OS-X Lion

[BritinUSA]

I activated OS-X Lion on my MacBook yesterday and while I have not examined all 250 new features, what I have seen so far seems to more than justify the $29.99 cost. The upload from the App store took a long time, it's about 3.5Gb of data and I don't have the fastest internet on the planet.

Everything seemed to work well, with no conflicts showing up with my applications. Some of the software that I had downloaded via the App Store already had some updates to work better with the new OS, so these were downloaded at the same time.

One of the biggest changes is LaunchPad, which operates the same way as the icon display does on an iPhone. The applications can be re-arranged on the screen or moved to a 2nd, 3rd.. etc screen so they are off the main desktop. A simple four finger pinch movement on the trackpad opens up LaunchPad (I also programmed the PF5 key to do the same thing, though newer versions of the MacBook have changed the PF4 key from DashBoard to LaunchPad).

Applications can also be grouped together just by dragging one icon on top of another, this creates a 'Folder' which can be renamed to anything you want. Click the folder and the icons inside are revealed. I think LaunchPad effectively removes the need for the Dock and I would have liked to have seen an option to de-activate the Dock completely.

Applications work in Full-Screen mode now, again just like on an iPhone.

I did have some issues with MacFonts (a third party font collection). Some of the fonts that I had installed had gone missing during the upgrade but I was able to add them back after just a few minutes work.

There's some nice functionality in this release including AutoSave and Versions to show multiple copies of your work (it seems to work in much the same way as Time Machine.

[wgnoyes]

Well, I've got the little kitty with the arrow on my imac dock (the install icon) but haven't clicked on it yet. 25 years of mainframe systems programming experience tells me to wait for others to bleed, plus I have no real way of backing up yet. (I haven't gotten an external firewire or thunderbolt HD for time machine yet; an HP usb drive that I've got here fails half way through.) My plan was to put it on the macbook pro, play with it there, and then repeat on the imac. (Both are current 2011 computers.)

Other thing to always check before anything like this is compatibility with your installed oem software. (Your macfonts, for instance.) I'm running current generation ms office 2011 mac and adobe cs5.5 web premium plus InDesign 5.5 and I'm waiting to hear definitively from them before proceeding on the imac. On the MBP, its office 2011 mac and (critical) vmware fusion 3.1.3 for running win7 prof for the sole purpose of running ezwinscore and ezsteel to score matches. Beyond that, I'm trying to stay as vanilla apple as I possibly can, even converting a few weeks back from outlook 2011 to mac mail.

There is one big fundamental difference of which I've heard. "Natural scrolling" (?) reverses the direction of scroll gestures on the mouse and trackpad. That is, 2-finger swipe downward on snow leopard does the normal thing and move you down the page. In Lion, they're trying to make you think like an iPad or similar iOS device where you'd swipe up or down the screen to move around. That is, you swipe down and now the screen moves UP and vice versa. You can turn it off thankfully and most people are. I thought about it, I could get used to thinking that way but if I did, I'd be totally ruined for working on any windows machine from there on out.

I did go ahead and make a bootable DVD and may do a bootable usb flash drive as well. Not sure if I'll use that to install on the MBP or just do the download again the way they intend for us to do.

Edited July 22, 2011 by wgnoyes

[BritinUSA]

I kept the natural scrolling; If I thought about which direction to move my fingers I got it wrong, but when I stopped thinking and just did it then it became easy.

[maineshootah]

It does sound very interesting with a lot of new features as well as advances to existing features.

However, like you, I always wait until the .1 "update" comes out.

10.7.1 I am there.

Right now, I sit on the sidelines.

[outerlimits]

just partitioned my HD and installed Lion on one, running SL on the other. since no more rosetta, all PPC apps will puke under Lion...hence the need for a partition to run the snow leopard OS and PPC apps.

gonna take getting used to, but the mail app is much better. i like the new safari and 64 bit itunes as well.

[Kevin Spencer]

After updating I found Microsoft Office doesn't work with Lion. Looks like someone will have to address that. It looks like all my Adobe software works though

[outerlimits]

After updating I found Microsoft Office doesn't work with Lion. Looks like someone will have to address that. It looks like all my Adobe software works though

if it's office 2004, no. office 2008 and office 2011 work just fine.

[wgnoyes]

Office 2011 blows up now on Snow Leopard, but we do have some pretty hefty workbooks that contain complicated macros. Leave it to microsoft to have the only thing on my iMac that "just DOESN'T work". And I converted over to mac mail and address book from outlook. Much happier with that.

Yes, Lion is pretty much telling people running powerpc apps under the Rosetta emulator 'look, you need to get over it and come into the intel world'. Apple apparently is like that. They'll just suddenly take away something they don't think you should use anymore.

My understanding is Front Row went away, too. That's too bad; I kind of like that on my MBP, controlled with an apple remote.

[benos]

After updating I found Microsoft Office doesn't work with Lion. Looks like someone will have to address that. It looks like all my Adobe software works though

if it's office 2004, no. office 2008 and office 2011 work just fine.

Does office 2011 support Excel macros?

2008 did not, so I never upgraded to 2008. (Still on 2004, because I cannot live with out Excel macros.)

be

[outerlimits]

Brian-it does not...all part of bill gates pimping visual basic, only to realize no one will use it

[wgnoyes]

Uh, yes it does, too! I've used them with excel 2011 mac on snow leopard. Now, excel is somewhat unstable when running them (at least the set that are in this particular workbook I've used, but I have to assume the fault is in the macros first....?), but they absolutely are there. Why wouldn't they be? Visual Basic and Excel are both Microsoft products.

Edited July 23, 2011 by wgnoyes

[-JQ-]

Apple apparently is like that. They'll just suddenly take away something they don't think you should use anymore.

I have an app that was a recent purchase and it is NOT compliant with Lion. they are working on it but...

I think I'll let everyone else bleed too.

[wgnoyes]

That can happen. Which one? (Which is why I'm trying to stay as vanilla as possible on the mac.)

[-JQ-]

My problem app is a photo quoting tool. But I'm not updating my machine anyway. I run CS4/Snow Leopard/etc and will into the foreseeable future....I hope

But check this link. This goes to adobe article entitled "Known Issues with Adobe products on Mac OS 10.7 Lion" It seems Quicken and several others are not running or are having rosetta issues.

Did apple not see this coming or was this just the same old story of strong arming users and developers? :angry2:

[-JQ-]

And a quick follow up for my favorite undocumented feature (aka bug)...

Dreamweaver CS4: Color Picker returns incorrect sample color

See "Color Picker returns incorrect sample color | Dreamweaver CS4 | Mac OS 10.7 Lion" (cpsid_90683)

[benos]

And a quick follow up for my favorite undocumented feature (aka bug)...

Dreamweaver CS4: Color Picker returns incorrect sample color

See "Color Picker returns incorrect sample color | Dreamweaver CS4 | Mac OS 10.7 Lion" (cpsid_90683)

Uh. That's got to be a bummer for a lot of folks.

[wgnoyes]

My problem app is a photo quoting tool. But I'm not updating my machine anyway. I run CS4/Snow Leopard/etc and will into the foreseeable future....I hope

But check this link. This goes to adobe article entitled "Known Issues with Adobe products on Mac OS 10.7 Lion" It seems Quicken and several others are not running or are having rosetta issues.

Did apple not see this coming or was this just the same old story of strong arming users and developers? :angry2:

Well the issue is that Rosetta is gone, and it's deliberate. Apple (and other vendors, too) will decide from time to time that you've run that old ass stuff long enough now and it's time to come into the modern world. I'm not supporting or decrying it, just pointing out that this happens, and it's not just Apple that does it. How much Windows XP stuff have people had to stop running or upgrade when they went to Vista or Win7? Answer: quite a lot.

There's a very lengthly review article on OS X in PCMag that is interesting and informative: http://tinyurl.com/3nfqekk

Edited July 28, 2011 by wgnoyes

[-JQ-]

Thanks for the link. I'll take a look.

That is pretty much what I've figured all along. And why do we need 6GB RAM on laptops that are just web surfers...there is a lot of bloat in there somewhere. Don't get me wrong I need all the power I can get - and more.

To me is is like buying a car and the first time you need brakes, "oh yeah, sorry but they don't make that size any more. You must upgrade." - regardless that you paid tons for it in the first place.

It seems to me that it is just a push for us to join the "cloud" and lease our software through the web...just billing your account each month. You want v2.0 sure just a few more $$ a month sir...which you'll be forced into within six months anyway as they discontinue "support" of your version...sorry about the rant

I sure wish I could just go sell shells by the seashore. Cash only. No website either, thanks.

[maineshootah]

And a quick follow up for my favorite undocumented feature (aka bug)...

Dreamweaver CS4: Color Picker returns incorrect sample color

See "Color Picker returns incorrect sample color | Dreamweaver CS4 | Mac OS 10.7 Lion" (cpsid_90683)

Uh. That's got to be a bummer for a lot of folks.

Which again is why we wait for 10.7.1

[wgnoyes]

Any speculated 10.7.1 might not address that, as Apple may feel the system is running as designed, and the oem vender (Adobe) is the one who has to react and accommodate the new operating system.

[benos]

Any speculated 10.7.1 might not address that, as Apple may feel the system is running as designed, and the oem vender (Adobe) is the one who has to react and accommodate the new operating system.

I'm not following you Bill. If the colorpicker worked as intended in 10.6, but now doesn't work as it did in 10.7, that's Adobe's problem?

[wgnoyes]

Very possibly, if Adobe created the feature by going outside of normal operating system services and interfaces and instead programmed "down to the bare metal", as it were, then it's easy for something to break when the operating system is updated. For instance, we can use regular operating system file services to read, write, create, delete, etc files, or we can (if we REALLY know what we're doing), write physical level input/output routines of our own design. If we follow the latter idea and code our own, it'll work... on THAT operating system, but not necessarily on the next one. It's a common problem. IBM would send out maintenance for it's MVS operating system and when we would apply it, it was possible that 3rd party products would then break. That's why it was incumbent upon us to check our software vendors first to see if they had maintenance available to apply to their products first before applying the operating system maintenance. I've done that here (checked, that is) as I have CS5.5 Web Premium, so I'm waiting to drop the hammer on Lion on my iMac until Adobe comes up with something that says their stuff will work. I'm more likely to install Lion first on the MacBook Pro, as the 2 main oem products there are MSOffice 2011 and VMWare Fusion 3.1.3, both of which I've seen will continue to work. (If you call how MS Office runs ANYWHERE to be "working", that is. Glad I didn't lay out full price for office!)

[benos]

If you call how MS Office runs ANYWHERE to be "working", that is.

[wgnoyes]

One thing I noticed last night at the apple store. If you like your current snow leopard wallpapers (like the default Aurora), find where they are and copy them off somewhere BEFORE you install Lion because it looks like they get whacked.

Never mind; that's wrong, they're still there. Just finished upgrading on the Macbook Pro. First thing that got turned off was the so-called "natural scrolling". If I swipe down on the mouse or trackpad, the text or whatever on the screen has GOT to still scroll down the page with me. Natural scrolling only makes sense on iOS screen-driven devices.

Second thing, went into finder preferences and changed sidebar preferences to show me my damned Mac HD in the Devices section.

MS Office seems to still work. (At least excel does; haven't looked at the other 3.)

I can still print to the HP P1606dn network printer both from OS X and from Win 7 running under VMWare Fusion, so that critical app is still working.

Seems a little slower, but I'm told he has a lot of re-indexing to do initially and that will pass.

I may throw launchpad and mission control off my Dock; both are easily accessible with gestures or dedicated function keys.

So far so good.

Edited August 3, 2011 by wgnoyes

[wgnoyes]

10.7.1 is out now. Not really a big list of things that needed fixing and nothing that I experienced myself, and the download was only 17mg.