortable restoring a full system from it as in the past it hasn't been seamless; some restores bring conflicts within app's and plist's not matching up, resulting in more time spent drilling through the system and error logs to figure out the issue.

I back everything up on it, but I usually just drag and drop my personal documents, etc. into a fresh install and use it for file/data recovery otherwise.

I need to explore Windows 8 more, I just didn't like the "Metro" style tiles on my desktop. It was jarring and I gave up. I'll need to check it out more as it seems MS is being more innovative and daring with their software while not neglecting the professionals as Apple seems to be doing.

I was also disappointed in Apple's lack of iCloud support in 10.6.8. I would have stuck with 10.6 but as a developer I was given little choice. I did get full iCloud support in Mail, Calendar and Contacts working in 10.6.8. "Address Book" was the tricky one, but figured out what Apple did with their system and got it working without a hitch. I couldn't care less about iPhoto Streaming, and "Documents" is a far cry from "iDisk".

 

[nuckinfutz]

What about RSS removed from Safari? An incredibly useful feature pointlessly ripped out of the browser for no reason and without warning (unless you are a developer).

Plus there are further small movements towards the kind of world we can expect with further iterations of OS X - it is still a choice that you can install apps that aren't from the app store, but it is set to a default that only app store apps can be installed. Expect that facility to be turned off at some point, then the walled garden will become a prison.

RSS no longer had a place in a browser. RSS fans had moved on to Reeder and other more useful RSS applications a long time ago.

Gatekeeper is an anathema to Walled Gardens. It's primary function is to offer a safeguard for applications distributed outside the Mac App Store. Anyone trying to call this retreat from a walled garden ominous is a grade A moron who should take off the tin foil hat.

Apple engineers weren't sitting around with their thumbs up their rear. They were delivering better memory management and fixes to every part of the OS to make sure iCloud, security and more all work properly.

It's a matter of personal opinion on whether these updates are of benefit but it's fact that these improvements didn't happen on their own.

 

[Eidorian]

Interesting about Windows 8. I'll have to check that out.

What's funny, I never use "Time Machine" for a restore. I'll fresh install the OS, then drill down into "Time Machine" to manually restore my files. I'll install all my app's from fresh. While "Time Machine" does help in some instances, I feel slightly uncomfortable restoring a full system from it as in the past it hasn't been seamless; some restores bring conflicts within app's and plist's not matching up, resulting in more time spent drilling through the system and error logs to figure out the issue.

It is somewhat surprising how many errors a Time Machine restore can throw. Most people will not notice them unless they get a message or delve into the Console logs.

I back everything up on it, but I usually just drag and drop my personal documents, etc. into a fresh install and use it for file/data recovery otherwise.

I am fond of a clean install. Once upon a time I used iBackup.

I need to explore Windows 8 more, I just didn't like the "Metro" style tiles on my desktop. It was jarring and I gave up. I'll need to check it out more as it seems MS is being more innovative and daring with their software while not neglecting the professionals as Apple seems to be doing.

I totally agree that Metro is jarring. It was for me as well. What really bothers me the most after that is the changes in location for the Sleep/Shutdown into the right hot edge where all other system/device options slide out.

After learning all that, I only see Metro for the few seconds it takes to click on the desktop icon after logging in. I really any time in it on the desktop. I have the Ribbon closed the majority of the time too so I never see that. I am just waiting to be able to purchase an upgrade copy.

I was also disappointed in Apple's lack of iCloud support in 10.6.8. I would have stuck with 10.6 but as a developer I was given little choice. I did get full iCloud support in Mail, Calendar and Contacts working in 10.6.8. "Address Book" was the tricky one, but figured out what Apple did with their system and got it working without a hitch. I couldn't care less about iPhoto Streaming, and "Documents" is a far cry from "iDisk".

I have been taken down a notch from years past, I am strictly a user for now. I have the luxury to stick with Snow Leopard. I did manage to endure Lion for a few days. 10.8 appears to resolve and smooth the bumps from Lion.

 

[dutchnewbie]

I hated the metro interface too, until I got used to it. Then is started to make since. Are you running windows8 now?

Hell no i gave windows figurative a nice finger.
For me never windows as long they keep the metro interface, i think it will be terrible for elder people who need a new pc and are not so well known and don't like big changes.

 

[topmounter]

3 million times by how many people?

If it was just one dude at his mom's house in Temecula, then I'd be freaking impressed.

 

[togg]

I still have nothing to complain about with Lion (except maybe the handling of full screen with two monitors). I can't upgrade my iMac to ML but I am not all that disappointed about that. Lion runs great. Mountain Lion just makes Lion that much better.

Also, people complain about how Mountain Lion is not revolutionary and Apple are out of ideas but then in the same breath say how it is SOO much better than being stuck with Lion. I'm confused.

I know this is probably not what you meant by your post, I am still venting from reading some posts in another forum.

Yes. Is much better. And yes, new features don't interest me at all.

 

[cube]

If Apple sold 4 million computers last quarter, that would be 43,715 a day.

43,715 a day = June 11 to July 25 = 44 days = 1,923,460 download in upgrades and that would assume everybody already downloaded their upgrades immediately, which wasn't possible due to Apple's code issue snafu.

With codes only given after 72 hours the 3 million is maybe 2 or 2.5 million .

Don't see how any of it is something to sneeze at.

You could get your working code in a couple hours, 72 would be a worst case.

 

[Felix01]

3 Million @ $19.99 - a cool 59 BILLION dollars....jeepers!

Good math scores in school?

 

[kcmac]

It's a little bit like the "shipped vs. sold," but given that they are selling it for $20, my guess is that Apple is more concerned about the uptake than the actual revenue (hence the reason why they are disclosing downloads).

Not really. Shipped means it could just be sitting on a shelf, not being used.

We downloaded ML one time and installed it on 3 machines so far. All 3 being used. So yeah, uptake vs revenue is a logical way of looking at it but not the shipped vs sold thing.

 

[KdParker]

One point to note : Microsoft's installed based of users dwarfs Apple's. As such, they have a much larger pool of users that will be wanting/waiting to upgrade in the first few days.

It wouldn't surprise me that Windows 8 adoption numbers in absolute units will be higher than 3 million in 4 days, why people want to deny that I'm not sure. It would be interesting to get the numbers as percentages of the installed based though.

that would be interesting.

 

[nilk]

It's funny, because I remember all the whining threads about Snow Leopard. I guess some things never change. There will always be someone to whine about the new OS release.

This is true, and I think people forget what OSes were like when they were first released as opposed to what they were like later in their lifecycle.. Windows XP is a prime example of this -- it wasn't until SP2 before it stopped being completely terrible IMHO.

For me, 10.5/Leopard was the "gold standard". Great new features and it was stable/bug free, even on Intel. I appreciate what they did in 10.6/Snow Leopard, but I had issues with it that kept me going back to 10.5 until a year later when they fixed most of the bugs, and there was still a few things they took away that I missed. Of course, everyone's experiences tend to be varied.

I think 10.8/Mountain Lion is such a minor change to the core OS that it's probably even more stable now than 10.7/Lion was during it's first release. Time will tell. I'm actually considering upgrading my Snow Leopard-running work machine that I refused to put 10.7/Lion on.

 

[Puevlo]

How many people downloaded Snow Leopard on the first day? Definitely not as many as either Lion or Mountain Lion.

 

[pondosinatra]

Just finished the entire 24 page review on Ars...

What a godawful interface abomination - absolutely no consistency. The problem seems to get worse with each new release.

The group of people responsible for the interface should all be fired.

 

[Analog Kid]

3 Petabytes a day-- that'll keep the tubes full!

 

[kalsta]

Lion was not THAT bad, actually... Calling it Apple's own Windows Vista is a bit unfair IMO. What happens is 19.99 is too cheap not to try, and Apple users usually adopt things from the company faster than customers from other tech companies. It's simple as that.

I never called it Apple's Vista, ever. But I have talked to long-time Mac users who were quite upset about Lion and the direction Apple seemed to be going. I suspect there are quite a few seasoned users who are happy to leave it behind, including Ars Technica's John Siracusa, who writes, 'Where Lion stumbled, Mountain Lion regroups and forges ahead'.

As for my own Mac, I couldn't upgrade to Lion (or Mountain Lion) because I still rely on a number of Power PC apps and Apple removed Rosetta. It's going to take me a little while to sort out replacements.

 

[Hyper-X]

I recall Snow Leopard having tons of issues until the latter part of its lifecycle and they seem to have gotten 10.6.8 done right.

Lion on the other hand was IMHO garbage upon release, all subsequent updates really didn't change how slow and inefficient it was all the way up to its end of its lifecycle.

ML is a decent start, IMHO it provides nothing significantly different from Lion and I don't see why there was any need to provide a whole new OS for features I believe could've been implemented through a major update.

 

[hkechoes]

Generally ML is faster, more responsive than Lion (I've done a clean install).

Two problems found:
- Couldn't find the updated driver for my Canon PIXMA MX876 multifunctional scanner/printer. The installer from the product CD says it's no longer compatible with this version of OS. Install anyways shall crash when I tried to scan/print something.

- VMware fusion 4 - when I run a VM in full-screen mode, other Mac programs running side-by-side may exhibit strange behavior - the window flashes. Some suggested turning off the 3D acceleration will solve the issue, but hope a patch from VMware shall solve this problem.

http://communities.vmware.com/message/2083755?tstart=0

 

[F.biz]

Faster but...

Sure Mountain Lion is faster, especially if you have to buy new Mac to be able to run it. Sure you pay only $19.99 for OS but if you like us and you have to buy about 5 MBs for $2000 each it is way more to pay than Microsoft OS price.

OS X ML makes you buy new Mac - in this way Apple could sell OS X for $1 and it would still be very profitable for the company.

MacBook3,1 with SSD drive inside and OS Snow Leo installed is fast enough to do 99.9% of office work with all kinds of 2D graphics. But if you want simple iCloud service which doesn't even have all MobileMe features you have to buy new Mac and throw out your current (running just fine) Mac.

This is full ecowaste system.

 

[haruhiko]

Sure Mountain Lion is faster, especially if you have to buy new Mac to be able to run it. Sure you pay only $19.99 for OS but if you like us and you have to buy about 5 MBs for $2000 each it is way more to pay than Microsoft OS price.

OS X ML makes you buy new Mac - in this way Apple could sell OS X for $1 and it would still be very profitable for the company.

MacBook3,1 with SSD drive inside and OS Snow Leo installed is fast enough to do 99.9% of office work with all kinds of 2D graphics. But if you want simple iCloud service which doesn't even have all MobileMe features you have to buy new Mac and throw out your current (running just fine) Mac.

This is full ecowaste system.

You are allowed to purchase once and install ML on all the Macs you own provided that they are compatible with ML.

 

[sillypooh]

Got ML, installed on one of my Macs, but there's nothing really new there so on my work machine, I'm sticking with Snow Leopard for now. I'm actually shocked how few new features there are, and I'm a Snow Leopard user! I'm kinda against the current Apple philosophy that less is more. As a power user (I think I am), I like a lot of features and configuration options in my OSes, even if those are hidden deep underneath. Every release till SL added boatloads of new features that were for the majority neat "essentials". Not so much here.

I might get the Server additions tho for our server machine (a normal SL). It's dirt cheap so Let's go nuts!

 

[KurtangleTN]

Sure Mountain Lion is faster, especially if you have to buy new Mac to be able to run it. Sure you pay only $19.99 for OS but if you like us and you have to buy about 5 MBs for $2000 each it is way more to pay than Microsoft OS price.

OS X ML makes you buy new Mac - in this way Apple could sell OS X for $1 and it would still be very profitable for the company.

MacBook3,1 with SSD drive inside and OS Snow Leo installed is fast enough to do 99.9% of office work with all kinds of 2D graphics. But if you want simple iCloud service which doesn't even have all MobileMe features you have to buy new Mac and throw out your current (running just fine) Mac.

This is full ecowaste system.

This is Apple, the undisputed champions of planned obsolescence. Remember this when you're buying your next computer. Apple doesn't care about anyone outside of that magical 3 year period.

You know what is even more disgusting is that Apple is likely to drop SL support now, and since my Mac can't update to ML officially if I wanted security updates I'd have to go to the ******** that is Lion.

To all the people talking about Windows upgrade rates and such, people can stick with older an older OS because MS won't use security updates and app support as a hostage in order to get you to update.

I've gotta admit Apple has done an incredible job at grooming so many iOS converts into thinking they've gotta update. Sadly, I know way too many folks that were "loving" ML without actually being able to tell me what feature they loved most. That's the Mac userbase now in a nutshell, that's who the recent ads are targeted at.. they don't know exactly why they need OS EX but god do they need it.

 

[danckwerts]

Contextual Menu Problem

Anyone else have this? I find that right-clicking my Mighty Mouse fails to bring up contextual menus in Mountain Lion. I tried to change the settings so that the depressing the scroll button acted as a right-click. Then the left button acted as the right button and I had no left-click! I only managed to fix this by accessing my iMac from my laptop. By the way, the double-fingered click on my MacBook Air also fails to bring up any contextual menus. This is a major pain! Just when everything seemed to be going so well.

 

[albusseverus]

Less time announcing, more time fixing. This one's a shocker!
I've had the most crashes of ANY OS X release.

Advertising, advertising, advertising… Fix OS X, please Apple.

• Finder dies many times a day, and won't even Force Quit.
• Mail goes into spasms, likewise, won't Force Quit. Even restarting the Mac makes no difference.
• Drag'n'drop in Contacts results in overlapping fields, that at least appear to have data, but upon saving, don't.
• And I've had to scrap Notes altogether, since they lost search inside a note! And they were syncing so well with iCloud, too. Finally moved to Evernote, thanks third-party developers!

Have to smile at the Snow Leopard rules set, though. Wake up & catch up or you'll be really squealing when there's no upgrade path, because you're adamantly running an OS 4 versions out of date. Apple's setting a pace with yearly updates, and you just don't seem to get it. Move it or lose it. Hilarious to see all the effort going into don't-have-iCloud work-arounds. It's like the people who knew Mobile Me was going away a year in advance, didn't make a move until the last week, then blamed Apple. Look around! Apple's got so many fundamental changes that they can't afford backward compatibility. Be smart.​

Mountain Lion is worth it for the Notifications. So quick to see important stuff as it comes in, so you can interrupt your flow, only when necessary.
Now if only Apple can fix the rest…