Home Forums Mac Software Mac Operating Systems Still Happy with 10.7?

While it may be true on certain sites that only people with extreme viewpoints post, my perception is that overall FineTunedMac is more rational.

Those of you who upgraded to Lion: are you still satisfied with 10.7.x? Would you recommend it?

Inquiring minds want to know.

I'm liking Lion more and more every day.

It took me about a week to get used to the reversed scrolling. (I refused to chicken out and just uncheck "natural" scrolling.) "Natural" scrolling now feels, well, natural.

I have another machine I use often that's running Snow Leopard. What I expected was that going back and forth between scrolling conventions would be like going back and forth between a car with an automatic transmission and one with a manual transmission: your muscles can easily learn two sets of muscle memory and go back and forth between them automatically.

What I found was that in learning the Lion way, every time something scrolled the wrong way, I'd just remind myself that it's "push the content, not the scrollbar" and then it was easy. But when I go back to Snow Leopard and something scrolls the wrong way, I have to think: "OK. It's SL. Scrolling is the other way. But why? Oh, yeah, something about a scrollbar, but why in the heck do I need to be thinking about scrollbars at all? I'm reading some text, I want the text to move, why am I not moving the text? I've forgotten there's even a scrollbar involved, and now suddenly I have to think about one."

Apple's right. We've been doing scrolling the wrong way for years. I'm glad now that someone had the vision to notice that the emperor is wearing no clothes, and the courage to do something about it.


I love the new scrolling between spaces. I'm liking auto-save ("what you see on screen is what's on disk"), versions (instant per-document Time Machine), and resume ("I can now quit an app or even log out without losing track of what I was doing or which windows were open. When I'm done with a window I close it, but windows no longer close themselves unbidden.")

Full-screen is a mixed bag. Some applications are delightful in full screen mode: Xcode especially. Others, like Safari and Mail, get lost in full-screen on my 27" monitor. At least I don't have to run them in full-screen. My Terminal windows default to 80 columns, which I like, but occasionally I need more width, and when I do I usually need all I can get. It's nice that full-screen is only a keystroke away.

It's not all perfect. I wish I could tell if there's something to scroll to without trying to scroll. I wish that apps would remember which spaces their windows were on instead of putting them all in the current space when they resume. I especially wish applications would remember that their window is closed. (I have several apps that I keep running windowless: Activity Monitor, for example; and they re-open their window on re-login. I like it when apps re-open the windows they had open last time, but they shouldn't "re-open" windows that weren't open.)

LaunchPad is a useless joke. They need to at least add a way to Get Info on an icon, so I can resolve duplicate icons. I should be able to remove an icon without removing its application. But, again, as long as I can just ignore it it's no problem.

Most everything is A.O.K. - although some 3rd party apps and software are not compatible with LION . . . yet!

(For example: I would like to add some more "visualizers" to iTunes, but simply cannot locate any which will install and function correctly.

One called JACKET - which claimed to be compatible with LION - will download AND look like it is 'installed' because it shows up listed in the iTunes/View/Visualizer drop-down menu . . . but it will not open for some reason. Music will play but monitor stays black.)

I am not 100% happy. Most apps work fine and occasional hiccups of the new Outlook (not liking some filenames - never seen this in Entourage) can be attributed to and blamed on Microsoft as usual.
What is really annoying is the browsers. Now most if not all of them, when launched, open the last open window. My favorite iCab does not work with Web Outlook and G-mail anymore; I had to abandon it as a default browser. Most browsers suddenly stopped talking to the Keychain when getting proxy server logon info. Now I have to input it manually. Only iCab remembers it as it did before, and Firefox just needs the first letter and then suggests. Generally, password retrieval is not as good as it was in SL. My Keychain settings for most sites are to allow access for all applications.

I am like gangbustein and like Lion more every day and I second everything he says. Some old features I never used in the past I now use all the time because gestures make them so easy to access. Over the years I have gone through inumerable third party application launchers, but Launchpad has replaced them all — again because gestures makes it so easy to access. My only complaint is Safari 5.1's tendency to hang at the most inopportune times and that is occurring under 10.6 as well as 10.7.

To my great surprise, I often overhear my wife encouraging her Mac using friends to upgrade to Lion — and she often drags her feet when it comes to upgrades.

are there any big advantages to someone who just has a desktop?

I have one at work. The only "advantage" was to shell more than 400 bucks for program upgrades because Lion does not have Rosetta anymore. Other than that not much except for a recurring Finder bug not rendering the desktop icons well here and there (empty icon; happens on two independent computers). The browsers seem faster overall, but as I said, many of them became finicky. From the user end, not much to brag about...

All of my computers are desktops. (I've never seen the point of paying more to get less hardware in a portable.)

All the pluses I mentioned before therefore apply to desktops.

I do see that full-screen mode would be useful in more apps to someone with a smaller screen, but even on my 27" monitor it's useful in some.

Because I keep my apps up to date the only expense I have had for Lion, other than the $30 purchase price, is the $80 I invested in a magic trackpad to enable me to use all those gestures with my iMac. Well, I must admit I had to buy a second magic trackpad for my wife's MacMini.

By-the-way, I gave my Magic Mouse away to a friend to use with her MacBook Pro.

But you have to admit your 27" would be a bit tricky in an Airbus 320.

ryck

I pay the extra $$$ to buy space both on my desk and in my life...

My MacBook just plain stops existing when I close its clamshell and move it from my desk!

I got 10.7 primarily so I can test apps I write with it. I have not yet made the move to make 10.7 my default operating system, partly because I still use Adobe Creative Suite CS2 (which requires Rosetta). I have CS5 on the way.

I'm not usually an early adopter of new OS X versions. I generally wait until the .2 or .3 updates are available before I switch full-time.

From what I've seen so far, there are a lot of things I like (the new scrolling direction feels very natural to me, and it only took about ten minutes to get used to) and some things I don't (I don't like the fact that by default the scroll bars disappear when you're not scrolling; that makes sense on a phone or iPad but not on a computer). I really don't like the more monochrome look to icons and widgets; for me, color is a big part of how I recognize things, and I find it takes longer to recognize an object without the color.

I'm not crazy about autosaving things or automatic versioning, but then again, I tend to work with large files.

Overall, it seems like a bit of a mixed bag. When I start using it regularly, I might change that assessment, but I will probably hold off making it my OS of choice for a while.

I will definitely admit that is true particularly on the regional jets I often find myself on, but my iPad does very nicely and if I understand iCloud correctly it will bring my iMac and iPad much closer together, almost into a single environment. Even the scattered bits parts and pieces currently available are already doing a good job of that. I have given up carrying my MacBook Air because the iPad has so far done everything I have needed it to do on the road and is a lot easier to haul around.

If you guys want to discuss the pros and cons of desktop vs notebook vs iPad, please start a separate thread so this one can stay focused on the topic of 10.7.

I found that annoying too, but then discovered one can stop that in System Preferences, General, by unchecking "Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps".

THANK YOU . . . That, too, was driving me nuts (when I open Preview or Text Edit, for example).

The latest release of the old OS X standby TinkerTool (the freeware app) has a pane that allows you to individually configure the "Resume" preferences of virtually all applications running under Lion.