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OS X Lion: Apple’s Vista moment

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Re: OS X Lion: Apple’s Vista moment

#131

Post by runjake »

rbanffy wrote: post #34

Has this guy ever used Windows Vista?! I agree Lion is a bit underwhelming, but that's nowhere near the disappointment (Microsoft did promise a lot at PDC 2003) users had when Vista actually showed up years after schedule, bloated, slow and ugly. BTW, his crashes may be hardware (memory) related. I'd advise him to run memtest or to take his Mac to the nearest Apple store to have it checked.

Out of curiosity, why was Vista such a big disappointment?

It was years after schedule, there were broken promises (which end users weren't aware of) and ugly is subjective, but I never found it to be slow.

Windows 7 only seems slightly faster than Vista, but is much, much faster (both in GUI responsiveness and disk/network IO) than Snow Leopard and Lion on the same hardware.

It seems like more than actual disappointment in Vista, people didn't really see a pressing need to upgrade to Vista, as XP, with all its warts, worked fine for their purposes.

Re: OS X Lion: Apple’s Vista moment

#132

Post by calloc »

I've been using Mac OS X Lion as my main development machine for the last month or two, and it is absolutely fantastic. I have had none of the issues he mentioned. Mail has been faster than ever, I don't have random windows closing (when in full screen) and when I drag and drop to Safari there is no issue what so ever.

Do I like the new Mission Control UI over Spaces? No. That, and multi-monitor support being particularly broken makes me sad, but I have learned to live with it for now.

I have no idea why this guy is seeing all of the issues he is seeing. I didn't do a clean install either, so far my files have come from:

10.2 -> 10.3 (PPC) -> 10.4 (Intel, used migration tool) -> 10.5 -> 10.6 -> 10.7.

Without any major issues.

Re: OS X Lion: Apple’s Vista moment

#133

Post by rbanffy »

runjake wrote: post #131
rbanffy wrote: post #34

Has this guy ever used Windows Vista?! I agree Lion is a bit underwhelming, but that's nowhere near the disappointment (Microsoft did promise a lot at PDC 2003) users had when Vista actually showed up years after schedule, bloated, slow and ugly. BTW, his crashes may be hardware (memory) related. I'd advise him to run memtest or to take his Mac to the nearest Apple store to have it checked.

Out of curiosity, why was Vista such a big disappointment? It was years after schedule, there were broken promises (which end users weren't aware of) and ugly is subjective, but I never found it to be slow. Windows 7 only seems slightly faster than Vista, but is much, much faster (both in GUI responsiveness and disk/network IO) than Snow Leopard and Lion on the same hardware. It seems like more than actual disappoint…

It was disappointing for me because of the broken promises - the PDC 2003 video shows a very impressive GUI with skillful use of animation. WinFS would also offer vastly improved file management. Finally, being heavily based on managed code would make it both more secure and easier to develop for. But I agree most prospective Vista users were not aware of any of this. I, however, was.

FOr most users, the disappointment came from the "Vista Ready" sticker on computers that could run XP very well, but were barely capable of running Vista at acceptable speed and the Aero look.

Re: OS X Lion: Apple’s Vista moment

#134

Post by runjake »

rbanffy wrote: post #133
runjake wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, why was Vista such a big disappointment? It was years after schedule, there were broken promises (which end users weren't aware of) and ugly is subjective, but I never found it to be slow. Windows 7 only seems slightly faster than Vista, but is much, much faster (both in GUI responsiveness and disk/network IO) than Snow Leopard and Lion on the same hardware. It seems like more than actual disappoint…

It was disappointing for me because of the broken promises - the PDC 2003 video shows a very impressive GUI with skillful use of animation. WinFS would also offer vastly improved file management. Finally, being heavily based on managed code would make it both more secure and easier to develop for. But I agree most prospective Vista users were not aware of any of this. I, however, was. FOr most users, the disappointme…

Ah yes, now I remember the Vista Ready fiasco. That was a pretty big mistake on Microsoft's part.

Re: OS X Lion: Apple’s Vista moment

#135

Post by tptacek »

KirinDave wrote: post #113
ephelon wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that you rolled that rug up and threw it away to make space for the new and shiny rug. Too bad the new rug still has some moths.

I do not like this metaphor.

Ok, how about, you built a porch, and you liked the porch, but then bees built a hive on it, and you're scared of bees, and before you were able to eradicate the bees they created a new version of your operating system that had behaviors you didn't like.

Re: OS X Lion: Apple’s Vista moment

#137

Post by rayiner »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #6

I upgraded my Macbook from Snow Leopard to Lion, then gave it to the girlfriend. She'd never used a Mac before. She didn't even notice that the scrolling was the opposite way round to other devices. Not until I pointed it out to her after she'd been using it for a while. I now use a Lenovo Thinkpad T420 with Ubuntu instead. It's come a hell of a long way over the past few years.

How's the battery life as compared to Windows?

Re: OS X Lion: Apple’s Vista moment

#138

Post by dgallagher »

commandar wrote: post #48
dgallagher wrote: post #31

When 10.5.0 Leopard came out an replaced 10.4.x Tiger, it was quite buggy until around 10.5.3. Aside from Snow Leopard which was a special case, new OS X releases are typically buggy for the first few months. Vista was a dog because it was slow, resource intensive, and Microsoft never issued any updates to fix it. The only thing I thought was a bad idea in Lion was Time Machine snapshotting your local HD every hour,…

>Vista was a dog because it was slow, resource intensive, and Microsoft never issued any updates to fix it. That's somewhat disingenuous. RTM Vista and Vista today are hardly the same thing, and Microsoft was pushing out updates to fix updates within the first couple of months it was on the market. The infamous slow file copy bug being a great example of this: http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2007/04/17/222983/…

You're correct; they did patch and update it to fix various issues. They didn't abandon it or anything.

The thing which bugged me the most about Vista was that it was slower than XP. Significantly. And for no apparently good reason. From a user perspective, it did mostly the same stuff, but required so much more resources in terms of CPU, RAM, and GPU. Going from Win 98SE to XP wasn't like that at all. XP did need more RAM, but it ran faster and was less buggy. Apps and games ran on it fine.

IT shops I worked at avoided Vista like the plague, and so did many businesses. The general consensus was that it was slow, something I and many fellow IT workers experienced whenever we used it. All of us waited for SP1, and when it came and did really nothing, everyone basically went "Well, XP until Windows 7 comes out!".

Plus its UI was annoying. "You just told me to do something. Are you sure you want me to do what you just told me to?" YES/NO dialog boxes everywhere. Great for someone whose never used a PC before. Terrible for anyone who has more than a year's experience. UAC was a mess. Yes, you could fix most of that by tweaking the OS, but there was no way to get your settings to easily follow you around PC-to-PC outside of roaming profiles via Active Directory. The default out-of-the-box experience was terrible compared to XP.

Microsoft never issued a patch to fix any of that. They can't; once they ship an OS they sign an unwritten agreement with IT shops and developers saying "this is the standard until Windows 7 comes out". That's a good stance to take sometimes, but not if your root standard is terrible.

The OS should have been delayed another year before release to make it good, but they didn't do that. It's hard to convince IT shops to renew their expensive MVL OS-upgrade contracts if it's been 5 years since the last OS release.

Re: OS X Lion: Apple’s Vista moment

#139

Post by KirinDave »

tptacek wrote: post #135
KirinDave wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not like this metaphor.

Ok, how about, you built a porch, and you liked the porch, but then bees built a hive on it, and you're scared of bees, and before you were able to eradicate the bees they created a new version of your operating system that had behaviors you didn't like.

Much better.

Re: OS X Lion: Apple’s Vista moment

#140

Post by dasil003 »

llambda wrote: post #59
yogsototh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an iMac from 2007. And after upgrading I experienced most of these issues. Even thought I love most of new Lion features. I am happy to know, it works fine for most people. May I try to make a clean install. But if it doesn't work better, I'll have to downgrade. I don't think I have a "strange" configuration. I don't remind playing with the kernel or using very specific configuration.

Try a clean install. As always, this is the preferred method for upgrading. (This is because there can be user-installed software that had explicit dependencies on the older environment.)

And just FYI, to do a clean install with only one download of Lion you need to burn a disk or create a USB stick before you install it because it deletes the installer.

See http://lifehacker.com/5823096/how-to-burn-your-own-lion-inst...

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