Does anyone recommend OS X Lion?

Peter Stubbs wrote:

Agree iCal looks horrible but there is a way of changing it and Address book.

http://macnix.blogspot.com/2011/07/change-mac-os-x-107-lion-ical-skin-to.html

Hoo-rah! The Lady Heather Look is dead! You have no idea just how much I hated the Leather Queen of Phobus skins on AddressBook and iCal!

Michael Allbritton wrote:

I agree that I'm not a big fan of the new look for iCal, but I can live with it. I'm certainly not going to accuse Steve Jobs of killing kittens just because I don't particularly like the look of iCal, though.

The iSteve doesn't kill kittens. He's a vegan, after all.

He lets Phil Schiller kill them for him.

No i am not.....it has lots of problem please dont go to Lion it ***** and very annoying.........

Hey, I'm doing a fresh install of snow leopard as we speak lion is awefull! Not the normal I would expect from apple really!!! Waste of money!

No front row

No full screen on external monitor

SLOW!!!!!!!!!

Screen saver does not clear properly when coming out of standby

SLOW!!!!!

Can't cancel uploads to mobile me.

Crazy amounts of crashing!

Running hot with constant fans

This is just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head, would honestly prefer a refund then this excuse for an os! Would rather have vista! My new mbp 13 2011 is useless with lion! Thanks apple!!

Charles Dyer wrote:

Michael Allbritton wrote:

Barney-15E wrote:

No, Office 2008 won't install. It will run, but the installer is PowerPC.

Actually, no it isn't. Office Mac 2008 installs just fine on Lion since it uses the built-in Installer app Apple provides.

_Newer_ versions of Office 2008 ship with a Universal installer. Older ones (including the version I have) ship with a PPC installer.

Seems Microsoft could provide some sort of installer that would work with the older disks and pull out the necessary data and install it.

notabluemac wrote:

Hey, I'm doing a fresh install of snow leopard as we speak lion is awefull! Not the normal I would expect from apple really!!! Waste of money!

No front row

No full screen on external monitor

SLOW!!!!!!!!!

Screen saver does not clear properly when coming out of standby

SLOW!!!!!

Can't cancel uploads to mobile me.

Crazy amounts of crashing!

Running hot with constant fans

This is just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head, would honestly prefer a refund then this excuse for an os! Would rather have vista! My new mbp 13 2011 is useless with lion! Thanks apple!!

You've got some serious problems with your system that have nothing to do with Lion.

I don't use Front row and don't have an external monitor, so I can't comment on those things. But everything else points to some serious data corruption on your drive or third-party extension conflicts. I have not witnessed any of the other things you mention.

Miguel-Whittier wrote:

Sorry... I don't! And I am WARNING ALL THE TEACHERS NOT TO DO IT!!!. I think most teachers, like me, have their school files with Microsoft Office for Mac or AppleWorks. Now with OS X Lion all those documents are useless; YES EVEN APPLEWORKS files 😠. I am lucky to have Pages and could open some of the work in files but some personal and students' research documents to be graded in Word format appeared chunked, incomplete or with illustrations/maps missing after all their hard work and is incongruent going to the startup disk to the previous system. What is the point of upgrading then?

If this is your first Mac, yes OS X Lion is good but if you are planning to upgrade: NO, stay or return to Snow Leopard OS 10.7

It is my first real deception since my first Macintosh (1989). It is true that there were some changes later with OS 8, OS 9, and all the OS X's but those were different times. Schools in California have been impacted with budget cuts. My small school district lost 60 teachers and got seven furlough days and, of course, salary reduction. So the "buy ...Office 2011..." suggestion for me, at this time, does not work. If Apple does not fix all these "simple" details OS X Lion is going to have unsatisfied customers.

Office 2008 and Office 2011 work with Lion. (That's 'work', not 'work fine'.) Office 2008 may have a problem installing. Office 2011 has the Evil Ribbon. Pick your poison.

AppleWorks is dead, as it requires Rosetta, and Rosetta is dead. Pages can read most AppleWorks text documents.

If you're planning to upgrade I'd export the files into a format that's supported under Lion (PAGES, DOC, DOCX, RTF, PDF, TXT for text and word processing files, for example) and you should have no trouble so long as you have the proper apps. (Acrobat Pro 9 works in Lion, as does Word 2008, Word 2011, and Pages 09.) if you don't have the proper apps, you'll have a problem. AppleWorks, any version, is not a member of the set 'proper apps for use with Lion'.

let's not be too hasty now

lion is a new ***** to conquer, snow leopard currently is so PERFECT

we need to be patient with osx 10.7

get used to the "natural" scrolling, it does make sense if one is used to an i pad/phone

it is like touching your imac's screen and scrolling

Yeah, that's what you would think!!! Tried a re install and still had the same issue with nothing on the drive except snow lep and then lion. I get the same issues each time. With the exception of the screen saver. So then I did repair permissions and still no help! I then restored from a backup and no help either but SL works fine!?!?!

A few other people have written about similar problems a lot on these forums and others, but I also have this on my old MBP 2009, but it's fine on my partners air!

Barney-15E wrote:

Charles Dyer wrote:

Michael Allbritton wrote:

Barney-15E wrote:

No, Office 2008 won't install. It will run, but the installer is PowerPC.

Actually, no it isn't. Office Mac 2008 installs just fine on Lion since it uses the built-in Installer app Apple provides.

_Newer_ versions of Office 2008 ship with a Universal installer. Older ones (including the version I have) ship with a PPC installer.

Seems Microsoft could provide some sort of installer that would work with the older disks and pull out the necessary data and install it.

They _could_. But they _won't_. Office 2008 is officially on the discard block at Microsoft, they want you to get Office 2011 instead.

Anyone who has anything whatsoever to do with education really, really, REALLY should proceed to <http://www.journeyed.com/> and see if they qualify for the education-based discounts. You can get the full, $500, Professional version of Office 2011 for $100 there. You can get Adobe CS5.5 Master Collection for under $1000 instead of $2800. But only if you qualify. (I'm an adjunct professor at the local state college in my copious spare time. I qualify, and so do all my students. A certain other tertiary education institution across the street from us doesn't. Such a pity.)

A few other people have written about similar problems a lot on these forums and others, but I also have this on my old MBP 2009, but it's fine on my partners air!

It's not likely an "old" thing. I've been running it on an early 2007 Macbook Pro.

Hey, I'm doing a fresh install of snow leopard as we speak lion is awefull! Not the normal I would expect from apple really!!! Waste of money!

No front row

Yep. Front Row's gone. Allegedly you can bring it back if you really want to. I haven't been able to, but apparently others can.

No full screen on external monitor

Full Screen is a bad idea anyway.

SLOW!!!!!!!!!

You are probably low on RAM and/or haven't let mds finish indexing your hard drive. If you have less than 100 MB free the system slows to a crawl. you can check by laucning Activity Monitor.

Screen saver does not clear properly when coming out of standby

That's not a Lion problem.

SLOW!!!!!

See above.

Can't cancel uploads to mobile me.

yes you can.

Crazy amounts of crashing!

Only if you have directory problems. Run Disk Utility and repair the disk, or get out Disk Warrior or Drive Genius. This isn't a Lion problem either.

Running hot with constant fans

You have the indexing going on, and you're low on RAM, so your system is running hard. This will change once the indexing is complete.

This is just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head, would honestly prefer a refund then this excuse for an os! Would rather have vista! My new mbp 13 2011 is useless with lion! Thanks apple!!

Some of your problems are Lion problems, and some of those have fixes. Others are not Lion problems, and some of those have fixes. At least one of your problems is A Feature, Not A Bug™ and will not be fixed.

Well if I install it again I will certainly note your advice! One of the things I have loved about osx over the last 5 or so versions I have owned is simplicity. I do hate that you have to work to make windows work, and I feel like I'm now doing the same thing with mac now.

I checked the ram 892mb free on average still have the problems and it's four gb installed.

I misread that the main reason for full screen on seconddisplay is for watching DVDs on a 36 inch tv rather then 13 inch. So this is something I use a lot. Any work arounds? Other then ditch you £1000 laptop and buy a £15 DVD player.

Thanks

Yes, I recommend it.

Fully update and Backup your system first so you can always go back to Snow Leopard.

Make sure you don't have any PowerPC apps that you rely on, and go for it. I'm running Lion on a mid 2010 iMac and having played with it over the weekend I really like it. There are some small niggles - Long boot time, and occasional internet connection issues for example, but I expect these will be sorted out by updates soon.

I really haven't had any of the major issues that some people are talking about.

Good luck.

Andy.

I'm reverting to Snow Leopard. For those who choose to do this, note that you will need an earlier version of 10.6 installed before you can reinstall Snow Leopard from the online Combo link. My Air has a convenient stick.

For me, the Lion interface is ugly and dysfunctional. Grey is not my preferred color for quickly obtaining information. Nor do I need a bunch of hidden commands that only become visible when I invoke intermediary commands. Someone claimed that searching in Mail is better under Lion, but I haven't found this to be true.

I currently share folders and files on my local network using Synk Pro. It's infalliable and provides me with much needed control I don't get with Lion. I'll miss MobileMe, but it provided only limited functionality anyway.

The unalterably full-screen iTunes is not useful. I prefer to put iTunes in the background. Nor do I require full-screen for other apps, as an iPhone or iPad user would. I've a plenty large onboard screen and my monitor is bigger than that, so unless I'm doing games or ****, who needs fullscreen capability? Especially forced fullscreen capability. Just hit the green button.

There may be good technical reasons for installing Lion, but these haven't been made clear. So far as I can tell, Lion is basically a cosmetic do-over that diminishes the serious user's freedom of choice in critical areas. If I wanted an iPhone or iPad, I would buy one. $30 -- or $1 -- is too much to transform my Mac Air into a portal to the Apple Store. No refunds.

Maybe when a new version of Lion comes out that offers real advantages....

Good luck to those who continue to find value in Lion, the Mac's New Clothes. Each to his or her own.