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Snow Leopard or Mountain Lion

I've tested Mountain Lion and have decided to...

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therocket

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 11, 2010
58
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I am wondering if I should upgrade from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion. After Lion came out, I was going to upgrade, but I never did because of some of the stories that I was hearing about people switching back to SL. Also, I use Spaces and expose extensively and when I saw how Mission Control deals with spaces and sticky corners from SL, that kind of finalized my decision to not upgrade.

I have a 2010 MBP, i5, and 4GB of ram so I'm not too worried about performance, I'm mostly just concerned about productivity and usability of the OS. I don't mind change, unless the change is backwards rather than forwards.

Has anyone that stuck with SL tried the GM of Mountain Lion and made a decision on upgrading or staying with SL? If you have made the decision, would you mind sharing some of the details on why you are staying with SL or upgrading to ML?


Thanks!
 
I'm staying with SL mostly because of Spaces and Full-Screen mode.

If you use Spaces/Expose extensively then you would probably be disappointed with Mission Control. For example, in SL if you activate both Spaces and Expose , you can freely move any window from any Space to any other Space without having to exit the grid. In MC, you can only move windows involving the current desktop.

If you don't have and will never get a 2nd monitor, you probably won't mind Lion's and ML's Full-Screen mode. On the other hand, if you might even consider getting a 2nd monitor, then Lion's and ML's Full-Screen mode will make the 2nd monitor virtually useless.

Also, note the loss of "Save As..." and "Do you want to Save?", and limited control over Resume, Versions or AutoSave.
 
I think it would be really silly to stay on 10.6.8 at this point. I could see waiting until 10.8.1 or .2 is released, but you are missing out on a lot of features by staying on Snow Leopard.
 
splitpea said:
What would you consider the can't-miss features that SL users don't have access to?
Click to expand...

It is all the little things more then one feature. Just the speed improvements alone are worth more then $20 to me.

So far, I am enjoying AirPlay and Safari 6, but there are many small improvements in the Finder and other apps that become more noticeable when I use a 10.6 machine again.
 
therocket said:
I am wondering if I should upgrade from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion. After Lion came out, I was going to upgrade, but I never did because of some of the stories that I was hearing about people switching back to SL. Also, I use Spaces and expose extensively and when I saw how Mission Control deals with spaces and sticky corners from SL, that kind of finalized my decision to not upgrade.

I have a 2010 MBP, i5, and 4GB of ram so I'm not too worried about performance, I'm mostly just concerned about productivity and usability of the OS. I don't mind change, unless the change is backwards rather than forwards.

Has anyone that stuck with SL tried the GM of Mountain Lion and made a decision on upgrading or staying with SL? If you have made the decision, would you mind sharing some of the details on why you are staying with SL or upgrading to ML?


Thanks!
Click to expand...

I would upgrade. SL is around 3 years old now so it's rather obsolete security wise. I haven't tried the GM so i can't say what's the good and the bad on it. As for spaces there is this. And expose has better window grouping in ML.

By sticky corners do you mean hot corners? There is that option with Mission control in the System Preferences.
 
Apple will drop support for Snow Leopard once Mountain Lion is available.

Sticking with an unsupported operating system is illogical.
 
I like the fact that I can resize windows from any edge in Lion. But Lion loses the emulator for old code like MS Office 2008, which is definitely a problem for some.
 
NeoMayhem said:
It is all the little things more then one feature. Just the speed improvements alone are worth more then $20 to me.

So far, I am enjoying AirPlay and Safari 6, but there are many small improvements in the Finder and other apps that become more noticeable when I use a 10.6 machine again.
Click to expand...

Speed improvements? Are there any tests out there yet?

Honestly if I had not been forced to use Lion by iCloud and Xcode 4.3, I would have stayed with Snow Leopard forever.

Now let's talk about what Mountain Lion users don't have access to... Built-in RSS, Rosetta, proper full screen on multiple monitors, proper Spaces, manual termination of apps, the list goes on...

Major.Robto said:
Spock is right, Staying on a outdated os Is illogical!
Click to expand...

Why is it illogical? When the majority chose to stick with Windows XP when Windows Vista was out, the people had a very logical rationale behind the decision. It all boils down to personal preference and there is nothing illogical about this.
 
Simplicated said:
Why is it illogical? When the majority chose to stick with Windows XP when Windows Vista was out, the people had a very logical rationale behind the decision. It all boils down to personal preference and there is nothing illogical about this.
Click to expand...

XP is still receving updates. OSX 10.3 osx 10.4 osx 10.5 are not,
So what the hell?
Apple does not like users running the old systemMicrosoft will update till 2014 I'm told.

Look theres new malware on PPC only systems, so like what the hell.
 
Your poll needs a Lion choice ;) and possibly a Leopard choice. :eek: I move to Lion to get iCloud fully working. Unfortunately, almost all my machines are not compatible with ML so I'll be sticking with Lion on most of my Machines and with Leopard on my trusty but dusty G4.
 
Sven11 said:
Apple will drop support for Snow Leopard once Mountain Lion is available.

Sticking with an unsupported operating system is illogical.
Click to expand...

It may be risky, but it's not totally illogical if the new OS would be extremely detrimental to one's usual workflow, without adding any features that are particularly useful to that particular user. That seems like a net loss.
 
Thanks for all of the replies and your input. And While I do think that it is illogical to remain on an unsupported/unupdated OS, at the same time, it's illogical to change to an OS that will majority affect someone's workflow. Luckilly I am not quite into my 20's so i can adapt to tech changes like a fat mans shirt to his belly. :D

I think that i'm probably going to try out mountain Lion and see what I think about it. I use 2 monitors about 80% of the time so the fullscreen issue will probably get really annoying :mad:, but there should be a 3rd party fix somewhere, no? I haven't had to deal with the issue so I haven't done any research on a solution.

And i've been planning on doing a clean OS install ever since Lion first came out, but after the bad reviews, I never upgraded and i have never gotten around to doing a clean refresh of SL. I'll do a clean ML install and i guess the worst that can happen is that i will end up with a clean install of SL if I don't like ML.

r0k said:
Your poll needs a Lion choice ;) and possibly a Leopard choice. :eek: I move to Lion to get iCloud fully working. Unfortunately, almost all my machines are not compatible with ML so I'll be sticking with Lion on most of my Machines and with Leopard on my trusty but dusty G4.
Click to expand...

The reason those options are not available is because I wanted to target the people who chose to stay with Snow Leopard, like I did.
 
NeoMayhem said:
It is all the little things more then one feature. Just the speed improvements alone are worth more then $20 to me.

So far, I am enjoying AirPlay and Safari 6, but there are many small improvements in the Finder and other apps that become more noticeable when I use a 10.6 machine again.
Click to expand...

Can you tell me more about the speed improvements? I never saw that as one of its 'features'.
 
WSR said:
Also, note the loss of "Save As..." and "Do you want to Save?"
Click to expand...

Both appear to have returned in some way or another with ML.

saveprompt.png

saveas.png
 
therocket said:
Luckily I am not quite into my 20's so i can adapt to tech changes like a fat mans shirt to his belly..
Click to expand...
Lucky for you! In another ten years you'll be so dumb you won't be able to use a computer.

Just today, I had to download a Fortran compiler so I could get some old software to run on my Mac. If I wasn't such an old geezer, I would just know how to use new software, and I wouldn't have to bother with compiling code. Just look at what you'll have to deal with in ten years!
 
Last edited:
I didn't update to lion solely because they ruined expose, now that ml has the old exposé back though I am for sure upgrading.
 
Snow Leopard for as long as I can.

I need color in my sidebar.
Green triangle means Photoshop, CD means audio, yellow blue red screen means Final Cut, and black square means games. I can't do that with monotonous generic grey folder icons. If I really wanted grey I'd fire up my Mac Classic and sit in front of that all day.

A rather minor one for most people that makes a pretty big deal for me is the dashboard. With the Dashboard's transparency I can easily use my currency converter widget while looking at a list of prices on a document or website.

Safari 6 apparently got rid of the Activity window and Backspace to go back. I use Activity to bypass flash and HTML watermarks and other stuff like that all the time and removing backspace to go back is just stupid. Every other browser in the world uses backspace why can't Safari?

There are several other issues but it'd take all day to list them.
 
InuNacho said:
A rather minor one for most people that makes a pretty big deal for me is the dashboard. With the Dashboard's transparency I can easily use my currency converter widget while looking at a list of prices on a document or website.
Click to expand...

That option is still there in Lion.
 
Major.Robto said:
XP is still receving updates. OSX 10.3 osx 10.4 osx 10.5 are not,
So what the hell?
Apple does not like users running the old systemMicrosoft will update till 2014 I'm told.

Look theres new malware on PPC only systems, so like what the hell.
Click to expand...

Microsoft has no hidden agenda, they run the worlds computers for every product & service we rely on. They will always be there to stand behind their products no matter how imperfect they may be.

Apple wants us to believe their superior, yet they've got computers & other hardware to sell. What better way than to force us through Apples abandonment of the Macs we love & have taken good care of.

I'm used to it, Apples been this way for years. I will continue to use & enjoy my fast, fun & highly optimized version 10.6.8 for some time to come. Once Apple walks away, I'll still use it till _I_ decide it's time to change. If one practices safe computing there's little concern over potential malware & the like.
 
Is there any major software that even requires lion or higher?

So far I see nothing new that can't run on snow leopard. Maybe the next version of safari and itunes will require mountain lion, but that's hardly anything of importance.
 
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