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Why Mountain Lion [for my iMac]?
- Thread starter zoran
- Start date
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You may find some useful information in some of the many existing threads where this topic has been discussed extensively, such as these:
Snow Leopard vs Mountain Lion
Should I Update my OS from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion?
Snow Leopard or Mountain Lion
Is Mountain Lion worth it?
Snow Leopard vs Lion vs Mountain Lion
Snow Leopard vs Mountain Lion
Should I Update my OS from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion?
Snow Leopard or Mountain Lion
Is Mountain Lion worth it?
Snow Leopard vs Lion vs Mountain Lion
Firstly you will get more features and better application support but its up to you care about that.
iCloud integration for one thing. Messages, Notes (separate as opposed to being buried in Mail), Reminders, better Mail application with column view and smart mailbox bugs fixed( most notably the logical .and. not functioning properly), natural scroll (i like it because it is more intuitive and better suited to trackpad usage), richer gestures for the trackpad, Built in Notifications since Growl Mail doesn't work any more and last but not least Dictation. I think that is enough reason for me to switch. Besides, it runs quick and the footprint is reduced compared to Lion. I sometimes dual boot to Snow Leopard to run Rosetta programs and Snow Leopard feels old and outdated after using ML for more than a year.
Don't Upgrade
I have the experience of having a lovable Snow Leopard and succumbed to the promotion to "upgrade to Mountain Lion".
I claim no abilities with computers so this is just a personal opinion.
Do not 'upgrade'! Mountain Lion lost an immense amount of ease in using.
OldSaltyDogTwo
I have the experience of having a lovable Snow Leopard and succumbed to the promotion to "upgrade to Mountain Lion".
I claim no abilities with computers so this is just a personal opinion.
Do not 'upgrade'! Mountain Lion lost an immense amount of ease in using.
OldSaltyDogTwo
You seem to be looking for objective TRUTHS when dealing with what is essentially a totally subjective phenomenon.
Not to belabor a tired cliché, but if you like it, it's good. No objective truths here.
Just one man's subjective opinion...
Well when a company makes a new OS, its supposed to be better than its predecessor, so those better qualities im looking for, ones that are not subjective!
You're never going to find a truly "objective" quality because all features and their likableness by humans are "subjective" to each own's desires.
Oftentimes, people want answers on what constitutes "the best" [insert your device here] when there is no "the best"; it's all a matter of opinion.
Try things out for yourself, ask others opinions and weigh them for yourself and get what you like.
Well when a company makes a new OS, its supposed to be better than its predecessor, so those better qualities im looking for, ones that are not subjective!
http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/
http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/features.html
For a detailed assessment of Mountain Lion, read this lengthy article.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/os-x-10-8/
1. The only major "upgrade" in mountain lion is the notes and reminders apps, which sync with an iphone. I rely on exchange calendaring, notes, and reminders on my iphone, but since I'm quitting my job, I will no longer have exchange. So iCloud does a pretty good job of replacing exchange for me.
2. The app store in mountain lion really has little useful software for me. It might be good for games, but not much else. The nice feature is that all the apple apps as well as a few others such as drivers update through the apple store. A lot of these don't require restarting your computer, so it's a little more convenient then snow leopard.
3. mountain lion has support for windows 8, although you can just download the drivers from apple's website. They used to force you to use bootcamp to download windows drivers, but they don't do that anymore.
4. Finally, if your computer is slow, and you're thinking about reinstalling snow leopard, it's would be the best time to install mountain lion and would give you something fun to play with for a day or two.
Now for the bad:
1. Windows XP and vista support dropped by bootcamp.
2. You can no longer access display preferences from the menu bar. You have to go through system preferences or press command + F1, which is embarrassing during a presentation.
3. Power PC support dropped, although universal apps should continue to work.
4. Gestures on the trackpad totally screwed up, although if you have an imac, i guess you probably don't have a trackpad.
5. You won't get your iphone photos synced through photo stream unless you buy the latest version of iPhoto through the app store. The snow leopard version you have won't work.
6. Notification center doesn't do much useful. I thought it might be like an iphone or ipad where you could get updates like ESPN and news updates without having the app open. It's nothing like that, and there are few apps that take advantage of notification center. Maybe twitter and facebook do, but I havn't installed them yet.
7. Spotlight indexes a lot for some reason.
8. Mountain lion with a ssd is the same speed as snow leopard with a hard disk. That probably indicates mountain lion with a hard disk will be slow.
9. Finder hides the user library by default. You can install a hack or temporarily press the option key to see the user library, but I think that's annoying for power users.
10. The finder itself has a lot of useless bloat on the sidebar and it's all in grey instead of color. That makes it slower to use then the snow leopard reader.
11. Preview no longer has the hand (move) tool. So it will highlight text instead of scrolling with a mouse. This is not a big deal if you have a laptop as the trackpad scrolls for you, but if you have a mouse this is a major annoyance. The scroll bars are hidden by default, until you scroll with a mouse wheel or trackpad, which means to scroll by dragging, you need to first scroll with mouse wheel, then move the mouse to the scroll bar, activate it by hovering like an idiot, and then scroll with scroll bars.
12. Opera (from the app store) crashes a lot more then it did in snow leopard.
As you can see, mountain lion removes a lot of useful features of snow leopard and dumbs it down, and adds few useful features. Mountain lion can be really unstable if you upgrade or clean install and import old preferences. But mountain lion seems very stable if you clean install the OS and all apps.
2. The app store in mountain lion really has little useful software for me. It might be good for games, but not much else. The nice feature is that all the apple apps as well as a few others such as drivers update through the apple store. A lot of these don't require restarting your computer, so it's a little more convenient then snow leopard.
3. mountain lion has support for windows 8, although you can just download the drivers from apple's website. They used to force you to use bootcamp to download windows drivers, but they don't do that anymore.
4. Finally, if your computer is slow, and you're thinking about reinstalling snow leopard, it's would be the best time to install mountain lion and would give you something fun to play with for a day or two.
Now for the bad:
1. Windows XP and vista support dropped by bootcamp.
2. You can no longer access display preferences from the menu bar. You have to go through system preferences or press command + F1, which is embarrassing during a presentation.
3. Power PC support dropped, although universal apps should continue to work.
4. Gestures on the trackpad totally screwed up, although if you have an imac, i guess you probably don't have a trackpad.
5. You won't get your iphone photos synced through photo stream unless you buy the latest version of iPhoto through the app store. The snow leopard version you have won't work.
6. Notification center doesn't do much useful. I thought it might be like an iphone or ipad where you could get updates like ESPN and news updates without having the app open. It's nothing like that, and there are few apps that take advantage of notification center. Maybe twitter and facebook do, but I havn't installed them yet.
7. Spotlight indexes a lot for some reason.
8. Mountain lion with a ssd is the same speed as snow leopard with a hard disk. That probably indicates mountain lion with a hard disk will be slow.
9. Finder hides the user library by default. You can install a hack or temporarily press the option key to see the user library, but I think that's annoying for power users.
10. The finder itself has a lot of useless bloat on the sidebar and it's all in grey instead of color. That makes it slower to use then the snow leopard reader.
11. Preview no longer has the hand (move) tool. So it will highlight text instead of scrolling with a mouse. This is not a big deal if you have a laptop as the trackpad scrolls for you, but if you have a mouse this is a major annoyance. The scroll bars are hidden by default, until you scroll with a mouse wheel or trackpad, which means to scroll by dragging, you need to first scroll with mouse wheel, then move the mouse to the scroll bar, activate it by hovering like an idiot, and then scroll with scroll bars.
12. Opera (from the app store) crashes a lot more then it did in snow leopard.
As you can see, mountain lion removes a lot of useful features of snow leopard and dumbs it down, and adds few useful features. Mountain lion can be really unstable if you upgrade or clean install and import old preferences. But mountain lion seems very stable if you clean install the OS and all apps.
1. So would you suggest to a dude like me that has no Macbook but an iMac, no iphone, no track pad, that uses CS5 and plays Warcraft and not World of Warcraft to go for Mountain Lion?
2. Would ML run faster than SL on my Corei7 2.93GHz imac?
2. Would ML run faster than SL on my Corei7 2.93GHz imac?
Sorry, I don't have time to do an in-depth rebuttal, but a lot of what you say here is either partial or untrue. Some facts certainly, but to say that Finder is "slower to use because there's more stuff (by default) in the Sidebar" is crazy.
There are plenty more significant useful features than "just Notes and Reminders". And while the app store may not have any useful software "for you", there is much that is useful there.
You don't need to "install a hack" to show the user Library -- just run a Terminal command "chflags nohidden ~/Library".
As for "ML on an SSD is as fast as SL on a HDD" -- there's some other factor at play if that's your experience.
And there are much easier ways of scrolling with a mouse than the methods you suggest -- which is why Apple is persuading people not to manipulate the scroll bars as a method of scrolling.
I've updated three computers to ML without clean installing and had no issues of stability.
1. If you are happy, and have no need of the features it offers (see the extensive article I linked to in my earlier post), then the only reason to upgrade is to stay up-to-date. SL may not receive the latest security updates for very long, and new apps will increasingly require newer OS versions.
2. Lots of people find ML runs faster than SL on new hardware.