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Mountain lion upgrade worth it?

M

Meltdownblitz

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 21, 2010
1,103
44
I'm debating on upgrading to mountain lion on my 2011 MacBook pro. For all of you who have paid the $20 and upgraded, is it worth it?
 
Too early to say. I'm very happy with Snow on my Pro and Air for now. Still have Tiger and Panther on my older Macs and they work, not great but .....
 
I upgraded my 2011 MBP and very happy with ML. I consider it $20 well spent.
 
I upgraded from Lion on a 2008 unibody MBP and I'll be honest it broke OS X, had to do a clean install from USB of ML then migrate from the time machine backup for it to work, it's a bit of a pain but I guess I needed to clean house, it's been almost 4 years worth of junk collection in OSX.

Final verdict, thumbs up, seems faster and is very nice to use, the new improvements definitely take a step in the right direction.
I had to download the latest version of VMware Fusion ( I ignored the update ) but it works fine now.
 
I couldn't recommend it more. After having numerous issues with .0 releases of Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion i was hesitant to do that again, however after a couple of days use i've found it much more stable and responsive than Lion ever was. New features aside, if you're rocking Lion i'd recommend it on this alone.
 
For me, it's worth it just for the unified archive folders in Mail, similar to the unified Inbox. I archive almost everything - and have been doing this since 2002. I find find it very annoying to drag & drop to the correct folder with 9 or 10 email accounts configured on my Mac.
 
I don't care for the added features, it just made my system faster. I've recorded some new speeds for my system-

Lion 10.7.4 (SSD Samsung 830):
Read: 251Mb/s
Write: 155Mb/s
Bootup: 18.3 Seconds

Mountain Lion 10.8.1 (SSD):
Read: 268Mb/s
Write: 164.9Mb/s
Bootup: 16.1 Seconds

Lion 10.7.4 (HDD Stock 5400rpm):
Read: 63Mb/s
Write: 67Mb/s
Bootup: 50 Seconds

Mountain Lion 10.8.1 (HDD):
Read: 64Mb/s
Write: 71Mb/s
Bootup: 44 Seconds

$20 fully justified :)
 
Nope, not for me.
$20 for a battery draining furnace with notifications i already hate seems not worth it.
All the little 'nice to have' additions seem like they could've been implemented via simple software update, absolutely not a new OS.

I know, i'm a crybaby.

(2009 MBP, 13", 2.26GHz Core2Duo, 8GB Ram)
 
For me definitely not worth it. If you are not a compulsive twitter boy, or one of the people that are 24/7 tied to your FB account, I see no reason to upgrade.

As for folks reporting that their computer is "quicker", "snappier", etc; this is simply because you are starting with a new directory of the hard drive. This can be accomplished by running Disk Warrior and you'll notice the same result. I do this every 6 months or so and it's like getting a new computer every time. Over time it will slow down again as the directory get muddled up.

YMMV...but I'm sticking with Lion, which I'm not the biggest fan of.
 
jwolf6589 said:
Not for me. I will need to replace office 2004 with Office 2011 and that will cost me $200 as I need the version with Outlook. I also would need to replace Quicken 2006 with iBank.
Click to expand...

Your have the same sight picture I have. ML staying in the woods:D:D
 
I have a MAcbook air 15, just got it and i only have 4 gb of Ramm. It says ML needs 2 gb to run. Obviously i have enough, but will it make my computer run slower? i dont like slow computers
 
MoxFulder said:
Nope, not for me.
$20 for a battery draining furnace with notifications i already hate seems not worth it.
All the little 'nice to have' additions seem like they could've been implemented via simple software update, absolutely not a new OS.

I know, i'm a crybaby.

(2009 MBP, 13", 2.26GHz Core2Duo, 8GB Ram)
Click to expand...


You have to get used to this though. Apple isn't doing the once every 4-5 year upgrades anymore. There is no such thing as a "New OS" anymore, it's now a constantly evolving OS. ;)

Seriously, if you think you're going to get the same features you used to get with 3-4 years updates your in for disappointment.
 
Is it worth it?

Over the past ~15 years, with the existence of the internet, we have been conditioned by mostly MS (but also Apple and others) to expect service packs, bug fixes, patches, and enhancements to be free; and to expect to pay $50-$200 for a major rewrite or revision of software or an OS. In some way, this makes sense: I paid money for a product, distributing a patch costs almost nothing, why should I have to pay to fix what I paid for already?

However, what if MS charged $20 for Service Pack 2 to Windows XP back in 2004ish? Would I have paid? Of course I would have paid, it's worth $20 just for the security fixes not to mention how much it improved the OS in general.

This analogy is how I feel about these "inexpensive" OS X updates. They're more like a big service pack, but worth paying for. Because even if they only improve 1 thing in your workflow, it's money well spent.

Apple is changing the way we pay for OS updates. If there is ever an OS11, I would expect it to either be totally incompatible with computers built for OSX, or it's going to cost what we expect a totally new OS should cost. Until then, we're just paying a little for a pack of enhancements and fixes.

tl;dr - Yea, it's worth it. But it's still more like a service pack than anything else.
 
oneMadRssn said:
Is it worth it?

Over the past ~15 years, with the existence of the internet, we have been conditioned by mostly MS (but also Apple and others) to expect service packs, bug fixes, patches, and enhancements to be free; and to expect to pay $50-$200 for a major rewrite or revision of software or an OS. In some way, this makes sense: I paid money for a product, distributing a patch costs almost nothing, why should I have to pay to fix what I paid for already?

However, what if MS charged $20 for Service Pack 2 to Windows XP back in 2004ish? Would I have paid? Of course I would have paid, it's worth $20 just for the security fixes not to mention how much it improved the OS in general.

This analogy is how I feel about these "inexpensive" OS X updates. They're more like a big service pack, but worth paying for. Because even if they only improve 1 thing in your workflow, it's money well spent.

Apple is changing the way we pay for OS updates. If there is ever an OS11, I would expect it to either be totally incompatible with computers built for OSX, or it's going to cost what we expect a totally new OS should cost. Until then, we're just paying a little for a pack of enhancements and fixes.

tl;dr - Yea, it's worth it. But it's still more like a service pack than anything else.
Click to expand...

That's a horrible analogy. A service pack does not contain new features that the user can readily see. I've downloaded service packs and they are all behind the scenes changes. Also, an OS 11 would not require a new computer. It would require (most likely), significantly increased system requirements. I upgraded my Mac way back when from OS 9 to OS X and it ran just fine.
 
Meltdownblitz said:
I'm debating on upgrading to mountain lion on my 2011 MacBook pro. For all of you who have paid the $20 and upgraded, is it worth it?
Click to expand...

Short answer - Yes
Long answer - $20 (before taxes) for a new OS? That's a bargin. If your mac can use ML there's no reason not to upgrade.
 
jwolf6589 said:
Not for me. I will need to replace office 2004 with Office 2011 and that will cost me $200 as I need the version with Outlook. I also would need to replace Quicken 2006 with iBank.
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear that the upgrade has brought in some extra costs, but the new packages will bring benefits too hopefully.

Also the OP was asking about the OS only and didn't mention any older packages that might have compatibility issues. So for most people it will still be worth the upgrade.
 
I am really happy with ML, I liked Lion it worked for me with my requirements. But ML is smoother and is superior.
 
afurry13 said:
That's a horrible analogy. A service pack does not contain new features that the user can readily see. I've downloaded service packs and they are all behind the scenes changes.
Click to expand...

There is no rule that service packs can't have consumer-facing features.

Nor is there a rule that a service pack is always "behind the scenes" changes, whatever that means. What "scene" is there to be "behind" in an OS? Do you mean code optimization? If so, SPs certainly are often more than just code optimization.

Perhaps you're too young to remember, but Windows XP SP2 had several consumer-facing features. It added the Security Center, a new firewall, and a pop-up blocker into IE among numerous other changes (I know this sounds trivial today, but it was a big deal in 2004). I am sure MS could have listed "200 new features" in SP2 and charged $20 for it. With the standard of little tiny things Apple counts as a "change", SP2 had at least 200. So XP SP2 was really an update but called a service pack.

On the flip-side, Windows 98SE was widely considered a "whole new OS" when it really had almost no new consumer-facing features. So it was was really a service pack but called a "new OS".

Don't even get me started on what some Linux distros consider updates or new revisions. It seems each distro has different rules for what deserves a full number revision, what deserves a major dot revision, and what deserves a minor dot revision.

In the end, it's all semantics.


afurry13 said:
Also, an OS 11 would not require a new computer. It would require (most likely), significantly increased system requirements. I upgraded my Mac way back when from OS 9 to OS X and it ran just fine.
Click to expand...

You know this for a fact? I was speculating what about what I expect. Unless you're a senior Apple product manager, I'm pretty sure you don't know more than I do. For all we know, OS11 will be a totally new thing running a totally new platform. There is no requirement that OS11 has to be written for x86, nor ARM for that matter.

And also I did have a iBook for a short while that came with OS 9, and no one thought Kodiak or Cheetah ran just fine.
 
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