Snow Leopard or Lion?

[Germany_chris]

Awesome! Thanks guys, all of you really answered my questions quite nicely. And boy, I do appreciate it! ;P It's nice to know that Apple doesn't put back in useless features. I guess I won't have to worry about Apple deciding (for some crazy reason) to put a registry in Mac. ;D Many thanks again, my Macsters. ;P <3

-J.S.

Oh they do, but you'd not notice unless you've been around a while.

Lion is a great OS if you're joining the Mac world right now, not so much if you've been around..

If you go onto other forums and you hear griping it isn't because Lions bad so much as you had to learn new stuff..

Mountain Lion, is nice it's the evolution of Lion like Snow Leopard was for the Leopard.

What I'm saying is don't worry over the griping if you come across it, wait and form your own opinion

 

[Ctrl-Opt-Del]

Eventually all of us will be running Lion (if we have computers capable of running Lion). Maybe not this year, or next year...but maybe 5 years from now.

- Nick

I guarantee you that 5 years from now there will still be people out there running Tiger on G3 Macs

One of them will probably be one of my university lecturers (a man with the charming name of D.H. Lawrence), who is still rocking a Sage green 1999 iMac in his office!

 

[The-Canuckster]

Oh they do, but you'd not notice unless you've been around a while.

Lion is a great OS if you're joining the Mac world right now, not so much if you've been around..

If you go onto other forums and you hear griping it isn't because Lions bad so much as you had to learn new stuff..

Mountain Lion, is nice it's the evolution of Lion like Snow Leopard was for the Leopard.

What I'm saying is don't worry over the griping if you come across it, wait and form your own opinion

AH. Big difference there. Still, as long as it works, (stable, fast, and is compatible with most mac programs out there) I really don't care too much. It sometimes scares me when people gripe so much about the OS X's. Like this one regarding Mountain Lion: OS X Mountain Lion: what you need to know | News | TechRadar (comments section) ...

Anyway, thanks again for your thoughts and stuff. I'll be asking more questions!

 

[pigoo3]

I guarantee you that 5 years from now there will still be people out there running Tiger on G3 Macs

Ha ha...I know what you mean!

I'm sure "everyone" won't be using Lion in a few years...but most of us (99%) probably will. There's always the 1% that won't upgrade for various reasons.

Heck in three years...many folks won't even be running Lion or Mountain Lion...they'll be running OS 10.9, 10.10, or 11.0!

- Nick

 

[Nick Naym]

I've yet to upgrade to Lion because I rely very much on Palm Desktop, a PIM that no longer is available nor supported. It ran fine under Leopard, barely runs under Snow Leopard, and I absolutely doubt it'll run under Lion. Were it not for that, I'd have moved from Snow Leopard to Lion several months after its release — I always wait a while, in case there are some new-release glitches. (I also have no idea what to get to replace Palm Desktop when I do move to Lion, Mountain Lion, or whatever.)

In your case, however, you're a new user, and I can see no reason for buying an older machine with an older OS (except, perhaps, if it were a gift, or a very well-kept machine at an absolutely bargain price that you would keep for a while — say, until you were completely comfortable with the Mac, and Apple introduces some newer models and further OS upgrades — both of which happen rather frequently).

Quite frankly, there are quite a few folks with older Macs who have yet to even upgrade to Leopard. Apple's OSs and Macs tend to be evolutionary, and can last a long time before you find yourself "forced" to replace them.

 

[chas_m]

Lion is a great OS if you're joining the Mac world right now, not so much if you've been around..

Rubbish.

(been on Macs since 1986)

If you go onto other forums and you hear griping it isn't because Lions bad so much as you had to learn new stuff..

Just a bunch of men who've grown old and set in their ways, and are tired of learning new things the way they did so easily when they were young. Tomorrow's "get off my lawn" cranks IMHO. *SO* glad that hasn't happened to me (yet).

What I'm saying is don't worry over the griping if you come across it, wait and form your own opinion

Amen.

 

[kbw]

If you have PPC Apps that you want to continue to use, stay with Snow Leopard, otherwise go for Lion.

 

[cognus]

yes

yes.

in my case, imac aluminum emc-2133 is ostensibly [as of now] capable of Mountain Lion, excepting the whim of the product manager @ Apple.
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion System Requirements

in fact my unit has a lion dvd in it as I type this, not yet installed, and I am hesitating... why bother with a generic lion when one lives in mountain lion country?

Not really a dumb question. If you were thinking of a slightly older Mac (2-3 years old)...you would have a choice...and could choose. There are some folks who do prefer Snow Leopard over Lion...but mostly because Lion really doesn't have much in the way of "jaw-dropping"...gotta have it...features.

But with that being said...there's really nothing terribly wrong with Lion. For someone that's upgrading...they just have to pay the $29 to get it (which some folks would rather not do if Lion doesn't have features they can't live without).

But for someone who is new to Macintosh computers...and will be buying a new computer with Lion pre-installed...there's absolutely nothing wrong with Lion.

The real bottom line. Eventually all of us will be running Lion (if we have computers capable of running Lion). Maybe not this year, or next year...but maybe 5 years from now.

- Nick

 

[chas_m]

If you have PPC Apps that you want to continue to use, stay with Snow Leopard, otherwise go for Lion.

Ultimately, this is bad advice. Better advice would be "transition your apps to Intel versions or (if no Intel version is going to be made, to alternative apps."

The reason I say this is that no matter how awesome your PPC Mac is, it's old and getting older. It will be retired someday, and guess what ... no new ones (in fact not even most old ones anymore!) will run your PPC stuff.

So the question really is ... do you want to make a smooth transition now ... or a very bad, forced transition later?

 

[chas_m]

in fact my unit has a lion dvd in it as I type this, not yet installed

Since there's no such thing as a Lion DVD, perhaps you should look into buying a legal copy.

 

[soulnchain]

Hey everyone!
I've read the whole thread, but I have a question...

I own a 2010 macbookpro (intel core 2 duo, not i5 or i7), 4GB of Ram and a 320Gb HD, i upgraded to Lion and was pretty pleased with the result.

Now my wife has a macbook (the 13" white plastic body), that has been running really slow lately (ok, it's an intel core 2 duo, 2Gb ram, but it has become slower than usual, i will look into it soon...).

AND HERE'S THE Qs:
Should I upgrade hers to Lion or stick with Snow Leopard?
Wouldn't Lion be slower on hers since it's a smaller machine?

Thanks for the advice!

 

[cognus]

if it were my macbook, yes I would but not via the online upgrade. I would save off all the valuable files safely onto an external drive, then do a clean install of Lion. Contrary to a previous comment, there is a Lion DVD, you just make it yourself by saving the downloaded image and converting it to disc. you can also do it to a bootable sd card or bootable usb flash drive. my guess is that the current system is experiencing some disk thrashing [overworking the HDD] due to clutter on the disk and perhaps unnecessary background tasks bleeding resources.
There are hundreds of posts about creating a bootable Lion installer, and utilities such as Lion Diskmaker to help if needed. You will be erasing the current HDD from the Disk Utility menu prior to running the install

 

[soulnchain]

if it were my macbook, yes I would but not via the online upgrade. I would save off all the valuable files safely onto an external drive, then do a clean install of Lion. Contrary to a previous comment, there is a Lion DVD, you just make it yourself by saving the downloaded image and converting it to disc. you can also do it to a bootable sd card or bootable usb flash drive. my guess is that the current system is experiencing some disk thrashing [overworking the HDD] due to clutter on the disk and perhaps unnecessary background tasks bleeding resources.
There are hundreds of posts about creating a bootable Lion installer, and utilities such as Lion Diskmaker to help if needed. You will be erasing the current HDD from the Disk Utility menu prior to running the install

What i was thinking of doing is getting Lion from App store, creating a DVD, then backing up the whole mac with Time Machine, clean install Lion (with all the system integrity scans it will suggest), then backing up all the applications, files, preferences, etc through time machine.
it should run better, correct? I bet having 4 Gb of RAM would help too, huh?

 

[cognus]

Me personally, I would not take that approach. but my prefs are a technician's... I have to cleanup other folks messes and try to make sure the system I give back is running optimally, safely, and with all the goods intact.
I'd be wary that Time Machine will restore the problem, if you know what I mean.
typically the user has documents, data [like from quickbooks or itunes or whatever], and media that are "the valuables". I would prefer to back those up and see them intact, uncompressed even, before I wipe the old drive.

yes more memory
and these days, to me the switch to an SSD is well worth the smallish cost, but the concept of operating is different, imho: go with the smallest SSD one can tolerate [my personal is a 70gb] and leave all the less-often-needed junk on the external drive.
cooler, quieter, lower power, and way faster.

What i was thinking of doing is getting Lion from App store, creating a DVD, then backing up the whole mac with Time Machine, clean install Lion (with all the system integrity scans it will suggest), then backing up all the applications, files, preferences, etc through time machine.
it should run better, correct? I bet having 4 Gb of RAM would help too, huh?

 

[soulnchain]

I'd be wary that Time Machine will restore the problem, if you know what I mean.

So you confirm what i was thinking, if my HD is "messed up", backing up with Time machine and restoring it will just copy the "mess"!

I totally agree with the 70gb SSD, but my wife is like 80% of female computer using population: desktop terror. She has no room on her desktop for icons, i tried telling her to keep her desktop clean so it would run better, but she just won't listen...

So in the end, Lion would run better than Snow Leopard, as the computer is now?

Thanks for your time!!

 

[cognus]

'better' is subjective. if you take the exact model info and google around on the subject, you will definitely find smart folks who moved that model to Lion, regretted it, and moved back to snow leopard. and you will find the reverse. all i can say is read up, and remember, as you say, that its your bride who will live with it..... and stuff rolls downhill, if you know what i mean