So apparently Lion sucks?

[Djangry]

No longer the good ole days

Not really forced Beta Testing. You'd have to expect that some apps are going to have problems, they always do with new OS releases. Rosetta for example...everyone knew it was coming and upgraded then bitched about it.

Ubuntu is a decent OS with plenty of decent free apps. Would it work well for 90% of what people need? Yes
Is it better than OSX or Windows 7. No(just my opinion)
I'd like to see more PC's getting released with it personally, because most people would be just fine using it.
There always comes some specialty thing you need your computer to do, then you hit a wall and are just screwed.

I agree with you about many things...
I miss the good old days of say... the mid 2000's -Tiger fast and stable,Xp as well.
Boot camp beta,audio apps kicking butt on both platforms.
Powerful hardware(ran a little hot)but everything seemed to work well.
After the Leopard/Vista years the hardware was problematic and the apps seemed to never really catch up.
That is when the penguin reared it's pretty head.
Apple and Microsoft dropped the ball and when I saw Dell start to release Ubuntu machines....

I knew Linux was finally ready for prime time.

In the meantime...

My solution was to stop upgrading and unplug some machines from the Internet.
So my apps wouldn't be chewed up and work-flow could remain unfettered.

I read in Max Pc the sister mag to Maclife "do your banking on a bootable Ubuntu disc".
Can you believe it! whats the point ...just run Ubuntu it is the most secure,now that Mal-ware has finally cracked the mac OS.

This one should start a flame or two "Safari sucks and so does Firefox"
IE has always been a spy sieve- we know that already.
These three are responsible for a plethora of Mal-ware and millions of dollars lost.
I thought there were lawsuits to separate these open portals from the main OS.
I guess that was BS because at least in the case of Safari and IE they are very much a part of the OS.
To hear about the the new safari crashing all over the place- just reiterates what a dog it is.
Love it or hate it chrome on Ubuntu is as good as it gets.
Just my opinion,
Love... your humble narrator!

 

[ZipZap]

I think many problems are due to a poor upgrade process from Apple.

I wiped and reinstalled lion and seem to have a stable system. I also get to see lion uncluttered by Snow Leopard and I do like what I see.

No WIFI issues.

That's not to say there are no bugs...only that a clean install seems to get rid of the wierdness.

 

[gentlefury]

Well, I am one of those 5 stars......I've been using it since day one and it works great! I'm not on crappy outdated hardware...so that could be why. But seriously? They need to change the site name from MacRumors to MacComplainers.

 

[swingerofbirch]

I think many problems are due to a poor upgrade process from Apple.

I wiped and reinstalled lion and seem to have a stable system. I also get to see lion uncluttered by Snow Leopard and I do like what I see.

No WIFI issues.

That's not to say there are no bugs...only that a clean install seems to get rid of the wierdness.

I would have had it even worse then had I not done a clean install. I installed a brand new hard drive in my MBP and then installed Lion from an external USB drive and still had the problems I mentioned previously. Switching back to Snow Leopard and not having those problems. I do hope they get fixed because I would like to use Lion for the cool new stuff, like switching betweens spaces with the gesture and full screen apps.

 

[MartiNZ]

A few words about Windows ME.
It was a transitional OS a blend of 98 and NT soon to be XP.

It was buggy and than Microsoft put the effort to make the code 10 times better than before..ME in it's final days was actually a decent OS because the company focused.
Let's hope Lion shares the same fate.

Mac seems to want you to upgrade every three years or so.
I take issue with that,but will save that for another post.

Also it is not always their fault when apps go astray- I still can't get adobe updater to work properly under any of version of OSX.

Apple does so many things right,you are probably spot on when you say must users will be happy.... eventually.
Upgrading is never an easy process ,although mac seems to do it rather well.
Some apps are always lost till they catch up or give up.

Just remember pioneers get arrows -settlers get land.
We just need to wait a while.....

Really interesting that, I never knew that about ME. I never had the experience of using it, but that makes it a good happy ending in my mind.

Unfortunately for Lion's case, such improvements ARE going to mean letting us completely and permanently turn off the counterproductive new features and let us not save changes! And I just don't think they have it in them to give us that .

Oh and I totally misread that as "settlers get laid" .

 

[LIVEFRMNYC]

A few words about Windows ME.
It was a transitional OS a blend of 98 and NT soon to be XP.

It was buggy and than Microsoft put the effort to make the code 10 times better than before..ME in it's final days was actually a decent OS because the company focused.
Let's hope Lion shares the same fate.

Windows ME was the most buggy OS in the history of man kind!!! It was never close to being good.

 

[scottsjack]

Unfortunately for Lion's case, such improvements ARE going to mean letting us completely and permanently turn off the counterproductive new features and let us not save changes! And I just don't think they have it in them to give us that .

Exactly. The user should have the option to make Lion act like a tablet system, a laptop system or a desktop system. The UI behaves very differently on each of those three types of computers.

My anger has been more with Lion's desktop issues than with the tablet features I don't plan to use.

 

[natejohnstone@g]

I installed Lion about 2 weeks ago on my 9-month-old late 2010 13" MBP (stock 2.4 duo, 4Gigs ram). It has been so horrible ...

--Battery Life down 40%
--Won't output HD audio, or even DTS/DD most of the time, regardless of codec or program
--Pinwheels all the time
--Safari and iPhoto are unstable, crash, freeze, etc.
--Start up, program launches, and generally everything is slower
--WoW is slower

To top it all off, my wife literally asked me to switch back to the old OS (Snow Leopard) because she just can't stand the all-grey finder! I'll admit, I hate it too. Why not give us the option to customize with color icons? Computers have had color icons since like 1992 ... switching to monocrome is a step BACKWARDS as is everything with this BS OS.

If Apple wants to pretend "grey is the new black" or whatever, fine, set that as the default. But still give us the option to make the OS easier to see, read, navigate, and just plain CUSTOMIZE to our liking! My wife can't stand it, and I know for a fact that my Mom will just freak (60-year-old eyes have a hard enough time seeing colors, let along ALL GREY, are you kidding me?), so I told her not to upgrade.

I can't help but conclude that Apple threw away a whole lot of functionality in order to make Lion "smaller." But why? Is there a global shortage of hard drive space? Because I thought you could get a 1TB hard drive for under $100. So why make it small and loose so much?

The only thing I can think of is that Apple is trying to make iOS and OS X into as much the same thing as possible, presumably to try to make it easier for all the iOS users to switch from PCs to Macs. But they'll NEVER get PC users to switch with Lion. Good Lord, I hate to even be typing this, but Windows 7 is loads better than Lion. I never thought I'd see the day.

 

[SaSaSushi]

There was exactly one issue that I was experiencing in Lion. The machine wasn't truly entering full sleep mode unless I disabled Internet Sharing.

This wasn't a fix in my opinion so I was looking forward to an OS update that would address it until I realized it was actually caused by an app, iStat Menus. I've removed that in favor of ATMonitor and now everything is just fine and dandy and the machine enters sleep mode properly.

Overall, I'm quite happy with Lion and now have no complaints at all, performance or otherwise.

----------

I installed Lion about 2 weeks ago on my 9-month-old late 2010 13" MBP (stock 2.4 duo, 4Gigs ram). It has been so horrible ...

--Battery Life down 40%
--Won't output HD audio, or even DTS/DD most of the time, regardless of codec or program
--Pinwheels all the time
--Safari and iPhoto are unstable, crash, freeze, etc.
--Start up, program launches, and generally everything is slower
--WoW is slower

I can't comment on your battery issues and don't play WoW but I have exactly the opposite experience to the rest of your list of complaints. It sounds to me like you may have far more serious issues than the OS.

Have you tried a clean install?

Good Lord, I hate to even be typing this, but Windows 7 is loads better than Lion. I never thought I'd see the day.

I don't know why you'd hate to type that. You're entitled to your opinion. I own Windows 7 Ultimate and run it in Boot Camp/Parallels and I happen to like it a lot too. 99% of the time I'm in Lion, however, so that says something.

 

[Hyper-X]

A few words about Windows ME.
It was a transitional OS a blend of 98 and NT soon to be XP.

Incorrect, you're confusing ME for Windows 2000 which was the official product of incorporating PnP and DirectX support from the 9x operating systems with NT's code.

Windows ME was based on the 9x code but restricted access to real-mode DOS, to drop boot times which really sucked at the time.

 

[Djangry]

me 2

Windows ME was the most buggy OS in the history of man kind!!! It was never close to being good.

I thought cheetah was the worst it gave new meaning to the words dual boot.
We shouldn't argue about something we both agree on.
My point was the last set of patches for ME really helped,because the company had egg on it's face.
ME only lasted a year on the shelves, thank God.
Let's hope lion gets patched quickly.
Love, your humble narrator.

----------

 

[natejohnstone@g]

I can't comment on your battery issues and don't play WoW but I have exactly the opposite experience to the rest of your list of complaints. It sounds to me like you may have far more serious issues than the OS.

My computer is only 9 months old and I've had no issues with it before. Everything had been running great so far, actually, which was a pleasant surprise because I've had horrible luck with my original 15" and now 17" versions of the MBP (which is currently GSODed). But this 13" computer was fine until Lion, and I've made no other changes than that. I don't have any 3rd party hardware and honestly don't have all that many programs on this one ... it's mostly our media hub and my wife's internet machine.

Have you tried a clean install?

I have not, and will probably resort to that, either that or switching back to SL, which I'm leaning towards since I've scoured the net for a fix to the HD audio problem (which many people have) and the consensus is that it's an OS issue.

But I have to say this: most of us here are experienced users who can do a clean install simply, but for the average bloke it's not a viable fix. You shouldn't HAVE to wipe your system clean to install an OS upgrade. Not to mention that it's bloody annoying to have to set up your computer all over again the way you want it, transfer files, etc. If you're running a 2007 system, you might expect to have to do that once in a while, but this baby's barely crawling.

And by the way, SaSaSushi ... I live up in Misawa, lol!

 

[Queen of Spades]

Well, I am one of those 5 stars......I've been using it since day one and it works great! I'm not on crappy outdated hardware...so that could be why. But seriously? They need to change the site name from MacRumors to MacComplainers.

No, it's actually not. I've had wifi problems from the minute I installed Lion on a 2011 quad core MBP. Not to mention problems with iWeb and other programs. I eventually just went back to SL until Apple can release a more polished OS X update.

A lot of people are having issues, it's not just a few isolated complainers. Some of us use our computers for more than gmail and facebook.

 

[handel30]

Lion does not "suck"

An extreme but vocal minority have tried -- and failed -- to label Lion "Apple's Vista." I just switched from a laptop with Vista and all I can say is that, compared to Vista, Lion is a wonder. If Lion sucks, it is only in relation to Snow Leopard. The vast majority of complaints as far as I can tell are coming from people who prefer or are attached to Snow Leopard. It's not like someone is going to come to Lion from Vista and say, "Oh no, Vista was so much better; I want to go back to Vista." That isn't happening.

 

[Partron22]

I've had wifi problems from the minute I installed Lion on a 2011 quad core MBP.

-Deprecated Hardware.
With Lion, Jobs took the Winbox obsolence strategy and kicked it up a quantum-notch.
I anticipate having to buy the latest Mac at least once a day.

 

[Djangry]

Incorrect? Possibly...depends.

Incorrect, you're confusing ME for Windows 2000 which was the official product of incorporating PnP and DirectX support from the 9x operating systems with NT's code.

Windows ME was based on the 9x code but restricted access to real-mode DOS, to drop boot times which really sucked at the time.

I was referring to things like msconfig which I had to add to 2000.
And running certain 9x apps.
But you are correct in some ways.... 2000 was released before Me.

Here is a quote I found on Wikipedia...
"Windows Me was conceived as a quick one-year project that served as a stopgap release between Windows 98 and Windows XP."
That's kinda what I meant.

Let us not forget this is a mac site- no need to go tit for tat about MS details....

We are discussing lion,so to contradict myself...Ubuntu Ubuntu Ubuntu Ubuntu.
Get with it guys you can run it on almost anything..Love ya
Penguin power baby!

 

[Hyper-X]

I was referring to things like msconfig which I had to add to 2000.
And running certain 9x apps.
But you are correct in some ways.... 2000 was released before Me.

Here is a quote I found on Wikipedia...
"Windows Me was conceived as a quick one-year project that served as a stopgap release between Windows 98 and Windows XP."
That's kinda what I meant.

A few words about Windows ME.
It was a transitional OS a blend of 98 and NT soon to be XP.

It wasn't a blend of 98 and NT, that was Windows 2000. Yes it was released beween 98 and XP but still not a blend.

Perhaps the wrong choice in the word "blend".

 

[KirkL]

My battery life's been cut in half after Lion

 

[SaSaSushi]

But I have to say this: most of us here are experienced users who can do a clean install simply, but for the average bloke it's not a viable fix. You shouldn't HAVE to wipe your system clean to install an OS upgrade. Not to mention that it's bloody annoying to have to set up your computer all over again the way you want it, transfer files, etc. If you're running a 2007 system, you might expect to have to do that once in a while, but this baby's barely crawling.

Well, I'm sorry to hear about your problems and as troublesome as it is to do, a full backup then a clean install just to see if it does help might be worth a try. I agree you shouldn't have to and as I said on my 22 month old iMac I did an upgrade from Snow Leopard and haven't had any issues with Lion to speak of. Good luck with that. You could always go back to Snow Leopard too although I wouldn't want to do that at this point.

And by the way, SaSaSushi ... I live up in Misawa, lol!

Cheers! I envy you. I've never gotten up to Aomori but I absolutely subsist on a daily dose of San Fuji Apples. It's way too hot and humid down here in Kagawa.

 

[natejohnstone@g]

An extreme but vocal minority have tried -- and failed -- to label Lion "Apple's Vista." I just switched from a laptop with Vista and all I can say is that, compared to Vista, Lion is a wonder. If Lion sucks, it is only in relation to Snow Leopard. The vast majority of complaints as far as I can tell are coming from people who prefer or are attached to Snow Leopard. It's not like someone is going to come to Lion from Vista and say, "Oh no, Vista was so much better; I want to go back to Vista." That isn't happening.

Of course Lion is better than Vista, when people compare the two it is a metaphor. Vista sucked balls, it was a step down from XP in many people's eyes, and so many chose to downgrade back to XP. Today, Lion is being treated the same way by many people who are choosing to downgrade to Snow Leopard ... hence the comparison.

 

[3bs]

lion doesnt suck-I think lion is very refreshing- it might lack a bit of color but i wouldnt go as far as to say it sucks.

Yeah I kinda miss the old colored sidebar icons in finder

 

[handel30]

Of course Lion is better than Vista, when people compare the two it is a metaphor. Vista sucked balls, it was a step down from XP in many people's eyes, and so many chose to downgrade back to XP. Today, Lion is being treated the same way by many people who are choosing to downgrade to Snow Leopard ... hence the comparison.

A few things about Snow Leopard are better. Hopefully, Apple will reincorporate them. But certain features in Lion should remain basic. Autosave and versions are certainly a welcome advance as long as you still give people a way to quickly save whenever they want. Not being at the mercy of the machine is important.

Why can't you get the best of both worlds? I like the fact that the new scroll bars disappear and a bunch of other little things about Lion that I would not want to do without. Even when the scroll bars appear, they are very unobtrusive, as is the Lion interface in general.

 

[stevemiller]

i know slippery slope arguments are the worst, but the more i use it, the more concerned i become about lion positioning full screen apps as the 'post-pc' future and transitioning away from the desktop model on computers.

don't get me wrong, having a "focus mode" is a good idea in certain situations, and i've given it the college try to see how well it works to section things off as much as possible. but the end result has been me realizing how incredibly limiting it is most of the time. i want to have my calendar and my mail side by side when i'm trying to arrange something with others. i want my web browser for research next to the document i'm composing. i want reference photos open in preview next to my 3d software. i want finder windows handy for fast drag 'n drops.

i know i am not everyone, but i feel like i must represent a reasonable portion of people who appreciate the benefits of a shared workspace. yes, i know desktops are still there, but i just want to strongly advocate that both modes be allowed to flourish, rather than some transitional period to everything being fullscreen, and endless swiping in between.

 

[pcmxa]

don't get me wrong, having a "focus mode" is a good idea in certain situations, and i've given it the college try to see how well it works to section things off as much as possible. but the end result has been me realizing how incredibly limiting it is most of the time. i want to have my calendar and my mail side by side when i'm trying to arrange something with others. i want my web browser for research next to the document i'm composing. i want reference photos open in preview next to my 3d software. i want finder windows handy for fast drag 'n drops.

Just wanted to second this and to say thanks for putting what I have been feeling since using Lion so eloquently

 

[Soliber]

Just thinking out loud here, but when people say that their battery life has diminished, do they actually experience it as such? Meaning they can actually get less hours out of their battery? Or are they basing themselves on what the battery icon tells them?
I read that those OS X battery life estimates can get less accurate over time, but there's a procedure to fix that.