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Roundup of OS X Mountain Lion Reviews: 'Faster and Smoother', 'Incremental', 'Bargain at Twice the Price'

From what I can see in the reviews, Mountain Lion seems to address many of my gripes with Lion (10.7).

Many applications still look tacky (faux leather etc.) to downright hideous. Greyscale icons are still harder to identify than Snow Leopard's colored ones. So Snow Leopard's look still reigns supreme for me.

But at least some functionality seems to have been restored, particularly things (3 columns in Contacts, calendars sidebar in Calendar) that quickly made me ditch Lion last year.

Can't wait to upgrade. I will certainly not fall in love with any incarnation of (Mountain) Lion but as I want to run current/new apps (like iMessage), I have no choice.
 
papoopeepoo said:
Oh great, another 4GBs to download. This will take 8 hours at full speed on my connection. Should I wait months for (maybe) a flash drive to be released?
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So let me get this straight, waiting 8 hours is too long, but waiting months is OK?

8 hours, just start it before you go to bed, I don't see what the problem is. Sure, some people have slow connections that would take days or weeks, but overnight doesn't seem like a big deal for me, I've bought software that's been 20+ gigs, there's a download purchase I'm considering that's coming out in a couple weeks that's over 50. That is days for me but I'm fine with that.
 
Steady, Mountain Lion... steady...

I think that the more incremental update is a deliberate ninja move by Apple to get into enterprise while Microsoft is causing confusion there with Windows 8. Imagine that the large offices have broken out into a wild jungle sending users into a panic and Apple is opening a familiar door and directing people in. "This is a world you mostly already know. It might be time to try Apple since you'll have a learning curve even if you stay with Windows."

I'd like to see what Apple's plan for the next 10 years looks like. I'd love to see what a major jump looks like, but I think that this is a play for market share. Being bold with the desktop metaphor at the same time as Microsoft is not a great idea. I want them to do it, but it doesn't make sense for them to do it just yet.

I also think that Apple's major leap to the next version of their OS (11?) is not going to be as major as Microsoft's was. Sure, there's reason to update things... I love the live tiles. The idea that things don't need to be static and letting the computer take care of more stuff on my behalf, but I think that with Metro, Microsoft may have thrown out the baby with the bathwater. They've ignored the last 30 years of learning about interfaces. Full colour icons are still incredibly valuable in finding things. Gradients are still important on buttons to show you that something is clickable. There are best practices that Microsoft is ignoring in order to feel futuristic. It's like the see-through monitors in Avatar; sure it looks futuristic, but it's actually not the best approach practically.

Apple's best tactic right now is to mostly stand still and update incrementally. We'll see how many panicked enterprise users come over to the Mac side, and then Apple gives something that looks like a solid foundation for the next 10 years – futuristic, but building on what they've learned.. without starting over.
 
I am not home on my Mac with Lion 10.7 so I would like to ask.....

Does anyone know if the iMessages program beta expired and if this is a Mountain Lion only option now?????
 
As some have already said, I think Gizmodo has some bias against Apple since the whole iPhone 4 in a Bar situation. Also, Gizmodo articles have been pretty poor lately, I can't even the last time I read one of their articles.
 
.Joel said:
It would be nice if the halfwits stopped quoting opinion as "fact." Fact is you have made an opinionative statement that is about as factual as Bill not having sexual relations with Monica.

MacRumors.Com, where kids whom hate Apple come to hang out because their parents don't love them.
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Please, for your own sake, get over yourself.

Oh, and using "whom" in a comment just makes you look moronic.
 
nagromme said:
...Apple innovates too quickly, and Apple innovates too gradually...
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Ha, ha, I noticed that too. I think it's that certain people only evaluate visual changes to asses innovation. From that perspective ML doesn't "innovate" at all. On the other hand, Apple is moving very quickly with usability/workflow enhancement (well, I think they are enhancements, I know some dont' like the Lion changes.)

(But I choose caution: wait until a point update or two. I don’t want to be a guinea pig with bragging rights.)
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Luckily for me I have two Macs. One I can put anything on (I'll wait a day or two for ML to avoid download delays) while the other is for work, with which I'm very cautious.
 
MisterK said:
Apple's best tactic right now is to mostly stand still and update incrementally. We'll see how many panicked enterprise users come over to the Mac side, and then Apple gives something that looks like a solid foundation for the next 10 years – futuristic, but building on what they've learned.. without starting over.
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There are no panicked enterprise users. First off - it's the CIO who decides which OS is going to be used in an enterprise not the run of the mill employee. Second, Windows 7 is still going to be huge in enterprise upgrades for some time. During that time Microsoft will educate CIOs about the advantages of Windows 8 under the hood:

New logon methods(PIN, picture password)
New easy restore
User account integration

Windows To Go is an upcoming Windows 8 Enterprise feature that will allow users to create a bootable USB Flash drive (usually called a Live USB) with Windows 8 in it, including the user's programs, settings, and files. That one CIOs are really going to love.

Storage Spaces is a storage virtualization technology which succeeds Logical Disk Manager and allows the organization of physical disks into logical volumes similar to Logical Volume Manager (Linux), RAID1 or RAID5, but on a higher level.[27]

Client Hyper-V - brings type 1 hypervisor to Windows

and so on.
 
pmz said:
No interest in reading reviews from a bunch of know-it-all hacks that think Snow Leopard is the great thing since Atari and thought that Lion was, in a word, flawed.

I despise anyone who believes Lion is in anyway meaningful way, "flawed"

Lion is nearly OS perfection, and Mountain Lion is the sequel. It's not "incremental" in anyway, it nearly doubles the feature set of Lion while improving every addition that came with Lion.

Out of ideas? Get a life people.
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I hate Lion. WiFi issues at school.. SL works fine. Safari is crap. two tabs open, and it hangs, and I have to force a reload.

Then I always have the check box unchecked so when I restart, I don't have every windows open (otherwise it takes forever to get backup and running) and when I have to force a restart (power button) it ignores the fact that the check box isn't checked, and puts everything back where it was.

HUGE pita. I'm hoping ML will be fixed with the Safari issues, and WiFi issues are fine. The Apple rep for our school said Apple is aware of the WiFi issues, and suggest installing the 10.6 (SL) WiFi Kext. WTF. I want a fix!!!
 
milo said:
So let me get this straight, waiting 8 hours is too long, but waiting months is OK?

8 hours, just start it before you go to bed, I don't see what the problem is. Sure, some people have slow connections that would take days or weeks, but overnight doesn't seem like a big deal for me, I've bought software that's been 20+ gigs, there's a download purchase I'm considering that's coming out in a couple weeks that's over 50. That is days for me but I'm fine with that.
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Fair enough, but i'm also considering that the download might fail halfway at 5AM before I'm awake. The download factor isn't going to deter me from buying, especially because I've been using Apple computers since the Apple IIse was released. But, how unfeasible was it that they release DVD alongside the download release? I'd gladly copy the files to my HD for backup, and recycle the media.

I'm old school. Give the OS on 4000 floppies and I'll boot it like the storage-less machines of olde :D
 
Mac21ND said:
Disagree with Gizmodo. Windows 8 is a nice idea, but man it's going to confuse the living heck out of lots of casual Windows users. (Like the secretaries in my office. I feel bad for our IT department.)
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Jesus is still upset about the iPhone 4.
 
KPOM said:
Gizmodo has been anti-Apple ever since the company sued them and banned them from media events (after Gizmodo refused to return a stolen iPhone 4 prototype). Apple could create a fountain of youth and Gizmodo would complain that it only adds 10 years to your life instead of 20.
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Yep. Gizmodo is the Fox of wannabe internet journalism. Not worth a single click.
 
iconboyips said:
Actually I think it a perfectly reasonable question to ask a manufacturer what their products are compatible with.

If a camera lens manufacturer made lenses and did not know which cameras their lenses were compatible with what would you think?

In-fact I consider it good business practice that both Adobe and Apple know how their products are compatible with each other ready for release. It provides a better customer experience.
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You realize in your camera-lens metaphor, the lens company equates to Adobe. Which is what other posters have been saying, Adobe needs to answer the question.
 
Notes via iCloud does not seem to work for me yet. I can’t enable it on my iPhone when my account has no MobileMe address (I’m using a Yahoo! account). This means my notes on my Mac won’t be pushed to my iPhone and vice versa.

iCloud tabs doesn’t work either yet. Can we expect an iOS update soon? It would be a shame having to wait until iOS 6 comes along, even though this feature has been heavily advertised.

Furthermore, it seems that Apple has left traces of Twitter sharing in each sharing button, even though I don’t use it. Very sloppy if you ask me.
 
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I downloaded, installed and made a boot/recovery SDHC card of Mountain Lion in about an hour before work this morning. So far so good!

Why is it taking people 4-8 hours? Thanks to Cox for a speedy connection!!
 
Rennir said:
You answered your own question. It's too simple, and while that is great practicality-wise, inevitably, people are going to get bored of the simplicity (after 5 generations of the same design). As for asking what people want, that's not the point. Apple's philosophy is that the consumer doesn't know what he/she wants. If you asked a person what more they wanted from a smartphone before the first iPhone was released, do you think they could've listed every single feature that made the iPhone so successful? If any person could do that, then why didn't any other companies try to invent the iPhone before Apple did? Same thing for the iPad.
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Bored of simplicity? I'd never get bored of simplicity. I'm happy with the direction they are taking.
 
iconboyips said:
Actually I think it a perfectly reasonable question to ask a manufacturer what their products are compatible with.

If a camera lens manufacturer made lenses and did not know which cameras their lenses were compatible with what would you think?

In-fact I consider it good business practice that both Adobe and Apple know how their products are compatible with each other ready for release. It provides a better customer experience.
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Yes, but ultimately, it is Adobe who must tailor their application to work within the constraints of the operating system.

Remember that the operating system is a big complicated program that lets other big complicated programs live together in (relative) harmony.

Apple really can't exhaustively test every single application because they aren't probably familiar with how each and every function is supposed to behave. The people who wrote the application can best do that and after all, Adobe engineering are the ones with access to the Adobe source code and can make changes.

It's Apple's responsibility to provide a reasonable stable set of libraries and APIs so that third-party developers have a stable base on which to work.

And this isn't exclusive to Apple. Windows, Solaris, Linux, OS X, whatever. The onus of supporting applications falls on the vendor.

As an Adobe customer, you should be asking them to support their application. Plus, they have all the help documents, resources, etc. They are the experts on Adobe products, not Apple. If you want to know if ___ Adobe product will work on Mountain Lion, ask Adobe. They are the ones who will qualify the application and if necessary, create a patch to make it work on the new operating system and finally put something online that says, "supported on OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion".
 
pmz said:
No interest in reading reviews from a bunch of know-it-all hacks that think Snow Leopard is the great thing since Atari and thought that Lion was, in a word, flawed.

I despise anyone who believes Lion is in anyway meaningful way, "flawed"

Lion is nearly OS perfection, and Mountain Lion is the sequel. It's not "incremental" in anyway, it nearly doubles the feature set of Lion while improving every addition that came with Lion.

Out of ideas? Get a life people.
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So it's your way or the highway, correct? Ok, mr know it all... Will you be paying for me to upgrade to the totally cool and useful 10.7? I don't mean the $20 OS fee. First off since Rosetta was dropped for no reason, I mean because no one uses it, I will need new software. Microsoft office needs to be updated to the newest intel binary version, so let's say $100. I will also need you to repurchase other assorted PPC software, so let's add about $100 more on top of the previous $100. Next, my flat bed scanner uses PPC software, so I will need you to buy me a new scanner as well. Let's say $250 or so. For me to upgrade to the totally awesome and flawless 10.7, I would need to shell out around $475. That is totally worth it though, right? Spending almost $500 to upgrade an OS is not a flaw at all....... PM me the money and I will get right on it. Alternatively, you could substitute in an entire decent windows machine for that price, which wouldn't have any problems like this. If you intend on selling me on 10.8 though, that would be a requirement, as my 2008, I mean ancient, C2D Mac mini is apparently too old to even run the new OS. You say get a life, which totally makes you not sound like a d bag btw, but how should I do that if I need to work hard at a second job to pay for OS updates?
 
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According to John Siracusa (Ars Technica):
"The Mac is a platform in transition. In Lion, OS X began shedding the well-worn trappings of traditional desktop computing at an accelerated rate. This trend continues in Mountain Lion. Where Lion stumbled, Mountain Lion regroups and tries again—while still forging bravely ahead in other areas.

As the second major refinement-focused release, it's easy to view OS X 10.8 as "what 10.7 should have been." The flip side of this argument is that the real-world mileage we’ve all put on Lion has helped Apple make the right kinds of adjustments in Mountain Lion."

And yet how many people (here and in the press) slammed MS for Vista? Win 7 is what Vista should have been but no one went easy on Microsoft. Funny how when Apple does this (ie, release a subpar OS version only to make it better with the next release), many folks are OK with it.
 
Yay!

For anyone who has been wanting to mirror their laptop screen wireless on their HDTV this OS update is a no-brainer! Can't wait to try it out tonight. :)
 
iconboyips said:
Anyone know if this will allow CS4 to run bug free. (I ran it fine on Lion without any bugs).

I have asked and asked Apple Store online chat and none of their staff now.
How stupid is that - they don't know what their own product is compatible with!!

They wanted me to ring AppleCare (who would charge me as my product is out of warranty) just to find out if it is compatible.

Loosing ALOT of faith in Apple these days.
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Uh, ok n00b, go here.

http://roaringapps.com/

Which it looks like I'll be waiting 'till Adobe gets their junk together before I upgrade... Oh well. Looking forward to integrated notes & reminders tho.
 
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