Mountain Lion doesn't seem like a real 'OS' upgrade

[IllmasterMath]

Lion never felt like a 'real' OS upgrade to me. If you ignore the arbitrary naming convention- because that's all it is- Lion brought iCloud support and a couple of half-baked features. If Apple has ever been guilty of charging for a Service Pack, Lion was it. Out of necessity I switched over but it's a mess. Mountain Lion is what we were promised. This is why I'm particulary disappointed in Apple's intention to prematurely make obsolete my 2008 MacBook with an Intel GMA X3100. I have been able to get the developer preview running just fine so it's clearly capable. I have been holding out for a MacBook Pro redesign so we'll see what happens in the coming weeks but annoying nonetheless.

I don't think anyone would disagree that Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion is a hell of an upgrade. Let's just collectively repress the memory of the bastard child that was Lion and move on.

 

[\-V-/]

I don't think anyone would disagree that Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion is a hell of an upgrade. Let's just collectively repress the memory of the bastard child that was Lion and move on.

My thoughts exactly.

 

[blow45]

It's not an os upgrade it's a service pack to fix the mess that was lion and put it behind them. That's why it wasn't presented in a keynote (what to present twitter, notes and reminders or a bunch of lion bug and interface fixes?), the first os x version to not be presented in a keynote.

If apple charge for it they will be shameless, seeing as they 've still not done proper work in os x internals and there are far too many bugs left unfixed. Mountain lion is another name for cougar, it's a very apt name (lion was anything but a lion of course), since in slang it refers to an aged animal seeking younger companions to mate, it's the great (other peoples') cutting edge hardware apple use in their devices paired with an aging os with poor technological advances at its core but plenty of injudiciously applied lipstick and make up slapped on top. Apple can't even put enough development behind lion to get it to having the latest Darwin kernel, and ios 6 will be ahead of os x there too...

 

[nuckinfutz]

OS Upgrade ...Service Pack....new thingy. All semantics. Since only Microsoft calls their updates Service Packs is means little to a Mac user how you define an update.

Lion is fine..does it have bugs? Yes ...like every other OS X version before it had bugs.

Is Mountain Lion adding some much needed fixes and polish? Yes. I do hope Apple makes Mountain Lion free i'll be happy because I think that all Macs that can run Mountain Lion should be running it so long as their aren't legacy apps that prevent a user from upgrading.

 

[Dolorian]

Frankly after the disaster that was Lion for me, from this point on I will only upgrade the OS when I get it with a brand new Mac. Something which I am honestly not looking forward to.

What Apple is doing with OS X does not interests me in the least and in no way helps my productivity. I understand they see the big market being in the iOS devices and as such they feel they need to copy/paste all the features of iOS into OS X but I really have no interest in that.

Gone are the days when I was super excited about a new Mac OS upgrade, an upgrade that I couldn't wait to install and enjoyed immensely every time I did. Now it is all uninspiring, "oh look, Apple is adding X iOS feature to OS X" or Apple messing around with things that aren't broke..."lets revert scrolling, let's remove Save As"...or adding unnecessary tedious features "les't make all apps resume on launch, lets save every change you do automatically without asking you to save when you close the document".

It's become a hindrance I'd rather avoid.

 

[Martyimac]

Frankly after the disaster that was Lion for me, from this point on I will only upgrade the OS when I get it with a brand new Mac. Something which I am honestly not looking forward to.

What Apple is doing with OS X does not interests me in the least and in no way helps my productivity. I understand they see the big market being in the iOS devices and as such they feel they need to copy/paste all the features of iOS into OS X but I really have no interest in that.

Gone are the days when I was super excited about a new Mac OS upgrade, an upgrade that I couldn't wait to install and enjoyed immensely every time I did. Now it is all uninspiring, "oh look, Apple is adding X iOS feature to OS X" or Apple messing around with things that aren't broke..."lets revert scrolling, let's remove Save As"...or adding unnecessary tedious features "les't make all apps resume on launch, lets save every change you do automatically without asking you to save when you close the document".

It's become a hindrance I'd rather avoid.

Thank you, could not have said it better myself.

 

[greenmeanie]

I have to agree.
There are add ons but not a OS upgrade in my book.

I'm not usually one to complain, but a lot of the features that Apple has listed about Mountain Lion on their website don't seem much like 'real' operating system upgrades:

iCloud - Personally I don't use iCloud much, but I was under the understanding that all that iCloud stuff was already available on Lion... I don't get what's been added to iCloud with ML.

iMessage - It's a nice feature, but it's more like an IM client app rather than an operating system feature. You should really be able to get it on the app store in the form of a messages app.

Reminders & Notes - These are really just apps, not OS features at all. You could download apps on the app store that could do exactly the same things as these apps branded as OS features.

Share Sheets - Again, it's just a feature in many ML apps. Not really part of the OS.

Gatekeeper - Seems to me like a way to try and start walling OSX off... Not sure how many people would find this useful, let alone it be an incentive to upgrade their OS.

 

[blow45]

Frankly after the disaster that was Lion for me, from this point on I will only upgrade the OS when I get it with a brand new Mac. Something which I am honestly not looking forward to.

What Apple is doing with OS X does not interests me in the least and in no way helps my productivity. I understand they see the big market being in the iOS devices and as such they feel they need to copy/paste all the features of iOS into OS X but I really have no interest in that.

Gone are the days when I was super excited about a new Mac OS upgrade, an upgrade that I couldn't wait to install and enjoyed immensely every time I did. Now it is all uninspiring, "oh look, Apple is adding X iOS feature to OS X" or Apple messing around with things that aren't broke..."lets revert scrolling, let's remove Save As"...or adding unnecessary tedious features "les't make all apps resume on launch, lets save every change you do automatically without asking you to save when you close the document".

It's become a hindrance I'd rather avoid.

qft

 

[vohdoun]

lets save every change you do automatically without asking you to save when you close the document".

It's become a hindrance I'd rather avoid.

I'd have to admit, I detest that so much with Preview on Lion.

 

[atMac]

iCloud - No reason this can't be simply an extension for Safari. They are still not syncing keychains, preferences, or Mail settings like Rules, and preferences from the site to Mail.app.

iMessage - Could easily be a few dollar app in the App Store


Reminders & Notes - These could also be apps in the App Store

Share Sheets -Not familiar with this one. So I can't judge it.

Gatekeeper - This is actually a nice addition IMO.

There are some small changes that are nice, but I don't feel like this should be a 10.8 I feel like it should be a 10.7.5 + new apps in the App Store, and a few other things should be held off till a better 10.8 is ready in a year or 2.

I in no way feel 10.8 is BAD I just don't think it lives up to Apples normal standards for a new OS.

Does anyone have a good link to all the backend work that is going into 10.8? I really am only familiar with the UI changes. I assume there are some security/framework changes as well.

 

[nuckinfutz]

iCloud - No reason this can't be simply an extension for Safari. They are still not syncing keychains, preferences, or Mail settings like Rules, and preferences from the site to Mail.app.


Does anyone have a good link to all the backend work that is going into 10.8? I really am only familiar with the UI changes. I assume there are some security/framework changes as well.

http://gazapps.com/wp/2012/02/19/os-x-v10-8-mountain-lion-new-frameworks/

The following frameworks have been added in OS X v10.8:

Accounts (Accounts.framework). The Accounts framework provides a single sign-on model for supported account types. Single sign-on improves the user experience because apps no longer need to prompt a user separately for login information related to an account. It also simplifies the development model for you by managing the account authorization process for your app. You can use this framework in conjunction with the Twitter framework to access a user’s Twitter account.

Event Kit (EventKit.framework). The Event Kit framework provides an interface for accessing a user’s calendar events and reminder items. You can use the APIs in this framework to get existing events and add new events to the user’s calendar. Calendar events can include alarms that you can configure with rules for when they should be delivered.

Note: The Calendar Store framework (CalendarStore.framework) is deprecated in OS X v10.8. You should use the programming interfaces of the Event Kit framework instead.

You can also use Event Kit APIs to access the user’s reminders, create new reminders, add an alarm to a reminder, and mark a reminder as complete.

Game Kit (GameKit.framework). As described in “Game Center,” the Game Kit framework provides APIs that allow your app to participate in Game Center. You can use Game Kit APIs to display leaderboards in your game, and to give users the opportunity to share their in-game achievements and play multiplayer games. To learn more about using Game Kit APIs in your app, see Game Kit Framework Reference.

GLKit (GLKit.framework). The GLKit framework provides libraries of commonly needed functions and classes that can help reduce the effort required to create an OpenGL app. In addition, the GLKit framework provides APIs that help you perform several optimized mathematical operations, reduce the effort in loading texture data, and render using provided effects.To learn more about using GLKit APIs in your app, see GLKit Framework Reference.

Twitter (Twitter.framework). The Twitter framework allows you to interact with the Twitter service. For example, using a configured Twitter account, you can send status updates (that is, “tweets”) on behalf of the user, which can also include location information and media attachments. Additionally, this framework provides classes for interacting with the Twitter developer API.

These are just a few frameworks that have been added to Mountain Lion. You can't make these simple add ons to the Mac App Store because the frameworks underneath have changed.

Put yourself in the shoes of a developer. Apple cannot add significant framework changes in 10.7.x point releases. The support would be a nightmare because there would be such a large amount of changes between 10.72 and 10.7.5. Consumer get confused. Developers need a fairly consistent target to write against.

Mountain Lion will have a significant amount of changes that aren't exposed to end users. These changes will fix bugs (and cause new ones) and hopefully improve functionality and stability of the OS.

 

[atMac]

I forgot about Twitter and Game Center. I also find those a waste of development time.

 

[nuckinfutz]

I forgot about Twitter and Game Center. I also find those a waste of development time.

Apple doesn't make Operating Systems for just you. They make them for everyone.

 

[atMac]

Apple doesn't make Operating Systems for just you. They make them for everyone.

Yes, but there are Twitter Apps, and I don't know anyone that even uses Game Center on their phone.

I'm just saying there are better things to spend time on, like memory management.