To Lion... Or NOT to Lion?

[flopticalcube]

Oh my, you're one of those people. It's kind of funny how I always get Mac OS'es the day they come out, but it took me something like a year and a half to install Windows 7, and I still use XP a lot more than 7. Go figure.

Apple is great in that you don't have to wait for SP1 like a lot of versions of Windows.

Leopard Day 1. Broken apps, kernel panics, system freezes.

Snow Leopard 10.6.2. No issues.

Windows 7 Day 1. No issues.

Windows XP. Not used once since Windows 7 installed.

That is simply my personal experience but feel free to place people in neat little boxes if it's easier for you.

 

[iBunny]

IMHO, Windows 7 is the best OS that has existed. Not just "for its time" but ever.

Great OS. Stable and Fast. No issues, lots of comparability. Good foundation to build from as well.

Love Mac OS X, however it does not translate well in a Enterprise network environment as well as Windows 7 does.

 

[GoKyu]

IMHO, Windows 7 is the best OS that has existed. Not just "for its time" but ever.

Great OS. Stable and Fast. No issues, lots of comparability. Good foundation to build from as well.

I'd say Windows 7 is the best versions of *Windows* at least since Windows 2000.

+1 on the stable and fast, lots of compatibility...

But OS X gets the nod for "good foundation to build from", as it's all UNIX underneath.

I wish Microsoft would do what Apple did ONE time - break compatibility to really update the aging and kludgy 15 year old registry and give Windows a UNIX base. Of course people would grouse about it, but in the long run, I think it would go a long way to improve Windows security, and significantly reduce the incidence of malware system wide.

Apparently a lot of OS 9 users complained, but OS X has really become the more advanced and stable system over the past decade.

Windows is no slouch, but I've never been able to keep an uptime of greater than a month or so. I've kept OS X running for 4-5 months continuously, and that's got a lot to do with the UNIX subsystem.

 

[panzer06]

Honestly? Nothing.

Launchpad removed. Mission control removed. Resume feature cancelled. Trackpad scrolling has to be put back to normal. Trying to find out how to cancel autosave 'feature'.

Actually the wallpaper is nice, but probably this isn't the best reason to upgrade.

I'm spectacularly underwhelmed.

That is what I am worried about.. I am not sure if I would ever use the Launch pad. And I have heard someone say that more than once... What happens to the scrolling???

I never used spaces or most of the other "nice" features in SL. I too got rid of that "natural" reverse scrolling. I like the predictive spell check in almost every input field. Other than that it really doesn't seem like much from a feature standpoint... however, for me it is much more responsive. I installed it onto a new drive connected via USB on a 2010 i5 MBP and it was more responsive than the internal SL install.

That speed boost was worth $29 and I had no expectation with regard to performance. I still won't use it for full production until I can test every app but so far so good.

Cheers,

 

[GraphikGeek]

I never used spaces or most of the other "nice" features in SL. I too got rid of that "natural" reverse scrolling. I like the predictive spell check in almost every input field. Other than that it really doesn't seem like much from a feature standpoint... however, for me it is much more responsive. I installed it onto a new drive connected via USB on a 2010 i5 MBP and it was more responsive than the internal SL install.

That speed boost was worth $29 and I had no expectation with regard to performance. I still won't use it for full production until I can test every app but so far so good.

Cheers,

Thanks a lot! Good to know! So you are running Lion off a USB drive?? Interesting!! Does that mean you still have SL on your internal drive??

 

[Benbikeman]

Windows is no slouch, but I've never been able to keep an uptime of greater than a month or so. I've kept OS X running for 4-5 months continuously, and that's got a lot to do with the UNIX subsystem.

As someone who was a Mac user from the original Mac until 2000, then switched back from Windows very recently, I'd say Windows 7 and Snow Leopard were much of a muchness. Both very stable, very slick, very capable.

Lion is, to me, better than either. Microsoft will respond with Windows 8 and on it goes. Competition is good.

 

[GraphikGeek]

As someone who was a Mac user from the original Mac until 2000, then switched back from Windows very recently, I'd say Windows 7 and Snow Leopard were much of a muchness. Both very stable, very slick, very capable.

Lion is, to me, better than either. Microsoft will respond with Windows 8 and on it goes. Competition is good.

See.. Windows was the main reason I switched over to Mac.. Mainly because windows Vista was so amazingly HORRIBLE! So I didnt even give windows 7 a chance until a couple months ago when I used it to do some video production and editing with After Effects.. This appeared to be too much to handle for windows 7 as it crashed on my on average of 4-5 times a day! The record was 10! After that I dropped it like it was hot and looked into macs.. I cant have that sort of instability in my line of work..

 

[SirStrumalot]

I've been wondering the same thing... I like the idea of full screen apps and versions. However, I love the way Spaces and Expose works at the moment and I'm afraid because I've read one too many negative reviews about Lion.

Also, would anyone mind confirming that time machine does not work with the current Lion release? That by itself would keep me from getting Lion.

 

[iSmac]

Good:

Safari (Only had one issue which wouldn’t let me quit Safari (menu bar greyed out and CMD+Q unresponsive), had to force quit) Only happened once.
Mail
Launch Pad
Full Screen
Full Disk Encryption
Login Screen

Bad:

Mission Control
Gestures
Scrolling
Default wallpapers are all awful! Especially Andromeda!
Default user avatars are all awful!
Some general clunky-ness (which I guess will get ironed out in 10.7.1)
iCal, get rid of that ridiculous leather look bar at the top

 

[Benbikeman]

Mainly because windows Vista was so amazingly HORRIBLE!

Vista was, yes. I skipped that entirely, sticking with XP until Win7 appeared.

So I didnt even give windows 7 a chance until a couple months ago when I used it to do some video production and editing with After Effects.. This appeared to be too much to handle for windows 7 as it crashed on my on average of 4-5 times a day!

That must have been a problem either with that app, or that machine. In 18 months using Win7, I had exactly one crash, and that was caused by a hardware fault.

 

[jms969]

I am waiting until 10.7.2 by which time most bugs will be worked out and most apps moved over (along with their bugs worked out). At that point, after much playing around with store machines and reading relevant reviews, I'll make a decision.

Yup exactly where I am as well, SL is working great and I am just not up for the drama of a .0 OS at this point...

 

[techbajan]

I'd say Windows 7 is the best versions of *Windows* at least since Windows 2000.

+1 on the stable and fast, lots of compatibility...

But OS X gets the nod for "good foundation to build from", as it's all UNIX underneath.

I wish Microsoft would do what Apple did ONE time - break compatibility to really update the aging and kludgy 15 year old registry and give Windows a UNIX base. Of course people would grouse about it, but in the long run, I think it would go a long way to improve Windows security, and significantly reduce the incidence of malware system wide.

Apparently a lot of OS 9 users complained, but OS X has really become the more advanced and stable system over the past decade.

Windows is no slouch, but I've never been able to keep an uptime of greater than a month or so. I've kept OS X running for 4-5 months continuously, and that's got a lot to do with the UNIX subsystem.

Okay, we all know iBunny has seriously exaggerated about Windows 7; I guess that's why he/she said IMHO. However, one very good point made about OS X is that it's unrealistic in an enterprise environment, unless it's an enterprise of probably "designers", whether graphic or otherwise.

I support a large number of clients, both Windows and Mac and, while it's true that I hardly every get calls from the Mac users compared with the frequent calls from Windows users, it has a lot to do with the demographic of the users that typically use Macs for business vs the ones that use PCs for business. Typically, the business Mac users either need a specialist function Macs are more commonly associated with (since the performance edge isn't really that much of a factor anymore) or a die-hard Mac user who just wants their Mac at work.

What I CAN say for the Windows is that it is much less rigid in a networking environment. To be honest, when it comes to Enterprise, Apple can't compete with Microsoft for price/features/scalability, as much as we Apple users and lovers would like to think so. Some of the features that Apple is bragging about with Lion were available on Windows for a long time, like Hibernation & Maximise. Windows 7 even had proper encryption way before we heard rumors about Lion. Microsoft doesn't get everything right, but they don't get everything wrong either.

Regarding why Microsoft can't go cold turkey like Apple and just build Windows from Unix and "to hell with compatibility" is simple common sense: OS X does not have the GLOBAL market share Windows has. Plus, Apple does not have the large installed base in Enterprise environments that Microsoft has. Apple could have afforded to make the switch back then because the cost of pissing off its client base was much smaller than the cost of Microsoft pissing off theres. This is not about a consumer OS that can be used for business. This is about a business-class OS that is used by consumers. Sure, OS X can operate in an enterprise but with limited software support, no matter how much I'm sure someone will try to list all the software available for Mac.

Both Apple and Microsoft have good OS products; which one a person chooses comes down to preference or suitability to task. Windows users don't need another UNIX-based OS; they just need a less vulnerable OS; Windows has gotten better and I'm sure the trend will continue.

The reality is: so many of us Mac fans have VMWare or Parallels because there are some things we just either need Windows for or recognise Windows does better. Most real power users either Bootcamp or run Windows in a VM. IMHO, Windows 7 is just as good as OS X; it just serves a different need. For me, my personal machine (the toy) is my Mac; for the type of work I do, my work machine is Windows, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

[darkerside]

To Lion...
Its worth every penny.

 

[techbajan]

I've been wondering the same thing... I like the idea of full screen apps and versions. However, I love the way Spaces and Expose works at the moment and I'm afraid because I've read one too many negative reviews about Lion.

Also, would anyone mind confirming that time machine does not work with the current Lion release? That by itself would keep me from getting Lion.

Time machine does work. I upgraded yesterday and it worked without a glitch. Thank goodness too because I think I'm going back to Snow Leopard; even if not permanently, just so I can confirm whether it's Lion that has suddenly been causing my machine to behave like a Celeron that's trying to do video editing.

Vista was, yes. I skipped that entirely, sticking with XP until Win7 appeared.


That must have been a problem either with that app, or that machine. In 18 months using Win7, I had exactly one crash, and that was caused by a hardware fault.

My thoughts exactly. I was actually wondering to myself what type of machine they were using. What makes me laugh is how we spend over $1000 on a Mac and glorify it but then try to buy a Windows laptop for just over $400 and act disappointed with the performance. That's the problem: people just don't compare apples with apples (no pun intended).

 

[djkinetic]

I'm a huge expose fan, and i absolutely hate how they made mission control replace expose for the most part, another reason why i see not need to upgrade my non multi-touch mbp.

 

[BiggAW]

Windows 7 is pretty darn good. I haven't used it much yet, since I usually use my XP VM when I need Windows, and I have XP at work, but Microsoft is so much more enterprise-friendly. While Apple won't tell you how long stuff is supported, and you're pretty much expected to upgrade, Microsoft publishes the schedule for primary and extended support on day 1, and sticks to it. It would be almost impossible to figure out when you'd have to upgrade, and thus account for cost on a Mac, whereas with Windows you know that on day 1. Enterprise also likes to move very sloowwwly. My company is just now starting to roll out Windows 7, and I know the software testing and compatibility phase before the actual beginning of the roll-out took well over a year to complete.

 

[GoKyu]

Regarding why Microsoft can't go cold turkey like Apple and just build Windows from Unix and "to hell with compatibility" is simple common sense: OS X does not have the GLOBAL market share Windows has. Plus, Apple does not have the large installed base in Enterprise environments that Microsoft has. Apple could have afforded to make the switch back then because the cost of pissing off its client base was much smaller than the cost of Microsoft pissing off theres. This is not about a consumer OS that can be used for business.

Windows users don't need another UNIX-based OS; they just need a less vulnerable OS; Windows has gotten better and I'm sure the trend will continue.

I gave you a +1 for this, but I'm wondering...

What if Microsoft built an OS on top of UNIX alongside their flagship OS, and did a gradual migration along the way?

As I understand it (I wasn't a Mac user until about 3.5 years ago), OS 9 was full of viruses, so it wasn't that they had a smaller marketshare, it was that the OS was too vulnerable to attacks.

Enter OS X, powered by UNIX. Now you have a much higher grade security model, stricter permissions, and only *necessary* times to enter your password (unlike Windows where it's always asking for your permission to run this or that...even in Windows 7.)

So 10 years later, how many viruses does OS X have? How much spyware/malware? And sad but true, while viruses were common in Windows XP, these people are writing even MORE malware than ever - we're removing viruses from customers' computers left and right at the store I work at. Windows XP, Vista, 7, doesn't matter.

I honestly think UNIX is what helped curb the virus issue on MacOS, and would *significantly* reduce the malware that Windows machines are subject to every day. Take UNIX/Linux itself - I know of VERY few viruses (really they were more like trojan horses that required root access) that were affecting these systems (serious server/mainframe-class machines - SunOS/Solaris, AIX, Linux, *BSD, etc.)

That's my opinion, and I think Microsoft would be wise to consider doing something like this...not just for the short term, but I think as Apple did, for the long haul.

 

[techbajan]

Good points

I gave you a +1 for this, but I'm wondering...

What if Microsoft built an OS on top of UNIX alongside their flagship OS, and did a gradual migration along the way?

As I understand it (I wasn't a Mac user until about 3.5 years ago), OS 9 was full of viruses, so it wasn't that they had a smaller marketshare, it was that the OS was too vulnerable to attacks.

Enter OS X, powered by UNIX. Now you have a much higher grade security model, stricter permissions, and only *necessary* times to enter your password (unlike Windows where it's always asking for your permission to run this or that...even in Windows 7.)

So 10 years later, how many viruses does OS X have? How much spyware/malware? And sad but true, while viruses were common in Windows XP, these people are writing even MORE malware than ever - we're removing viruses from customers' computers left and right at the store I work at. Windows XP, Vista, 7, doesn't matter.

I honestly think UNIX is what helped curb the virus issue on MacOS, and would *significantly* reduce the malware that Windows machines are subject to every day. Take UNIX/Linux itself - I know of VERY few viruses (really they were more like trojan horses that required root access) that were affecting these systems (serious server/mainframe-class machines - SunOS/Solaris, AIX, Linux, *BSD, etc.)

That's my opinion, and I think Microsoft would be wise to consider doing something like this...not just for the short term, but I think as Apple did, for the long haul.

You get my vote too and I totally agree with that proposal because back when Linux was beginning to look like a viable competitor to say that Microsoft should create their own Linux distribution, and since they would have all the inside knowledge about how Windows works and a large user base they'd be uniquely-positioned to launch a successful Winux OS.

They could develop and launch it in beta, see what the response is like and if they decided to shift, develop either a migration plan or decide to keep Windows supported for the next 5 years while Winux grows and software transitions.

Like you, I fight malware on clients' machines everyday and have come to the conclusion that it's no use hoping users listen to IT and do things more safely; an overhaul is required so if Windows users choose to remain as "not bothered" about malware like users on Unix-based OSes, the OS can handle it.

Maybe what we're talking about isn't farfetched at all when you look at Microsoft "Happy 20th Birthday" video to Linux: http://www.infoworld.com/t/linux/microsofts-happy-birthday-video-linux-cynical-or-sincere-167806

 

[Morod]

Wondering the same thing here

I have a late 2007 24" Al iMac, 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM desktop computer with keyboard and Mighty mouse. No iDevices.
I won't get a Magic Mouse or Trackpad.
I wasn't going to upgrade to Lion at all as SL works fine for me. As I have an @mac.com email address I'm hoping iCloud will work with SL eventually. But MR posted about the additional security of Lion here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1195172/

And I like what I see.
So, is Lion without gestures and iDevices worth it?

 

[ThemacNub]

Nothing much, really. The only standout thing for me is how fast Safari is but you can just download that from the Apple website. If you are a big user of Expose or Spaces then I suggest staying away from Lion. Mission Control is awful and clumsy and it is really tedious to work with. I wish I could downgrade to Snow Leopard but I don't have the CD.

Link for safari please?

 

[Morod]

Link for safari please?

Safari 5.1 is the newest version I'm aware of. Here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1070

 

[runebinder]

Personally I love the new gestures, three finger drag makes it so much easier to highlight large portions of text, move files etc on the trackpad. I also love the fullscreen apps, autosave and versions (really don't understand people who want to turn this feature off), the new Mail and (while a few people hate it), the animations for going back/forward in Safari.

Add to that the improved security and 64-bit kernel by default for such a small upgrade fee then it was a no brainer for me. If this was MS they'd be several different versions with the general one costing 5 times as much, and the full feature (ultimate), costing 10 times more.

 

[GoKyu]

You get my vote too and I totally agree with that proposal because back when Linux was beginning to look like a viable competitor to say that Microsoft should create their own Linux distribution, and since they would have all the inside knowledge about how Windows works and a large user base they'd be uniquely-positioned to launch a successful Winux OS.

Didn't Microsoft have their own version of UNIX at one time? I seem to think they did back in the late 80s/early 90s...

 

[chillvisio]

Comment deleted, because it no longer represents my current view on subject.

 

[a.jfred]

Didn't Microsoft have their own version of UNIX at one time? I seem to think they did back in the late 80s/early 90s...

Dos?