is Lion worth it for a Mac Pro desktop?

[whyrichard]

Hey,

Is Lion worth it on a Mac Pro Quad with three monitors?
I ask because it seems that nearly every lion feature is geared towards the mobile crowd... and I don't want the hassle of software incompatibilites.

What do you guys think? What Lion features are useful for a mac pro user with three monitors?

Thanks,

r.

 

[JonBook Pro]

Mission Control could be one, but other than that - I just upgraded for more multitouch gestures. I mean, full screen applications are useless in a dual monitor configuration and Launchpad is just...well...

You get the point.

 

[derbothaus]

Yes. Muti-touch on the desktop makes all the sense in the world.

=Worst interaction ever trying to swipe the stupid launchpad.

 

[alphaod]

I've been told Lion won't install a recovery partition on a software RAID set (RAID 0) and after some running there is a bug that "freaks out" and then the computer crashes because Lion can't find the recovery partition.

Until they fix this issue, I'm sticking with Snow Leopard.

=Worst interaction ever trying to swipe the stupid launchpad.

The 5 finger pinch is pretty ridiculous. I can barely fit my hand on the trackpad, forget trying to find room to perform that action.

 

[JonBook Pro]

Yes. Muti-touch on the desktop makes all the sense in the world.

=Worst interaction ever trying to swipe the stupid launchpad.

I personally find the four-finger swipe to be very useful for bringing up all your applications, but that's just me.

 

[Odd]

So that's it? Not a single new feature that might be useful (or indeed useable) on a desktop?

And mission control? I'm still pining for Leopard's implementation of Exposé.
Guess I'm sticking with SL then.

 

[sparkie7]

Hold off until all the bugs are ironed out.

 

[chrono1081]

For me I can't wait to upgrade for the new OpenGL implementation.

Lion is far more than just gestures. Its much faster too. I've noticed a descent difference from my Snow Leopard to Lion partition. I'd go all Lion if I could but Maya is not compatible yet.

 

[toxic]

from my stint using Lion on my MBP, I would say no.

 

[goMac]

I've been told Lion won't install a recovery partition on a software RAID set (RAID 0) and after some running there is a bug that "freaks out" and then the computer crashes because Lion can't find the recovery partition.

This isn't true. I run in RAID0, and everything is fine here. Lion warned me it would not be able to create a recovery partition, but aside from that, no "freak outs."

 

[Atomic101]

Messiah stopped working & also adobe software required an update & for some reason zdnet overclocking tool, reports not compatible -but works anyway ?

Overall not a bad update.

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

And I would say yes.

Rock steady and super fast. Pity about them old PPC apps, but progress marches on. Was the same when Intel processors were introduced and no Snow Leopard for PPC machines.

For those of you too young to remember there was a much bigger broohaha when OS X was introduced. Allegedly was to kill mobos etc! And give up OS 9 or 8.6? never.

 

[derbothaus]

And I would say yes.

Rock steady and super fast. Pity about them old PPC apps, but progress marches on. Was the same when Intel processors were introduced and no Snow Leopard for PPC machines.

For those of you too young to remember there was a much bigger broohaha when OS X was introduced. Allegedly was to kill mobos etc! And give up OS 9 or 8.6? never.

Rock steady?
I know you don't use Apple at work do you?

 

[Gomff]

Just a personal opinion but I don't like Lion at all. Bought it, tried it on a spare partition for a few days, then went back to Snow Leopard again.


IMHO you lose too much stability, compatibility and useful features in exchange for, well, not really that much. Some cute GUI animations if you like that sort of thing.

And it uses more RAM.

 

[t0rr3s]

How mission critical is your machine? My 2011 mbp is on Lion although I'm sticking to SL for the mac pro. Peace of mind.

 

[Tali]

I hated it. It did work alright with FCP 7, Photoshop worked quite well too.

But that's it. Everything else is terrible.

DNS and Subnetmask settings keep changing by themselves.
Performance is unspeakably bad. It feels quite sluggish.
Safari is unusable, but fun, can actually create a 14 GB web content file - no problem!
There is no more Rosetta support, it's not the end of the world, but you still miss out on some things.

I wiped the HD and went back to SL quite quickly, but I still use Lion on the Laptop - fullscreen apps make at least some sense there, gestures are nice.
Im not sure what I will do when icloud is released, but I seem to recall that it supports SL too, otherwise I might check again if SL works better on a desktop then.

 

[scottsjack]

Been there done that. I had Lion on my MP for a few days and hated it. In no particular order;

1. No Eye1 calibration (X-rite's fault)

2. Stupid mini scroll bars drove me crazy. I have folders full of lots of photo and movie files. The big Aqua scroll bars are very useful.

3. Full screen was useless, save it for an 11in Air.

4. Grey icons were fugly. My eyes respond to color, contrast and things that look good.

5. The Auto Save was nauseating.

6. Terrible new Apple philosophy of Dumbed Down OS so it "just works" for the most newbiest of us. After all, who would ever need to see their Library!

7. Way to tablet-like. Launch Pad? Sorry, I'm over fourteen years old.

8. They totally ruined Spaces, a feature that I use all the time, every day.

9. The two features I really liked, adjust windows size like Windows and FileVault 2 turned out to be not all that needed in the face of all of Lion's distractions.

10. I got really tired of scouring the Web looking for all the menu adjustments and terminal commands to remove the stupidity.

11. None of Lions bugs and issues were instrumental in me dumping it from both of my Macs. New OSs and new Apple software have technical issues that have to be worked out. That's expected.

 

[phpmaven]

Rock steady?
I know you don't use Apple at work do you?

You can roll your eyes all you want, but the vast majority of people are using Lion with no issues and are quite happy. I have it running on my Mac Pro and my MacBook Pro and it's great.

I hated it. It did work alright with FCP 7, Photoshop worked quite well too.

But that's it. Everything else is terrible.

DNS and Subnetmask settings keep changing by themselves.
Performance is unspeakably bad. It feels quite sluggish.
Safari is unusable, but fun, can actually create a 14 GB web content file - no problem!
There is no more Rosetta support, it's not the end of the world, but you still miss out on some things.

I wiped the HD and went back to SL quite quickly, but I still use Lion on the Laptop - fullscreen apps make at least some sense there, gestures are nice.
Im not sure what I will do when icloud is released, but I seem to recall that it supports SL too, otherwise I might check again if SL works better on a desktop then.

Sorry, but much of what you say is nonsense.

 

[hakuryuu]

Rock steady?
I know you don't use Apple at work do you?

Its been rock steady for me. The only hiccups so far have been caused by my Apogee Duet (FW) causing Parallels 6 to crash. That has been fixed with the recent driver update. Oh and it seems that about half the time the Office 2011 apps think they have crashed and keep wanting to send reports, but even the crash reporter app crashes. Probably something to do with versions.

Also, full screen Terminal on a 27inch ACD is great.

 

[hayesk]

5. The Auto Save was nauseating.

6. Terrible new Apple philosophy of Dumbed Down OS so it "just works" for the most newbiest of us. After all, who would ever need to see their Library!

7. Way to tablet-like. Launch Pad? Sorry, I'm over fourteen years old.

8. They totally ruined Spaces, a feature that I use all the time, every day.

9. The two features I really liked, adjust windows size like Windows and FileVault 2 turned out to be not all that needed in the face of all of Lion's distractions.

6. A "philosohpy" is all in your head. It's not a real flaw in the OS.

7. Launch Pad is optional. It's foolish to complain over an optional feature. Just don't use it.

8. I can understand that, but for me, it's an improvement.

9. That doesn't make sense, as an argument against Lion anyway. How could another feature make you decide you don't need FileVault?

The only thing I think they should change ( other than fix bugs ) is to make autosave optional. At least they made auto-locking of files optional.

 

[scottsjack]

6. A "philosohpy" is all in your head. It's not a real flaw in the OS.

7. Launch Pad is optional. It's foolish to complain over an optional feature. Just don't use it.

8. I can understand that, but for me, it's an improvement.

9. That doesn't make sense, as an argument against Lion anyway. How could another feature make you decide you don't need FileVault?

The only thing I think they should change ( other than fix bugs ) is to make autosave optional. At least they made auto-locking of files optional.

6. No, every OS and every machine has a philosophy behind it defining who is going to use it, how are they going to use it, and for what purposes.

7. Optional yes but it's that tablet-newbie philosophy again. Really.

8. If spaces could be used either way there would be no argument.

9. You're right, that didn't make sense. What I meant to convey was that FV2 and better windows resizing options were two features that attracted me to Lion but that the negative changes from SL far outweighed them.

 

[Parkin Pig]

Total agreement

SCOTTSJACK:

I agree with all your points. The whole world seems to be dumbing down, but I find it particularly distasteful that Apple have joined the rot.

They've gone from 'Think Different' to 'Stop Thinking'.

Note how a lot of keyboard shortcuts have also disappeared in Lion. Yup, touchscreen devices have virtual keyboards, and consequently no keyboard shortcuts. By definition, keyboard shortcuts speed things up. My iMac has a keyboard. My MacBook Pro has a keyboard. At least leave the keyboard shortcuts there - the LCD (Lowest Common Denominator) users don't HAVE to use them. Everything in Lion seems to take more steps to achieve. Anyone who uses their Mac for serious work, or to earn a living should really avoid installing Vista, (sorry, Lion - easy to confuse the two) like the plague.

I now have a 27" iPad sat on my desk. Unfortunately, as it doesn't have a touchscreen it's not as user-friendly as the actual iPad I have. Mobile operating systems do not work on a desktop platform.

As for autosave - that's the dealbreaker for me. Utterly infuriating. If people really need their backsides wiping that much, should they actually be allowed to play with a machine that runs on electricity? If autosave isn't ditched, or at least made optional, then I have already made my last ever Apple purchase. After 20 loyal years of fidelity to Apple as a pro user, one of the core people who supported them through their less prosperous years, it feels like they've turned their back on me. As such they won't even notice my departure.

What comes after Lion? OS X Shortbus?

 

[kevink2]

If I had known of the problems with file sharing, especially with Windows, I would have waited.

 

[toxic]

I don't see the problem with autosave... sure, there should be a way to turn it off, but there's no great reason to not have it on by default. why should the user have to remember to save all the time when the computer can do it automatically? people forget to do things all the time. you aren't special.

the problem is many of Lion's features aren't plainly a move forward. let's start with the improvements:
- autosave and versioning are good, useful to everyone
- FileVault 2 is good, much improved over the original
- Mail looks and works a little better
- AirDrop is useful
- AirPort renamed to Wi-fi in the menu bar, which is less confusing
- Mail, Contact, & Calendars in System Prefs is nice - one location for importing and managing online accounts

but then there are a bunch of step backwards:
- Launchpad is pretty useless
- Mission Control replaces All Windows Exposé and Spaces, loses many features of Spaces, isn't a replacement for either, and it uses more space and looks more cluttered as a result (though not a big problem for a desktop)
- Full Screen: good idea, bad implementation. no multiple screen support, can't switch between application windows or view desktop using Exposé, slow animation
- active window gray is lighter than it was in SL, and it's too close to the inactive window gray (which I think is the same as in SL)
- iCal and Address Book took two big steps backward in appearance, AB in usability
- more gestures, but I feel like I have to relearn them (more like learn them in the first place) since they've changed and aren't as intuitive
- bunch of extra useless, slow animations
- feels slower overall, even after turning off a lot of the extra animations

compare this to Leopard, which featured BootCamp, Dashboard Web Clips, Stacks, Quick Look, Spaces, and Time Machine, which are all steps forward...the only bad move I can think of off the type of my head is the overly reflective Dock.

Lion obviously has stability and compatibility issues, but that's a problem for every new OS and shouldn't be counted against it.

I ran Lion 10.7.0 on my 2009 2.26 13" MBP for 2-3 weeks while my MP remained on SL. I've since switched my MBP back to SL, even though many of Lion's features (e.g. Full Screen) are meant to help mobile users. the execution is just poor.

 

[roadbloc]

If you have more than one monitor, Lion is a big no no.