Vista was so awful users would “upgrade†back to XP, and it never gained more than 19% installation based. Apple jumped on this with blatantly mocking (and successful) ad-campaigns to woo users burned by Vista.
But now, Apple seems to have done a remarkable job of causing me to do a 180. OS X Lion (or 10.7 in more logical terms) seems like a massive step back in usability for something named after the king of the jungle.
Now that we’re on 10.7.2, it’s more stable, at least. I haven’t had to reboot it due to issues for a while. In my mind the biggest mess from the Lion release Apple has yet to fix is Safari. A lot of technology companies seem to be infected with fixing what ain’t broken syndrome. Apple now seems to be one of them. I just installed an update to Safari that I sincerely hope will address some of the stability problems.
I also agree with Eric on the reversed scrolling thing. I think it’s actually is more natural on a trackpad. On a mouse not so much, but I think Apple has determined the mouse to be passé.
For almost any use where a mouse formerly was the way to go, the Magic Trackpad is a large upgrade. Personally, I notice much less wrist issues as well.
-Gene
Hehe, I’m one of the guys who “Upgraded” from Vista to XP! Still running it on all my computers too. My biggest gripe with Vista was it’s a memory hog, Need 2 gigs of ram to run the damn thing. Crazy……
Is Windows 7 any good?
Windows 7 actually ain’t bad (aside from the first word in the title, but hey, that’s a personal preference). I don’t consider it worth upgrading from XP, but if you’re starting a new computer from scratch, go with 7.
Is anyone else having trouble “parsing” the pagunblog atom and RSS feeds? I have no idea what that even means, so I’m rather stuck.
Glad there’s a marginally related technology thread to post this question.
On topic, I got a chance to use some Mac OS the other day. Frustrating, but usable once you get used to it. Not really a fan of all the bouncy colorful icons, which is one reason I can’t stand 7… Never thought I’d be a Vista supporter.
Parsing how?
See the screencap. No content is showing up in my live bookmarks either. Google suggests some XML problem. http://i43.tinypic.com/2rnzerl.jpg
Since nobody else has mentioned it, I’ll assume it’s on my end. Could be a problem with Feed Sidebar or one of my hundred other addons…
Played with Lion for a month now and I loathe it. It came with my new laptop and due to time issues I haven’t felt like rolling it back to Snow Leopard.
List of Bugs:
iCal – broken, buggy, crashes, ugly stupid faux leather look
mail – ugly, stupid “conversation” grouping
spaces / exposes – mission control is worthy of a long string of explitives, ruined my workflow
launchpad – horrid
trackpad – stupid changes in gestures from 10.6, too damn finnicky.
Worst of all – everything is washed out and monochrome, and too damn small, and hidden to boot. 10.6 didn’t try to be “helpful” and make decisions for me, Lion does. Hate it, hate it hate it.
Patrick, I’d forgotten about Mail! LOL. Yeah, I’ve literally just given up on the Mac OS stuff for a while. I check my
.Mac, I meanMobileMe, er, iCloud email on my iPhone only now. Anything else is Gmail, and since I’ve abandoned Safari for Chrome…?Zermoid, seriously, go to 7. It’s amazing. It’s the Windows we should’ve had for a long time and that would have kept me from switching to a Mac. I don’t know where ecurb saw obnoxious bouncy icons in 7… With a few minor settings adjusted (that are easier to find than in Lion) it’s a great OS.
Magic Trackpads rule!
I only spent 20 minutes fixing a problem on a neighbor’s computer (and changing any of the defaults would have utterly confused him). Didn’t like the icon row on the desktop or the transparent 3d everything. It’s probably better once all that’s off.
[/offtopic]
I recently upgraded [sic] my Ubuntu to 10.04 – and found it’s new Unity desktop manager unusable. So I installed Gnome 3, and it was just as bad.
And MS seems determined to make exactly the same mistakes, in Windows 8.
The desktop is not a notepad!
I think you mean either 10.10 or 11.04. 10.04 still ran Gnome 2
:P
I originally hated Unity, too, but after using it for a while I’ve warmed up to it a bit. There are still things I hate (like not having minimize/restore functionality in the launcher, and the ridiculous size of the icons in the dash), but after tweaking some settings in CompizConfig it’s really not much worse than any other DE I’ve tried (once I got rid of the stupid mac-style global menus, at least), and I haven’t really seen any significantly better concepts for them to build on.
The big problem is that Gnome 2 is dead – no new development, no new bug fixes, no nothing – and so Ubuntu was left with the choice of going with the new Gnome-Shell, going with some other existing DE like KDE, or trying to develop something new on their own.
One thing to keep in mind is that Unity is essentially still a beta. It won’t truly be release ready until at least 12.04 (the next long term support release), and I suspect it won’t be truly “settled” until 12.10 or 13.04, at least. It just still needs a lot of work.
Just the press releases on Lion convinced me that rather than being the usual breathless early adopter I usually am, I’d wait. At this point I’m really pretty much pretending there isn’t even an upgrade available and I haven’t been able to come up with a single reason to care that I haven’t.
As an Apple developer, I began using pre-release versions of Lion. I don’t plan to go back to Snow Leopard for my day-to-day machines.
I prefer the newer scrolling. First, it feels more natural to me, even on the mouse (I use the buttonless Magic Mouse). Second, it works the same way as my iOS devices, and I now use my iPad as much as my laptop. For those who prefer the older scrolling, it can be selected in System Preferences.
I haven’t had any stability issues. Not a one.
I’ve used multiple desktops on UNIX boxes before and was pleased when the feature made it to MacOS. Spaces has greatly enhance my workflow. I use the three-finger swiping gestures rather than Mission Control
I rarely use Launchpad.
I haven’t had a problem with iCal or Mail. The conversation grouping in Mail can be handy when trying to gather all the emails on a subject, and it can be turned off if it isn’t wanted.
My desktop and icons appear to be the same size and color scheme as I had with Snow Leopard, but since almost none of my settings are at the default values, I really didn’t notice what they are. I simply put everything the way I wanted it during the OS installation–as I have beginning with Mac OS 0.997.
Lion how do you annoy me? Let me count the ways! Too many to count. Most especially Calendar and AddressBook. Apples wasted tons of effort on pointless flashy animations of pages turning and leather binding while ignoring basic usability. You know Apple has messed up badly when we find ourselves trying to downgrade back to earlier versions. I’ve tried reverting to Snow Leopard Calendar and AddressBook, played with Thunderbird and Lightning mac versions, even switched to Outlook. Arrgggh.