Re: Does anyone recommend OS X Lion?

Bob Jacobson wrote:

It's rated 3.5 stars in the Apple Store. When I see a 3.5 star-rated app in MacUpdate, I skip it unless there is a really compelling reason why I must get it (like, there's no other option available).

What do you think about Xcode? 25% of people gave it 1 star in the Italian MAS. 3.x something average. Actually it is the same in the US store. Just checked. Why? They couldn't either download or install it. I downloaded it with my brother's 7Mbps connection via WiFi, while the PS3 was downloading another 5GB of stuff. Yes, it took few hours, but the download went fine and it installed with 1 click. I am starting to doubt that I am "just lucky". This is how some people judge an application in the store.

Bob Jacobson wrote:

Once there are millions of dependent users, if there are problems, the negative ramifications will be severe, worse than nattering about Lion. Just sayin'.

Yup, like this news from the last two days...

Blackberry users across Europe, the Middle East and Africa have been hit by a data outage that cut off access.

Bob Jacobson wrote:

I suspect that when people get clued to the reliability and privacy implications of iCloud (and cloud computing generally, for other than nonessential e-commerce applications), many will not be pleased. Most Apple customers will relegate their data to iCloud without a thought, choosing the freebie system over personally managed reliability and security. Smartphone usage has trained them well. Once there are millions of dependent users, if there are problems, the negative ramifications will be severe, worse than nattering about Lion. Just sayin'.

Not going to use iCloud for Photo Stream or Documents&Data. Which are the 2 guys eating space and thus tying us to Apple, eventually requiring a fee in the future. Also Apple had the nice idea to make a mandatory removal of their local data (and of the Calendar. The contacts instead will be left alone. Don't ask me why) when disabling iCloud. That's IMVHO atrocious.

I even wonder if that is legal. The EU antitrust may have something to say against it. And I don't care if one can easily bypass this mechansm backip up the data. It's the principle behind to be wrong.

But enough for me with iCloud. There will be plenty of discussions here in ASC: I still wonder why many people had issues getting Xcode, which was about the same size of Lion. As I wonder if the issues they've got with it were present also when downloading and installing LIon.

Anyway, 10.7.2 obviously feels much less broken than the previous builds. Even if I can still get large swapping outs, the system keeps responding, Right now I have 1.43GB of swap used (I started a Win7 virtual machine yesterday) but it just stays there. And when running the Win7 VM Windows was kinda slow, but OS X very responsive. That was the only major issue I had.Then many little GUI bugs are gone. I never had performances issues after my clean up, so about that I can't say. But you may want to give it a try installing it over an external backup!! Just for testing. You might be pleased. 😉

Someone said that this update was all about iCloud. I noticed the

installation of 10.7.2 opened with the iCloud registration right in your face.

I am suspicious of iCloud being part of my OS regardless of registration.

My Mac is registered. I guess I need a second, offline Mac to feel secure.

I read some of the reviews on MacUpdate and they are indeed averaging

2.5. Seems that Lion’s unhappy campers are not much happier with 10.7.2.

At first blush things seem a little better, but of course it will be a while before

intermediate users like myself notice any real differences. I am hopeful

things will improve but I still can’t turn off Versions and Autosave.

Dr.Head wrote:

Someone said that this update was all about iCloud. I noticed the installation of 10.7.2 opened with the iCloud registration right in your face.I am suspicious of iCloud being part of my OS regardless of registration. My Mac is registered. I guess I need a second, offline Mac to feel secure.

I don't like the fact that if I try to exclude "Documents and data" from iCloud, I get a warning that disabling this will delete the info from my Mac. WHAT?? 😮

I guess I'm stuck with that stuff floating around in the Cloud now! 😠

Dr.Head wrote:

I still can’t turn off Versions and Autosave.

Yeah. *sigh*

Kittenmommy wrote:

Dr.Head wrote:

Someone said that this update was all about iCloud. I noticed the installation of 10.7.2 opened with the iCloud registration right in your face.I am suspicious of iCloud being part of my OS regardless of registration. My Mac is registered. I guess I need a second, offline Mac to feel secure.

I don't like the fact that if I try to exclude "Documents and data" from iCloud, I get a warning that disabling this will delete the info from my Mac. WHAT?? 😮

I guess I'm stuck with that stuff floating around in the Cloud now! 😠

I don't like that at all either. When I first saw it I had the same reaction: WHAT?!? Also because it doesn't say what it is going to be removed. At the moment it is only for the iWork documents.You can log in icloud.com and check what it is there. And remove it from there I suppose (make a backup copy of the same documents in the local disk, though.

About iCloud showing in our faces, don't worry DRH. Like anything else if one doesn't authenticate iCloud will have no clue whatsoever about our data. It couldn't be otherwise, because it would be a major security hole. It is like iTunes Store or the Mac Apple Store. if we don't sign in we can't access them. MAS actually is getting pretty annoying about asking for authentication any time one wants to do something different.

Anyway, if you want to be even more secure, just remove any Apple IDs in the Users & Groups Preference Panel.

Kittenmommy wrote:

Dr.Head wrote:

Someone said that this update was all about iCloud. I noticed the installation of 10.7.2 opened with the iCloud registration right in your face.I am suspicious of iCloud being part of my OS regardless of registration. My Mac is registered. I guess I need a second, offline Mac to feel secure.

I don't like the fact that if I try to exclude "Documents and data" from iCloud, I get a warning that disabling this will delete the info from my Mac. WHAT?? 😮

I guess I'm stuck with that stuff floating around in the Cloud now! 😠

Dr.Head wrote:

I still can’t turn off Versions and Autosave.

Yeah. *sigh*

Totally agree. I think I actually spat out a few drops of coffee as I read that comment when I unchecked 'D&D"

So now I am reliant on someone else to hold and maintain my crucial files, be it briefly until I can reclaim them. It actually says the same thing for 'contacts'. Does it really mean what we think it means? Will my documents and contacts book be removed from my macbook?

OK I'd like some advice from you folks.

I haven't installed the Lion update yet but these posts are causing me some concern.

I don't want to have anything to do with the Cloud, but apparently there's something deceptive about the update installation process that tricks you into sending all your stuff into the Cloud.

How do I install the update but NOT sending anything to the Cloud?

Tom in London wrote:

How do I install the update but NOT sending anything to the Cloud?

As long as one doesn't sign into iCloud from the iCloud Preferences Panel, iCloud is out of business. Signing in, only the "services" that are checked/enabled will start synching data. If you have a @me.com mail accoint you can just enable that, taking care of not enabling the calendar and contacts. It will work as an IMAP email account. As soon as you select Calendar and Contacts they get synched and they go to the iCloud, staying there. Signing into Mac Apple Store or iTunes is separated from signing into iCloud.

In other words, if you want to be 100% sure of not sharing your data in iCloud, just leave iCloud (and iCloud only) alone in the Preference Panel. The security concept is always the same: as long as one doesn't authenticate, giving an Apple ID and its password, iCloud sits doing nothing. Probably not even its demons are running until it is enabled (I would have to check, but that's not very important. The connection is established only after authentication).

Tom in London wrote:

OK I'd like some advice from you folks.

I haven't installed the Lion update yet but these posts are causing me some concern.

I don't want to have anything to do with the Cloud, but apparently there's something deceptive about the update installation process that tricks you into sending all your stuff into the Cloud.

How do I install the update but NOT sending anything to the Cloud?

Actually, Tom, when you first update and go through the icloud setup, you're presented with a series of features that you can co-ordinate across your devices. That's all fairly simple and straightforward.

The problem comes when you want to remove a feature (say Documents and data) from the iCloud stable. You get a message saying, in effect, that these items will be removed from your Mac if you continue.

In fact that doesn't happen. I tried it with 'Contacts' having first copied my contacts book elsewhere in case it was deleted. It wasn't. I think the dialogue box is misleading. Items, it seems, aren't removed from your Mac as threatened, but simply removed from the iCloud process of continuous update to other devices.

It's actually quite a nice feature, but compromised by some clumsy language around it's actions.

UK-Max wrote:

In fact that doesn't happen. I tried it with 'Contacts' having first copied my contacts book elsewhere in case it was deleted. It wasn't. I think the dialogue box is misleading. Items, it seems, aren't removed from your Mac as threatened, but simply removed from the iCloud process of continuous update to other devices.

Good to know. Thanks! ➕

This scares me because it all seems to rely on me not ticking one little box in System Prefs. If I get that wrong, all my files are gone - to the Cloud.

Is the Cloud "on" by default in System Prefs?

Can the "Cloud" prefs be locked? What really worries me that long-term, at some future point when I'm busy doing something else, that System Pref might become unchecked for some reason, maybe by mistake, and then I really would be sunk.

Can I grab all my stuff back from the Cloud and put it back on my hard drive?

To be sure I don't send anything to the Cloud, is it possible to download the update, then disconnect completely from the Internet, and install it?

Maybe I should add that I have relegated Lion to sandbox status, on another computer I don't use for doing anything serious. For serious stuff I am still on Snow Leopard. So even if Lion does something disastrous, I'm not in danger of actually losing all my work files.

Hey - I wonder where all the fanboys have gone. Maybe they're re-thinking 😁

Come on fanboys, let's hear one more time how stupid we are and how great Lion is !!

Kittenmommy wrote:

UK-Max wrote:

In fact that doesn't happen. I tried it with 'Contacts' having first copied my contacts book elsewhere in case it was deleted. It wasn't. I think the dialogue box is misleading. Items, it seems, aren't removed from your Mac as threatened, but simply removed from the iCloud process of continuous update to other devices.

Good to know. Thanks! ➕

I am afraid that is not totally correct. If one chooses the option to remove the contacts from the Mac, they are gone (locally). To get them back one must resynch with iCloud enabling the contacts again.

Not sure about the Calendar. I have seen that having both iCloud and Gmail calendars they are independent. iCloud can't touch (nor see) the Gmail one and vice-versa. I just wonder what it is local. And if that (the local calender) will be forcibly removed once signing off the iCloud. I don't use iCal much, so I didn't bother doing an extensive testing.

Tom in London wrote:

OK I'd like some advice from you folks.

I haven't installed the Lion update yet but these posts are causing me some concern.

I don't want to have anything to do with the Cloud, but apparently there's something deceptive about the update installation process that tricks you into sending all your stuff into the Cloud.

How do I install the update but NOT sending anything to the Cloud?

You can select what you sync to the web:

If you don't want your documents and other data uploaded don't check the box.