Upgrade from Snow Leopard?

kenackr wrote:

Adobe through a monkey wrench into my plans to sit comfortably with OSX 10.6.8 and not rock the boat with something that works. I'm a Creative Cloud member and utilize many of the CC apps including After Effects. The new After Effects CC now requires OSX minimum of 10.7.4. Lion).

It's B.S. like this that is forcing me to switch to Windows 7 which remain as is and get updates until 2020.

On a good monitor, Win 7 doesn't look nearly as bad as OS X, longevity and stability is key asset, I can always restore from System Restore Images if it gets seriously hosed, else System Restore reverts back to the last updated state.

Since it's expected that by 2015 tablets will outsell traditional computers in the consumer space, doesn't bode to well for many Mac's which chiefly target the consumer market and the professional market to a lesser degree.

Apple has already discontinued the MacBooks and the 17" MacBook Pro, so it might be shortly that only PC laptops will be the choice of professionals for their more versatility than consumer tablets.

Anyway the future isn't looking too bright.

I've been reading many of the comments about upgrading from Snow Leopard and am now quite uneasy about attempting it due to all the conflicting remarks about it. I do have AE CS6 and can operate on it for a while, but the new features in AE CC are not offered as updates to CS6 programs.

A professional setup is a whole different animal than a consumer machine where they can care less as it won't cost them money if the machine is down for some time.

It's likely best you buy a new MacPro and ease into it rather than take your chances on the Lions because they take some getting used to their strangeness. 😟

I advise you also to join the chorus and complain on the Adobe forums about what they are doing to force upgrade you for their purposes.

Slightly over 25% of OS X version market share is on Snow Leopard and many of them because they are running PPC based apps they can't get anymore.

So I'm assuming there will be quite a uproar on the Adboe forums over this, or else you can be the first to kick it off.

Adobe is trying to push, but if enough people push back and start to look for alternatives, Adobe will have to cave in because their sales are down big time as the print media industry is dying, thus less need for artists and the CS suite.

Is there an automated approach to determine if my current NON APPLE applications will work with either Lion OR Mountain Lion ?

1. I have NO power pc applications
2. I do not use Boot camp, parallels or anything similar. Windows software does not exist on this machine.
3. I do use MS Office for Mac 2011, including Outlook.

Not automated, but user submitted information here.

http://roaringapps.com/apps:table

I assume that Apple is probably working on the next OSX incarnation to succeed Mountain lion and that It may be timed to be coincident with the new Mac Pro release which is a hazy mirage of "sometime later this year". Point being, is it worth it to wait until that future incarnation settles down with the inevitable bugs blown off?

I would if your planning on buying a new MacPro.

Don't kill your present money making machine with the Lions, it's just not worth it.

Now you CAN clone your present boot drive to a external powered drive, option/alt boot from it and upgrade that to the Lions to get you by until the new MacPro is released and you can get fully up on that.

Most people need Snow Leopard for some reason or another, installing it on a paritition or via a virtual machine is a bit of a pain.

Snow Leopard is really fast, the Lions are fully 64bit and act more like dump trucks, RAM gobblers 4-8GB+ and a SSD on a newer issue Early 2011+ laptop or 2010+ iMac/Mac Pro is better suited for them.

I think the new MacPro + Mavericks is the way to go, keep the Snow Leopard machine working while the bugs and Adboe issues are worked out, then of course is the new OS XI version coming after that is the more pernament solution for longterm.

Most commonly used backup methods

Plan your moves carefully, don't let the arses at Adobe push you off a perfectly working machine into a OS X upgrade that can fail horribly and brick your logicboard/firmware with no AppleCare coverage to fall back onto.

I had 10.7 kill a 2007 MacBook Pro I upgraded from 10.6, it was 4 years old and Apple wouldn't fix it.

So don't upgrade OS X out of AppleCare unless it's a spare machine, certainly not your working machine.

Short answer:

ds store wrote:

Not automated, but user submitted information here [about the compatibility of software in Lion/Mt. Lion].

http://roaringapps.com/apps:table

MS Office 2011 is good to go! Not using PowerPC apps or Windows is also good to go!

Only upgrade to the latest Adobe or Microsoft software if there is a feature you must have in either.

If they require a specific operating system, keep in mind old operating systems are still good indefinitely, as long as you keep up the PRAM battery every 4 years on machines that have it, and make sure to keep a clone of your hard drive, so it can be replaced in case it dies. Preferably two clones help. If you must buy the latest and greatest for a feature that doesn't exist on an older machine or is not able to run on the older machine, keep the older machine around until the software on that older machine is no longer needed.

Remember many people got stuck in a lurch when Apple went to 10.7 because of PowerPC software no longer running on 10.7, but Michael LAX has also pointed out to me and others, it is possible to run PowerPC on 10.7.

So there is recourse to some extent. And ds store, you'll never catch me moving to entirely Windows until the security of Windows is as good as Apple's.

kenackr wrote:

I may resurect it in order to run "Opcode Studio Vision Pro" once again for my musical endeavours, after surgery for tunnel carpal.

Hardware will fail, so keep in mind you can install Snow Leopard Server into Parallels 8 to regain the ability to run most PowerPC apps in Mt. Lion.

I advise you purchase SLS NOW for $20 by telephone orders only to 800-MY-APPLE and put it on the shelf, as once Apple stops selling it, its price will start to go back UP!