Feedback/opinions on OSX Lion

So let's hear what you think of Lion. What features have you discovered or think of?

I'll start:

Magic Mouse: scrolling is now opposite to what it was before

Mission Control: Not sure how different this is...haven't seen a full screen app yet? I updated iTunes.

Java: I have an app that uses Java. I clicked on it and Software Update immediately opened up asking me if I wanted to install Java. Pretty cool.

It's about time.

I was configuring a new Win 7 laptop today for someone. When configuring Explorer to hook into to their security cams it popped up a window asking me if I wanted to download and install Java. Windows has done that since XP I think.

Wow, full screen apps. It's about time with that too. Not raining on the parade, those are just two things that Windows has had for years.

Mission Control, isn't that Exposé basically?

Resume, Auto Save, and Versions looks good though.

Launchpad, still out for testing, seems like mainly eye candy for what can be done with aliases. It does sort of make it like iOS by grouping apps, but again what can be done with aliases and a folder in the dock.

Where did my apps go?

In the dock, but not in Launch Pad:

Click for large view


Not in the Applications folder:

Click for large view


I am afraid to take them out of the dock!

Click and hold on the dock icon and choose Show in Finder for the apps you can't see in the Applications folder. Then Command click on the enclosing folder's icon at the top the Finder window to see the path.

You have them installed elsewhere, or were they in the Applications folder before upgrading?

Found this too;

If you want to delete an app, you do have to do the click-and-hold dance, and then tap the X that appears in the top left corner. You’ll be asked to confirm that you really want to delete it. Bear in mind that you can’t delete any of Apple’s own apps. Also, if you delete an app from Launchpad, it disappears from the Applications folder too—and I mean it’s gone: it doesn’t even show up in the Trash. You can always download anything you’ve purchased from the Mac App Store again; in many cases, those reinstalled apps will retain your data.

No Sir, I don't like it.

This guy kind of says what I feel, is it really needed on a desktop? It's just a dock replacement.

I must admit though that it also took me quite a while to embrace the dock after OS 9's Apple Menu functionality and ease of configuration. I still use my Recent Items menu a lot.

Weird, they are in Recovered Items

I don't like how if I bring up a preference pane on a fullscreen app, then accidentally click on the app in the background, it causes the pane to go BEHIND the fullscreen app. I have to use Command + ~ to get to it.
Besides that, I'm loving Lion. Also, I can't wait for chrome to work properly fullscreen.

For the issues with Launchpad, just create a folder of "Unused Applications," but I'm not sure yet how many that will hold.

EDIT:
To fix the mouse thing go into the Pref Pane for mouse, then unclick the Move Content in the direction of yada yada yada.

Hi and welcome... you know you aren't sending the pane back... by clicking on the app you are requesting the app be forward.

ok, iPhoto 8.1.2, a universal app, does NOT work. Sent in a report to Apple about that. Same with Pages, keynote and Numbers.

Are they thinking that I have to buy all the updates??

All of my apps are in the recovered section. Wonder why?

I think I jumped the gun upgrading to Lion


Well, my copies of iWork & iPhoto don't work and they are only 1 version old!

All my applications were moved to a "recovered" folder, whatever that is.

What's this fuss about full screen apps? Haven't seen it. How do I know if versions, autosave, etc are working? How do you access that??

Apparently my time machine drive, connected via FireWire, can't be seen anymore. Worked fine before the upgrade

Not very happy with this upgrade at all

Haven't had much time to explore, but…

First things first.
I created three partitions on new iMac.
One for Snow Leopard, one for storage, and one for Lion. I use 2 externals for Time Machine and various backup and junk. The clean install was flawless on the empty Lion partition, took about an hour and a half to download and install.

2. MobileMe imported most of the preferences and contacts and sync. I'm really going to miss that.

3. Created Lion Boot DVD from Lion download (search if you want to know how). It took forever to boot from. 30 min.?

4. Aside from basic contacts, calendar, etc. I'm reinstalling everything old from scratch, not migrating.

5. I think I'm already used to the "backwards" scrolling.

Wanna get the basic backup and functions out of the way first, the fun is yet to come.

6. Safari is pretty snappy.

My favorite so far are full screen apps, Mail's favorites mailboxes and opening Word documents in Preview.

One thing I've noticed is the new operating system (and especially Safari) doesn't seem to hog memory as much as 10.5 or 10.6. Of course, one of the first things I do with a new system is delete unwanted languages with Monolingual and delete foreign fonts I'll never use. This helps keep memory usage down also. There are plenty of little gripes with Lion. Should we list them also?

If it's part of your experience, sure. Maybe someone else has a work around or what.

Biggest gripe with me is the most used item....Safari. I do love having full screen browsing built in the system instead of having to use the app PresentYourApps to make it full screen but, Safari always shows the toolbar. I can right click the blank space of the toolbar and select Hide Toolbar but I haven't seen a way to get it back. Why couldn't Apple make this like Google Chrome, who did it the right way and still use Command L to type in a location when it's not listed in our bookmarks? Google Chrome gives a total full screen and when you move your cursor to the top, the toolbar and favorites bar drop down.

Second gripe I have is not being able to flip list view when arranged by name in the Finder. It lists from z at the top to a at the bottom. Has anybody figured out how to flip it with a at the top?

Ok, just happened to stumble on the list view problem. Under the Arrange button, I have to select none instead of name, then I can select my view by clicking the views above the list like all previous systems.

Not sure if you noticed, but right click on the desktop. You won't see Arrange By, instead you see Sort By


Now, open up a finder window &. Right click there. Guess what? Arrange By is there!

Oh, and wasn't there a Feebback option under the Apple menu in SL?

I looked at Launchpad and kinda like it, but it does seem to be somewhat of a Dock alternative. I still have my most used apps in the Dock, but easy access to my other apps is nice.

I have the most recent iLife suite which works just fine. I also have iWork 08 and those apps are functioning for me (not full screen capable, though).

Full screen apps are pretty cool, but they have to be fairly recent versions. Firefox 5.0.1 doesn't do full screen as well as iWork 08 apps. The system apps that were updated by the Lion install are full screen capable (Preview, QT, etc.).

Finder and app window resizing from any corner or edge = cool!

The gray, 2D scroll bars = meh.

Lion is as quick as SL on my 2.0 GHz, Core2Duo Mini with 2 Gig RAM.

Launchpad = kinda neat.

Mission Control = Exposé more or less.

Not sure I like the new iCal. I don't see a way to change the default "skin."

Mail.app is nice, but I might invoke the "Classic" layout, or toggle back and forth just to see which I prefer.

I deleted a bunch of old, incompatible apps (some I had even forgotten I had).

My install/upgrade was uneventful and all is running smoothly (My boot drive is a FW400 external).

Still trying to figure how to afford a Magic Trackpad so I can use gestures.

Here I go complaining again. I don't like the Finder sidebar as much as 10.6. It lists the devices at the bottom and the most used folders like the ones inside our Home folder are not colored.

2 nice improvements, when I Command click a link in Safari, it loads the tab just to the right of the current tab.

In Mail, it seems Apple has fixed the new mail sound. So far, every new email I have received has had the new mail sound. It never worked in 10.6.

That's been around.. you had to set it in the prefs though. I guess it's default now.

Or are you saying it pushes any other tabs over and becomes the left mostest right tab?

You're really splitting hairs, and putting too much stock in Monolingual. Getting rid of languages helps apps launch a hair faster, but I don't think it matters in RAM usage. Also in these days of terabyte drives the couple of gigs or so of disk space doesn't matter.

When you do the OS install you can choose not to install languages or fonts BTW.

Some of those foreign fonts are used for glyphs and such, be careful what you pull out, and the few you remove makes no noticeable difference in performance, I doubt it's even measurable if you were to benchmark the machine.

My .02¢. I've seem enough gnashing of teeth over Monolingual and such apps causing problems is all.

Address Book is pretty cool, now.

Monolingual is more of a hard drive space saver. That's what I should have said. I do think removing unwanted fonts reduces memory and makes my Macs run quicker. But, everybody's mileage may vary. I have heard horror stories with Monolingual but, I've never had one and used it a ton.

Apparently it changed my system prefs for sleep and now my computer is sleeping. (I know this because I tried to remote log in just now and it's offline)

Glad I came across this thread. I will be sticking with SL until it becomes extinct or until I get a new Mac with Lion pre-installed. Which ever comes first.

I think I may have done something right.

Partition 1. Snow Leopard
Partition 2. Lion
Partition 3. Various

External HD 1. Time Machine Snow Leopard/Various
External HD 2. Time Machine Lion/Various

Installing what programs I can from scratch onto Lion.
Yes, I have the disks.
OCD comes in handy sometimes.

iMac 2.7 i5 27

Since I can't have Rosetta, dual booting is the best of both worlds.

So far, everything is working great, but just a little bit different…

Edit: A little bit different is not what I meant to say.
I freaking love this computer, and the OS.

I'm having difficulty getting it back too. I put the mouse up and the bar pops down. There is a command {Command |} but that doesn't work for me.

re: Monolingual

Yeah, Monlingual was more for people with first generation iBooks etc. who realized they didn't have a lot of space left to play with once they had put OSX on their machines. I used it to free up quite a bit of space back in the day (though Japanese is one I couldn't part with and it is the biggest one!!). Nowadays, it is rather a pointless procedure. One or two .avi movies will take up more space than languages ever will.

Hey Nana, for you from wikipedia:

The total wild population of the snow leopard was estimated at only 4,080 to 6,590 individuals by McCarthy, et al., 2003 (see table below). Many of these estimates are rough and outdated.

I knew you meant the other SL, but it got me thinking (:

John, the only way I can get the toolbar back after hiding it is click the View menu and select Customize Toolbar, then click done. The Command | works when not in full screen mode.

Just to let everyone know, after running Monolingual I saved 1.6 GB. I'll take it.

Oh.
My.
God.

Lion has reintroduced the single most important thing on any operating system.

Animated gifs in Mail!

Praise Jobs!

Here's a little list I've made of likes, dislikes other than what I've already said;

Likes:
Window resizing from any side.
Safari forward & backward swipes.
The new Dictionary panel quick lookup.
Conversation view in Mail.

In Mail, it seems Apple has fixed the new mail sound. So far, every new email I have received has had the new mail sound. It never worked in 10.6.

The system doesn't seem to hog memory as much as 10.6.

Preview app can open Microsoft Word documents. Even .docx.



Dislikes:

Save As is gone. Have to use Duplicate and name the document.

I don't like the Finder sidebar as much as 10.6. It lists the devices at the bottom and the most used folders like the ones inside our Home folder are not colored.

Save dialog sidebar is colored until I click the upside down triangle beside the naming section. If I click that, it all turns gray.

Whoa! You now get a file preview popup/out in Spotlight!

You are a maven in this field I see how can I download this new LION OS without a credit card? I only posses debit cards.I went to a store here in the Philippines and they only have i tunes gift cards which are the $50.00 amount and the program only cost $29.95.Any solutions? Thanks

Yes.. buy the gift card and use the rest for something else Apple sells....

I routinely use my debit card to make online purchase. It works just like a credit card.

Either Lion broke Flip4Mac, or it's the new version of QT. QT launches, but there is no video or audio when using Flip4Mac. No sound either. The browser plugin works, but with only part of the control strip showing. Not that I encounter very many WiMP files, though.

Have you checked Elements 9 yet?

Can't afford the $79.

Sorry, I thought you were already using it. I see some reports with problems under Lion.

I haven't had a problem with PSE 8 so far.

Haven't installed it yet, but *somewhat* thrilled that you can resize windows from all four sides.

I've been forced to be cross-platform, working on pc's at my day jobs for the last 8 or 9 years, so I know more about pc's than I like. But the one thing I liked, that pc's do that Mac's don't, is the resize-from-any-side thing.

Woo-hoo?

EDIT: Does QTPro v7 still work under Lion?

Yes, it does.

Thanks Mike I have a chase debit card but they only told me I can only withdraw money from the ATM with it nothing else. I cannot make purchases in the store.I am puzzled by this.

Does it have the Visa or MasterCard logo on it?

I removed Flip4Mac months ago …I have yet to find any movie I couldn't either play in QT with Perian installed, or through VLC or mplayer.

Interesting. I guess Perian does do WMV, which is the only reason I have Flip4Mac installed. I'm going to try without it. I can play everything else sans VLC or mplayer now. At least what I watch.

What do you need to use VLC or mplayer for, mkv?

There are so many different Microsoft video formats and perian won't play everything. Mplayer and/or VLC are much better at it.

I have always hated messing with flip4mac because of all the extra for-pay junk we don't need associated with the install. Reminds me a lot of StuffIt.

iGlasses appears to be broken. It could be why Photo Booth is rather unstable and iChat gets a bit confused too.

Edit: Yep. I disabled iGlasses for iChat and Photo Booth and they both seem to work normally.

I haven't had a single problem thus far. Only a few niggling things:

I find LaunchPad to be completely frivolous and useless on a desktop Mac, and only mildly useful on a laptop.

I don't like the way some of the gestures contradict themselves depending on how/when you use them.

I hate how if you have an app set to open in a specific Desktop (space), let's say Desktop 2, and you're currently in Desktop 1, if you click the Safari icon in the Dock, it doesn't automatically switch to Desktop 2. In fact, it does nothing.

Other than that, I'm loving it so far.

It has a Visa logo on it.Thanks

Then you can use it like a credit card too...just can't go over your available balance in your account

(From the ecamm webpage/site) ' iGlasses 2 is not compatible with OS X Lion. iGlasses 3 is coming soon, with amazing new features and full support for Lion. Upon release, iGlasses 2 customers will become iGlasses 3 customers at no additional charge.'

Yet another reason why I'm holding off on the 'Lion' installation...

iGlasses

For now, I simply disabled it for the apps that I use. No problem.

That's a really cool little app. I see where you can even use some kind of infrared mode.

So far, so okay here ... most everything works except all but one of my Freeverse games don't work anymore and they have no plans to make them Lionized, so that's a bummer.

Gonna wait a while before switching over on my work machines given things like Flip4Mac also don't work, and i need that functionality =)

Ewww ...don't tell me you're a WMV encoder :P

I'm sure v3 will be even better.

In the real world, this is often a necessity;-)

Thanks for your help I will use it tomorrow.

Using Excel is one of the reasons I will put off getting Lion. I have an old one and don't think it will be accepted in the Lions pride.

Dave

MrB, there are freebie office suite apps which are Excel-compatible... might want to look into them.

OK. I'm not too sure about the new file saving options in Preview, for an example. Where does Lion keep auto-saved files anyway? In order to save a file to a specific location, you now have to choose Export from the File menu.

Here ya' go

Unlike Time Machine, Apple's file version storage system is not limited to saving a complete copy of each new revision of a file. A second SQLite database (/.DocumentRevisions-V100/.cs/ChunkStoreDatabase) tracks the individual chunks that differ from one revision of a file to another.

Welcome to iOS for the desktop. Can't touch this.

No sir, I don't like it.

"How do you feel about this, Mr. Horse?"
"No sir, I don't like it".

I'm keeping Snow Leopard as my work OS and Lion as my play OS.
After all the years waiting for a better filing system, this isn't it (yet).

In another year or two, everything people are "worried" about will be such the norm that whatever the "new thing" is, people won't like it and want to stick with what Lion is now. Happens every major upgrade

Agreed. In the current form it's a bit limited, but once iCloud comes out things will make more sense. I think the biggest problem a lot of us have is trying to figure out what makes it tick. John Siracusa said it best in his review of Lion. From now on OS X isn't going to be graded on what has been added to the OS, it's gonna be what has been removed.

Manual vs Automatic :: Most people prefer automatic. At some point the effort it takes to understand the inner workings isn't worth the reward of that knowledge. How many developers today know a thing about machine code or file systems? Not many. They use developer tools that abstract them from the ones and zeros. Apple is doing the same thing, but for higher level operations.

Oh, I agree.
That's why I always upgrade. Love new bling, and Lion hasn't let me down.
I just like to take it slow.
Too many things I rely on work in SL, not to mention I can't afford to upgrade apps.
Very few companies are going to give Lion support for free.
That doesn't mean I can't learn and explore and wait until it is the norm.

Rebooting resets my default printer to the last used. Meh!

And, speaking of Safari (version 5.1, that is) 'Click-to-Flash' doesn't seem to work the way it used to. Also, Google Voice & Video plugin gave up its ghost....

Are you using the old plugin, or the new extension?

https://extensions.apple.com/

ClickToFLash seems to be working fine for me in Lion.

I really like the OS so far! It’s my main system now—which I normally I wouldn’t risk until .1 or .2, but it came on my new Mac, so... fingers crossed!

There are a few quirks and glitches—which detract from the level of polish I want to see. But nothing dire, and lots to like.

Yes..Lion is change we can believe in.....

Zing!

Something I don't like:

Open safari in full screen mode. Then open a link in a new window. That Safari window opens separatey, not over the current window.

Now close that safari window.

Does it take you back to the first safari that you had opened the link from? Noooooo

It takes you back to the "main" finder window

Correction: I installed a ClickToFlash update shortly after posting that it worked. After that, it didn’t anymore. Well, it did mostly, except HTML5 substitutes for embedded YouTube didn’t work: they just delivered the (optional) Flash version if you clicked.

But I just installed ANOTHER ClickToFlash update, and now all is well again

This is all very confusing, and a royal P.I.T.A. I think it would be easier just to let the darn Flash crap load and ignore it.

I've done exactly that. Since I'm on my iPad/iPod most of the time about the only time I come to browse the internet on my desktop is to view something in Flash anyway.

Stupid Flash...

I stopped blocking ads/flash/etc. years ago. The amount of effort (and the performance hit you take by having those plugins installed) isn't worth the results. I can say that because I don't visit any of the sites that typically bury you in Flash (like game sites, etc.)

I've been using Lion's scrolling preferences for a couple of weeks now (with my mouse scroll wheel) and I have to admit that I don't even look at the scroll bars anymore, so the minimalist bars were a good move rather than the aqua blue scroll bars.

I'm already to the point where I now prefer the Lion scrolling - but only when using the Magic Trackpad. When I switch to the Magic Mouse I'm still having to force myself to use the new scrolling method.

Truthfully speaking is there a really big difference from the new LION OS than the current Snow Leopard OS?

Any time a sentence begins with "truthfully speaking" or "honestly" is suspect in my book.

I'm pretty impressed by it. The new features and functions took a little bit of getting used to and I haven't really dug into it too deeply yet (I keep finding new things and ways to do them). Performance, even on my 2 GHz Core2Duo Mini, is very acceptable with 2 GB RAM. I'm still entertaining the idea of getting an internal 250 Gig, 7200 RPM drive to see how that will run. I'm currently running from an external 200 Gig IDE drive via Firewire 400 which seems to be a bit slow at times.

You can kind of judge if a faster internal will help you, aside from application launching. If the machine has been running for awhile after you have been doing your usual daily stuff, don't do this from a fresh start, launch Terminal, do top. Post the top part of the output, like this;

Processes: 80 total, 3 running, 4 stuck, 73 sleeping... 354 threads 23:12:06
Load Avg: 0.20, 0.13, 0.04 CPU usage: 2.73% user, 5.00% sys, 92.27% idle
SharedLibs: num = 36, resident = 55M code, 412K data, 4164K linkedit.
MemRegions: num = 15864, resident = 532M + 30M private, 244M shared.
PhysMem: 207M wired, 1077M active, 166M inactive, 1451M used, 597M free.
VM: 8725M + 387M 117761(0) pageins, 22(0) pageouts

Processes: 83 total, 2 running, 3 stuck, 78 sleeping, 447 threads 06:49:55
Load Avg: 0.74, 0.80, 0.81 CPU usage: 3.70% user, 5.55% sys, 90.74% idle
SharedLibs: 14M resident, 3692K data, 0B linkedit.
MemRegions: 14164 total, 640M resident, 30M private, 329M shared.
PhysMem: 255M wired, 1185M active, 364M inactive, 1804M used, 244M free.
VM: 203G vsize, 1118M framework vsize, 845225(0) pageins, 759582(0) pageouts.
Networks: packets: 3955566/3203M in, 5463614/2717M out.
Disks: 1048565/18G read, 1285689/32G written


Sometimes, waking from sleep takes a couple of minutes and fully launching FF takes a couple of minutes - I can hear the drive thrashing a bit.

Is that the early 2009 2Ghz or the Mid 2007?

I assume the external boot drive is a 7200 RPM?
That's a long time to wake from sleep. The thrashing you're hearing and slow wake from sleep is due to lack of RAM. You have a lot of pageouts, that's the machine needing to write from disk back to RAM. With the amount of pageins/pageouts either the machine has been up for quite a few days, or you're running memory intensive apps. What does uptime in Terminal show?

In the end, no. The two OS versions are very similar. You have some GUI changes, and some features that are different. But given that you can turn off so many of the "changes" (like the scrolling) or simply not use some of them (like LaunchPad), there's little reason to upgrade unless you truly WANT those features - and future compatibility of course.

What I'm getting at is that I don't think that you're going to get the boost that you think you will from a 7200 RPM drive. A lot of things come into play regarding drive speed and access times other than just RPMs. You can have a newer bigger 5400 that has a greater density than an older smaller 7200 with a lower density and the 5400 could be faster in latency and access time.

Now an internal SSD, that would be a kick in the pants, and the wallet though.

Mid-2007 refurbed by Apple. Yeah, I have noticed that Lion uses VM a lot more than previous OS versions. The external drive is a full size 7200 RPM. 8 days up as of right now.

Firefox is the memory hog.

Usually, if things take too long to launch, it means drive failure is soon. For now, it's just once in a while that FF takes a while to completely come up - the app launches, but the browser window doesn't come up right away - and the wake from sleep issue which is also once in a while.

LOL! I'd have to take out a mortgage for a SSD that is large enough.

You would do better off getting a smaller SSD and just using a larger external HD for movies/pics/music.

God bless SSD.

Ya got one for $50?

Are you kidding me John?

Thanks for your input regarding these 2 OS