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Mountain Lion blues
#25625 04/05/13 07:41 PM
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tacit Offline OP
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So yesterday I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my main development/production machine from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion.

I'd had Mountain Lion on a separate partition, to be able to test software using it, but more and more tools aren't working with Snowy any more so I finally felt it was time to make the jump.

Now, before I get started, I've been using every version of Mac OS since System 1.1. I recognize that operating systems change. I jumped from OS 9 to Mac OS X 10.0 when it was first released (actually, before it was first released; I started using OS X with Developer Preview 3).

I get that things change. OS X is so little like System 1.1 that it's hard to imagine they share any common DNA at all.

And yet...

What is this I don't even. It's not fear of change or reluctance to try new things that make me say "What the fsck, Apple?" 10.8 is rapidly gaining ground on my List Of OS Versions I Can't Stand.

There's a part of me that wonders, somewhere deep down inside, if Apple didn't smart under accusations that the upgrade from 10.5 to 10.6 was nothing but a glorified service pack, and so decide to show the naysayers that they could release an OS update that was really, really different.

Jarringly different. As different as an elephant and an elephant seal.

I just can't figure out the rationale for a lot of the changes, except that they're change for change sake. They re-imagined Mail.app from a simple but serviceable way to read mail into this weird thing that tries to use space more efficiently and actually seems to have the effect of being more cumbersome to use. And the idea that user interface elements should more closely resemble the user interface of iOS, an operating system with an entirely different user interface paradigm, is...it's just...what the fsck, Apple?

Every now and then Apple hits one out of the park. System 6.0.8 was awesome. Mac OS 7.6 rocked; I used it for a long time. 8.6 also rocked. OS X 10.5 was good; 10.6 was fantastic.

And every now and then Apple does something...unfortunate. System 4.2 was dire. System 7.1.2, the first PowerPC release with its plague of "Error Type 11" dialogs, was a disaster of epic proportions. Mac OS 8.5...I don't know what happened there, but I bet Apple's engineers wish they could have a do-over. OS X 10.0 was so hopeless that Apple released 10.1 for free...and insisted everyone upgrade.

And now there's 10.8, an operating system that I like even less than System 7.1.2.

Ugh.


Photo gallery, all about me, and more: www.xeromag.com/franklin.html
Re: Mountain Lion blues
tacit #25626 04/05/13 07:56 PM
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> ...change for change sake.

It's a plague!!! frown

The phrase "Leave well enough alone" has all but been expunged from the language.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Mountain Lion blues
tacit #25627 04/05/13 08:54 PM
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By the way, how did your upgrade go?

The farther behind I fall (I'm still running Snowy.) the more apprehensive I get about the potential complexities of an upgrade.

Thanks.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Mountain Lion blues
artie505 #25629 04/05/13 10:30 PM
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tacit Offline OP
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The jump from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion was, technically, quick and painless. The installer is an application that lives in the Applications folder; no need to boot from an installer DVD. Just run the Install Mountain Lion app, type your admin password, and walk away.

It was also quite quick, finishing in much less than the half an hour I expected.


Photo gallery, all about me, and more: www.xeromag.com/franklin.html
Re: Mountain Lion blues
tacit #25630 04/05/13 11:04 PM
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Having been able to run neither OS X 10.6 nor OS X 10.7 due to hardware constraints, I went directly from Leopard to Mountain Lion, and I have to say that for me, the improvements vastly outstrip the annoyances. Of course, I spent the first couple of hours that I was booted into 10.8 undoing many of the more controversial changes—making ~/Library visible, always showing scroll bars, and yes, returning Mail to its familiar interface (Mail -> Preferences -> Viewing -> Use classic layout checkbox).

For me, the most irritating Mountain Lion "feature" is the iCloud integration. I did use Terminal to permanently change the default Save dialog location to disk rather than to iCloud (defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSDocumentSaveNewDocumentsToCloud -bool false), but as one accustomed to frequently opening a new TextEdit document as a scratch pad, a temporary repository for random snippets of text or URLs, a way station for de-styling or reformatting copied text before pasting it elsewhere, or a means for constructing Spotlight queries without precipitating a premature search for every item beginning with the search term's first letter or two, I resent the extra click required to tell TextEdit that yes, I want to create a new document.



dkmarsh—member, FineTunedMac Co-op Board of Directors
Re: Mountain Lion blues
dkmarsh #25631 04/05/13 11:27 PM
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tacit Offline OP
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Most of the changes I've already undone, including the default Save to the Cloud (really, Apple? You think I'm going to save all my files on your servers? I bet if I actually took you up on that offer, you'd reconsider!). The ability to make Mail look like a reasonable application that can be used by human beings is something I'd missed, so thanks for that!


Photo gallery, all about me, and more: www.xeromag.com/franklin.html
Re: Mountain Lion blues
dkmarsh #25632 04/05/13 11:32 PM
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Thanks for your input; I've bookmarked it against the dreaded day.

I say a prayer for my deuced Mac(hina) every night.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Mountain Lion blues
tacit #25634 04/06/13 01:17 AM
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If you want color icons back in the Finder sidebar and other features, you can try XtraFinder which I find works the best of the similar apps that I tried.


iMac 2.7 GHz Core i5, 12 GB RAM, OS X 10.9, Int SATA 1 TB, Ext Fire 2 TB / 1 TB / 1 TB / 500 GB / 300 GB
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Re: Mountain Lion blues
artie505 #25637 04/06/13 12:15 PM
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Originally Posted By: artie505
Thanks for your input; I've bookmarked it against the dreaded day.

I say a prayer for my deuced Mac(hina) every night.

And the longer you put it off the bigger and more daunting the change will be. I confess to being a chronic early adopter, but the upgrade from Lion to Mountain Lion was completely problem free. Yes there were changes and some things, as with every OS X upgrade, moved to a new home, but those were relatively minimal as I had kept up with the changes through the OS X generations. The longer you put it off, the more changes there will be and the steeper the learning curve you will have to climb.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Mountain Lion blues
joemikeb #25638 04/06/13 02:06 PM
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> The longer you put it off, the more changes there will be and the steeper the learning curve you will have to climb.

I realize that you're 100% correct, and that's part of the dread. But it's at least partially mitigated by the info I'm picking up along the way and the great support I know I'll find here if (more likely when) I need it.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Mountain Lion blues
joemikeb #25639 04/06/13 02:18 PM
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Originally Posted By: joemikeb
... the upgrade from Lion to Mountain Lion was completely problem free.
The longer you put it off, the more changes there will be and the steeper the learning curve you will have to climb.

I believe that for both tacit and Artie the issue here was/is the upgrade from Snow Leopard rather than from Lion. Mac OS X' change to (a.o.) the iOS feature set started with Lion, and once you're used to that the move to Mountain Lion would be decidedly less jarring.

But you're right that the 'culture shock' of moving beyond Snowy will only increase in severity with each new version of Mac OS X. Apart from that I know that the actual upgrade process itself will be smooth for me (a notorious late adopter), because I'll get it pre-installed with the new Mac I'm (eventually) going to get. smirk


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Re: Mountain Lion blues
alternaut #25640 04/06/13 02:41 PM
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> I'll get it pre-installed with the new Mac I'm (eventually) going to get.

That's the flip-side (Wow, is that ever an archaic term!) of my dread...my deuced Mac(hina)'s eventual death, which will force me to upgrade past an OS (Edit: not to mention a Mac) with which I'm reeeally happy.

My intention remains to avoid the App Store for as long as I can, even if it means skipping a bunch of upgrades from each Mac to the next one.

My "how'd it go" to tacit was more directed towards post update complications than towards the Mounty installation itself, and there don't seem to have been any of those.

Last edited by artie505; 04/06/13 02:46 PM.

The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Mountain Lion blues
joemikeb #25649 04/06/13 10:11 PM
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Quote:
And the longer you put it off the bigger and more daunting the change will be.


Tell me about it. I just jumped from 10.3.9 to 10.8.2. I couldn't believe I couldn't find my own Library folder, and there was nothing in Pogue about it.

So now I've got that fixed. If I'm not hooked up to iCloud, I don't need to worry about that default setting, right? Is there a long list of settings that should be "corrected"? I don't know what I don't know.

Re: Mountain Lion blues
dboh #25650 04/06/13 11:07 PM
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> I just jumped from 10.3.9 to 10.8.2.

Wow! That probably qualifies you for the Olympics. grin

> Is there a long list of settings that should be "corrected"? I don't know what I don't know.

Did you read dkmarsh's and Kevin M. Dean's posts in this thread?

I don't know whether they're all-encompassing, but they're helpful.

(I can't believe Pogue omitted mention of the hidden ~/Library folder.)


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Mountain Lion blues
artie505 #25651 04/07/13 07:26 AM
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Post-update complications were pretty much nil. One place where I do have to give credit to Apple: they know how to make an operating system install go smoothly. I upgraded a Windows XP machine to Windows 7 earlier this year and the Windows 7 installer is the best one Microsoft has ever done, but it still looks incredibly crude compared to the Mountain Lion installer.

I reset a lot of system preferences (like scroll bars and scroll direction) post update, but credit where it's due--very little post-update tinkering was required.


Photo gallery, all about me, and more: www.xeromag.com/franklin.html
Re: Mountain Lion blues
tacit #25652 04/07/13 07:35 AM
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Thanks; that's heartening, as is dboh's having jumped from OS X 10.3.9 to 10.8.2 without any apparent issues...yet.

As I said, I hope I never have to upgrade, but if I do, I'm at least somewhat prepared.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Mountain Lion blues
dboh #25653 04/07/13 08:27 AM
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Y'know, after rereading dkmarsh's post I think you may need to change that default iCloud setting. (I'm still running Snowy and don't know for sure).


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Mountain Lion blues
dboh #25654 04/07/13 12:50 PM
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Pogue does mention it—in a casual aside on page 75—but since the hidden ~/Library debuted in Lion, the lack of prominence is understandable. (Not saying I agree with that, but the hidden ~/Library folder was so widely discussed in the overall Mac internet literature, folks like me had internalized the fact long before actually upgrading.)

As for artie's concern that you may need to change the default save-to-iCloud setting despite your lack of connection to iCloud, I can't say, mostly because I did move to iCloud, and because the source I relied upon more than any other for gaining familiarity with Mountain Lion beforehand—John Siracusa's OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion: the Ars Technica review—assumes the user is iCloud-connected when he describes the various features and limitations of the integration of iCloud into the operating system. (See iCloud and you and iCloud vs. reality for the gory details.)

It should be easy enough to figure out, though: what happens when you go to save a new TextEdit document? (It should be pointed out that this is only an issue for apps written to take advantage of this Save-to-iCloud interface. Among Apple's bundled apps, these are limited, I think, to TextEdit and Preview; I believe the iWorks apps also fall into this category.Third-party adoption of the Save-to-iCloud approach has been somewhat problematic, but I don't have information on specific apps.)

If you find that you are plagued by this and other Mountain Lion "features," but don't feel like searching high and low to find solutions, or using Terminal to implement those which lack a GUI front end, you might check out Mountain Tweaks, which I haven't used, but which seems to include all the Usual Suspects I've encountered or read about.



dkmarsh—member, FineTunedMac Co-op Board of Directors
Re: Mountain Lion blues
dboh #25655 04/07/13 02:52 PM
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Your biggest issue may be with PPC apps that no longer function in Mounty.

Check /Applications/Utilities/System Profiler.app > Software > Applications & Extensions, and look at the "Kind" column; anything identified as "PPC" will need to be upgraded...possibly, replaced.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Mountain Lion blues
dkmarsh #25656 04/07/13 05:54 PM
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Quote:
Pogue does mention it—in a casual aside on page 75


So he does. That'll teach me. This is the first time I didn't sit down and go through the book cover to cover before upgrading. I still think in an earlier edition, he'd have taken the time when describing how to move your fonts to your home folder to say, "Don't forget the Library folder's invisible."

Thanks also for your links. They're sure to help.

Re: Mountain Lion blues
artie505 #25657 04/07/13 05:56 PM
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Oh, it'll all need to be replaced, I'm sure. I'm just happy -- at least for now -- to know I can start using all my fonts again.

Re: Mountain Lion blues
artie505 #25658 04/07/13 08:02 PM
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The removal of PowerPC support from Lion was the reason I put off updating for so long.

I have one app--Adobe GoLive--that is PPC-only. Adobe buried GoLive when they bought Macromedia and took over Dreamweaver, a more popular but inferior Web site creation app. I have Dreamweaver, and will reluctantly have to start using it since GoLive is now thoroughly dead and gone.


Photo gallery, all about me, and more: www.xeromag.com/franklin.html
Re: Mountain Lion blues
tacit #25659 04/07/13 08:28 PM
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Not worth maintaining a Snowy partition or, for that matter, machine to run it, or too complicated?

The end of PPC support won't be much of an issue for me...two, maybe three, useful, but non-critical, apps.

(I hated the end of Classic which cost me OED. [Sheepshaver just isn't worth the effort.] frown )


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Mountain Lion blues
tacit #25660 04/08/13 01:48 AM
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Thought it would be worth mentioning an easy way to see the hidden Library folder.

In the Finder, select the "Go" menu and then toggle the Option key and Library will appear in the menu.


iMac 2.7 GHz Core i5, 12 GB RAM, OS X 10.9, Int SATA 1 TB, Ext Fire 2 TB / 1 TB / 1 TB / 500 GB / 300 GB
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Re: Mountain Lion blues
tacit #25661 04/08/13 07:48 AM
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Originally Posted By: tacit
I have one app--Adobe GoLive--that is PPC-only. I have Dreamweaver, and will reluctantly have to start using it since GoLive is now thoroughly dead and gone.

Exactly my position. I paid to upgrade to Office 2011, which is an improvement on 2008, and upgraded Suitcase - also an improvement. But GoLive is a perfectly functional application, and my main website is built/maintained with it.

I have ML on another hard drive, all up-to-date and ready to go, but no desire to use it. Snow Leopard is excellent.


iMac (19,1, 3.1 GHz i5, 12.7.4, 40 Gb RAM); MacBook Air (1.8 Ghz, 8 Gb RAM, 10.14.6, 256 Gb SSD) Vodafone router and Devolo Wi-Fi Extender, Canon TS8351 printer/scanner.
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