Switch to Lion or stay with Snow Leopard?

[innercr]

Don't switch

Okay, where do I start? On the release day I have Time Machine backed up my SL install and upgrade-reloaded Lion on my 2010 MacBook Pro i7. My first impression was that it did run snappier than SL. Then performance degraded.

What I run on MBP is basically three browsers, OpenOffice, MS Office, T-Bird email (don't use Apple mail and don't care much about it), CS5, three text text/html editors and VMWare Fusion w/W7 and that's it.

Here's what does not work as it should have:

Can't easily edit /etc/hosts anymore. It requires command line hack and elevated admin privilege.

Lion wants at least 4gb of RAM just to run the core apps. Not good. SL would be less resource hungry.

CS5 has been de-activated. Dreamweaver crashes often.

Wi-Fi is more erratic than under SL.

VMWare Fusion is like Vista, crawling, freezing and crashing.

Bluetooth DUN tethering does not work. Can't have 3G Internet anymore. Used to work with SL.

Can't change size of icons or or folders by pinch-zoom gesture anymore.

"Save As" has been replaced by "Duplicate". Steve Jobs can't save anymore, he has to "duplicate"

Essentially, Lion is a service pack that broke a lot of functionality and I don't care about Mission Control and Launchpad - they were expunged from the dock on the day of install.

My suggestion to you is to stay with SL. You ain't gonna gain nothing by going to Lion except aggravation.

 

[jbg232]

Okay, where do I start? On the release day I have Time Machine backed up my SL install and upgrade-reloaded Lion on my 2010 MacBook Pro i7. My first impression was that it did run snappier than SL. Then performance degraded.

What I run on MBP is basically three browsers, OpenOffice, MS Office, T-Bird email (don't use Apple mail and don't care much about it), CS5, three text text/html editors and VMWare Fusion w/W7 and that's it.

Here's what does not work as it should have:

Can't easily edit /etc/hosts anymore. It requires command line hack and elevated admin privilege.

Lion wants at least 4gb of RAM just to run the core apps. Not good. SL would be less resource hungry.

CS5 has been de-activated. Dreamweaver crashes often.

Wi-Fi is more erratic than under SL.

VMWare Fusion is like Vista, crawling, freezing and crashing.

Bluetooth DUN tethering does not work. Can't have 3G Internet anymore. Used to work with SL.

Can't change size of icons or or folders by pinch-zoom gesture anymore.

"Save As" has been replaced by "Duplicate". Steve Jobs can't save anymore, he has to "duplicate"

Essentially, Lion is a service pack that broke a lot of functionality and I don't care about Mission Control and Launchpad - they were expunged from the dock on the day of install.

My suggestion to you is to stay with SL. You ain't gonna gain nothing by going to Lion except aggravation.

I'm sorry you're having so many problems. I have to state that I haven't noticed any of those things though and I use CS5 and VMware fusion fine. Just my 2 cents.

 

[harcosparky]

I have the same iMac as the OP and for now it is staying on Snow Leopard.

I have a three month old 17" Macbook Pro that I installed LION on it a week or so ago. I have noticed some minor anomalies with LION and talk about them in a separate thread.

Not sure if I am going to stay with LION on the MBP because we are still trying it out. I guess if any other anomalies pop up that have an adverse effect " for me " I may take the MBP back to Snow Leopard.

 

[Lokheed]

Hey guys, not to highjack the thread but I have a question along similar lines. Should I wear underwear or not? Sometimes it's nice but often times I find it too restrictive and binding! What should I do? I hear a lot of people are wearing it, but should I too? Does anyone know any problems associated with wearing them? Or not wearing them?

What are your experiences on the subject? Yay or nay!?

 

[jbg232]

Hey guys, not to highjack the thread but I have a question along similar lines. Should I wear underwear or not? Sometimes it's nice but often times I find it too restrictive and binding! What should I do? I hear a lot of people are wearing it, but should I too? Does anyone know any problems associated with wearing them? Or not wearing them?

What are your experiences on the subject? Yay or nay!?

The internet never fails to provide entertainment.

 

[Lokheed]

The internet never fails to provide entertainment.

Ha. Thank you. I'll be here Thursdays and Sundays! 2 drink minimum! Bring your friends

 

[wrx]

Hey guys, not to highjack the thread but I have a question along similar lines. Should I wear underwear or not? Sometimes it's nice but often times I find it too restrictive and binding! What should I do? I hear a lot of people are wearing it, but should I too? Does anyone know any problems associated with wearing them? Or not wearing them?

What are your experiences on the subject? Yay or nay!?

I'm so glad I could inspire you



btw, I too wear underwear...

 

[talmy]

Your mileage may vary...

What I run on MBP is basically three browsers, OpenOffice, MS Office, T-Bird email (don't use Apple mail and don't care much about it), CS5, three text text/html editors and VMWare Fusion w/W7 and that's it.

Seems reasonable.

Here's what does not work as it should have:
Can't easily edit /etc/hosts anymore. It requires command line hack and elevated admin privilege.

Ignoring that most people don't need to edit /etc/hosts and that it was always owned by root with only read access otherwise, it should be editable just like always with "sudo vi /etc/hosts" or "sudo emacs /etc/hosts". Is this a hack? Is editing the hosts file a hack?

Lion wants at least 4gb of RAM just to run the core apps. Not good. SL would be less resource hungry.

Runs fine on our 2GB Macbook Air. I'm using more memory on my iMac because I've bought into its autosave/resume and no longer close apps when finished. This keeps them instant loading (as long as there is sufficient RAM) and relies on OS X to shut down apps not in use when RAM runs out. This is a great use of RAM memory. I'm now using 5GB of my 8 in "normal" use with upwards of a dozen running apps. I never used even 4 of the 8 with Snow Leopard. Is this being resource hungry or is it just making good use of the resources available? I'd say the latter.

CS5 has been de-activated. Dreamweaver crashes often.

Always a smart move to deactivate Adobe CS before any major change and then reactivate afterwards. I've had no problems with Dreamweaver CS5 crashing in Lion.

"Save As" has been replaced by "Duplicate". Steve Jobs can't save anymore, he has to "duplicate"

This is a new document-centric paradigm. I've got at least one Lionized app (Eazydraw) that has both Save As and Duplicate, so they aren't mutually exclusive. When you do a "Save As" you end up doing further editing of the new file which has no version history. With Duplicate the contents are duplicated into a new file (with it's own window) and you can continue editing the original file (which has the history) or the new file (which is nameless until you either close it (command-W) or save it (command-S)). The combination of the new features Duplicate, Versions, Locked files, auto-save, and resume works very smoothly and are easily understood although different that historic usage. Actually it isn't new. Duplicate+autosave have been part of Aperture, iPhoto, and iMovie for quite some time.

Essentially, Lion is a service pack that broke a lot of functionality and I don't care about Mission Control and Launchpad - they were expunged from the dock on the day of install.

IMHO it's far more than a service pack, it is the most radical new release in OS X history. It's the first release that demands you rethink your workflow. It's certainly a dangerous proposition, but I expect Apple feels they have enough momentum to pull it off.

 

[colourfastt]

Okay, where do I start? On the release day I have Time Machine backed up my SL install and upgrade-reloaded Lion on my 2010 MacBook Pro i7. My first impression was that it did run snappier than SL. Then performance degraded.

What I run on MBP is basically three browsers, OpenOffice, MS Office, T-Bird email (don't use Apple mail and don't care much about it), CS5, three text text/html editors and VMWare Fusion w/W7 and that's it.

Here's what does not work as it should have:

Can't easily edit /etc/hosts anymore. It requires command line hack and elevated admin privilege.

Lion wants at least 4gb of RAM just to run the core apps. Not good. SL would be less resource hungry.

CS5 has been de-activated. Dreamweaver crashes often.

Wi-Fi is more erratic than under SL.

VMWare Fusion is like Vista, crawling, freezing and crashing.

Bluetooth DUN tethering does not work. Can't have 3G Internet anymore. Used to work with SL.

Can't change size of icons or or folders by pinch-zoom gesture anymore.

"Save As" has been replaced by "Duplicate". Steve Jobs can't save anymore, he has to "duplicate"

Essentially, Lion is a service pack that broke a lot of functionality and I don't care about Mission Control and Launchpad - they were expunged from the dock on the day of install.

My suggestion to you is to stay with SL. You ain't gonna gain nothing by going to Lion except aggravation.

Steve Jobs doesn't "duplicate", he replicates by fission like all bacteria.

 

[mzd]

first off, thanks to wrx for starting this thread as I am in a very similar position (late 2007, 2.8 C2D iMac). And I appreciate the comments others have posted. I bought Lion right when it came out, but haven't installed it yet due mainly to a very busy August (got married + honeymoon). and after seeing so many threads about various "issues" users have with Lion, I have been reluctant since my computer is rock solid with SL. in the past, my upgrades from Tiger (only a month) > Leopard > Snow Leopard went very smooth. I don't have any rosetta apps, though I do use CS3 extensively and some users have reported issues with CS3 and Lion.
so I think I'm going to follow Fishrrman's suggestions below. I recently ordered an external FW800 OWC 1TB drive for photo storage that should arrive tomorrow. I'll hold off on moving my Lightroom library and install Lion on it to test it out for a while. I will be following the instructions to keep Front Row since I use that program a lot for watching movies.

My suggestion is that regardless of what others post in this thread, the only way that YOU are going to know if the upgrade will work for YOU -- is to try it.

But -- try it in a way that "lets you go back" if you find that you're unhappy.

To do that, I suggest you consider buying another external hard drive (they're relatively cheap nowadays), and do a completely "clean install" of Lion onto that drive, so that Lion doesn't "touch" the installation you currently have running and consider to be "your main drive".

Or, I'd suggest this alternative (and one that I consider "better than" an "external" drive):
Get one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=usb+sata+dock&x=0&y=0
(many items shown, they all work the same, just pick a cheap one at it will be fine)

....and then add a "bare" hard drive from the vendor of your choice.

Connect it, initialize it with Disk Utility, and do a "clean install" of Lion onto the "docked drive". You can reboot from it just as you would an external drive.

When Lion asks if you wish to import data from another drive, select your _current_ (Snow Leopard) drive, and you will end up with a "Lion version" of your internal, but running on the docked drive. It will be completely "separate" from your current setup, and you can boot from either one.

This way, you can experiment with Lion WITHOUT "committing yourself to it". If it doesn't satisfy you, just disconnect the drive from the dock and set it aside for now. You could even erase it if you wish and use it as a backup drive.

Time and time and time again, we see posts here from people saying "I tried Lion, don't like it, and want to go back to Snow Leopard". That's a job.

Do it my way above, and "going back" will be as easy as a simple reboot.

 

[MacAddict1978]

Hi!

I am considering a change to Lion, but after some hours of research here on this forum I'm not so sure anymore. That's why I am seeking your advice.

Currently I'm running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on an Mid 2007 24" iMac (the first generation with the aluminum body) with a 2.4GHz Core2Duo, 4GB RAM (which already is the maximum!) and the ATI Radeon HD 2600 with 256MB RAM.

So far everything is fine and I don't really have any performance issues what so ever - my machine is actually still quite snappy.
Apart from "standard" use (internet, e-mail) I regulary use MS Office 2008, iPhoto, iMovie, Aperture 3, watch HD Videos (720p and 1080i/p with QuickTime Player 7 and VLC, use Skype for videocalls, play Civ5 (with Steam) and do some video encoding.
Occasionaly I run Win XP in a virtural machine, I also have a Win XP in a Boot Camp installation.

I have a Time Machine backup disk.

- Would a switch to Lion bring performance issues? (big issue)
- How's the current situation with Lion compatible versions of common software? When I switched from Leopard to Snow Leopard that was quite a problem.
- What would happen to my Boot Camp Win XP? (minor issue)

Thanks

I have the same model. DONT DO IT. Performance is awful. It's a lag and crash fest. Unless you have a fetish for manual reboots and spinning beach balls, or enjoy loosing data, wait. The 10.7.1 update fixed a few issues, but none of the major ones. If I hadn't lost my SL disc, I'd have removed it.

And I took have my ram maxed at 4 gigs. We're closer to the bottom of the minimum requirements, and it seems they really meant them this round.

 

[wrx]

first off, thanks to wrx for starting this thread as I am in a very similar position (late 2007, 2.8 C2D iMac).

You're more than welcome

I bought Lion right when it came out, but haven't installed it yet due mainly to a very busy August (got married + honeymoon)

Obviously you're not a true apple fan

so I think I'm going to follow Fishrrman's suggestions below. I recently ordered an external FW800 OWC 1TB drive for photo storage that should arrive tomorrow. I'll hold off on moving my Lightroom library and install Lion on it to test it out for a while.

Please let me know how your upgrade went and how you iMac is handling Lion.
Good luck - hope you don't need it!

----------

I have the same model. DONT DO IT. Performance is awful. It's a lag and crash fest. Unless you have a fetish for manual reboots and spinning beach balls, or enjoy loosing data, wait. The 10.7.1 update fixed a few issues, but none of the major ones. If I hadn't lost my SL disc, I'd have removed it.

And I took have my ram maxed at 4 gigs. We're closer to the bottom of the minimum requirements, and it seems they really meant them this round.

Boy, the experiences counldn't further apart...
Anyway I don't really think that the 4GB RAM alone are responsable for the performance issues, it's the entire platform our iMacs based on. Consider that most Macs are shipped now with 4GB RAM.

 

[Hikkadwa]

easy

Hi!

I am considering a change to Lion, but after some hours of research here on this forum I'm not so sure anymore. That's why I am seeking your advice.

Currently I'm running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on an Mid 2007 24" iMac (the first generation with the aluminum body) with a 2.4GHz Core2Duo, 4GB RAM (which already is the maximum!) and the ATI Radeon HD 2600 with 256MB RAM.

So far everything is fine and I don't really have any performance issues what so ever - my machine is actually still quite snappy.
Apart from "standard" use (internet, e-mail) I regulary use MS Office 2008, iPhoto, iMovie, Aperture 3, watch HD Videos (720p and 1080i/p with QuickTime Player 7 and VLC, use Skype for videocalls, play Civ5 (with Steam) and do some video encoding.
Occasionaly I run Win XP in a virtural machine, I also have a Win XP in a Boot Camp installation.

I have a Time Machine backup disk.

- Would a switch to Lion bring performance issues? (big issue)
- How's the current situation with Lion compatible versions of common software? When I switched from Leopard to Snow Leopard that was quite a problem.
- What would happen to my Boot Camp Win XP? (minor issue)

Thanks

EASY CALL, STAY WITH SL , DO NOT UPGRADE, I DID and it was a mistake!

----------

Steve Jobs doesn't "duplicate", he replicates by fission like all bacteria.

I agree I'm going back to SL

 

[harcosparky]

I won't say going to LION was a mistake however I did just install Snow Leopard on the only machine that WAS running LION.

There were a few things I thought were nice in LION, but the negatives ( for me ) far outweighed any positives.

Maybe they will be changed in the future and I will give LION another look.

I gave LION long enough time to realize that it just did not improve my workflow, and in some areas made the workflow slower.

 

[wrx]

I won't say going to LION was a mistake however I did just install Snow Leopard on the only machine that WAS running LION.

There were a few things I thought were nice in LION, but the negatives ( for me ) far outweighed any positives.

Maybe they will be changed in the future and I will give LION another look.

I gave LION long enough time to realize that it just did not improve my workflow, and in some areas made the workflow slower.

Thanks for your input, what kind of Macs (and which generation) do you have?

 

[scottsjack]

After reading the thread https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1181550/ elsewhere on this site there is no question about not switching to Lion.

Not only is Lion amateurish, noobish and gimmicky, it's potentiall downright bad. I was going to take my mini out of Windows 7 service and put a Lion installation on it to have something to play with as the OS progresses. Now I don't want any Lion Macs on my system.

 

[YMark]

I "upgraded" to Lion and after a month of spinning beach balls, freezes, and a variety of other crap, I went back to Snow Leopard. All is well again. Lion is the worst OS release put out by Apple in a long time.

 

[innercr]

Your mileage may vary...



Seems reasonable.


Ignoring that most people don't need to edit /etc/hosts and that it was always owned by root with only read access otherwise, it should be editable just like always with "sudo vi /etc/hosts" or "sudo emacs /etc/hosts". Is this a hack? Is editing the hosts file a hack?



Runs fine on our 2GB Macbook Air. I'm using more memory on my iMac because I've bought into its autosave/resume and no longer close apps when finished. This keeps them instant loading (as long as there is sufficient RAM) and relies on OS X to shut down apps not in use when RAM runs out. This is a great use of RAM memory. I'm now using 5GB of my 8 in "normal" use with upwards of a dozen running apps. I never used even 4 of the 8 with Snow Leopard. Is this being resource hungry or is it just making good use of the resources available? I'd say the latter.



Always a smart move to deactivate Adobe CS before any major change and then reactivate afterwards. I've had no problems with Dreamweaver CS5 crashing in Lion.



This is a new document-centric paradigm. I've got at least one Lionized app (Eazydraw) that has both Save As and Duplicate, so they aren't mutually exclusive. When you do a "Save As" you end up doing further editing of the new file which has no version history. With Duplicate the contents are duplicated into a new file (with it's own window) and you can continue editing the original file (which has the history) or the new file (which is nameless until you either close it (command-W) or save it (command-S)). The combination of the new features Duplicate, Versions, Locked files, auto-save, and resume works very smoothly and are easily understood although different that historic usage. Actually it isn't new. Duplicate+autosave have been part of Aperture, iPhoto, and iMovie for quite some time.



IMHO it's far more than a service pack, it is the most radical new release in OS X history. It's the first release that demands you rethink your workflow. It's certainly a dangerous proposition, but I expect Apple feels they have enough momentum to pull it off.

Well, you sure sound like a spokesman for Apple..I digress. Anyways, I don't mean to mock you, but your statement that I need to re-think my workflow just because Steve and Co. decided to create a hybrid iOS/Mac is absurd and has no merit with some of us who are trying to get work done.
If I wanted to get an iPhone or iPad, I'd get that, not MBP. I don't need, nor appreciate the continuously running and never shutting down apps. I don't need to auto-save or versioning because I am not senile to forget to save before the app exits or is closed. And I certainly don't need my apps to re-start upon warm boot, because I don't shut the computer down or re-start - its not Windows.
Who needs more freaking ways to open App folder by introducing Launchpad. Idiots maybe do. Again this is not an iPhone.
What did in the world Apple people think by axing Spaces and Expose?? Serious designers use 10+ spaces. WTF Apple?
Now, what about Samba?? Where the freak did that go? Or wait it got replaced by Apple's version that no longer sees shares?
BTW, Yes I do consider editing /etc/hosts a freaking hack because it was not editable under root before, and then Apple figured that the system might not secure enough already that it hence required a lock-down.
"sudo vi /etc/hosts" or "sudo emacs /etc/hosts" does not edit the hosts anymore. "sudo nano /etc/hosts" does allow you to drop into hosts.
Dreamweaver shouldn't be de-activated if it's an upgrade.

I mean I could go on and on for hours basically outlining how this new 250 Feature upgrade stopped my workflow in its tracks.

The point is that there's Mac and there's iOS. One compliments each other but why the heck do I need iOS on my MPB that doesn't even have a touch screen?

Why do I need the embellishment at the expense of productivity?

Why do I need an Air Drop if I can't use it with my Win7 machine?

It may sound like a rant, but I switched to Mac from Windows to gain productivity not beach umbrellas, crashing and bugs upon bugs upon bugs.

Snow Leopard is going the way of XP, becoming mature and super stable. Lion is more like Vista with the "wow" effect and little substance.

 

[Ruahrc]

It may sound like a rant, but I switched to Mac from Windows to gain productivity not beach umbrellas, crashing and bugs upon bugs upon bugs.

This sums it up very well. Most of us switched to Macs because it was more productive. The UI was sleeker, better thought-out, and more efficient. Lion is a serious misstep on those aims.

To the OP: I'd stay with SL for now. Unless there is one particular feature you're absolutely dying to use, or some Lion-only functionality that is absolutely critical to you, I'd leave Lion in the oven a bit longer- it desperately needs more baking time.

 

[rockinred]

This sums it up very well. Most of us switched to Macs because it was more productive. The UI was sleeker, better thought-out, and more efficient. Lion is a serious misstep on those aims.

To the OP: I'd stay with SL for now. Unless there is one particular feature you're absolutely dying to use, or some Lion-only functionality that is absolutely critical to you, I'd leave Lion in the oven a bit longer- it desperately needs more baking time.

Couldn't agree more. I feel like I am in Windows again.

 

[hayesk]

All this complaining happened when Snow Leopard was released, and each major OS upgrade before it. Then the complaining stops around the .2 revision.

Wait until the .2 or .3 revision and try it again if you don't like it now. And if there's a feature that you want changed, send feedback about it to Apple. If you remember, Apple modified Stacks in a revision to Snow Leopard that made it better for a lot of people.

 

[hayesk]

After reading the thread https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1181550/ elsewhere on this site there is no question about not switching to Lion.

Not only is Lion amateurish, noobish and gimmicky, it's potentiall downright bad. I was going to take my mini out of Windows 7 service and put a Lion installation on it to have something to play with as the OS progresses. Now I don't want any Lion Macs on my system.

I've been running Lion for weeks and I don't understand your rhetoric. I'll agree LaunchPad is a bit gimmicky, but who cares? it's optional. The auto-magnification in the Dock that's been with us since 10.0 is gimmicky too, but nobody complains about that.

Making the OS easier is not "noobish" - that's the point Apple products. Everyone should be striving to make computers better, not remaining stagnant. Snow Leopard was not perfect, and Lion is not either. However, nothing about what is in Lion says it's not getting better.

 

[talmy]

Well, you sure sound like a spokesman for Apple..I digress. Anyways, I don't mean to mock you, but your statement that I need to re-think my workflow just because Steve and Co. decided to create a hybrid iOS/Mac is absurd and has no merit with some of us who are trying to get work done.

Obviously, nobody is forcing you to use Lion. You can stay with Snow Leopard, or perhaps change to Windows or Linux. Lion makes a radical change that you can accept or reject. I'm no Apple spokesperson. I use Macs at home and for teaching for about 5 years, but I've always used Windows (since 2.x), UNIX and Linux on my day jobs. I looked at the first Mac back in 1984 but rejected it because it couldn't do what I needed. It was a more radical change (no command line!) than Lion is now.

If I wanted to get an iPhone or iPad, I'd get that, not MBP. I don't need, nor appreciate the continuously running and never shutting down apps. I don't need to auto-save or versioning because I am not senile to forget to save before the app exits or is closed. And I certainly don't need my apps to re-start upon warm boot, because I don't shut the computer down or re-start - its not Windows.

OK, but I happen to enjoy not having start or shut down apps (I also use sleep and don't normally shut down the computer). It's one less thing to deal with. It's like the apps start instantly, even better than a SSD. And auto-save is just protection against crashes and accidental data loss, like backups. You do appreciate backups, don't you?

Who needs more freaking ways to open App folder by introducing Launchpad. Idiots maybe do. Again this is not an iPhone.

You don't have to use it. In fact you don't have to use the Dock or Finder or Spotlight to launch an application. You can open a terminal and find and start everything from there. But some people might actually like Launchpad.

What did in the world Apple people think by axing Spaces and Expose?? Serious designers use 10+ spaces. WTF Apple?
Now, what about Samba?? Where the freak did that go? Or wait it got replaced by Apple's version that no longer sees shares?

I'll agree with you there, although I don't use 10+ spaces. I do use two displays, which are also handled badly in Lion.

BTW, Yes I do consider editing /etc/hosts a freaking hack because it was not editable under root before, and then Apple figured that the system might not secure enough already that it hence required a lock-down.
"sudo vi /etc/hosts" or "sudo emacs /etc/hosts" does not edit the hosts anymore. "sudo nano /etc/hosts" does allow you to drop into hosts.

Just checked. sudo vi and sudo emacs works here, and on a Snow Leopard system these files are still mode 644 owned by root and require sudo.

Dreamweaver shouldn't be de-activated if it's an upgrade.

Mine wasn't, but I've had CS5 deactivate on me before after a system repair. Who knows what "tricks" Adobe uses to determine if the system is the same.

I mean I could go on and on for hours basically outlining how this new 250 Feature upgrade stopped my workflow in its tracks.

The point is that there's Mac and there's iOS. One compliments each other but why the heck do I need iOS on my MPB that doesn't even have a touch screen?

Then stick with Snow Leopard. I've found many of the changes to be major improvements on my MacBook, much less so on my iMac which has much more screen space and a mouse. The touch screen is the touchpad."Natural Scrolling" is crazy on a scroll mouse and disappearing scroll bars don't make sense when you have plenty of screen pixels. This upgrade is obviously aimed at small screen users. The new full screen mode is great on an 11" Macbook Air.

Why do I need the embellishment at the expense of productivity?

An argument I made when I saw the first Mac. I still feel I could write best on Wordstar in 1981 without that silly GUI interface.

Why do I need an Air Drop if I can't use it with my Win7 machine?

The same way you can't use (any number of Mac features) with your Win7 machine.

It may sound like a rant, but I switched to Mac from Windows to gain productivity not beach umbrellas, crashing and bugs upon bugs upon bugs.

Snow Leopard is going the way of XP, becoming mature and super stable. Lion is more like Vista with the "wow" effect and little substance.

It always pays to wait a while, or test out on a trial basis first. Leopard ground my LAN to a halt (no peer to peer at all!) when it came out. Much worse than Lion for me. I only make major changes when school is not in session, so it was now or late December for me. I tried it out and decided I could live with the warts for the features I really wanted. That said, I still run Snow Leopard Server, and have two "entertainment center" minis running Snow Leopard, and have no plans to ever update them.

 

[jbg232]

Although there are a lot of people likely with problems with Lion I just want to put my voice out there and say I have yet to have one beach ball, crash, or anything actually. Maybe I'm the exception but likely I'm in the silent majority. People with issues tend to post about them on this site. That is completely understandable - they want others to know the problems they are having (I've done that as well). However, with Lion I have nothing to report so thought I should report that nothingness.

 

[Hyper-X]

Hi!

I am considering a change to Lion, but after some hours of research here on this forum I'm not so sure anymore. That's why I am seeking your advice.

Currently I'm running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on an Mid 2007 24" iMac (the first generation with the aluminum body) with a 2.4GHz Core2Duo, 4GB RAM (which already is the maximum!) and the ATI Radeon HD 2600 with 256MB RAM.

So far everything is fine and I don't really have any performance issues what so ever - my machine is actually still quite snappy.
Apart from "standard" use (internet, e-mail) I regulary use MS Office 2008, iPhoto, iMovie, Aperture 3, watch HD Videos (720p and 1080i/p with QuickTime Player 7 and VLC, use Skype for videocalls, play Civ5 (with Steam) and do some video encoding.
Occasionaly I run Win XP in a virtural machine, I also have a Win XP in a Boot Camp installation.

What I'm keying on your above comment is that you don't have any performance issues and how everything works. In my line of work I'm a firm believer of the "don't fix what's not broke" philosophy. Unless Lion has something you absolutely need to make something work, there's no real reason to change unless you simply want to.

The grass in not greener on the Lion side of the hill, there's nothing a Lion-user has access to that's any real advantage over Snow Leopard with the exception of a couple of things. The first is how Apple finally got with the program by implementing full ASLR in Lion, by comparison SL's implementation is a joke from a security standpoint so Apple finally caught up to what Microsoft and Linux has offered years prior.

The second is Safari 5.1, with its new sandboxing feature only active in the Lion-version, it's a huge leap over it's previous however Safari still sucks in that it's very unstable, it crashes often, it's very slow, it can't render many normal webpages properly, it suffers from a very bad memory leak and it's far from the top of the list with HTML5 support which Chrome clearly dominates at the moment.

For every major step forward Lion had made over Snow Leopard, there are kilometers worth of bugs and issues in the opposite direction that devalue whatever positive changes Lion brings to the table.

This next issue affects only a very tiny part of the OS X Lion community but the zero-day exploit of the LDAP which allows a user to logon using any password on a Lion server using LDAP still goes unpatched, there's no workaround and no solution as far as I'm aware on the way and Apple has yet to acknowledge or release any information as to when it'll be resolved. This leads me to believe that they don't think it's serious or they're too consumed over their mobile market (iPhone and iPad), in which I'm afraid we won't see any resolution anytime soon.

I won't go into Launchpad, Misson Control and how the mouse scrolling is inverted because you can simply opt to not use it or change how it works. However if you want my suggestion, Lion is bound to be decent but it won't be anytime soon. I would suggest waiting until Apple rolls out REAL patches with worthwhile updates to fix Lion. The next update is projected to be the release of iCloud and it'll require more than just a handful of updates to fix Lion to the level of stability as Snow Leopard.