[MattWallace]

Ok, I need a real onscreen keyboard like windows 7. Microsoft has word prediction. Apple's is broken, the window shrinks randomly. Pisses me off, I've got no response from Apple on issue.

[Kenoodle]

In the US, the flight from cities to rural communities continues to rise, fueled by retiring baby boomers. There are joining millions of rural Americans who are not serviced by broadband, cable or Wi-Fi. Unless state or national policies address that issue, the US angle of decline will increase.

[whitedog]

Kenoodle, on 03 April 2012 - 06:25 AM, said:

In the US, the flight from cities to rural communities continues to rise, fueled by retiring baby boomers. There are joining millions of rural Americans who are not serviced by broadband, cable or Wi-Fi. Unless state or national policies address that issue, the US angle of decline will increase.

Given the current political climate in this country, action by any government is unlikely in this regard. However, if rural populations are indeed growing, the infrastructure to support them will follow eventually. It may take some time because capital investment is still constipated by recession related anxieties - and the fractious political climate. It's a vicious cycle. Sooner or later, though, market forces will push rural broadband improvements; development money will follow the people because the people will have money. It's a simple equation, however distorted it may occasionally be by secondary influences.

As for decline in the US, it, too, is a cyclical thing, a pattern that has repeated itself at least twice before in my lifetime (over 65 years). When one is close to it the problems seem portentous. Time should lend perspective, though few people seem to take the lessons of history seriously, not even their own history. As a result, they make the same mistakes again and again. This is not a uniquely American thing. It's human nature to be shortsighted. It must be a survival trait of some kind: If people were intimidated by the past they might not take risks in the future - and risk is a vital part of progress of any kind, good or bad. This is a serious problem in China (our chief economic rival right now) where fear of past chaos informs every government policy. More potent even than that fear is the bureaucratic inertia that infects every over managed economy. That's not to say China isn't doing some things right. Nevertheless, their potential has its own built in limits.

The threat of Chinese economic success will, sooner or later, spur development in the United States, just as fear of Russia pushed US technical and economic innovation in the middle of the last century, and the threat of the Japanese economic juggernaut stimulated change in US industry some thirty years ago. The process is not painless nor is it neat, but it is inexorable.

[nkmckeown]

I've been using Macs since '84. I did not start using them because I was a frightened technophobe (currently 45 yrs amateur radio with an Amateur Extra class license - old style!). I wanted something easy and intuitive for me and my employees to use to work with minimal training for all purposes. Apart from the lack of software (cpm, believe it or not) and insufficient RAM I could not have been happier. Same for the employees. They didn't like taking a 3 day course to run an IBM mag card typewriter or a "crippled computer" from XEROX and others.

There have been a few other less than sterling OSs from APPLE, but eventually they got the bugs out, preserved an extraordinary degree of backward software compatibility (versus industry norms), and I hope/expect the same will prove true here.

No, I am not 100% satisfied with Lion, and we shall see about Mountain Lion. Currently I am using 3 Lion boxes at work, including a Mini Server and my own MacBook Pro to experience the glitches before turning things over to the support staff and other attorneys (who are using Snow Leopard), and some die hard Windows types I am gradually converting - sort of; because there are still Windows only applications we MUST use1 Thank you Parallels.

With a business on the line I can't simply make the jump to a very new OS without some serious beta testing.

Yes, I have an iPhone 4 (wish I had SIRI to play with) and there still exist some SERIOUS cross-platform calendar issues to deal with since it is not simply a matter of publishing MY calendar, and making it available to smart phones, it also involves having my calendar accessible and capable of being modified by me, my legal assistant, and our office receptionist. Other office attorneys have the same need. Accessing each other's calendar to schedule joint meetings is also a requirement. I am quite certain that many other businesses share this problem.

Unless I have received inaccurate information from my Apple Store, and others, iCal does not handle this requirement. I believe Lion's iCal is supposed to do so, but what happens in Mountain Lion? How do I deal with cross platform requirements? Heaven forbid, but one of my partners even uses an Android smart phone and has 1.5 years to run on his contract.

In a business environment, even a very small one like my office, there are a number of questions lacking answers that will delay my ability to upgrade fully to Lion or Mountain Lion. I'm not throwing rocks here, just presenting the point of view of a small business owner.

At home I am working with Lion 10.7.3 and using Parallels with XP-Pro to "play" with a software defined amateur radio box that I acquired from a company in Texas. Seems to be working very well. I'm hoping the Texas company decides to support Thunderbolt in the future and not just Firewire 2. Could be fun and open up some significant possibilities for wireless remote operation :-)

At work I do not enjoy the luxury of playing around. I need to get work out fast and communicate effortlessly with my co-workers!

[DannyAsmus]

11. Allowing PowerPC applications

JDW, on 21 February 2012 - 02:23 PM, said:

Yes, well some of us would prefer these 10 things instead:

1) Safari stops eating up all available RAM! (Still occurs even in 10.7.3.)
2) Safari actually plays Flash videos in their entirety, like Chrome and Firefox, without locking up the browser!
3) Safari allows 1Password to be usable again, like it once was under Snow Leopard.
4) No more unexplained lock-ups and crashes, which never occurred under earlier versions of the OS.
5) The bug-free edition of Preview we had in Snow Leopard returns!
6) Dashboard gets a transparent background by default again, rather than being put in solitary confinement!
7) An end to unexplained hard drive activity that shows up in Activity Monitor but cannot be traced.
8) Resurrection of Rosetta.
9) No more waiting in excess of 10 seconds for a stinking save dialog box to appear when all you did was click the close box on an unsaved TextEdit document! For crying out loud!
10) An end to fears that Apple will lock down the Mac like it has done with iOS.

[Gabriel465]

Will a 2008 model iMac duo core with 6gb ram run lion in order to install mountain lion when it releases? Sorry about the stupid question but another iMac user (new to macs) said it wouldnt. I'm hoping that it can; but even better would be the ability to upgrade from Snow Leopard to Mountian Lion without having to purchase and install Lion, in order to purchase the next. I don't mind paying for my software & operating systems, but forcing users to pay on a seemingly incremental level is a bit, what's the word???? Especially if they are just OSx hopping to get to the latest release. I really like how well Snow Leopard behaves and have been hesitant to install lion after hearing all the bugs. Pretty sure most of the bugs are worked out by now, and the Mountian Lion system seems appealing.

[dpeam]

And still gray and ugly, I see no mention of de-graying it.
iOS belongs on iOS devices, I have yet to see someone with an iMac under their arm and a keyboard on a drum harness.
I quote.
"To all the good people who replied to my original 10-point list by saying that certain things in my list can be remedied, yes, I am fully aware of that. Yes, I have Dashboard working beautifully as it did under Snow Leopard. By my point was it should work that way "by default." In other words, people lesser skilled than I should not be forced to jump through hoops to restore basic "logical" functionality. And why would one even want a transparent background for dashboard? The reasons are many, to be sure, but in my case it all boils down to the calculator. Some may wish to chide me for that, but so be it. When I am using an on-screen calculator, it usually means I am trying to calculate something on screen. And regardless of the arguments that "alternatives are available," I still like the dashboard calculator, albeit when dashboard has a transparent background so I can see what I am calculating!

And to those who say, "I have zero issues in Lion, you therefore must have major hardware or software problems," I reply that all you need do is but take seconds to Google up "OS X Lion problems" and find that I am not the lone soul on this planet with problems, despite the fact there is nothing wrong with my hardware or software configuration. Problems are not always related to a messed up software configuration or bad computer hardware. Some people just have problems that continue even after a freshly formatted hard drive and fresh OS install, which cannot be explained other than to say, "it must be an OS bug."

Why then are you having so few issues? The reasons are too many to give. Your machine may be different than mine. You probably are running a different set of 3rd party software than I am. You may not use all the same Lion features that I am. The list goes on, but the fact remains. And that fact is, I had none of these issues under Snow Leopard, or Leopard before it, or Tiger before it, or Panther before that, or Jaguar before that. Lion causes a lot of problems for a lot of people. And not just in making us "think different" either. There are a number of compatibility issues that remain to this day, even under 10.7.3. If you lack these problems, simply consider yourself blessed. And indeed, I envy you. But for "the rest of us" who do have some or all of the problems I listed, why resist or otherwise try to stifle our cries? Such is not unlike trampling upon the beat-up man at the side of the road rather than being a Good Samaritan to him. Kindness to someone with a problem is much more well received than Condemnation.

Lastly, some here perhaps misunderstood what I wrote about 1Password. Yes, I am aware of the security features of Safari. But that in no way diminishes my desire to see 1Password to become as useful as it once was. More specifically, when I click on a file (say a PDF for example) that is password protected, a little sheet will pull down automatically from the open browser window that requires me to enter my Login and Password. Under OS 10.6 and earlier, 1Password worked beautifully to allow me to enter both pieces of data with a single-click of the 1Password browser icon. But now under Lion that is broken. 1Password is still present in the browser, but it won't enter data automatically into those two fields, in that particular case. (1Password still works well in other cases, but I am not speaking about those.) And so when I want to download protected files via my browser in Lion, I therefore have to open 1Password, and selectively copy/paste the Login and then repeat for the Password, on every site that requires me to enter login data to access protected files. It sort of defeats the purpose of 1Password. I don't like that at all, and it's not the fault of the good people behind 1Password either. I have written about this on the 1Password forums, and they replied to apologetically say it is indeed one of the casualties of the "security enhancements" in Lion. Be that as it may, I would think that the engineers at Apple are smart enough to enhance security while allowing some fundamental conveniences too. I prefer not to have the DHS or the TSA on my Mac, thank you very much, regardless of how dangerous this world may be.

So please be kind to me. I am not trying to rile you good people. I simply have faced a number of undesirable issues in Lion that were never present in my rock solid stable copy of Snow Leopard. I can only hope Mountain Lion is to Lion what Snow Leopard was to all previous versions of the OS -- lots of bug fixes, faster, better."

Well said, Lion, so far, is a bust. The interface is terrible, the menus are all but useless, the same drab gray all over, the so un-useful LaunchPad and Mission control and major networking problems are just a few issues.
I know, some are just as happy as can be, good for them, an iPad is probably all they need for what they do.
I work on my machines, plural, from 10.0 to Lion (lion sits and sits and sits, can't stand it for more than 10 minutes). Reminds me of M$ in all flavors.

Want change that works Apple, quit fixing what isn't broken. Snow Leopard is the best to date, Lion the worst.

[dpeam]

jdemarchi, on 27 February 2012 - 06:08 AM, said:

JDW, on 21 February 2012 - 03:50 PM, said:

To all the good people who replied to my original 10-point list by saying that certain things in my list can be remedied, yes, I am fully aware of that. Yes, I have Dashboard working beautifully as it did under Snow Leopard. By my point was it should work that way "by default." In other words, people lesser skilled than I should not be forced to jump through hoops to restore basic "logical" functionality. And why would one even want a transparent background for dashboard? The reasons are many, to be sure, but in my case it all boils down to the calculator. Some may wish to chide me for that, but so be it. When I am using an on-screen calculator, it usually means I am trying to calculate something on screen. And regardless of the arguments that "alternatives are available," I still like the dashboard calculator, albeit when dashboard has a transparent background so I can see what I am calculating!

And to those who say, "I have zero issues in Lion, you therefore must have major hardware or software problems," I reply that all you need do is but take seconds to Google up "OS X Lion problems" and find that I am not the lone soul on this planet with problems, despite the fact there is nothing wrong with my hardware or software configuration. Problems are not always related to a messed up software configuration or bad computer hardware. Some people just have problems that continue even after a freshly formatted hard drive and fresh OS install, which cannot be explained other than to say, "it must be an OS bug."

Why then are you having so few issues? The reasons are too many to give. Your machine may be different than mine. You probably are running a different set of 3rd party software than I am. You may not use all the same Lion features that I am. The list goes on, but the fact remains. And that fact is, I had none of these issues under Snow Leopard, or Leopard before it, or Tiger before it, or Panther before that, or Jaguar before that. Lion causes a lot of problems for a lot of people. And not just in making us "think different" either. There are a number of compatibility issues that remain to this day, even under 10.7.3. If you lack these problems, simply consider yourself blessed. And indeed, I envy you. But for "the rest of us" who do have some or all of the problems I listed, why resist or otherwise try to stifle our cries? Such is not unlike trampling upon the beat-up man at the side of the road rather than being a Good Samaritan to him. Kindness to someone with a problem is much more well received than Condemnation.

Lastly, some here perhaps misunderstood what I wrote about 1Password. Yes, I am aware of the security features of Safari. But that in no way diminishes my desire to see 1Password to become as useful as it once was. More specifically, when I click on a file (say a PDF for example) that is password protected, a little sheet will pull down automatically from the open browser window that requires me to enter my Login and Password. Under OS 10.6 and earlier, 1Password worked beautifully to allow me to enter both pieces of data with a single-click of the 1Password browser icon. But now under Lion that is broken. 1Password is still present in the browser, but it won't enter data automatically into those two fields, in that particular case. (1Password still works well in other cases, but I am not speaking about those.) And so when I want to download protected files via my browser in Lion, I therefore have to open 1Password, and selectively copy/paste the Login and then repeat for the Password, on every site that requires me to enter login data to access protected files. It sort of defeats the purpose of 1Password. I don't like that at all, and it's not the fault of the good people behind 1Password either. I have written about this on the 1Password forums, and they replied to apologetically say it is indeed one of the casualties of the "security enhancements" in Lion. Be that as it may, I would think that the engineers at Apple are smart enough to enhance security while allowing some fundamental conveniences too. I prefer not to have the DHS or the TSA on my Mac, thank you very much, regardless of how dangerous this world may be.

So please be kind to me. I am not trying to rile you good people. I simply have faced a number of undesirable issues in Lion that were never present in my rock solid stable copy of Snow Leopard. I can only hope Mountain Lion is to Lion what Snow Leopard was to all previous versions of the OS -- lots of bug fixes, faster, better.

Well said indeed.

Not to poke a sleeping dragon, but I think you would have gotten far better reception if your first post was as well crafted as this one. I think you're... excitement... over the issues you've been experiencing got in the way of your message.

I have unfortunately experienced the very same 1Password frustrations. And don't get me started on TextEdit's Save document flaws, which are pretty incomprehensible to me. (It's a simple text editor. C'mon Apple.) But overall, my system has been running pretty steady under Lion. I upgraded, and I freely admit I don't even use many of the new 'Features'. Launchpad, Mission Control, full screen view, etc. – they all seem to be catered towards laptop users. And of course, maybe rightly so, as it still seems to be one of Apple's largest growing consumer groups. I don't find any of these features improve my workflow as a desktop user one bit. Sure I play with them from time to time, but that's it. They are a fun novelty as opposed to a real-timer saver.

By the way, why not go back to Snow Leopard if Lion is proving to be too troublesome? I say that as a legitimate suggestion to improve your daily computing tasks, not to be snarky. I'd hate to have to 'downgrade' after paying for an OS upgrade, but perhaps in your specific hardware/software configuration you'd be better off. At least until you're confident the bugs you're currently experiencing have truly been fixed. The way I see it, losing out on $30 is MUCH better than being frustrated with my computer every day, multiple times a day, for a year or more.

You say 'go back to Snow Leopard' like is was as easy as turning around and walking back out of the door you came in. No so.
If the Mac you have was built for Lion then there is no Going Back, if it was built for SL then yes, it can be done.
Problem is Apple decided to cut all below Lion off at the knees, no iCloud, none.
Other than email, I know I found this the hard way.
Us SL users are orphans, like it or not. Apple is doings its best to force the issue without any regard to those that supported Apple while Apple was in trouble, now that the bank is full, who cares who your friends were.
I will say that Apple sent me two free copies of SL just so I would upgrade to Lion, now I have backup disks.
As for any new Mac hardware I think I have bought my last. iPads or iPhones I have no issue with but since I can no longer sync contacts, calendars and others it is only on those devices will iCloud live.
Sour grapes? I have used Macs since 1989 and have been around a few blocks, I do know what I am saying.
.

[SamsonD]

Is Mountain Lion work on all MacPro computers?

[rickconklin]

My wish is for tagging any file on my Mac. Aperture has a terrific tagging system. I suggest in system preferences OR in a specific app, to turn tagging off or on. If "ON", when I save a file (or re-save before exiting) I can pick from a list of tags I've already set up. Click as many tags as I wish.

I'd probably never set up a sub-folder under documents again. Enhance spotlight to search for one OR MORE tags.

Who wouldn't want that?

Rick Conklin
Wichita, KS

[whitedog]

SamsonD, on 19 June 2012 - 12:54 PM, said:

Is Mountain Lion work on all MacPro computers?

It will not work on Mac Pros made in 2006-7 with model identifier 1,1. Look in About This Mac>More Info...>System Report...>Hardware, the second line on the right to see what your model identifier is. If it's 2,1 or higher it will support Mountain Lion.

This post has been edited by whitedog: 25 June 2012 - 11:21 PM

[DocNo]

rickconklin, on 25 June 2012 - 03:04 PM, said:

My wish is for tagging any file on my Mac. Aperture has a terrific tagging system. I suggest in system preferences OR in a specific app, to turn tagging off or on. If "ON", when I save a file (or re-save before exiting) I can pick from a list of tags I've already set up. Click as many tags as I wish.

I like your ideas, especially integration in the file save dialogs.

In the meantime you can get info on a file and put keywords in the comments. You can search the comments field in the finder, save/open dialogs or set up smart folders to slice and dice your files as you need.

Metadata rocks! Apple is dabbling with the default finder view in Lion - but I heartily agree - system integration for tagging would be awesome.

Followed by third party tools to automatically crawl your file system and tag.... Sigh - we can dream.

[Divebus]

As a Mac convert and evangelist since 1988, Apple is making more and more things I don't want. Give me an option to turn off the idiot lights.

[JonnoTheFusspot]

I'm with you JDW.

I moved to Mac because of Windows Vista - My Snow Leopard MacBook Pro is so good I bought my wife one. Little did I realise that having Lion on it would send her back to Vista days. I never thought I'd see the day when Mac became comparable to a Microsoft product - especially one as sluggish and buggy as Vista! Even opening a small JPG file in Preview take up to 30seconds! My Snow Leopard opens in a second or 2 max.

I worry that now Steve Jobs is no longer with us that Mac is turning into just another buggy computer company more interested in getting things out for profit and not making good quality sturdy reliable products that are worth what we have to pay for them. I hope I'm wrong and this is just a small glitch in the life of Apple.

Jonno