[Updated 15th August - green items are those which no longer occur, or a setting changed, blue means "I can live with it".]
OS X Lion is an impressive deal – a “full” operating system update for £20, on all Apple computers you own, is a welcome approach considering the expensive upgrade offerings by Microsoft, and even Apple in the past. The process was simple, did not involve physical media, and thankfully did not require the use of a recent backup. In all, it was cheap, painless, and about time someone turned such an upgrade into something even average users can do without phoning their “IT friend” for help.
I am not going to sit here reviewing it in depth though – you can find endless blogs of reviews, some in a lot more depth and quality of writing than I can hope to do. Instead I am going to list the current teething problems, at least on my machine.
Importantly though, these are early days. Every OS upgrade gets their fair share of problems, however big or small. No one is perfect, especially when deadlines are in place, so take these with a pinch of salt. This list might be of interest to anyone who is thinking of upgrading, and even then, these issues might be related to a certain device, or model of the device. I will also edit this list and add more teething bugs/gripes as time goes on (and cross out any which have been solved).
Also of note is that this isn’t a case where I may have different brands of hardware that are perhaps less supported than others, which is an excuse Microsoft, and Linux can usually get away with – Apple pick their hardware, and develop the OS for that hardware only. I haven’t modified the hardware of this Macbook at all.
The device is, an early 2011 Macbook pro 17″. Also these are problems that seem to happen on Lion, and not on Snow Leopard.
Bugs
- Using an external monitor, the Macbook often confuses which is the primary monitor on wake up. It sorts itself out very quickly, but any windows end up resized to that of the smaller resolution external monitor.
- Performance on the external monitor seems to slow down after hours of use – solved by sleeping and waking the Macbook. Oddly the same applications when moved to the Macbook’s monitor seem to run fine in this case.
- Finder also seems to slow down after use, when using a samba share for hours. This is causing Komodo Edit to have to wait even up to a minute before I can even more a cursor around the text file. Again, seems to be solved by sleeping/waking the Macbook.
- Apple Magic Mouse sometimes ‘sticks’ – the cursor moves smoothly, but it seems to (rarely) forget that I released click, or am not touching the surface of the mouse. Yes, I have been VERY careful. It isn’t so much an unintended scroll, but I have had applications shrink to a tiny square just by moving the mouse upwards.
- Design – minimise, maximise, and close appear smaller, yet seemingly for no real purpose other than to be smaller. It has not freed up room for any other functionality.
- Design – grey? For a company that releases displays capable of incredible colour ranges, Lion seems to have been dulled down. I do miss the older themes.
- Usability gripe – double-finger swiping left does not cause the browser to go back a page, but instead goes to the virtual desktop to the left, or the dashboard if on the first virtual desktop. In fairness, this is likely a setting somewhere, or hopefully will be, meaning this gripe is just laziness on my part. personally I am undecided whether I prefer the virtual desktop switching in this way, or whether I would rather keep the browser back and forth swipe.