Don’t Upgrade to Mac OS Lion! (Not yet)
Posted by CesareNew is cool. I like to try new things, even alpha or beta stuff. I like to see changes, improvements, new directions. I like the way Apple continuously pushes improvements: one new iDevice almost each year, new software solutions, new ways to save data. But I can’t let the things I like to influence my business in a bad way.
If you are like me you probably have a machine (in my case a MacBook Pro) which is your faithful daily companion. There is everything you need, the tools you use daily. An operative systems is not a toy application you can live without. It’s part of that faithful companion, something you count on. OSX Lion is something I cannot count on yet. I installed it on a spare Mac mini, which I use for experiments. I like the new interface, the way it is inspired to iOS, the way it is easier to use. But there are tools I work with daily, which are still not fully compatible with Lion. The first release of new tool is not perfect, even if it has been extensively tested during the alpha and beta stages. This happens to each product, even if it is built by great developers. Check out the Mac or App store to see how many 1.0.1 or 2.1 versions you can spot. Those minor version changes reflect updates which are needed to improve and fine-tune applications. Not even Apple is immune to that. I bet there will be a Lion 10.7.1 soon. The same applies to other Apple products like XCode. That’s another tool I use daily. There has been a 4.0, then a 4.0.1, a 4.0.2 and now a 4.1. If you search the Twitterverse it’s easy to spot people lamenting crashes of Lion or XCode. I can even venture a bet that 50% of Apple developers is still using XCode 3.
Not to mention 3rd party apps. Part of my daily job is based on the Adobe Creative Suite, which sometimes is buggy per se, regardless of the OS. I don’t want even imagine how it behaves on Lion, considering that Adobe is lazy (BTW compatibility issues are listed here) Also historically known applications like Coda are unstable and crashy, in spite the fact it has been upgraded to be Lion compatible. See here and here for example. I remember I had the same approach to Snow Leopard, which I installed at least two months after the first release.
I can understand people which install Lion to test it or review it. But really, what’s the sense of installing it and polluting the Twitterverse like screaming kids? Software development is craftsmanship, it takes time. Or is Apple so trustful that people blindly upgrade without doing any check?
Personally I can support an application crash a week, and a kernel panic error a month. Something more frequent would kill my productivity and raise my stress. My suggestion is to wait at least the next minor release. Moreover:
- monitor relevant twitterers and bloggers to have a glimpse of the current situation
- talk to people you trust, ask them how is the current release,
- monitor Apple’s forums,
- check the website/forums of each application you use for your business
And even after that be a bit doubtful. We are talking business. Or would you prefer to tell your client that the last release got screwed due to a Lion crash an app crashing on Lion? :)
That said, when do you plan to install Lion? Did you already install it? How many issues did you have?
Update.
If you like to check whether an app is compatible with Lion you can consult roaringapps
Similar Posts
I installed it last night. I really love it actually, as a laptop OS though. I thought about how the gestures would feel on a desktop and I cant see myself wanted to have a trackpad if I owned a mac desktop. That is an opinion though and not fact.
I really love everything about Lion. You didnt really give any significant reasons for not wanting to have Lion. You hinted at the possibility of crashes, but did anything crash for you?
Either way, it is a great system, I use photoshop, illustrator, and dreamweaver cs5 and it is working fine. I also love the new mail app and also the flow of the whole interface. Everything is really quick and looks great.
They are really breaking from the norm on a typical computer operating system. They are becoming more and more different from windows with every new OS. It is really neat.
I installed Lion on a new iMac and haven’t looked back. There have been a couple of hiccoughs, but nothing serious. If you depend on Flash player and need to change preferences, you’re SOL.
I thought Launcher was something i’d never use, but now that I’ve tried the gesture, it’s simply a brilliant way to access apps.
I don’t use XCode, so can’t offer any insight on that file.
But, it’s fast, attractive and pretty solid. As always, when moving up to a new OS, take the time to create a bootable backup of your existing drive. That one step is what separates prudence from negligence.
I did install it on a spare mac mini so it did not loose anything. I cloned the hd with super duper and the restore was fine.
Oops, too late – already installed it on the first weekend I had available.
I tried the reverse scrolling for a number of hours and turned it off – doing my head in way too much. Ensure turning on the detection for accidental trackpad touches too.
Can’t say I’ll use Launchpad since I’m used to keyboard launching via Alfred (previously I used QuickSilver).
About the only thing I found broken so far was correct networking to my kids original XBox. It’s some streaming issue.
That said I’m enjoying the new stuff. Always make your backups before installing a new OS though.
Martin
Dreamweaver crashes all the time in Lion, mostly when using live view. We’ve had to go back to “previewing in browser” to cut down on the crashes. This happens on every mac we have in the studio which has been upgraded to lion.
Dreamweaver still crashes intermittantly when editing css too, but this is a bug which has been there since release and Adobe can’t be bothered to solve. They’d much rather flog cs5.5 for another £600 upgrade.
Leave a Reply