I use Mac OSX 10.6.8 because it is stable and relatively bug free. Tomorrow, I'm buying an iPhone 4S (I can't wait for the next great thing. My old phone broke). My question is whether there are compelling reasons to move to 10.7 Lion. I'd rather stay where I am for now, but I don't want to mess up my iPhone experience.

Also, my MacPro is the early 2008 model with the dual quad core Intel Xeon processors. Can it handle OSX 10.7 OK?

You'll need to upgrade to OS X Lion 10.7.2 or later if you want to use iCloud.

Yes your "early 2008 model with the dual quad core Intel Xeon processors" can handle Lion as well as or better than Snow Leopard.

IMHO iCloud and the iCloud connection with the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch is worth the price of admission, i.e.. the $30 the Lion upgrade costs. In all the Macs around here, Lion has been completely stable and problem free.

Great! I'll report back when the dust has settled a little.

I would absolutely agree with that, if the upgrade to Lion is the only cost.

For me, it's not. I really, really want to use Lion as my main operating system, but I can't; I have one critical app (Adobe GoLive) that requires Rosetta. That means I can't use Lion, at least not all the time.

I recently got a new Mac, an iMac Core i5 (Mid-2011). I deliberately opted not to get the faster iMac (Late 2011) model because the Mid-2011 model will still run Snow Leopard, even though it shipped with Lion. I'm hanging on to Snow Leopard just for the sake of that one PPC app I still rely on.

So it's not *necessarily* true that the cost of entry to iCloud is the upgrade fee for Lion. Part of the cost of entry is abandoning PPC code, which some folks can do easily, but for others of us is more of a problem.

I picked up my new iPhone 4S just now and am working out my plan of implementation now that I have more facts. Unfortunately, it seems that my Adobe CS4 Design Premium may or may not work on OSX 10.7. I have posted a question on the Adobe InDesign forum and hope for an authoritative answer. The price of upgrade to CS6 is $700. So my price of admission is more like $730 if my Adobe stuff doesn't work. I use those apps a lot and can't afford to be without them. Does anyone know the answer to this question?

Update: I just received a reply on the Adobe forum that says CS4 does work, so I'll try it and hope for the best.

CS4 works, with some caveats:

- Dreamweaver, which replaced GoLive as part of the CS suite, works. If you use GoLive, it doesn't.

- There are some weirdnesses with Bridge. I don't use Bridge, so that doesn't bother me.

- If you use a scanner or an all-in-one printer/scanner with a TWAIN driver, it probably won't show up in the Import menu. You may need to run Photoshop in 32-bit mode rather than 64-bit mode, as most TWAIN scanner drivers won't run in 64-bit mode.

I've used Adobe CS4 InDesign and Photoshop quite a bit during the last 24 hours and they work very well. That's a big relief.

I have an Epson 4990 Photo flat bed scanner that is performing beautifully notwithstanding its age. I really don't want to give it up. Currently, I am unable to get it to run on 10.7.4, but it runs with no trouble on 10.6.8. In the Epson web site, I saw an answer to a question that instructed the user to be sure that Rosetta was installed on his system 10.6.8. I know that Rosetta isn't available in 10.7.4. The Epson software that I have installed originated with the PowerPC so it requires Rosetta. Is there any kind of work around for using the scanner with 10.7.4?

You might give VueScan a look. You can try it for free and pay for it if it works.

Assuming this is your scanner, it appears to be supported by VueScan; note the faint print at the bottom of the page which reads "Mac OS X 10.4-10.7 (Lion)."

Edit: BTW, this is really a new topic and as such we'll probably move it to the appropriate forum later today.

No problem with moving it. Tacit mentioned it and I responded to his suggestion. by reporting my failure to succeed.

I downloaded VueScan but did not buy it. I understand I can test it without buying. I followed the Guide Me instructions. They yielded "no scanner was attached to your computer" or words to that effect. I then restarted from 10.7.4 to 10.6.8 and, without changing anything except the operating system, the scanner performed its usual, excellent work. Could there be a missing driver? I went to Epson's web site and downloaded what looked like their best shot, but it did nothing. Does VueScan provide a driver if you buy it? (by the way, I'll stay on this thread until you change it) I'm running almost everything on 64 bit now so I downloaded the 64 bit version of VueScan.

I just checked my 10.6.8 system. Image Capture and almost every other item present on Activity Monitor showed 64 bit. The exceptions relate to software for my former Palm Centro phone that I have now abandoned in favor of the iPhone 4S.

Vuescan does not provide a scanner driver, and does not need anything beyond the "normal" scanner set-up/installation.

Did you try restarting (staying in 10.7.4) after installing Vuescan? If the developer lists your scanner as one that is supported by Vuescan, I suggest contacting him. He is very helpful and knowledgeable.

OK. I solved half of the problem. There were actually two issues involved. I needed to install an Epson driver that I thought I had effectively installed before, but it turned out I hadn't. It turned out I had to register the scanner before I could receive the driver. Effective installation of the Epson driver enabled me to use either Image Capture or VueScan effectively on 10.7.4 when the FireWire 800 connection was between my Mac Pro and and the scanner. However, when the Mac Pro is operating 10.7.4 and the iMac that is connected on a local network is operating 10.6.8, the iMac is not able to operate the scanner via scanner sharing. When I connect the FireWire cable from the scanner directly to the iMac, the iMac does operate the scanner, but the Mac Pro using 10.7.4 cannot access the scanner via scanner sharing. When both computers are running 10.6.8, scanner sharing works well regardless of which machine is directly connected to the scanner.

To make that long story short, I initially failed to effectively install the Epson driver for 10.7.4, but succeeded the second time and scanner sharing does not work when one machine is using 10.6.8 and the other is using 10.7.4. Since I've decided to not use iCloud, I'm seriously considering going back to 10.6.8 while waiting for Mountain Lion to appear and then to mature with a few updates.