Should I upgrade to Mountain Lion?

[astbn4]

After replacing my 2010 13'' MacBook Pro's 4GB RAM with 8GB and HDD with SDD, my computer's performance improved beyond my expectations--what a relief!

I'm trying to find out it worth further upgrading my system to Mountain Lion. I got many mixed reviews.
If I should, do I really have to buy Snow Leopard first? I really don't want to spend another $20 on something I'm not gonna use.

Many thanks in advance.

 

[DipDiveDodge]

If it's a 2010 laptop, it came with Snow Leopard, which shipped in 2009.

 

[astbn4]

If it's a 2010 laptop, it came with Snow Leopard, which shipped in 2009.

I re-checked. My mistake; thank you for pointing that out. Is it worth upgrading though?

 

[justperry]

As above poster said, yours came with SL, you'll loose Rosetta so you won't be able to run Classic Applications anymore.
Many people including myself say SL is the best OS there is.
I bought a 2012 Mini, no way to install an earlier OS otherwise I might just have gone back, but I kinda got used to ML now, it has it's quirks, not as fast as SL and quite a few things are done better in SL, but ML also has features SL doesn't have so it's all up to you.

If you decide to go the Mountain Lion way you can buy it from the App store and install it over your existing OS without loosing any data, but I recommend a backup.

 

[astbn4]

As above poster said, yours came with SL, you'll loose Rosetta so you won't be able to run Classic Applications anymore.
Many people including myself say SL is the best OS there is.
I bought a 2012 Mini, no way to install an earlier OS otherwise I might just have gone back, but I kinda got used to ML now, it has it's quirks, not as fast as SL and quite a few things are done better in SL, but ML also has features SL doesn't have so it's all up to you.

If you decide to go the Mountain Lion way you can buy it from the App store and install it over your existing OS without loosing any data, but I recommend a backup.

Ok I've decided to leave my OS as it is. I really appreciate everyone's opinions.

 

[maflynn]

Ok I've decided to leave my OS as it is. I really appreciate everyone's opinions.

I think at this point, unless there's a specific feature in ML you stick with SL.

 

[turtlez]

I would actually prefer to run SL over ML. It is higher performance and less bloated

 

[johnnnw]

As above poster said, yours came with SL, you'll loose Rosetta so you won't be able to run Classic Applications anymore.
Many people including myself say SL is the best OS there is.
I bought a 2012 Mini, no way to install an earlier OS otherwise I might just have gone back, but I kinda got used to ML now, it has it's quirks, not as fast as SL and quite a few things are done better in SL, but ML also has features SL doesn't have so it's all up to you.

If you decide to go the Mountain Lion way you can buy it from the App store and install it over your existing OS without loosing any data, but I recommend a backup.

I'm just curious, what do you mean it isn't as fast?

I used SL pretty extensively when in school and now have ML on my own MBP, what do you notice is slower?

 

[justperry]

I'm just curious, what do you mean it isn't as fast?

I used SL pretty extensively when in school and now have ML on my own MBP, what do you notice is slower?

Laggy, I hate the word I am going to say now because it is used too many times in stupid jokes/memes.

The word is snappier.

 

[RobT]

Does the latest version of iTunes and Office for Mac run on SL?

 

[johnnnw]

Laggy, I hate the word I am going to say now because it is used too many times in stupid jokes/memes.

The word is snappier.

Do you use an SSD by any chance? That might make it unnoticeable

 

[Krazy Bill]

I used SL pretty extensively when in school and now have ML on my own MBP, what do you notice is slower?

Shut down/Restart.

 

[benwiggy]

I don't find any difference between SL and ML in terms of speed on my 2009 MacBook.
There are many features in ML that I find productive, and while there are some bugs, there are even some bug fixes of bugs in SL. (If you can imagine that SL has bugs.)

Startup I find very fast on both my Macs, and even my 2006 iMac with the original HDD had a quick startup on Lion.

Unless you need to stay on SL, because you are still using some older software that is not supported on new OSes, then I would recommend upgrading.

I've seen it reported that the slow shutdowns can be improved with the following commands:

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.coreservices.appleevents ExitTimeOut -int 1
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.securityd ExitTimeOut -int 1
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder ExitTimeOut -int 1
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.diskarbitrationd ExitTimeOut -int 1
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.coreservices.appleid.authentication ExitTimeOut -int 1

Use at your own risk.