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Lion over Snowy?

VanneDC

VanneDC

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 5, 2010
860
92
Dubai, UAE
Hi Everyone, its been a while since the Lion release and was wondering what aspects of Lion people upgraded for? I ran it for a little while and returned to Snow Leopard, only really due to the interface changes. I loathed the smaller buttons for minimize, expand and store down below..

anyways, is Lion faster on the same hardware?

cheers
 
Nope. Slower. Harder on the GPU. Superfluous effects that net zero benefit. Feels half baked. If you are going to overwrite animations they should be fast and smooth. It works like Windows now with all windows animating open and fading closed which honestly seems to slow things down. Especially when you get a graphic hiccup. They destroyed WiFi stability as well.
 
VanneDC said:
Hi Everyone, its been a while since the Lion release and was wondering what aspects of Lion people upgraded for? I ran it for a little while and returned to Snow Leopard, only really due to the interface changes. I loathed the smaller buttons for minimize, expand and store down below..

anyways, is Lion faster on the same hardware?

cheers
Click to expand...

I upgraded out of curiosity and honestly haven't seen any real benefit from Lion over SL. I got monochrome icons, useless launchpad and my Mac Pro's inability to fall asleep anymore. (Thank the maker for PleaseSleep)
 
derbothaus said:
Nope. Slower. Harder on the GPU. Superfluous effects that net zero benefit. Feels half baked. If you are going to overwrite animations they should be fast and smooth. It works like Windows now with all windows animating open and fading closed which honestly seems to slow things down. Especially when you get a graphic hiccup. They destroyed WiFi stability as well.
Click to expand...

Yep. For that reason, I have absolutely no confidence in Mountain Lion.
 
Superfast boot-up is gone...

It's much slower, more like Windows. On the whole I don't see a lot of benefit from the upgrade. Plus it killed access to my FREENAS server where my 13,000 pix reside!
 
AppleDroid said:
I upgraded out of curiosity and honestly haven't seen any real benefit from Lion over SL. I got monochrome icons, useless launchpad and my Mac Pro's inability to fall asleep anymore. (Thank the maker for PleaseSleep)
Click to expand...

If you have a FireWire iSight Camera try disconnecting it and it should sleep.
 
Lion has better 3D drivers, every release till now has increased 3D performance even CPU crunch better number under Lion on same machine.
For example some games requires lion for older gfx chips since at least they perform better.

I love iCloud, MinimalUI and a lot of other things, Lion is awesome IMHO, best release yet in par with Snow Leopard.

lion makes heavier hard disk access so it seems slower on traditional disks, but it is the opposite. lion's performance are the best yet in terms of GPU and CPU. With 4GB and a fast HD (modern 5400, 7400 or SSD) will you have all the benefits and you will not notice slower loading times of apps.
 
derbothaus said:
Nope. Slower. Harder on the GPU. Superfluous effects that net zero benefit. Feels half baked. If you are going to overwrite animations they should be fast and smooth. It works like Windows now with all windows animating open and fading closed which honestly seems to slow things down. Especially when you get a graphic hiccup. They destroyed WiFi stability as well.
Click to expand...

can you tun off the animations?
 
Although it feels slightly slower, I get slightly higher CINEBENCH CPU and much higher CINEBENCH GPU scores.

Software developers will currently most likely be doing most of their testing on Lion, so arguably it is the place to be.
 
I jumped from Leopard to Lion, bypassing Snow, due to my CAD package version not being supported, the I upgraded the Cad and had to go to Loin...you know the drill!

I run a Mac Pro 1.1 and find Lion runs really well compared to Leopard, I did a complete fresh install. I really never had great performance with migration or transfer of data over the years in OSX, clean installs are the only way I upgrade. I also try to avoid the early new OS releases.

However the iCloud integration and some other features like iMessage, and syncing across laptops and iOS are for me worth the upgrade, other subtle improvements are things like selecting a group of files and then right clicking the mouse to create a folder and put them inside it, that is an incredibly simple feature that proves to be epic hourly in my work flow.

Go for the newer upgrade, take your time and learn how to use the features, You can't bake a cake without breaking eggs!
 
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There is a group of people on Adobe's forums that have persistent "serious error" crashes using Premiere CS6 with Lion, whereas those with Snow Leopard do not. I just received my physical copy of CS6 myself, so I'll be installing it on a spare boot SSD for thorough testing prior to installing it on my normal boot SSD... but I'm still happy on 10.6.8 and don't expect any problems.

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spacedesign911 said:
I jumped form Leopard to Loin, bypassing Snow, due to my CAD package version not being supported, the I upgraded the Cad and had to go to Loin...you know the drill!

I run a Mac Pro 1.1 and find Loin runs really well compared to Leopard, I did complete fresh install. I really never had great performance with migration or transfer of data over the years in OSX, clean installs are the only way I upgrade. I also try to avoid the early new OS releases.

However the iCloud integration and some other features like iMessage, and syncing across laptops and iOS are for me worth the upgrade, other subtle improvements are things like selecting a group of files and then right clicking the mouse to create a folder and put them inside it, that is an incredibly simple feature that proves to be epic hourly in my work flow.

Go for the newer upgrade, take your time and learn how to use the features, You can't bake a cake without breaking eggs!
Click to expand...
Like the new nickname. Loin. Hahaha!
 
wonderspark said:
There is a group of people on Adobe's forums that have persistent "serious error" crashes using Premiere CS6 with Lion, whereas those with Snow Leopard do not. I just received my physical copy of CS6 myself, so I'll be installing it on a spare boot SSD for thorough testing prior to installing it on my normal boot SSD... but I'm still happy on 10.6.8 and don't expect any problems.

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Like the new nickname. Loin. Hahaha!
Click to expand...

Dooh, de deslexic designer does it again!

Ok LION ok I goddit! lol
 
I hate Lion. My MBA came with Lion on it, so not much I can do about that....

However, I refuse to put Lion on my Mac Pro. I have no desire for iDevice features to exist on my desktop OS. Nor do I care for Lion's memory inefficiencies.
 
I concur with many of the folks who are critical of Lion. The UI stuff is anywhere from OK to annoying. But I also notice that performance is down a bit and my old ATI 2600XT is starting to look very long in the tooth.
 
wow... kinda glad i stayed with Snowy then. Looks like ill be skipping Lion until 2013 when the new MP is supposed to come out... (very sceptical here :)

but yeah i am very happy with Snowy, it was a much much improved upon Leopard(non-snow) :_)

might see if there is a nvidia update for the drivers... I know Cuda updates are available...
 
FWIW, Lion sucks in a mixed network environment. I have a mini/R6 running as a file and media server. The SMB implementation in Lion is broken so I can't back up my windows boxes to it. SL worked fine.
 
cutterman said:
FWIW, Lion sucks in a mixed network environment. I have a mini/R6 running as a file and media server. The SMB implementation in Lion is broken so I can't back up my windows boxes to it. SL worked fine.
Click to expand...

That's because they dropped Samba (OS X 10.2 -> 10.6) for their own SMBX Protocol (for handling Windows Networking) which is why you can't join a domain reliably as well. Sucks but hopefully they will improve it. I don't really have any problems reading/writing to my Windows 2008 R2 servers from 10.7.
 
paulsdenton said:
It's much slower, more like Windows. On the whole I don't see a lot of benefit
Click to expand...
I too have experienced a slow down. However my Windows 7 machines are significantly faster, smoother & very stable. As nice as my Macs running 10.6.8.

I see no benefit in Lion, actually I would avoid calling it an upgrade. In the spirit of giving Apple the benefit of the doubt, I do understand why they integrated the look & feel of iOS. Its sure to sell to easily impressed seniors & young people. It's as familiar to them as their iToyz.

Thinking that perhaps Apple would balance things out, that positive thought was dashed when I attended WWDC. Mountain Lion "features" an even more integrated level of iOS, so as to remove the fear factor of personal responsibility to learn a new (to the retail customer) OS. While again, I was not particularly surprised. Nonetheless it's terribly obvious the best days of OS X are in the rear view mirror. Apples once stellar desktop will never be the same.
 
Wow, still so much negativity towards Lion! It really surprises me; yes, there were some big UI changes, but I've adapted my workflows and now find that I'm more productive than ever. I thought no exposé would kill me, but actually the alternatives, so long as you have a trackpad (I have to use bettertouchtool on my magic mouse) the array of gestures and the level of control they give is fantastic.

I have Snow Leopard on an old Mac Mini that couldn't be upgraded, and the UI feels so, so dated now. I couldn't go back to Snow Leopard now I've learned to maximise the benefits of Lion. I also didn't upgrade the 2006 Mac Pro, but it's only used as a server. If I had a more recent Mac Pro I'd update in a heartbeat.

However, on old Macs that I did update I noticed a degradation in performance. I can understand how this would irk people. I'm fortunate enough that all the Macs I use at home and at work are within a couple of years old, and so Lion really shines. I guess if you've got an older Mac you'd be better off sticking with Snow Leopard. Perhaps Apple should have raised the barrier of entry for Lion and endured the wrath of its customers with older kit rather than allow the reputation of Lion, which is a fabulously powerful and stable OS, be tarnished.

I'm excited for Mountain Lion. I think Lion made great progress in moving along the desktop computing paradigm. Mountain Lion needs to continue this development while taking stock of the changes made thus far and improving efficiency wherever possible.
 
miniConvert said:
Wow, still so much negativity towards Lion! It really surprises me; yes, there were some big UI changes, but I've adapted my workflows and now find that I'm more productive than ever. I thought no exposé would kill me, but actually the alternatives, so long as you have a trackpad (I have to use bettertouchtool on my magic mouse) the array of gestures and the level of control they give is fantastic.

I have Snow Leopard on an old Mac Mini that couldn't be upgraded, and the UI feels so, so dated now. I couldn't go back to Snow Leopard now I've learned to maximise the benefits of Lion. I also didn't upgrade the 2006 Mac Pro, but it's only used as a server. If I had a more recent Mac Pro I'd update in a heartbeat.

However, on old Macs that I did update I noticed a degradation in performance. I can understand how this would irk people. I'm fortunate enough that all the Macs I use at home and at work are within a couple of years old, and so Lion really shines. I guess if you've got an older Mac you'd be better off sticking with Snow Leopard. Perhaps Apple should have raised the barrier of entry for Lion and endured the wrath of its customers with older kit rather than allow the reputation of Lion, which is a fabulously powerful and stable OS, be tarnished.

I'm excited for Mountain Lion. I think Lion made great progress in moving along the desktop computing paradigm. Mountain Lion needs to continue this development while taking stock of the changes made thus far and improving efficiency wherever possible.
Click to expand...

Still totally unnecessary to move around in System prefs and see proc usage of over 50% to open buttons. This vs. 5% or less in 10.6. The lack of optimization is befuddling. Or to rely so heavily on GPU on computers they ship completely lacking in GPU performance. Either mind numbingly stupid or intended wallet rape. Probably the latter but the first time it is so obvious vs. other incremental upgrades. Laptop idles at 45ºC on 10.6, 61-65ºC on 10.7. That is a major problem. And no patch has fixed it yet. Which is what I am really tee'd off at.
 
I moved my iMac to 10.7.4 a few weeks ago and it works fine. Had to inverse the mouse scrollwheel but everything else works the same. Except that mousebuttons 4 & 5 now show mission control instead of expose, but functionally that is the same.

I haven't noticed a drop in performance, but I don't really use it for heavy lifting. My macpro is still on 10.6.8 and likely to stay there until I run into incompatibilities.

I upgraded the iMac to test the waters, and I wanted to own Lion before Mountain Lion replaces it. I figure it always takes a while before they completely debug a new OS, so I have 10.7 just in case I need to migrate away from 10.6 and 10.8 is not yet solid enough.

I have learned the hard way that early adoption can be a crapshoot. I generally wait until x.3 or x.4 before I make the transition.
 
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I've seen the following:

System shut down takes longer (I think it's Lion's "restore my applications" feature, even though I have it turned off).

Start up takes longer (some of that is the hardware check and the number of drives/partitions I have).

The cosmetic changes.

Changing spaces/expose into LaunchPad.


Once everything is booted, I do not notice any performance differences. But I know several people that did, so I think it was hit and miss.

Do I recommend Lion? Not for a desktop.
It wasn't designed with multiple screens in mind or for people that don't have track pads. Admittedly, most Macs sold are laptops, so they designed it to please the largest user-base.
 
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