DON'T UPDATE TO LION!

R C-R wrote:

If that is the only thing you look at, then you would have to conclude that nobody should upgrade to any new OS version because every forum is dominated by reports of problems. That's just the nature of these forums: people mostly come here looking for help solving problems, not to report that they don't have any.

I'm not recommending that people delay upgrading to Lion based on what others are reporting, I'm basing it on my own experiences, and only in relation to my Mac mini and my Snow Leopard servers. The problems I'm having on my iMac and my MBP are annoying but not serious enough to advise against upgrading. The Mac mini, however, has been a disaster, and there are too many disaster stories in the Lion Server forum to recommend upgrading stable Snow Leopard servers.

Some people are fond of saying that this is the place to report problems thus perceptions are skewed, but that is a meaningless argument without actual statistics. No one here knows what perecentage of people are or are not having problems, and there is nothing useful to be gained by carrying on as if problems with Macs are rare. Such an attitude is simply not helpful.

The only evidence I have access to is the comments in these forums, and they are heavily weighted on the side of problems. If you know what the actual percentages are, please post them.

Mr. Misogynist:

Mac problems are rare!

CT wrote:

Mac problems are rare!

That is simply not true.

"As for the number of people here who are complaining, how many different individuals are there, actually? Have you counted them? What percentage of the total number of users who have upgraded to Lion are experiencing no problems? How many people who are having problems with Lion never post here? What are the actual numbers?"

You keep asking the question, I and others keep replying that statistics (even generalized) show that Lion is working. For every complainer here, there must be thousands (tens of thousands) whose copies works. Apple sold a million the first day. Again, YOU count up all the complainers here if YOU need THAT statistic. Then figure the percentage of complainers vs. the number (even that first million) of copies sold. There is YOUR answer, which, hopefully, will finally convince you that only a small percentage of people have issues.

If 5,000,000 units have sold, then 10% is 500,000 disgruntled users. Have you seen 500,000 complainers here? OK, how about 5%. That would be 250,000. Or 2%. That would be 100,000. You count up and tell us the number you find, and then we will all know the "statistic" that you seek. My guess is <1%.

capaho wrote:

CT wrote:

Mac problems are rare!

That is simply not true.

You may think so but I totally disagree with all of your assuptions.

To me it appears that problems on Mac are rare for the vast majority of people. It is only a few who manage to have the majority of problems. They then attempt to lay their problems on Apple.

Allan

capaho wrote:

If the problems are predominately with upgraded Macs then there is a problem with the upgrade installer, so the onus is still on Apple.

Again, not necessarily. Apple isn't responsible for all the third party additions users may have installed but not updated, for file corruption, hardware issues, or any of a number of other things that are known to cause problems with any OS upgrade but are beyond Apple's control.

I'm not recommending that people delay upgrading to Lion based on what others are reporting, I'm basing it on my own experiences, and only in relation to my Mac mini and my Snow Leopard servers.

That doesn't necessarily mean your experiences are relevant to others. There are many different ways to configure these machines, with thousands of different software packages. Your problems may be unique to some specific configuration, or to some issue completely unrelated to the OS itself. Without any details about your Macs, there is no way to know if your issues are common or extremely rare, or if they are the result of some defect in the OS or of something else.

All we really know is that some number of users, perhaps in the hundreds, are reporting problems, but they are not all reporting the same problems. Whether or not you think the number is statistically significant, or how many users with problems are not reporting them, there must be a reason that the reported problems vary so much, & that at the same time some users are reporting no problems at all.

The reason(s) for this should be the focus of this discussion. We can speculate forever about how many users are or are not having problems but that will get us nowhere. Users will still have to decide for themselves if another user's experiences are relevant to them, & the only way to do that besides just blindly guessing about it is to look for useful information in the problem reports that might provide a clue about that.

In short, the reports are all we have to work with. The more detail they include, the better it is for everyone.

The Dude Abides wrote:

You keep asking the question, I and others keep replying that statistics (even generalized) show that Lion is working.

To what statistics are you referring? You haven't posted any that are relevant to your claim.

Allan Eckert wrote:

To me it appears that problems on Mac are rare for the vast majority of people. It is only a few who manage to have the majority of problems. They then attempt to lay their problems on Apple.

Of course, the other side of that argument is that there are always those fanatical fans who will never be able to see it when there are problems.

I have a home full of Macs, an office full of Macs and nice little server patch full of minis. I guess if you're not a power user it may be easy to believe that Macs rarely have problems, but if you're running a business with them you'll find that's not the case.

R C-R wrote:

In short, the reports are all we have to work with. The more detail they include, the better it is for everyone.

That's true when there is something the user can actually do to resolve or at least work around the problem, which may not be possible when it comes to bugs that need updates to fix.

In the case of my Mac mini, it often crashes and needs a hard shut down after the A/V amp it is connected to is switched away from its HDMI port. It's a frequent problem under Lion and one that never occurred under Snow Leopard. What do you recommend I do to fix that problem?

capaho wrote:

The Dude Abides wrote:

You keep asking the question, I and others keep replying that statistics (even generalized) show that Lion is working.

To what statistics are you referring? You haven't posted any that are relevant to your claim.

Which places him in the exact same place as you capaho, back up your claims please

Capaho, for the benefit of others, could you identify the specific Mini model you are having this problem with, the OS it is running (including build number), the method of connection to the A/V amp (straight HDMI port or with adaptors or what?), the make & model of the amp & what else is attached to it (important because HDCP might be involved in some way)?

It would also be useful to know what (if any) third party system additions & apps you run on it &, if it didn't come with Lion installed, if you upgraded to that OS exactly as Apple suggests or by some method that differs in any way (like from a homemade USB installer stick or whatever).

These are the kinds of details that can help others determine if this issue might affect their Mini's & possibly provide clues about how to fix yours.

Likewise, any steps you have taken to troubleshoot or resolve the issue would be helpful. For instance, have you run the Apple Hardware Test & Disk Utility's two tests, reset PRAM, or anything like that? Have you looked in the system logs for clues? Have you tried a different cable, Mini, or any other hardware variation? Did you try starting up in safe mode or creating a brand new user account & logging only into it, & if so did you notice any difference?

Whether or not this issue is something only Apple can resolve, providing all these details will help, if for no other reason than to eliminate what users can resolve on their own.

"

The Dude Abides wrote:

You keep asking the question, I and others keep replying that statistics (even generalized) show that Lion is working.

To what statistics are you referring? You haven't posted any that are relevant to your claim."

Of course I have. YOU claim that this forum represents a majority of Mac (or Lion or Mini or MBP) users- that has been your major point, that because so many people post here with problems, they must be a majority of users.

I have posted (three times) the numbers of units sold by Apple and pointed out to you and others that the multiple millions of units sold (of Lion, of Apple computers, of iPhones, etc.) shows that there are likely over 100 million users of Mac products out there. I then point out that even if 10% of them have problems, and post here, that would be ten million people. Even if it were just about Lion, and they sold only the 1 million copies the first day that they announced, that would mean 10% would be 100,000 users having issues and posting here. I then suggested that YOU add up the total number of complainers on this thread to see if that was 100,000 or 10,000 or 1,000 or a few hundred.

And here you come back and say I have not shown statistics, when you are ignoring them. Let's please drop that from this discussion, as, clearly, a majority of Lion users are not here on this forum complaining. There is no argument about that, the numbers are clear.

Oh, and I am "not a fanatical fan" (I knew the fanboy thing would come up that I referred to earlier), I'm more than happy to give a list of things about Apple I don't like. But we are talking about "statistics" here, and, clearly, in that area, I have made my point. If you choose, you can do the addition and tell us how many people on this thread have issues. Then you are part of this discussion, not just someone telling us we are incorrect when we say our machines work with Lion and that Lion should not be avoided. For, at this point, the statistics are against you.

I hope you get your issues worked out, but please do not generalize (as did the OP) about Lion. It does work, for millions of people.

Csound1 wrote:

Which places him in the exact same place as you capaho, back up your claims please

To what claims are you referring? That my Mac mini crashes frequently since the Lion upgrade and that my iMac and MBP are noticeably slower in some respects than before? Or that the posts in this forum are heavily weighted in the direction of problems?

Otherwise, the claims I've made regarding statistics are that no one here actually knows what they are regarding the percentage of Mac users who experience problems.

R C-R wrote:

These are the kinds of details that can help others determine if this issue might affect their Mini's & possibly provide clues about how to fix yours.

Under normal circumstances I would say that the information you asked for regarding my Mac mini crashes would be useful to a knowledgable person in providing advice. In this case, however, the only change that preceeded the problems was the OS upgrade. The hardware and hardware configuration remain unchanged from Snow Leopard. That would certainly seem to implicate Lion specifically, particularly in light of the fact that many other mini owners are reporting similar problems since the Lion upgrade.

You say:

The Dude Abides wrote:

I see lots of people with Minis and MBPs here saying that they have issues. But my iMac is fine.

It's worth noting that these forums are always full of problems, but the forums represent a minority of users.

But to say, DON'T UPDATE TO LION is ridiculous.

"Lion is a disaster on my Mac mini. If you have a Mac mini and you haven't yet "upgraded" to Lion, I would definately say, DON'T UPDATE TO LION!

If you don't know what the actual statistics are, then you simply have no basis to say that the forums represent a minority of users. If you do know what the statistics are, please share them with us."

Well, I did that. Million units sold the first day divided by the number of posters complaining on this thread= miniscule percentage of Lion users. Over 100,000,000 million Apple device users divided by the possible number of users on this forum (10,000? 100,00, or even, though I clearly think it is a widely unreasonable number, 1,000,000) would come to no more than 1% of Apple device users here on this forum.

Why is that so hard to understand or admit. It is a clear (not generalized) statistic. My numbers of units come from Apple. Clearly, there are considerably less than a million users on this forum (any forum). Apple sold a million Lions day one. There are, maybe, 100 complaints on this thread, maybe a few hundred on some others (again, you add them up and show us YOUR numbers before denying mine). That is a minority.

Yes, YOU have problems. But YOU are not the majority. You are unable to make the case with statistics that YOU are the majority, while I have used easily-understood statisitcs to show that you are the MINORITY.

These are the facts. Denying them is not working. Please answer the poster who is asking cogent questions about what you might be doing or have on your systems that could be causing issues, so that others may understand and, possibly, help you. Complaining and denying and making unsubstantiated statements is getting you (and us) nowhere.

Let's move on.