DON'T UPDATE TO LION!

capaho wrote:

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.

That is a bad assumption on several counts. First, it is well known that the presence of some third party additions to the system can interfere with the upgrade process itself (because the existing OS performs the upgrade & that OS is no longer behaving exactly like the one Apple provided) or with the operation of the upgraded OS (because the addition has not been updated & is not compatible with the new OS).

Second, some forms of file system damage do not reveal themselves until some part of the file system is modified, & nothing modifies the file system more extensively than upgrading the OS (because thousands of files are replaced, added, or modified in one long process). Even when not upgrading, it is not uncommon for a file system to appear normal & cause no obvious problems, yet for Disk Utility to find problems with it that left uncorrected would eventually cause file damage.

Third, it is well known that hardware (especially RAM) can be flawed, yet still run one OS version without obvious problems. This is because each OS version runs its processes with slightly different timing, using various parts of the hardware at different times. For example, some memory problems show up only when certain data patterns affect a row or column of a memory module, so if one OS version does not produce that data pattern, you would never know the module corrupts that data when another OS version produces it.

Any of these things can & usually will cause problems with an upgraded system, up to & including system freezes & kernel panics. That's why diagnostic tools like the Apple Hardware Test & diagnostic/repair tools like Disk Utility exist. It is why procedures like starting up in safe mode or creating a new user account for testing system behavior are frequently recommended as diagnostic aids. You cannot safely assume that everything is OK just because there are no obvious problems when running the pre-upgraded system; to be sure you need to use the tools & techniques designed to detect problems doing that won't reveal.

Well, I have been using Lion now since it has come out,

and things are performing quite well. My early 2009 iMac

hums along just fine, if not better than SL. My 2011 MBP

is also humming along just fine. With 10.7.1 and a little

one line tweek in Terminal, my 2010 Mac Mini is once

again a fully functional HTPC.

In response to others, this forum is a place for help with

issues! So, one reading the threads would think that Lion

is a disaster.

I would agree with those that say a large majority

of Lion users are issue free. Why would they have any reason

to post here or even look here if they aren't having issues?

I won't deny that there are issues with Lion, I had them myself

with my Mini.

As far as those who don't like the new features, then go back to

SL or send you feed back to Apple to help make them better.

R C-R wrote:

It isn't difficult to explain at all. If say 99.5% of all Mac users never have any problems, the 0.5% that do still have a need for user support forums.

Wow, two more replies to my comments with me being away from this thread for the better part of a day. I guess you really want to keep me in this discussion.

Is that 0.5% of all Mac users since the beginning of time or 0.5% of current Mac users at any given point in time?

nothing in this world as complex as a computer system is going to be perfect. If you read some of the issues are not so much a computer problem but a configuration or other issue. Yes Apple computers do have issues. What you won't hear a lot of is total crashes or constant need to reboot in order to operate the system like a PC. We just went through a major system change and other than some minor problems most people are running. Look back at any upgrade in Windows and compare.

R C-R wrote:

That is a bad assumption on several counts.

Thank you for that list of bad assumptions. It is common practice when troubleshooting computer problems to first suspect the last thing that was changed, particularly if it was the only thing that was changed. Considering that Apple has almost complete control over both the hardware and the OS, and that OS X is optimized for Mac hardware, problems with OS X upgrades are inexcusable. The excuses you posted may be more appropriate for Windows and Linux upgrades, but not OS X.

Michael Kasper wrote:

If you read some of the issues are not so much a computer problem but a configuration or other issue.

All that is required to upgrade to Lion is to download the file and run the installer. If there are configuration issues, they result from problems with the installer, as there are no no configuration requirements on the part of the user.

capaho wrote:

Considering that Apple has almost complete control over both the hardware and the OS, and that OS X is optimized for Mac hardware, problems with OS X upgrades are inexcusable.

Right ... except that users are free to add third party additions & hacks that modify the OS in ways Apple has zero control over ... not to mention hardware issues that may develop in even the best computing products, various forms of file damage possible for any OS that isn't completely based in ROM, & stuff like that.

It is naive to think that Apple somehow has "almost complete" control over the system once it is purchased, unpacked, & put into operation. Jobs does not send Apple police to users' homes & businesses to make sure they run only the software the company knows about & vets, keep it up-to-date, avoid anything that might cause file damage, install a different HD or third party RAM, & so on. That's the only way that kind of control could be possible, & a quick check around you should confirm the notable absence of those folk.

It is a complex machine, & like any other machine of similar complexity, it can be broken or damaged in ways neither the manufacturer nor the user can anticipate or prevent. That's way there are tools & techniques to detect that, & why it is foolish not to try them if your machine is having problems.

Nope- no good. At this point, there is no convincing going on here. One poster says one thing, and no matter what others say and or quote, that poster is going to maintain the original mindset. No matter the statistics, or the logic, or the requests for actual system info, nothing is going to change here.

Logic and facts are not at home here. It's all emotion at this point.

I don't know why you persist with such an absurd line of reasoning unless it is your intention to merely be argumentative. My Mac mini worked almost flawlessly out of the box under Snow Leopard. I use it as a media server with its native applications, there are no mods, hacks or third-party apps that would account for the HDMI related crashes. Those problems started immediately after the Lion upgrade.

Perhaps you would enjoy arguing with the members in this thread, or at least enlighten us as to what's wrong with all of them:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3196192

The Dude Abides wrote:

Let's move on.

This feature, along with so many LION gimmicks, is dreadful.

I have been using LION now since it's release.

In my personal opinion, all these new features are a waste of time, dramatically reducing output, workflow, and productivity.

I can understand that touch-pads and phones need alternative interfaces, that's agreed, however lets not sacrifice the desktops productivity and intuitiveness.

Safari, appears to behave slowly and exhibits poor overall performance, scrolling is slow, blurry and jagged, and the rubber band space at the top/bottom of the page is annoying.

Folders appear to rearrange themselves, and lose any view options set by the user. This is an obvious mistake, and demonstrates the software was released without sufficient checks.

Full screen apps, come on, that feature sounds great, one of my reasons for buying Lion, but the final execution is appalling, i just can't see the benefit, they should have called it, 'Bar at the top of the window removed'.

Reverse scrolling, what were they thinking, seriously, was that a joke?

New calendar, no change there, fake leather appearance.

Mail, looks great, but no real change from previous SL.

Autosave, Pages, freaked me out initially, but appears to be a good feature.

Anyway my overall impression of LION is, it's slow, it's buggy, it's rubbish.

Not sure if this is a fix but I bought my desktop into Apple store. There a test was run and I was told my hard drive is diving and it coincided with lion install! I will let you know but they have drive on order!

Amusingly, I had plenty of problems with the glorious SL that you are all seemingly pining for (things were so much better in the good old days). It broke my FireWire and did some other stuff. I had to buy new external HDs so I could boot off of them. And I complained about it here. Others had the same issue. (Oh, and I mentioned that in one of my earlier posts.) New OS's do things when installed on machines you already have. If I bought a machine and Lion came pre-installed, I got it home, and it had kernal panics etc, I'd immediately take it in to get it fixed. But a machine I've been using for a while? There is always the chance that the new OS may change things, AS IT IS A NEW OS. Apple makes software that needs to run on many types of machines, with various levels of age and upkeep. If some people have problems (the link of 13 or so pages of Mini users may have a few hundred people at best with issues- I didn't add them up because it's not my job to collect those statisitics for you, you can do it for me and the rest of us), that is to be expected. Out of the millions of Lions sold- and remember that THIS thread is not exclusively about Minis, it is about Lion on Macs, even a thousand people with issues in <1%. Ten thousand people with issues is <1%.

My Lion runs fine, the only real issues I've had with it are that some of my Power PC apps are now outmoded and my folder windows won't stick. It's fast, it's stable, I have no issues with it. I turned off the things I didn't like (reverse scrolling, for instance). But, all in all, it's fine. If your experience varies, there are many possible reasons for it. But out of many millions of Lions sold, it is clear that most people are not having issues. Again, <1% is not a groundswell of discontent.

And before someone says, show me statistics, I have, add nasuem. Show me some that refute mine and we can have a discussion. Otherwise, making statements, as you did above, that Lion is killing a majority of machines (or even just Minis) is hokum. A friend of mine has a Mini, put Lion on it, and it works.

capaho wrote:

I don't know why you persist with such an absurd line of reasoning unless it is your intention to merely be argumentative.

My intent is to encourage users with problems to try to diagnose & correct them using the tools & techniques that are intended for that purpose, instead of relying on dubious post hoc logic. "After this; therefore, because of this" reasoning is indeed common but that doesn't make it any less inconclusive.

If your intent is to convince others that they should not upgrade to Lion, you can't make a compelling argument based only on the fact that your Mini worked fine before the upgrade. That's because, whether you deny it or not, it is well known that flaws in the OS itself are only one of several possible causes for this kind of behavior. If you are unwilling to try to eliminate the other possible causes, or even to provide any detailed info about your Mini & related equipment that might help explain why some Mini's are unaffected, & instead waste time on pointless arguments about unknown statistics & concocting & defending absurd statements like that Apple still controls the system once it is in user hands, then you neither make a strong case for your assertions nor help anyone get any closer to resolving whatever issues they might have, yourself included.

The Dude Abides wrote:

Let's move on.