Lion Cons… and maybe some Pros.
 

Without actually having used the new OS, and listening only to internet chatter, I'm already vexed by several things.

1) Front Row is gone.

That sucks! Front Row was among my favorite applications. What has it supposedly been replaced by? Are we supposed to just run iTunes in full-screen mode instead?

2) MacBook Air (and Mac mini) now ship only with Lion.

Doesn't anybody else see a problem with forcing new Mac buyers into using a point-zero OS version?

I've had money set aside for a while now to purchase the new MB Air with Thunderbolt port when it arrived, because I think the MB Air needs that port badly, but Apple's decision to ship only with Lion, and not Snow Leopard, has put my purchase plans into limbo.

I'd buy one tomorrow if I could run Snow Leopard on the new MB Air, and maybe upgrade to Lion after a point-three or point-four version release. Doesn't look like that's possible. The previous MB Air doesn't have the Thunderbolt port, so my only option here is to wait six to eight months for the OS to mature, and that's assuming I am willing to use Lion exclusively in the first place. Way to go Apple.

3) No installation DVDs. No installation flash drive.

Assuming you don't mind losing several GB of HD space, Lion's new recovery partition is a nice touch. (It has been used by some PC manufacturers for several years now.)

The phone-home OS recovery option is also a nice touch, but what if you can't get an internet connection? I don't like that Apple expects me to seek out an internet connection in order to re-install the OS. Just give me the discs! I'll do it locally, and offline, in a fraction of the time, and with less hassle.

On the bright side, looks like Apple will be selling flash drive installers for $69. I guess the extra $40 is for the "server-grade" flash drive. I've also just read that there's a way to make your own flash drive installer by using the disk image from the Mac App Store Lion installer.

Not a total deal-breaker here as there are some ways out. Would have been nice if Apple had mentioned the flash drive installers somewhere on the MB Air and Mac mini sites.

4) Disappearing scroll bars.

I saw this when S.J. gave his most recent keynote. I think I'm going to end up touching the trackpad every three seconds just to get a reference point for how much content there is in the window.

This, I think, needs an "always show scrollbar" option in System Preferences. Maybe there is one already, or maybe it'll be added in later. Who knows?

Here are a few more cons that TUAW posted. If you have any of your own, please do post them here!

You seem to contradict yourself on point 3 . No installer disks or USB flash drives. Except for the flash drives you can buy. And the installer disks that you can image.

And aren't new OSes usually supplied on new equipment?

But I accept that some of the changes may not be improvements.

I'm most excited by the changes to the Finder, including Spotlight search terms in drop-down lists (so you don't have to remember kind: audiobitrate:, etc). Also folder merge and file rename instead of overwrite.

I don't like what I've heard about Preview: that zoom levels default on every page. (Which is what iBooks does for PDFs.)

I will certainly be giving Apple feedback on this, and I suggest that everyone do the same for their pet peeves.

I'm sure that various defaults writes parameters will be uncovered soon, and these may assuage fears.

I meant that the new Macs don't ship with those things in the box, and you have to shell out extra cash to attain them.

This is the first time I can recall new Macs being shipped with only a point-zero OS version in the box. Not saying it hasn't happened before, but it's infrequent.

You can set the scroll bars to always display.

No physical install media is really no different than Apple dropping built in floppy drives, or their beginning to drop optical drives. Online distribution is what Apple sees as the future. And, as with external drives, there are plentiful workarounds. Plus, it's one less thing to keep track of that the majority of users will probably never need to use anyway.

I highly doubt that this is the first time that the first version of a new OS is what is shipped on new hardware. New hardware always ships with whatever the most recent OS version is. Perhaps this is the first time that new hardware has been released before a 10.x.1 release? It would be incredibly weird if Apple didn't ship the latest OS on their new hardware. And if you look at the keyboards for the new Air, you can see that Apple has always intended that these would run Lion (function keys with updated Expose, Launchpad, etc. logos).

Front Row: It's always a bummer when you're one of the rare users of something Apple stops delivering. This seems to be your situation with Front Row. Honestly, in all my reading and all the people I know, I think you're the only person I know of who used it extensively. But there are alternatives out there, and a bunch are conveniently listed on this page.

Recovery Partition: I have no idea where you got your information, but the following statement is just not true:

The recovery partition takes all of 650 MB. I can't imagine that's an issue for many.

A great article on Lion's security

Trevor

As most people on this board know, I know you personally.. When are you going to stop bitching? The OS changes are not, in the majority, deal breakers. I hate the loss of the Bounce Button in Mail, but, overall, the improvements are - to me - great. See my recent-ish post regarding Mail/Plugins/Alternatives. That post is now obsolete/irrelevant and thanks to NaOH, I saved myself a few quid.

The value of fellow members opinions on this site is invaluable to me. Stick GIYFW as far as you can get it. I want the opinions of people that I have come to respect.

I seem to remember that one of the most respected board members hereon suggested you go to Linux. Good call. 10.7 is not "great" for everybody, but is, actually, an improvement for the majority. Furthermore, if you wish to "get under the hood" (shocking Americanism... ;-)) [ I still have a "bonnet" on my car....] you still can for the most part.

If, in a month, or two, someone has not worked out how to create an install image without paying $65, i'll be a monkey's uncle. And, yet, that may happen, Cholmondeley. ;-)

Great article, Trevor. Thank you. I got some of that information from reading John Siracusa's 10.7 review, but the piece you linked put things in more lay terms which I can more easily digest and also share with the friends and family who seek my tech counsel.

I put the scroll bars back. It’s simple enough to do. I like that I could install it from the App Store w/o physical media. Until recently I had a dead optical drive on an otherwise healthy MacBook. (Now my grand daughter has it.) When traveling you can access Disk First Aid without carrying a Disk. My MacBook Air is light in part because it doesn’t have an optical drive.

If Lion has flaws, the new computer buyers, like the rest of us early adopters, will download the software update and things will be better.

Ooh, now I'm excited! John Siracusa's reviews of OS X versions are always excellent, and I haven't read one since, well I guess since Snow Leopard's release.

Trevor

I don't think you'll be disappointed, Trevor. As always with Siracusa's reviews, get comfy: I think Ars said this one clocks in around 27,000 words.

In that case, you'll be wanting to go to User CP > Ignore List > add ThreeBKK.

WTF is GIYFW?

I think the price will be $69 if you buy the one that Apple is supposedly going to offer starting in August.

Like I mentioned in post #1, there is also a way to make your own using the MAS Lion installer application. The hardware cost is much lower. You can even put it on a DVD-RW that has been previously used, I think, but it's unclear whether or not Lion owners will have to pay $29 to download it. For example, if I buy a new MB Air with Lion pre-installed, will I be able to download the Lion installer from the MAS for free? That's unclear.

Well, you can click through Mactracker and get a good idea. Going through all of the MacBook models, I see a single point-one version, and no point-zero versions.

I am not a gambling man when it comes to my data or my working environment. I'm not going to go "whole hog" on a freshly released OS just because it's the absolute newest thing on the market. Looks like Apple is betting that most people won't know the difference. I think it's unethical.

Look at MacTracker closely and you'll see that many machines in the 10-year OS X era have shipped with an x.x.0 release. On top of that, looking at what models shipped with the x.x.0 release without looking at how quickly the x.x.1 release came out provides a rather incomplete picture. Since 10.0 became available, the x.x.1 release has on average come out in 22 days.

More telling, I think, is that in the 8 years since 10.3 was released, it's never taken more than three weeks for the x.x.1 update to be put out. I'd bet 10.7.1 will be out really soon, especially since the reports are that 10.7 was set a few weeks ago, meaning it's already been a few weeks since they started preparing the update.

Anyway, here are machines that shipped with an x.x.0 version of OS X and the number of days before the before the first update was made available.

10.0 (21 days to 10.0.1)
iBook (Dual USB)
PowerMac G4 (QuickSilver)

10.1 (38 days to 10.1.1)
iBook (Late 2001)
PowerBook 64 (Gigabit Ethernet)
iMac (Summer 2001)
Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver)

10.2 (25 days to 10.2.1)
eMac
iMac (Summer 2001)
iMac (15" Flat Panel)
iMac (17" Flat Panel)
Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver 2002)
Power Mac G4 (QuickSilverED)
Power Mac G4 (Mirrored Drive Doors)
Power Mac G4 (Mirrored Drive Doors 2003)

10.3 (17 days to 10.3.1)
iBook G4
PowerBook G4 (12" DVI)
PowerBook G4 (15" FW800)
eMac (1.0 GHZ G4)
eMac (ATI Graphics)
iMac (20" USB 2.0)
Power Mac G5

10.4 (17 days to 10.4.1)
PowerBook G4 (15" 1.5 & 1.67GHz)
PowerBook G4 (17" 1.67GHz)
eMac (2005)
iMac G5 17" (Ambient Light Sensor)
iMac G5 20" (Ambient Light Sensor)
Mac mini
Power Mac G5 (Early 2005)

10.5 (20 days to 10.5.1)
MacBook (13" Late 2007)
iMac (20" Mid 2007)
iMac (24" Mid 2007)
Mac mini (Mid 2007)

10.6 (13 days to 10.6.1)
iMac (20" Mid 2009)
Mac mini (Late 2009)
Mac mini (Mac OS X Server, Late 2009)
Mac Pro (Early 2009)

read this today - might be useful

http://www.mac-hatter.com/blog/frontrowenablerforlion

That raises an interesting question. If the .dmg from the MAS Lion installer is around 4 GB, then how did Apple get away with only 650 MB for the partition? It seems like compression alone wouldn't reduce the file size by that much, so did something get left out of the recovery partition?

Also, I remember that Boot Camp would not install under Leopard if there were more than one partition on the boot drive. Under Lion has this changed? Can users now have 2, 3, 4 partitions on the boot drive and still install Boot Camp?

Thanks! Sadly, I will have to look into that.

13 to 38 days feels like an eternity when you've got a mission-critical software application that does not work properly due to bugs in the code.

Now let's consider that even a point-one version release does not fix all bugs. Certain problems may only get fixed towards the end of the OS lifespan, if ever. Sure would be nice in these situations to be given the option to boot up and run a previous, mature OS.

Sounds like you've got a firm grasp of the risks and caveats that might come from if you update your software or hardware too soon. So what's the problem, that you wanted to get a new MacBook Air ASAP and now know it would be better to wait, or is it something else?

For me so far almost every thing is ok with Lion.
I did have a moment when I wanted to dip into the Users Library, and it was not there!!.
But found how to show it again. By using the option key while clicl the 'Go ' Menu. And then draging the folder to the sidebar.

The Biggest thing for me is Full screen Apps.

I have Dual Screens. What was apple thinking when they came up with this method of full screen.
In 10.6 Full screen app work by one screen going full screen and the other staying normal.

Now you get one screen going full screen and the other going blank.

Plain bloody stupid.

With both Isadora and Modul8 I go full screen the same way as before. Maybe this is for Quicktime and DVD Player?
I like Lion so far as much there is to like. One thing I used to do is to put all apps that OS X installs by default and I never use into one folder and zip it. to keep my vast Applications folder manageable. Now I can not do anything even to the Chess that I would not touch with 10 feet pole. All apps are required by OS and could not be modified.

Using Lion on my MacBook Air I have adjusted to schizophrenic scrolling. If I use the scroll bars (which I have set to show always) I scroll in the same direction as before. If I use the track pad gestures I move my fingers the opposite direction to get the same effect. Somehow both methods seem fine.

New system code bugs?
 

>>13 to 38 days feels like an eternity when you've got a mission-critical software application that does not work properly due to bugs in the code. <<

Who would upgrade in that situation? I may be listed as 'Prospect' on this forum, but I have been around for a long time and involved in the computer business since 'System 360' days. I don't know anyone who would ever upgrade a 'mission critical' system without a LOT of off-line testing. If it worked, it worked, and I had better not do anything to screw up my, or anyone else's, paycheck.

Wait a minute, are you trying to tell me that the recovery partition doesn't actually allow offline recovery of the OS? Is it only there to get the user online so that he/she can re-download Lion from the MAS?

That's mostly correct (the Recovery partition can do more than just re-download Lion). Macworld has a good overview of all the Recovery partition can and can't do. For users who are concerned about needing the offline ability to re-install the OS, there are instructions for how to make a bootable drive of the actual Lion installer. To do so is essentially the same as it's always been, just that the one file needed to do this is hidden from average users who wouldn't know where to look.

Unbelievable.

Initially, I was feeling a bit upset about the whole situation even when I thought users could actually recover the OS using that partition. Finding out that it doesn't actually do that, I'm incredulous.

No offline recovery solution out of the box. Users must rely on an internet connection, and are also forced into relying on the MAS exclusively. Totally unacceptable!

At present, there may be ways of working around these new limitations, and making our own unofficial install disk(s), but who's to say that Apple isn't hastily working on ways to preclude that option?

"Who's to say that Apple isn't stealing children in the night?"

There are several pages on the internet about how to make a Lion install disk.
As you can buy an installer disk (flash drive) from Apple, it would be hard for them to preclude this. So you are fear-mongering over something that has not happened, like your prophesy that Apple will prevent us from downloading software from anywhere other than the MAS, which would make OS X lose it's UNIX certification, for one thing.

You seem to assume that Apple is going down this route for some evil purpose. What would that be? Lock-in? We already have Apple hardware, and Apple does very nicely out of the store as it is. Apple has never put any "authorisation" or serial codes on its OS. And you can install Lion on all your machines from one download, if you make a disk.

I genuinely think that Apple just wants to move away from selling software in boxes. (Not just for the reduction in overheads -- there are different legal implications for selling a physical product and a download in some jurisdictions.)

Yes, companies try to maximise revenue and keep the customer paying. But are the management sitting round a table in a sleek modernist hall with swivel-chairs, laughing insanely as they stroke cats, trying to take over the world? No.

You can buy all kinds of software from companies as downloads -- and updates. Why is it such an imposition for an OS to be bought in the same way?

If it is so unacceptable, then perhaps you might like to move to Linux. You can download the OS from.... oh, wait.

All I hope is that Lion / Lion Server get the whole Active Directory/OpenLDAP integration perfectly working and well documented.

In the next year or so most of my sites will be moving away from OD masters/replica as primary directory more than likely to 80% AD/ 20% OpenLDAP. Just want them to get AD binding perfect so we can drop in a Mac Mini's for Deploystudio,MDM, SUS, Netboot and overall we are seriously looking at just going Linux for most of this anyway but there are still a few advantages with a Mac Server as far as the cost of MDM.

Quick observations for a new Lion install:

1) All user accounts are gone until re-activated. This cannot be happening to everyone, I guess. Files are there, you just cannot log in. See my recent post where I found the solution.

2) vpn dns is not working quite right. The DNS settings are right as far as I can see but it does not resolve the same as in Snow Leopard.

3) Font sizes in mail are annoying. Cannot change font sizes of anything but the message windows as far as I can see.

4) Address book is not nearly as useful as an application because you cannot see the three columns at once. (Multiple posts elsewhere complaining about same thing.)

5) All of my printers stopped working. Both Epson 220 and Canon i850 recovered with Software update. Hp 1606dn is officially not supported; however, an HP employee posted an unofficial workaround on one of the forums which worked! (install latest firmware, re-install printer as Airprint).

6) Both perforce and mysql are missing in action. I can probably get them to work again by re-installing them (I had read about mysql, but perforce was not previously mentioned). I may not need to re-install, but figure out again how to make startup items work. I hear the method is different from Snow Leopard (which was different from Leopard).

7) Oddly, there were not that many apps I use which depend on Rosetta, thankfully. I hear there is a way to make Rosetta work anyway, but I have not tried it.

8) Reverse scrolling was only annoying for about 5 minutes. :-)

9) I need to get rid of the magic scrollbars. I understand there is a way to turn that 'feature' off. With magic scrollbars, I cannot ever seem to be able to click on the last item on the list in finder because the scrollbar covers it up as soon as I stop scrolling.

But at that point I went back to my trusty Snow Leopard until Lion works better for me. I had installed on a SuperDuper clone of my main disk, so going back was just a matter of rebooting, thankfully.

Hope this is interesting (if not helpful).

How many cons are we up to so far? I've lost count, but here's one more for the pile:
Automatic Termination.

According to TUAW, this shuts down and quits any (compatible) apps that aren't active and don't have any visible windows.

Haven't seen it myself, but there had better be an off switch for it if I'm forced to use Lion with my new Mac purchase. (The TUAW article notes that there is no way to turn it off.) Here's an even better explanation of how offensive Automatic Termination really is.

Yet another con for the pile: Boot Camp users are pretty much forced to buy Windows 7 with Lion.

There is a way to migrate an existing Boot Camp partition to new Macs with Lion. I'm not entirely sure how it works, but I'm betting that my Boot Camp / Windows XP backups will not be valid, and I'm going to have to shell out more money than I need to for Windows 7, despite the fact that I just purchased a Windows XP license to use with Boot Camp on my previous Mac. Of course, once I have Win 7 installed, there's no guarantee that my XP backups will be compatible with it, so I'm probably forced to start over with a blank slate.

Should have just kept my MacBook Pro and called it the last Mac that I'll buy.

I have to say that while I was slightly apprehensive about Lion, I'm really enjoying it.
Installation was a doddle - no lost printers, no deleted user accounts. I created a disk image of the installer on a flash drive and used that to install my MacBook.

I tried to give reverse scrolling a fair go, but couldn't quite get used to it. I think it may not have worked with all my apps, so I turned it off. I turned on scroll bars at all times.

I love Resume -- I turn my computer off every night and if I'm leaving the house for a while, so the ability to pick up where I left off is brilliant.
I can see the advantages of AutoSave and Versions, too.

The new Mail has a nice UI; the leather effect on iCal is a bit galling, but I don't feel compelled to fight it.

Lion has also fixed a couple of things that were screwy under Snow Leopard for me, and generally things seem a little faster, more responsive, even on my old 2006 iMac. It does seem to use all the memory whenever possible, but I'm not bothered by that.

The interface is a little grey, and I would prefer the hard drives at the top of the Sidebar list, rather than at the bottom (I think you can hack the .plist); but generally, I have few complaints and would say "come in, the water's lovely".

I had already phased out PPC code when I installed 10.6, so no problems there.

Any reason a VM wouldn't work for you? As far as I can see, if you're going to run more than one OS, VMs are the way to do it.

I've certainly lost count of how many are valid complaints.

Hmm. It does seem a bit pointless, as the processes are still in memory, but merely removed from the App Switcher and the Dock's list of running processes.
I can see the logic that with Auto-Save and Resume, whether an app is running or not doesn't really matter. There are at least six different ways to activate an app, of which App Switcher is only one.
To be honest, I use TextEdit and Preview extensively, and have certainly closed all the windows several times in these apps, thus activating Auto-termination; but until it was pointed out here, I hadn't noticed the effect.

Or what...?

"but until it was pointed out here, I hadn't noticed the effect."

Neither have I.

2 out of 3 (active) machines running Lion and I have not seen this once.

I read TUAW daily and, except Erica, the writeups and reviews leave a lot to be desired. Only have to read a few comments to see that. I amazed that they are on Apple's *****list, they are so fawning.

Ho hum, happy days.

I like the concept of sandboxed applications. Still tinkering with Lion myself haven't had a lot of hands on with it yet. My biggest out of the box complaint is not by default all wheels on mice (or two handed gesture for scrolling on track pads) are inverted....

My next set of complaints come from an IT standpoint not really an end user one.

Gaming performance and stability, traditionally, has sucked while running under a virtualized OS. If that is no longer the case, then I'll happily run my Windows XP games in a VM.

I'll simply have to find another computing environment to call "home". That is the ultimate fallout that Apple will have to reckon with if they continue messing about with the Mac platform.

Some people are less observant than others. I feel that I certainly would have noticed it, especially if the app were part of my workflow and kept being closed on me. My Mac should not be making these kinds of decisions for me. I'll close it myself when I'm good and ready to close it.

Bug fixes of this nature, in my mind, should be offered for little to no charge, and without forcing users to upgrade to the latest OS.

The only difference between TextEdit and Preview running and not running, after being auto-terminated, is an (optional) white dot in the Dock. It takes no longer to reload.
So I'll take your "less observant" jibe, as I'm actually getting stuff done on my computer. And here's the essential bit:

Remember when you had to allocate memory to programs individually? Just look at the last 25 years of computing, and how much the computer now does for you that you used to have to learn about and manually do.

Opening and closing apps is essentially computer admin, and -- like loading cupsd when I access a print menu -- is something that I don't need to do myself. Think of all those daemon processes that you never launched yourself!
It's so easy to get bogged down in the trivia of computing and forget what computers are for: getting stuff done. If the computer wants to handle file saving, backups, application launching, and anything else that is subservient to doing the things I want to do, then that is a Good Thing.

The history of personal computing development is about advances that allow the computer to take care of itself, and allowing the user to get on with creating, using, viewing, writing.. whatever it is.
Ensuring that the relevant apps are launched is a subservient task to what I use my computer for.

In an ideal world and an independent Scotland, maybe. Apple fixes plenty of bugs in updates for free, but every commercial software company charges for a new version which includes both bug fixes and new features. And frankly, $29.99 is little to no charge.

I would have gladly paid that amount for a bug fix package for Snow Leopard, sans the Mac App Store, which would run on the latest Mac hardware. Of course, Apple doesn't offer that because they are trying to incrementally push users down a pre-designed path that benefits Apple and doesn't necessarily benefit end users.

Granted, but if the app wasn't a permanent resident in the Dock, then it would have since disappeared from the Dock. The user would have to find it again and essentially re-launch it even though it was still running. The time it takes would be trivial to some people, but the distraction alone is reason enough not to auto-terminate apps.

Thanks for the retrospective on personal computing. I never really understood extensions in Mac OS 9 and prior OS versions. I'm glad I don't have to worry about that stuff anymore. There are plenty of things that Apple has simplified for the better. This is not one of them.

If Apple wanted to release a bug fix package for Snow Leopard, they would have to charge a lot more than $30. Apple, like all organizations, has limited resources. It would cost more to keep developers working on Snow Leopard specific versions of the OS than it does to work on the next OS alone.