Apple messed up a bunch of things with Lion. I remember how going fullscreen on an app turned the secondary monitor into a huge ugly grey linen canvas.
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Worst overall version of OS X?
- Thread starter KoolAid-Drink
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Been using since leopard. But followed closely since OS X was released.
Worst version i've used was Lion. Performance mostly. You can tell the early versions must have been tweaked for SSD, if you ran it on hard drive with 4 GB it sucked bad. It wasn't "unusable with 2 monitors" - just don't push the full-screen button and it behaves like Snow Leopard. Just slower. Yes, the implementation of Full Screen in lion sucked. Move on...
That said, i think Lion was a major push forwards with a lot of stuff under the covers, it was just tuned badly out of the box. By 10.7.4 it performed a lot better. Much like Vista in PC land in that respect - under the hood improvements in functionality and security... performance took a hit initially.
Since then I think OS X has improved. Yes there have been a few bumps along the way, but to bake a cake you need to break some eggs.
I did like Snow Leopard, but i do actually still have it running on my Mini and i miss a lot of the features - full screen, gestures, versions, resizing windows from any corner, etc. Performance is definitely very quick, but i have reasonably strong hardware, so newer versions run ok on everything I have other than the Mini.
The worst version as far as I can ascertain would have been 10.0. Performance was by all accounts pretty terrible on the hardware of the day and the programming APIs were fairly incomplete and buggy.
edit:
in contrast with the OP, i had zero issues with mavericks? never ran into any real bugs? I'm sure they exist, but i never hit them...
Worst version i've used was Lion. Performance mostly. You can tell the early versions must have been tweaked for SSD, if you ran it on hard drive with 4 GB it sucked bad. It wasn't "unusable with 2 monitors" - just don't push the full-screen button and it behaves like Snow Leopard. Just slower. Yes, the implementation of Full Screen in lion sucked. Move on...
That said, i think Lion was a major push forwards with a lot of stuff under the covers, it was just tuned badly out of the box. By 10.7.4 it performed a lot better. Much like Vista in PC land in that respect - under the hood improvements in functionality and security... performance took a hit initially.
Since then I think OS X has improved. Yes there have been a few bumps along the way, but to bake a cake you need to break some eggs.
I did like Snow Leopard, but i do actually still have it running on my Mini and i miss a lot of the features - full screen, gestures, versions, resizing windows from any corner, etc. Performance is definitely very quick, but i have reasonably strong hardware, so newer versions run ok on everything I have other than the Mini.
The worst version as far as I can ascertain would have been 10.0. Performance was by all accounts pretty terrible on the hardware of the day and the programming APIs were fairly incomplete and buggy.
edit:
in contrast with the OP, i had zero issues with mavericks? never ran into any real bugs? I'm sure they exist, but i never hit them...
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Finally took a look at this poll. It's interesting that every version has at least one vote. Maybe it's all about timing - when you adopted and abandoned the version.
I have used OS X since Cheetah. Versions 10.0-10.3 were promising but too problematic.
Afterwards everything went better until Snow Leopard which is in my opinion the best OS Apple has ever released.
Lion was a disaster, way too many bugs and very slow. Mountain Lion was a bit better but I was not impressed.
When Mavericks was released I was pleasantly surprised since it was quite fast and relatively few bugs, I did wait until 10.9.3 until I upgraded.
Yosemite is still full of bugs and there is no way I would pay anything for it!
Afterwards everything went better until Snow Leopard which is in my opinion the best OS Apple has ever released.
Lion was a disaster, way too many bugs and very slow. Mountain Lion was a bit better but I was not impressed.
When Mavericks was released I was pleasantly surprised since it was quite fast and relatively few bugs, I did wait until 10.9.3 until I upgraded.
Yosemite is still full of bugs and there is no way I would pay anything for it!
Agreed, Mavericks was super meh in the beginning. People probably forget that Mavericks had much worse wifi and sleep connection issue than Yosemite ever did, at least for me. Lion also sucks balls.
Yosemite has actually been pretty sweat apart from the occasional performance issues.
Judging by this forum el capitan seems to be the sh**t, can't wait for it.
From Worst to Best (Note: I did skip some releases because I didn't feel the need to try it or was too young to remember):
El Capitan (Beta though) is currently between Yosemite and Mavericks right now. Who knows where that will go in my list.
- Tiger
- Panther
- Leopard
- Snow Leopard
- Lion
- Mavericks
- Yosemite
- Mountain Lion
El Capitan (Beta though) is currently between Yosemite and Mavericks right now. Who knows where that will go in my list.
The first Mac in the household was a Mini running Leopard. After years and years as a PC user I was impressed, probably because I didn't know any better.
When I retired at the beginning of 2012 I purchased a MacBook Air with Lion preinstalled. I fell in love with the Mac and thought Lion worked just fine. I've upgraded OSs as they've been released, within a week or so, ever since.
I understand the question too. They're all my favorites. Maybe I've been fortunate or maybe I've practiced good computer/OS management. In either case I have yet to have a problem that can be attributed to the OS—every new release is my new favorite. If I had to pick one it would be Mavericks because it provided true multi-monitor support which was important to me at the time. My iMac came preloaded with Yosemite—I've had no problems. The only feature in El Cap that interests me is the split full screen mode, otherwise I probably wouldn't upgrade.
When I retired at the beginning of 2012 I purchased a MacBook Air with Lion preinstalled. I fell in love with the Mac and thought Lion worked just fine. I've upgraded OSs as they've been released, within a week or so, ever since.
I understand the question too. They're all my favorites. Maybe I've been fortunate or maybe I've practiced good computer/OS management. In either case I have yet to have a problem that can be attributed to the OS—every new release is my new favorite. If I had to pick one it would be Mavericks because it provided true multi-monitor support which was important to me at the time. My iMac came preloaded with Yosemite—I've had no problems. The only feature in El Cap that interests me is the split full screen mode, otherwise I probably wouldn't upgrade.
After trying every OS X from Snow Leopard to yosemite, yosemite was by FAR the worst. Unlike many people I always do clean installs of every upgrade of OS X. Many people have had great issues such as annoying lags because they upgraded without doing a clean install. I did that once and immediately saw the difference, so I never did it again. That being said, yes there are exceptions when even a clean install might cause problems but that may be a problem within the downloaded installer itself, better download it again and try that one, or it might be the computer in question even.
My problem with the flat, lifeless, weirdly transparent yosemite (other than the design) is the degradation of the easy usability of the OS. In every other OS X, when I enlarge a Finder window, it STAYS enlarged every time I open a new Finder window, even after rebooting, it remembers. But not in yosemite, no sir. I have to enlarge the damn thing every single time I open a goddamn Finder window, and I've downloaded several installers of yosemite and installed them on several Macs, so the bug is not related to a specific installer, and it's STILL NOT FIXED IN 10.10.4. Another degradation in usability in my opinion is the fact that I have to tap on option in order to maximize a window. I never liked using OS X in fullscreen mode, and I could never stand having to wait for the window itself to "transition" into fullscreen. Why do I need to do an extra step just to maximize a window that keeps showing up as small as 600x600 pixels?? Those are HUGE usability flaws that tend to become very annoying very fast. They just make the experience worse. An ugly thing about yosemite is its "choppy" way of filling a copy bar or any other bar instead of the fluid way that was present in OS X. Since when is a choppy way of doing things more enjoyable than fluidity? I like how people claim that Mavericks felt "chunky". I have had almost 0 problems with Mavericks ever since its initial release. Way less issues than I had in Mountain Lion that's for sure. And yes I believe Mavericks comes right after Snow Leopard in terms of stability. As I said before, make sure you do a clean install and you'll see what I'm talking about. In Mountain Lion I had all sorts of small, annoying bugs, just like in yosemite. In mountain lion I kept having tons of problems with the mouse and trackpad and it just didn't feel as stable as Lion did (yes that's right, I used Lion for well over a year and it was just great. Only when I saw how stable Mavericks was did I dare upgrade (after the fiasco with mountain lion)). Mountain Lion is fine now, but not as good as Mavericks, and Snow Leopard's just too old and outdated, so I stick with Mavericks. I can't really remember all the yosemite bugs because I've switched back to Mavericks since before 10.10.2 was released and never looked back but I remember that I had connectivity issues with my Magic Mouse. I was beginning to hate OS X (something I never thought I would ever say), then I switched back to Mavericks, I immediately remembered why I loved OS X in the first place and really enjoyed using it again. All these new and almost useless features are making the OS less and less stable, and with apple releasing a new OS ever single year it's just getting worse and worse. el capitan might seem fine now but who knows how it will actually turn out in the future.
When microsoft released windows vista, in my opinion the most beautiful OS one could think of as far as design goes, Apple DID NOT COPY THEM! They released Snow Leopard and my god what an OS that was! It worked unbelievably good that people still swear by it to this day, even though (let's be honest) it looked 10 years older than vista as far as design goes, but who gave a crap? NO ONE! BECAUSE IT WORKED! Now, microsoft have taken another drastic change in their design, but this time, when the OS actually looks disgustingly bad, sir tim cook and his little monkey jon ivy decided it was a damn good idea to copy one of the ugliest and most unreliable products in the world, even better, they mixed elements from windows vista/7 such as transparency with the flatness of windows 8, making one of the ugliest and most confusing operating systems ever created when it comes to design. Now I admit I am ranting, but I waited a very, very long time to get my mac and then apple started destroying everything that was good and lovable about it, without giving you the option of using the version you like best. Don't tell me "apple's not forcing you to upgrade" because they actually are. I need a new mac at the moment and it's gonna come loaded with yosemite most likely without the ability to downgrade even on machines that originally shipped with Mavericks or even Mountain Lion. Plus you can use Mavericks for so long, there is a day when the applications you use will demand that you upgrade. In other words, Apple KNOWS you're gonna upgrade eventually. I use professional applications such as Pro Tools, Sibelius, Premiere Pro and Adobe Acrobat, and I will say using them on Mavericks has been a pleasure compared to using them on yosemite. And I'm talking from the perspective of someone who has used both Mavericks and yosemite on 3 different Macs.
My problem with the flat, lifeless, weirdly transparent yosemite (other than the design) is the degradation of the easy usability of the OS. In every other OS X, when I enlarge a Finder window, it STAYS enlarged every time I open a new Finder window, even after rebooting, it remembers. But not in yosemite, no sir. I have to enlarge the damn thing every single time I open a goddamn Finder window, and I've downloaded several installers of yosemite and installed them on several Macs, so the bug is not related to a specific installer, and it's STILL NOT FIXED IN 10.10.4. Another degradation in usability in my opinion is the fact that I have to tap on option in order to maximize a window. I never liked using OS X in fullscreen mode, and I could never stand having to wait for the window itself to "transition" into fullscreen. Why do I need to do an extra step just to maximize a window that keeps showing up as small as 600x600 pixels?? Those are HUGE usability flaws that tend to become very annoying very fast. They just make the experience worse. An ugly thing about yosemite is its "choppy" way of filling a copy bar or any other bar instead of the fluid way that was present in OS X. Since when is a choppy way of doing things more enjoyable than fluidity? I like how people claim that Mavericks felt "chunky". I have had almost 0 problems with Mavericks ever since its initial release. Way less issues than I had in Mountain Lion that's for sure. And yes I believe Mavericks comes right after Snow Leopard in terms of stability. As I said before, make sure you do a clean install and you'll see what I'm talking about. In Mountain Lion I had all sorts of small, annoying bugs, just like in yosemite. In mountain lion I kept having tons of problems with the mouse and trackpad and it just didn't feel as stable as Lion did (yes that's right, I used Lion for well over a year and it was just great. Only when I saw how stable Mavericks was did I dare upgrade (after the fiasco with mountain lion)). Mountain Lion is fine now, but not as good as Mavericks, and Snow Leopard's just too old and outdated, so I stick with Mavericks. I can't really remember all the yosemite bugs because I've switched back to Mavericks since before 10.10.2 was released and never looked back but I remember that I had connectivity issues with my Magic Mouse. I was beginning to hate OS X (something I never thought I would ever say), then I switched back to Mavericks, I immediately remembered why I loved OS X in the first place and really enjoyed using it again. All these new and almost useless features are making the OS less and less stable, and with apple releasing a new OS ever single year it's just getting worse and worse. el capitan might seem fine now but who knows how it will actually turn out in the future.
When microsoft released windows vista, in my opinion the most beautiful OS one could think of as far as design goes, Apple DID NOT COPY THEM! They released Snow Leopard and my god what an OS that was! It worked unbelievably good that people still swear by it to this day, even though (let's be honest) it looked 10 years older than vista as far as design goes, but who gave a crap? NO ONE! BECAUSE IT WORKED! Now, microsoft have taken another drastic change in their design, but this time, when the OS actually looks disgustingly bad, sir tim cook and his little monkey jon ivy decided it was a damn good idea to copy one of the ugliest and most unreliable products in the world, even better, they mixed elements from windows vista/7 such as transparency with the flatness of windows 8, making one of the ugliest and most confusing operating systems ever created when it comes to design. Now I admit I am ranting, but I waited a very, very long time to get my mac and then apple started destroying everything that was good and lovable about it, without giving you the option of using the version you like best. Don't tell me "apple's not forcing you to upgrade" because they actually are. I need a new mac at the moment and it's gonna come loaded with yosemite most likely without the ability to downgrade even on machines that originally shipped with Mavericks or even Mountain Lion. Plus you can use Mavericks for so long, there is a day when the applications you use will demand that you upgrade. In other words, Apple KNOWS you're gonna upgrade eventually. I use professional applications such as Pro Tools, Sibelius, Premiere Pro and Adobe Acrobat, and I will say using them on Mavericks has been a pleasure compared to using them on yosemite. And I'm talking from the perspective of someone who has used both Mavericks and yosemite on 3 different Macs.
Earliest OS X I've used was Panther, it was pretty useless. Tiger IMO was the first decent version of OS X, and they got better from there.
So many people citing history.
Been a mac user for a looong time (OS 9 days). Leopard to me was the worst, hands down. It was a hot mess, odd performance issues, hated the glass plate dock and the visual style was incoherent.
Mavericks was a disappointment more than a terrible OS, and Wifi issues aside Yosemite has been working just fine.
Been a mac user for a looong time (OS 9 days). Leopard to me was the worst, hands down. It was a hot mess, odd performance issues, hated the glass plate dock and the visual style was incoherent.
Mavericks was a disappointment more than a terrible OS, and Wifi issues aside Yosemite has been working just fine.
Never had any problems with any of them. I dislike Yosemite the most only because of it's candy IOS design. I have Leopard on my QUAD and my POWERBOOK because it is more functional then Tiger. I have Mavericks on my MBP because it has better power saving than ML and it is faster and better looking than Yosemite.
I started with Mac when Tiger (10.4) was out. I've had such a good experience all these years that I cannot pick out any one version as being the worst. Every version has performed very well for me and I can't think of any major complaints I've had.
I always thought Yosemite UI looks poor on non-Retina devices but good on Retina devices.
But I never had an actual Retina panel, so I don't know.
On the bright side, the WindowServer memory leak (lag in Mission Control, etc after a few hours' usage) is reported to be gone in El Capitan!
The worst OS X version is the one that does not work for your needs. Especially true for those people who use OS X for their livelihood.
I've been using OS X since Jaguar and had lots of troublesome issues with Lion and Leopard. I've found the upgrades to the last few OS releases relatively pain free so I hope that continues with El Capitan.
Lion was without a doubt. Not only was it buggy, but it just didn't seem well thought out as a whole. In hindsight it just seemed like OS X's first awkward step into making itself look a bit more 'iOS'.