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The last word on Mountain Lion
- Thread starter vjaaan
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What system are you currently on? If youre on Snow Leopard, then Id suggest you stick with it. However if youre on Lion, definately upgrade 
i'm FINE on ML. i don't use all the bells and whistles...i don't need them. but my mac is running: fast. stable. efficient. and most important of all...i get my work done. no crashes, kernel panics.
for me, ML is the 'snow leopard' of lion. and am just as happy now as i was ON snow leopard.
for me, ML is the 'snow leopard' of lion. and am just as happy now as i was ON snow leopard.
I am running 8.2 and find it just fine. It runs just as good as SL, maybe a little better even. Only issue I have had is some safari crashes. I have put ML on most all of the macs at work, and we are using them to run live Video and Audio applications. Have yet to have one crash.
I upgraded from SL to ML on Monday and so far, I have absolutely no complaints. I'm wondering why I didn't do it sooner.
I haven't had the chance to check out all of the new features, but so far so good.
I haven't had the chance to check out all of the new features, but so far so good.
After using Windows for most of my life, I bought a Mac Mini a couple of months ago with Mountain Lion pre-installed. I have been nothing but thrilled with it. First of all, migrating all my stuff over from my Windows 7 box (iTunes files, backups, documents, etc.) was a snap, and that's the part I thought would take me most of the night. Setting up Time Machine was a piece of cake. Because of iCloud, my e mails, iMessages, Calendar, etc. were all just there automatically.
Within an hour or so of plugging the Mac Mini into power and an internet connection for the first time, I was USING it, not setting things up or tweaking things. Most brand new Windows setups I've done just aren't effortless the way setting this up was. Mountain Lion is iOS-like in the spots where it really comes in handy, and being a regular iPad/iPhone user, I really appreciated that. Basically, switching from Windows 7 to Mountain Lion (for me, at least) had almost zero learning curve and no hassles. Within a week, I felt like an old pro at OSX. We're using the Mac Mini more like a media center on steroids. It hosts, stores, and backs up our media, runs our stereo system off of iTunes, and shares files up to the Apple TV in the living room. When I need to other more computer-like things, it is there for me, but is out of the way when that's not the case.
I couldn't be happier having switched to Mountain Lion, and I should have switched to Mac in general about 10 years ago.
Within an hour or so of plugging the Mac Mini into power and an internet connection for the first time, I was USING it, not setting things up or tweaking things. Most brand new Windows setups I've done just aren't effortless the way setting this up was. Mountain Lion is iOS-like in the spots where it really comes in handy, and being a regular iPad/iPhone user, I really appreciated that. Basically, switching from Windows 7 to Mountain Lion (for me, at least) had almost zero learning curve and no hassles. Within a week, I felt like an old pro at OSX. We're using the Mac Mini more like a media center on steroids. It hosts, stores, and backs up our media, runs our stereo system off of iTunes, and shares files up to the Apple TV in the living room. When I need to other more computer-like things, it is there for me, but is out of the way when that's not the case.
I couldn't be happier having switched to Mountain Lion, and I should have switched to Mac in general about 10 years ago.
Having installed ML on a MBP with a 2.4gHz C2D, and reverted to SL, I'm curious what made you feel this way?
Coming from Windows, you are just experiencing the user-friendliness of Mac OS X in general... That's nothing to shout about on Mountain Lion... If you have used OS X from earlier releases, you will probably end up with the majority of those who have used OS X up to (the slow and steady) Snow Leopard and how much they loath Lion and Mountain Lion...
I've found ML to be nearly bomb-proof in terms of stability, almost as reliable as SL. Anything was an improvement after Lion which i found to be an unstable/bloated mess.
Apple appears to be adopting a very Tick/Tock approach to developing Desktop OS's the past few years e.g. an innovation release then a refinement release. If ML is a Tock i'll be reluctant to upgrade next time, i'm very impressed with it.
Apple appears to be adopting a very Tick/Tock approach to developing Desktop OS's the past few years e.g. an innovation release then a refinement release. If ML is a Tock i'll be reluctant to upgrade next time, i'm very impressed with it.
I am on a my 2008 Mac Pro (in my signature) and with =installed the eStata PCI card and the Caldigit USB 3 PCI card. 10.8.2+ has been great for me. The Messages.app in 10.8.x works out great for me and is well worth it. Plus for those who hate 10.8.x are trolls and reactionaries. Plus some people are pissed that their Mac is not allowed to run 10.8.x
I've had only 1 problem with ML, on my MacBook Air, it wouldn't download the additional sounds for GarageBand ... Hours on the phone with Apple, and in the end a senior level tech, eventually reinstalled the OS. Fine since then, and upgrade to my old iMac went smoothly and no problems there so far.
A lot of people hate the IOS aspects of ML, but I like the way my macs, iPads and phone feel more synchronised, and more similar in various ways. The benefits outweigh the negatives for me.
A lot of people hate the IOS aspects of ML, but I like the way my macs, iPads and phone feel more synchronised, and more similar in various ways. The benefits outweigh the negatives for me.
OpenGL support is better
Touch support is better if you have a trackpad
If you have enough RAM it is fine
I have had zero problems to speak of with ML.
I've been a mac user since Leopard.
Touch support is better if you have a trackpad
If you have enough RAM it is fine
I have had zero problems to speak of with ML.
I've been a mac user since Leopard.
I have been using a Mac for almost 11 years. I have used Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion and now Mountain Lion. In reality not much has really changed in Mac OS X over the last 4 releases. On the whole they have been incremental updates. I personally think that Mountain Lion is the best release of Mac OS X ever, and I would agree with others that Lion was perhaps a disappointment. However to Apple's credit they have improved some of the issues that people had with Lion (although not to everyone's satisfaction).
Most of the criticism of Lion and Mountain Lion is tends to be focused on the introduction of Auto Save. While I can understand some peoples point on view on this, it is not helped that Application developers have been slow to adopt some of the changes (partly because some users do not want them, and party because Apple's documentation on implementation was initially sketchy). Trouble is we now have 3 classes of Apps
1. Apps that have not been updated to support Autosave or iCloud
2. Apps that have been updated for Autosave, but not iCloud
3. Apps that support iCloud and Autosave.
So if you are trying to get used to a new mindset, it makes it a lot more difficult if you have to keep thinking, right I am using Pages, so I need to duplicate the file first, or I am using Word so I can make some changes then use Save As later.
So I do have some sympathy with traditional users here, although most of it is because people are reluctant to change the way they work.
The other area is Social Media integration and better integration with iOS. Again these issues tend to upset the 'Old Guard' more than new users. I have less sympathy here as on the whole the social media side can be ignored if you don't want to use it. Many people fail to realise that social media is how young people especially communicate with each other these days. My daughter does not phone or even email her friends from school, they generally use Twitter and Facebook. As far as iOS integration is concerned, well iOS makes up most of Apple's sales and profit these days so I completely understand why Apple wants to make sure Mac OS and iOS work well together.
Most of the criticism of Lion and Mountain Lion is tends to be focused on the introduction of Auto Save. While I can understand some peoples point on view on this, it is not helped that Application developers have been slow to adopt some of the changes (partly because some users do not want them, and party because Apple's documentation on implementation was initially sketchy). Trouble is we now have 3 classes of Apps
1. Apps that have not been updated to support Autosave or iCloud
2. Apps that have been updated for Autosave, but not iCloud
3. Apps that support iCloud and Autosave.
So if you are trying to get used to a new mindset, it makes it a lot more difficult if you have to keep thinking, right I am using Pages, so I need to duplicate the file first, or I am using Word so I can make some changes then use Save As later.
So I do have some sympathy with traditional users here, although most of it is because people are reluctant to change the way they work.
The other area is Social Media integration and better integration with iOS. Again these issues tend to upset the 'Old Guard' more than new users. I have less sympathy here as on the whole the social media side can be ignored if you don't want to use it. Many people fail to realise that social media is how young people especially communicate with each other these days. My daughter does not phone or even email her friends from school, they generally use Twitter and Facebook. As far as iOS integration is concerned, well iOS makes up most of Apple's sales and profit these days so I completely understand why Apple wants to make sure Mac OS and iOS work well together.
I don't understand the people that think "Apple is watering down OS X with iOS features" - they're simply there to help improve the traditional desktop OS experience, not hinder it!
Notification Center is very nice, a much needed replacement for all of the inconsistent ways existing Mac applications show certain types of alerts like Calendar alarms (Federighi clearly mentions this at WWDC).
All of the new stuff for document-based applications such as the ability to move and rename files from within the app is really awesome, reducing the need for me to go to the Finder. The Finder will still be needed for more focused operations however (like copying multiple files), which has also been improved. For example you can directly encrypt volumes and see inline copy progress indicators on files.
Gatekeeper is also a good step forward to improving security for the average user - they've really been pushing for developers who aren't able to submit to the App Store (approval restrictions), or want to alternatively provide a website-download alternative for their apps using the Developer ID mechanism.
Not everything in the OS I use (like Dictation), but what's new is very handy.
Now I realise there's stuff like RSS being removed from Safari - but realistically I don't see going to a full-blown website then looking at a stripped-down version of each article at a glance very useful. For people that really do like RSS, they should just find a dedicated RSS reader which'll have more functionality that'll appeal to them (like Apple suggests).
Exactly how I feel. In terms of how buggy/slowish things have been, 10.8.2 with the supplemental update has been great for me.
(PS. I've used Mac OS since System 7.5)
The point of social media integration is this, we as users can ignore, BUT it is not something that the entire OS can ignore altogether. Whatever ****** social media crap they built it in - Facebook, iCloud, Twitter etc, they introduced more processes into the OS that are bloating and hogging resources, whether or not you use them...
Fire up whichever versions of iStats you have on both Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion, and you will see the difference...
for every mac OS i've experienced (since 10.2), some people are happy, some aren't. it's always that way. what's funny, to me, is how people with a bad experience make absolute statements, ie "ML sucks", "worst mac OS ever" as if everyone was having the same experience, shared the same opinion.
either way, things move forward, and you move with the world, or...get left behind.
either way, things move forward, and you move with the world, or...get left behind.
This is typically the case with operating systems. As operating systems become more and more advanced, they require more resources. This is why computers constantly increase the amount of RAM, CPU power, GPU power that they come with. This is also why older hardware becomes unsupported.
I've used Macs all my life. Every version of the Mac OS from System 7 up to Mountain Lion.
It seems like there are always a ton of people whining about OS X updates. I, on the other hand, have never had a major problem with an update. Mountain Lion is a great improvement over Lion, and is more usable (for me) than Snow Leopard.
Let's get with the times, folks. Snow Leopard was a huge improvement over Leopard. I remember how exciting it was to not wait 5 minutes for my MacBook to wake from sleep after upgrading to SL. But that was four years ago. Lion introduced a lot of new features, some of which I'll agree were half-baked at launch. Mountain Lion has fixed most of the little things that bugged me about Lion. And the next version will probably fix things that bug me about ML.
If you want to keep yourself frozen in technological time, why not get a Windows 7 PC? Chances are most businesses will be using that for the next decade like they did with XP. Plus, it'll still run your software from 1986. Mountain Lion certainly can't handle that.
It seems like there are always a ton of people whining about OS X updates. I, on the other hand, have never had a major problem with an update. Mountain Lion is a great improvement over Lion, and is more usable (for me) than Snow Leopard.
Let's get with the times, folks. Snow Leopard was a huge improvement over Leopard. I remember how exciting it was to not wait 5 minutes for my MacBook to wake from sleep after upgrading to SL. But that was four years ago. Lion introduced a lot of new features, some of which I'll agree were half-baked at launch. Mountain Lion has fixed most of the little things that bugged me about Lion. And the next version will probably fix things that bug me about ML.
If you want to keep yourself frozen in technological time, why not get a Windows 7 PC? Chances are most businesses will be using that for the next decade like they did with XP. Plus, it'll still run your software from 1986. Mountain Lion certainly can't handle that.
I thought it would suck, but other than an issue with Samba (that also exists in Lion due to Apple dumping it and rolling their own that works fine with Windows, but doesn't work with all 3rd party stuff like XBMC, etc., but was remedied pretty quickly by using "SMBUp" to switch to Samba3), I have to say overall, I PREFER Mountain Lion to Snow Leopard (one other thing that sucks is the loss of Rosetta, but I've gotten over it since I replaced both my two Apps I used to use and now have a Wine wrapper for Diablo II (VMWare Fusion lets me use Win98, WinXP and even Linux with 3D acceleration in OSX anyway and it really plays games that are a few years old just fine without Boot Camp).
I thought I'd hate Mission Control, but I actually like having Expose and Spaces combined (one hot spot saves me a load of trouble and App Expose is available with "Show Windows" from any Dock icon, so there's no issue for me. I don't like how Full Screen works with two monitors, but two monitor support has ALWAYS sucked in OSX and it's no better in Snow Leopard. At least you can get the menu bar on the other monitor when its in Full screen mode for that app (slight improvement). The real problem is that the other screen is empty while it's in full screen and that needs fixed (but same thing in Snow Leopard except the screen is black instead of textured).
Launchpad is mostly useless (could be made to be useful at some point, I think), but thankfully it's not forced on you. You can just remove it from the Dock and safely ignore it if you don't like it (in other words, if it doesn't hurt anything, who cares?)
I really like Notifications. Not only do email summaries and other program messages pop up while active, they're stored on a menu-item drop-down to look at if they come up while away from the computer.
OpenGL has at least been updated to 3.2 (a real improvement, although they should be at 4.x by now, really)
Frankly, I'm hard pressed to think of significant other differences that come to mind offhand. I'm sure there are some, but obviously they're not an issue or I'd notice them. Some things like iTunes 11 (hate or not) have nothing to do with Mountain Lion (I'm still using iTunes 10.6.3 here). Some default settings changes can be easily adjusted to behave like before (most of mine got changed automatically when I moved my old PowerPC stuff over; yeah it moved a PPC Mac just fine other than some unusable PPC only Apps that I just cleaned off. Even Photoshop CS3 worked fine after it was moved. All my GUI settings, configurations, documents, emails ,etc. all moved over just fine and of course my quad-core i7 is like freaking lightning compared to the old PPC machine (even though it was upgraded to 1.8GHz and had a Radeon 9800 Pro in it and a Sata II interface and very fast hard drives). The Intel 4000 my Mini came with isn't great for modern gaming, but older games and all HD stuff, etc. and two monitors work great here (the two monitor setup could use some improvements as I mentioned earlier, though).
My new Brother printer (MFC-J835DW) works fine with it as does my older Brother HL-5250DN Laser. The Memorex Blu-Ray/DVD/CD 12x/16x/40x USB3 writer worked immediately without issue and my Western Digital USB3 hard drives I had been using in Leopard with USB2 worked immediately at the higher USB3 speeds. My Logitech 9000 webcam still has crappy frame rates as always at 2MP resolution (with no OSX option to use a lower/faster frame rate), but at least it works for FaceTime and Skype calls, etc. In other words, all my old hardware accessories worked fine in Mountain Lion.
Really, I have few complaints except the dual-monitor operations need work and the Finder still sucks big time, but for that I have found a great remedy. It's called "XtraFinder" and it's free (unlike some of the VERY pricey commercial ones out there). It has an awesome tabs and dual-pane modes and even a way to just automatically create two separate side-by-side or top/bottom sets of finder windows spaced next to each other with a menu click. It works great with Mountain Lion (no issues other than the option to use "color icons", which seems to cause a big lag/slow-down so I leave it off for now, which is too bad since color icons in the Finder look SO much nicer than B&W. They've made iTunes color again; they should make Finder color again too.
Oh yeah, I forgot about iCloud. You don't have to use it or you can only use parts of it. Frankly, I find it pretty slick to sync bookmarks, notes, etc. automatically with my iPod Touch 4G and even my account on my mother's Macbook Pro at her house (and my own Macbook Pro if I upgrade it from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion soon).
I have used Snow Leopard on my wife's work issued MacBook and when I go back to it now, I get very annoyed when it doesn't have a feature that I like using in Mountain Lion. (Full screen mode is probably the biggest example--launch pad is a big one too.)
In my opinion if you can start on Mountain Lion as basically a new Mac user and know your way around pretty much right away, it's a good release. The "I'm bored and angry with everything that I buy within one week of purchase" crowd may hate it, but for my family and me, it's been fantastic so far.
Mountain Lion is nothing like Lion (which felt unfinished to me). It's one of the best releases of OS X along with Snow Leopard and Tiger.
I dabbled with 10.2 but started using OS X fulltime from 10.3. I have zero issues with Mountain Lion and it's kind of ridiculous how people cling to SL.
In fact, I'm trying to work out why you're even in this subforum if you hate Mountain Lion so much?
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