I always feel conned with OS X upgrades

[bulldoze]

I got my first Mac 3 years ago and I was very happy with Snow leopard and despite Apple telling me that Lion and then Mountain Lion are essential upgrades I feel that the user experience has got worse with each release not better. And I have to pay to upgrade as well!

Lion introduced poorer battery life and everything just felt a bit slower and introduced a slew of bugs as well. And for what? I could not care less about the minor improvements it offered. I want an OS to be secure, stable and unobtrusive - Thats all.

And now Mountain Lion, who really cares about notifications, messages (which I still cannot get to work) and all the other 'improvements' that are just fluff in my opinion.

I pay money because I am promised more functionality, more security, more stability and more speed but what do I get again? more bugs, horrendous battery life and now I just discovered my VMware fusion 3 does not work and I am going to be forced to pay money to upgrade that before I can use my virtual machines!

I feel a little bit conned. Anybody else feel the same? Sorry for the rant.

 

[iBookG4user]

You would have hated to be a Mac user before Snow Leopard then. It was $129 for each OS update, you're pretty spoiled with Mountain Lion being $20.

 

[tigres]

I agree to a point. Apple needs to update every 2 years at best and stop ramming garbage through and focus on the basics.

I skipped lion completely, and ML although better than Lion- it is no SL. 10.6.8 I feel was their strongest release to date.

 

[NotAdvisable]

Not at all - I love ML with my new MacBook Pro and every single feature promised has been delivered on.

 

[paronga]

conned?
if you didn't like the new features, don't upgrade!
the main security issues with SL are flash/java related anyway

I feel like i'm the only one who went to lion/mountain lion for versions and file vault 2 and icloud.
They were the killer features for me. God damn i love iCloud and versions

 

[matrix07]

I'm glad Apple didn't listen to you. Auto-Save FTW!

 

[jameslmoser]

Auto save ftw??? Like this wasn't possible for developers before apple. All I have to say is thank you whoever figured out how to shut it off!! I agree with the op completely. OS X is filled with things that just hurt productivity and cause problems. Mail is practically unusable for work anymore, the rules sometimes work, mailboxes constantly need to be rebuilt. Mission control is a huge step backwards in window management. Gestures are not as accurate or as reliable as keyboards, but that's where their focus is with everything. Quality control seems to have gone to crap, too...

 

[sidewinder]

Jeez....if you are so unhappy go buy a Windows box. Then come back is 3 years and tell us what you think.

S-

 

[matrix07]

Auto save ftw??? Like this wasn't possible for developers before apple. All I have to say is thank you whoever figured out how to shut it off!! I agree with the op completely. OS X is filled with things that just hurt productivity and cause problems. Mail is practically unusable for work anymore, the rules sometimes work, mailboxes constantly need to be rebuilt. Mission control is a huge step backwards in window management. Gestures are not as accurate or as reliable as keyboards, but that's where their focus is with everything. Quality control seems to have gone to crap, too...

I don't care about developers. It's native, that's all I care. And yes, it makes my life so much easier.

 

[ixodes]

That's a different way to look at it.

 

[freedevil]

Apple tricked you and stole your farm animals! What did the police say? Just skip the upgrade if you're unhappy.

 

[mmomega]

Apple never once got in touch with me about upgrading, I always had to go to their website or others that adopted sooner and read what was included then decided to buy it or not..... hmmmph.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

You would have hated to be a Mac user before Snow Leopard then. It was $129 for each OS update, you're pretty spoiled with Mountain Lion being $20.

Yeah, but $129 got you fantastic updates, expose, dashboard, so many goodies! Now, $20 gets you a worse user experience and crap you don't need.

Jeez....if you are so unhappy go buy a Windows box. Then come back is 3 years and tell us what you think.

S-

Honestly, in the past 4 years that I've had my PC, the only problems I didn't cause myself involved a hard drive crashing. It's not the devil's OS like you imply. Not even close.

 

[ChristianVirtual]

I share the bad mood for the server version. with respect to the desktop version I'm fine and except the fullscreen/dual screen issue.

I like the integration between iOS and OS X which came along with newer versions (I know, could be done in former versions too, but that's marketing)

 

[WSR]

ML was brought out so quickly to get past Lion's many problem, like Microsoft's Windows 7 did for Vista.

For me ML still has its problems like the loss of grid based Spaces, and the new Full-Screen mode killing extra monitors. Thus, I'm still with SL.

 

[JacaByte]

Mission control is a huge step backwards in window management.

Quoted for truth. Mission Control has got to be one of the sloppiest pieces of Apple software I have ever seen. It has less functionality than Expose. How did their software engineers manage that.

 

[chrono1081]

I got my first Mac 3 years ago and I was very happy with Snow leopard and despite Apple telling me that Lion and then Mountain Lion are essential upgrades I feel that the user experience has got worse with each release not better. And I have to pay to upgrade as well!

Lion introduced poorer battery life and everything just felt a bit slower and introduced a slew of bugs as well. And for what? I could not care less about the minor improvements it offered. I want an OS to be secure, stable and unobtrusive - Thats all.

And now Mountain Lion, who really cares about notifications, messages (which I still cannot get to work) and all the other 'improvements' that are just fluff in my opinion.

I pay money because I am promised more functionality, more security, more stability and more speed but what do I get again? more bugs, horrendous battery life and now I just discovered my VMware fusion 3 does not work and I am going to be forced to pay money to upgrade that before I can use my virtual machines!

I feel a little bit conned. Anybody else feel the same? Sorry for the rant.

Sounds like something is wrong with your installs. Lion and Mountain Lion are rock solid for me.

Also VMWare is not Apples fault, its the creators of VMWare. They charge for their upgrades. It costs a lot of money to develop software and they're charging for it.

That being said $20 for an OS upgrade is a steal.

----------

Honestly, in the past 4 years that I've had my PC, the only problems I didn't cause myself involved a hard drive crashing. It's not the devil's OS like you imply. Not even close.

Support Windows environments for a living, you'll think otherwise. Windows just isn't good at handling large data sets like Mac and Linux are. Thats not Microsofts fault, thats the side effect of being highly compatible, you sacrifice stability.

What Microsoft can control is that Windows still doesn't offer full native ISO support and multiple desktops. Yes I know you can download programs for those features but its 2012 there's no excuse not to have them.

 

[Beta Particle]

Having followed OS X since its introduction, and switching with a Mac running 10.3 (the first release that was suitable for my needs as things had settled down from the switch) I would say that OS X peaked around 10.5

While Snow Leopard focused on speed, it also started the regressions in usability and functionality for the sake of simplicity with the way they changed things like Exposé. (actually it could be argued that Spotlight in 10.5 was the start)

While 10.8 fixes some annoyances of 10.7, it introduces more of its own.

I switched back to Windows 7 as my primary OS (though I still use and support machines running 10.6–10.8) when the iPad 2 was released and I sold my MacBook Pro for an iPad + PC combo.

Haven’t regretted it at all, even after spending the last month or so back on a Mac. In fact, that has strengthened my feelings that OS X is headed in a direction that I have no interest in, Windows 7 suits my needs, and Windows 8 is fine once you kill Metro.

Support Windows environments for a living, you'll think otherwise. Windows just isn't good at handling large data sets like Mac and Linux are. Thats not Microsofts fault, thats the side effect of being highly compatible, you sacrifice stability.

Is the problem Windows, or the software that you’re running on it?

What Microsoft can control is that Windows still doesn't offer full native ISO support and multiple desktops. Yes I know you can download programs for those features but its 2012 there's no excuse not to have them.

ISO support is built into Windows 8, along with a ton of other great features like Hyper-V. (no need for VMware etc—it’s built in!)

Unfortunately most of the focus on marketing Windows 8 has been about Metro and tablets rather than a lot of the “under the hood” stuff that has improved.

 

[Ahead123]

I switched from Lion to ML the day before yesterday and to be honest the only new features I can see is those notifications on the right, I had Growl before so no big difference, also updates are in iTunes (annoying). It's not faster or slower or more stable or less, it looks pretty much the same to me.

 

[ivnj]

also dictation

 

[OldCorpse]

I can't understand why people upgrade compulsively the moment something becomes available. If you value your sanity, don't be an early adopter - wait until the dust settles. Watch and see - what are user reviews like? What are the bugs (there always are)? What do you gain and what do you lose by upgrading? Once the new OS is up to version X.3 or so, you can start thinking about upgrading - but only if it brings you something you really need.

I'm on SL 10.6.8. I'm happy. I have not seen anything from the Lion or ML presentations that I'd want. SL works for me. In fact, there are reasons I am not rushing to upgrade - I have some PPC programs that I absolutely need, and starting with Lion, there is no PPC compatibility option. That right there is a serious problem for me, because the PPC apps I'm running will never be upgraded, so I'm a bit stuck.

In any case, I honestly don't see what the fuss is about ML or Lion - I don't give a flying about "cloud" or whatever other fluff they've got, so why exactly should I rush out and get it?

Now, granted, one day I'll need new hardware, and then I'll have no option but to get whatever is the current iteration of the OS, but until then, meh.

For that matter, I don't upgrade compulsively. I stayed with Tiger and skipped Leopard altogether. I got SL because I bought an iMac in early 2010. I'm fine with SL. I skipped Lion altogether. I will probably hold off on ML and just get whatever comes with new hardware once I'm ready to buy that. I'm thinking about a Mac Air sometime next year, though I'm not 100% even on that.

I don't care about ML. I'm fine on SL. As long as all my apps work on SL and no new must have apps come out that are ML-only, I'm golden. I'll let others be the heros and try out new OS versions. I'm in no hurry - SL does everything I need.

 

[daneoni]

When Snow Leopard came out everyone said Tiger was the best OS ever. When Tiger came out everyone said Panther was the best ever OS. When 10.9 comes out everyone will say ML was the best OS release ever.

 

[marzer]

Hmm, as i remember it, not many attested to Panther ever being "the best"

My experience has been that the every-other release is a "can do without": Puma, Panther, Leopard and Lion. Hmm, the ODD numbered releases, go figure.

I will make a prediction that 10.9 will be skip worthy as well. However, at $20 a release now compared to the $130 of previous releases, its not such a big deal if one misses the mark.

My favorite releases, with regards to solid performance out of the gate, have been Jaguar, Mt. Lion, Tiger. In that order.

 

[Mal]

I can't understand why people upgrade compulsively the moment something becomes available. If you value your sanity, don't be an early adopter - wait until the dust settles.

To be fair, some of us have to upgrade or there will be no one to catch the bugs. However, I advise the same to my friends and family, as well as my customers, usually. I jump on new OS releases immediately, almost like a soldier diving on a grenade, I suppose, because I can fix any problems I run into, or at least work around them, but I know most of those I know don't know how and wouldn't want to. Thus, I have no problem with anyone who does jump on an upgrade right away, but the average user probably is best waiting a bit until the bugs are ironed out. In recent times, the 10.x.2 release was usually fine for the average user to grab without fear of any show-stopping bugs.

jW

 

[JacaByte]

I'll laugh out loud if 10.9 turns out to be Snow Leopard.