[Macworld]

Post your comments for Apple readies Mac OS X Mountain Lion update for summer release here

[mwreader]

I'm not sure this is a good thing. OS X only gets stable after about 3 or 4 releases and now that's about the time to upgrade so we can start over again? And what about Server? I don't like the idea of introducing instablity into something in production just after it becomes a solid product. Of course, no one is forcing us to upgrade but I think it's setting some type of presendent.

[rdonson]

For those of us on Snow Leopard will we have to upgrade to Lion first then Mountain Lion or can we upgrade from Snow Leopard directly to Mountain Lion?

[kmfyi]

If you upgrade to Lion now, will you have to pay for the Mountain Lion upgrade?

[spiderbat]

When Lion was released, for the first time in 26 years I decided not to install an Apple OS on computers that might support it very well. The changes in Lion underline the fact that Apple computers (I guess in the near future we will not be even allowed to call them "computers") are for those who want to access content created by others, not for those who create that content, let alone those fools who would like to use a Mac for indulging in such perverse activities as scientific research.

This is my humble opinion, but there are things in the Lion's interface that are definitely wrong from an ergonomic point of view. For instance:

- every computer display now has color. The colored icons in the Finder of Snow Leopard and previous incarnations of Apple's OS were far easier to distinguish than the grey ones of Lion.

- yesterday a colleague of mine, who works with a new Mac that came with Lion installed, was complaining that he couln't see the items in the "Favorites" section of the Finder sidebar. After same testing and cursing, I realized that if I hovered with the mouse over the category name, a faint "show/hide" button appeared on its right. In previous versions a "disclosure triangle" was always visible.
Hiding a functional button is one of the thing that were deprecated in all those "Human interface guidelines" Apple has been so fond to issue to developers for many years.

Philip K. Dick, the visionary SF author, imagined in his novel "The Zap Gun" a future where weapons were developed by fashion creators: we didn't reach yet this stage, but Lion's interface seems to stem rather from a fashion atelier than from the study of ergonomy-concerned sw engineers.

Let's see wheter Mountain Lion will correct any of these blunders, otherwise... I'm far too old, but I'd be very happy to open my garage to any small group of people desiring to plan a new form of computer...

[spiderbat]

Meanwhile, I found another "feature" of Lion that seems to me completely ill-conceived. The data for 802.1X network authentication cannot be set anymore through the standard UI: a "profile" document must be created. There is, AFAIK, just an application for this purpose, the "iPhone configuration utility", that can create user-specific configuration documents only. Owners of Lion Server can use a more powerful app for this purpose.
The practical meaning of this change, at least for someone like me, who must guess the proper configuration for the networks [s]he must use at work from low-quality documents written for other operating systems (some of them, IMHO, just OS-wannabes), is the need to undergo a convoluted process just to test any change. Supporting profiles and the ability of creating them from the actual configuration is/would be a good move, but eliminating the interface to configure the authentication directly is a nonsensic aggravation for the user. The only rationale I can find in this choice is considering that Macintosh users are morons that must be taken away from any not-so-trivial activity.

This post has been edited by spiderbat: 28 March 2012 - 02:34 PM

[Xenotar7]

This just means it's time to give Lion a try. Then, when Mountain Lion comes out this summer we can listen to the "they moved my cheese" k'vetching for another nine months before trying that. Who are these people who feel the need to plunk a major OS upgrade on their machine as soon as it comes out? (iBooks author aside) Well, thank you, whoever you are. I learn a lot from the bitching and moaning and by the time I do my upgrades it's a non-event. Hard-won experience from 20 years in Microsoft land...

[jescott418]

My own feeling about Mountain Lion is that Apple keeps dumbing down OS X for our own protection. It started when Lion started to hide the user Library and stopped defaulting your main drive icon on the desktop. Anymore I think Apple just changes things so that they have something to sell us on to get us to upgrade. I am beginning to question this annual upgrade of OS X. I use my older Macbook with Snow Leopard then my new Macbook Pro. Just because I like SL much better. I only wished I had bought a new Macbook Pro before Lion was pre installed on them.

[spiderbat]

At this point, it would be better to call it "iOS X".