OSX Lion is here... and it's very nice.

[Omaroo]

Wow

Downloaded all 3.74Gb overnight and installed this morning. A flawless install on two my machines. I saved the installer app on my TimeMachine drive and cut a bootable DVD.

Very cool indeed. "Natural" scrolling is a bit different though... you swipe up to go down. Your gesture direction is in relation to the content, rather than the scroll bar. It's a bit weird at first after decades of doing it the old way, but given that it's now similar in behaviour to the iPad/Phone scrolling I'll persist and get used to it.

Love the Launchpad, still trying to find how to move applications from one desktop to another like you did in Spaces. Three-finger swiping between desktops is fabulous though. The new Mail app is outrageously better.

Golly - it's a whole new world. There are so MANY improvements and new ideas it's mind-boggling! There goes the afternoon...

[DavidTrap]

Good to hear Chris.

What do you think it will be like on slightly older machines?

DT

[Omaroo]

There is a lower limit on which it will install David - and that's Intel Core2 Duo.

This is a guide:



Worth it? For thirty bucks (as long as you're already on Snow Leopard) you bet it is. For such a comprehensive overhaul and feature upgrade of an O/S, this is truly incredible pricing. Microsoft charges WAY too much for 7.

[renormalised]

Good.....been looking forward to its release. Will definitely be on my next "to do" list to upgrade.

[Steffen]

I love it! Also, everything I need to work still works, the only thing that broke was the TimeMachine store on my Synology NAS. This is a known issue awaiting a fix from Synology.

However, the real question is of course: what's that galaxy in the standard Lion wallpaper? EDIT: D'oh! The image file name is "Andromeda Galaxy", may that's a hint…? ;)

And the second next burning question: when will SkySafari come out for the Mac…?

Cheers
Steffen.

[Omaroo]

I'm beta-testing it right now.... :D and it's lookin' good so far. :thumbsup:

[Octane]

I wonder if the galaxy image is a modified version of Gendler's?

H

[Omaroo]

Nothing like a nice new clean desktop.

Lion in all its glory. :D

[multiweb]

Will download it on my boy's laptop tonight. What about Apps, programs? Does a new OS update level all this? Need to backup/reinstall? Or just install new OS and it works transparently?

[Omaroo]

It left my apps and data completely dry Marc. Seamless. Just install :)

What sort of laptop is your son's? Is it at least a Core2 Duo?

[Omaroo]

Golly - I'm liking the new TrackPad with this. Safari's ability to quickly go back and forth between pages with a simple two-finger left (back) and right (forward) horizontal swipe is wonderful.

Only another 239 new features left to discover...

[multiweb]

It's a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB RAM (DDR3). It's running MAC OS X 10.6.6 which I assume is snow leopard.

[Steffen]

Apple recommend upgrading to 10.6.8 first. And yes, I'd always do a backup before any upgrade.

Cheers
Steffen.

[wysiwyg]

Well I took the plunge and got the OSX Lion app.
Cannot believe an operating system costs $32, windows should learn something from this.

I'm a big mac fan!
I'm sitting at work and I remotely logged into my mac and bought the OSX Lion app, it downloaded in about 30 minutes and now I am installing it while I am at work using my iphone.......Try doing that with a windows machine!

So by the time I get home it will be ready for me to have a play. Looking forward to the new features and I can finally make use of my track pad which I have not used since I bought it.

Thumbs up to apple :thumbsup:

[Omaroo]

Yes - upgrade to 10.6.8 first.



Sorry - yes as well. I keep forgetting, and I take it for granted that I run a 2TB TimeMachine. Back up first - even if it's just your data.

[Omaroo]

:) I did the same, but from bed using my iPad over a wifi LogMeIn Ignition session. That's the beauty of the Mac OSX/iOS environment - it's totally homogenous. Windows? I don't see it ever being as slick in this regard.

[multiweb]

I use SuperDuper for backups to an external USB drive. What do you guys use?

[kustard]

I'm currently downloading Lion and have done a Time Machine backup and am also doing a user folder backup to another USB drive (just a straight forward copy) as well.

Chris, does Lion allow you to make bootable DVD before it installs or does it just install directly after downloading?

[Octane]

Make sure you make a copy of the installer download.

My understanding is that as soon as you install, the installer is wiped.

H

[Omaroo]

Yes Simon. It.s easy, and documented all over the net. After downloading, kill the installer. Copy the installer app from your Applications folder and store it somewhere like a folder on your TimeMachine.

You open the installer package contents (right-click on the installer app) and burrow down to SharedSupport, in which you'll find InstallESD.dmg. Drag that file to DiskUtility and burn yourself an installer DVD.

Then, fire up the installer again and install.

[kustard]

Thanks Humayun and Chris, download has just finished (was very quick indeed) and am in the process of backing up the installer and making a dvd copy.

[kustard]

Yeah this scroll wheel reversal is initially strange but over all I likey!

[Octane]

Enjoy, mate.

The one thing I am missing is being able to use three fingers to swipe up and down on the trackpad to get to the top or bottom of a page. Also, swiping left and right in Firefox to move back and forward between pages. Hrm.

H

[Omaroo]

Two-finger left/right swipe in the new Safari (what you still using Firefox for? Yuk! :) ) works an absolute treat. Beautiful!

[Omaroo]

I'm already used to it now after only a day. It does feel more natural on the Magic Track Pad.

I utterly love AirDrop. How good is that! Two machines, same room, wifi and no setup to swap files. Brilliant.

[Octane]

Hrm, yeah, I'll switch to Safari. But, I don't like how it constantly updates all the pages in your pane of recent sites in the background...

I do really miss the three fingers up/down thingy, though. :(

H

[Omaroo]

Spacebar & shift-spacebar are your friends in Safari.

Also check out the new reading list feature.

[Octane]

Something is really wrong with Lion. My 2011 MacBook Pro's battery has depleted in 2 hours, whereas on Snow Leopard it lasted 7-8 hours.

The fans are also running full-time.

How do I roll back? This is balls.

H

[Octane]

Seems I'm not alone on this issue. Posts are slowly making their way to forums about people having issues with battery depletion on MacBook Pro's. MacBook Air's are fine, though.

I had nothing except Safari running IceInSpace and a photography discussion forum.

Not happy at all.

H

[Steffen]

It's probably still busy reindexing the hard disk. Check whether mds or mdworker are the top CPU consuming processes. This will stop eventually.

If it doesn't the system management controller (which controls power management, fans, etc) may need to be reset (http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964) to defaults.

Cheers
Steffen.

[Octane]

Thanks, Steffen.

Earlier this morning, I did see a little dot pulsating in the magnifying glass for Spotlight in the top right-hand corner. When I clicked, it did say it was indexing and that it would take 8 hours or so to do. The dot is no longer there so I just assumed it had finished.

I've closed it now as I'm in bed and it ran out of power. On the iPhone now. Will have a look in the morning.

Thinking about it now, it makes sense why the Air's aren't having the same initial issue -- solid state disk!

Thanks so much for the suggestion. I didn't think Apple would put out a dodgy OS. :)

H

[gbeal]

Stumbled onto this and am keen to get it going.
Being an app, does this mean I can install it on my MacBook Air, as well as my iMac desktop, or do I buy two "licenses"?
I had a similar question with FaceTime, I have it on the iMac, but can't find how/where to grab it for the MacBook Air. It's the bee's knees on the iPhone.
Gary

[Omaroo]

Hi Gary - long time no speak! :)

Once license does your entire household. You download once, copy and store the installer located in the applications folder somewhere after quitting it as it automatically starts. It's 3.7Gb. From there, either copy it to the second machine's applications folder as well. Fire it up on both and go have a coffee.

FaceTime is included in the install - or at least it was on mine.



LOL :) That's not like you! Yes, it sat there for a few hours indexing my 800Gb-worth of data on my machine. All good now I take it?

[gbeal]

Hi Chris,
yes a while between drinks. I'm about, just a tad quieter, if that is possible.
Hatching a plan as we speak. Looking good though.
Gary

[Octane]

I think I've found my problem.

I ran top in a terminal and found a process running at 99%+ all the time.

AGAdminService.

This service is the Citrix Access Gateway service. I use Citrix to log in to work remotely. For the time being, I think I will need to scrap it. :)

ETA: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3191543?start=0&tstart=0

H

[troypiggo]

Looks like the Lion's teeth are still a bit too sharp for me at this stage.

Oh, ahahaha. See what I did there? Hahah. Haha. Ha.... oh, never mind... :sadeyes:

[Steffen]

Good find! I'm using Citrix as well to work from remote, but I only ever install the clients, not the admin stuff.

Cheers
Steffen.

[wysiwyg]

Even though the installation process went smoothly, regretfully I had roll back to SL OSX. :(

I have quite a collection of software on my iMac and so far only 40% of it has worked with Lion, the rest bring up a plethora of error messages.
(Thank GOD for Time Machine!)

Don't get me wrong I like the new features, but at this point they are useless if I cannot use them.

Will wait until the rest of the software development world has cought up with Lion OSX.

I have however installed a fresh install of Lion on a new partition, this way I can do my own testing and eventually switch over.

Cheers
Mark

[gbeal]

Even a technophobe like me was able to make it work, crikey it is different though, I keep rolling the wrong way with the wireless mouse, just something I'll get used to.
Gary

[troypiggo]

I was just reading post on POTN that it doesn't work with Adobe products - Photoshop, Premier, Lightroom, Acrobat? Hope you guys are getting PS working?

http://www.neowin.net/news/os-x-lion-breaks-adobe-products-including-photoshop-flash

[Octane]

Gary,

You can enable non-natural/traditional scrolling in the trackpad settings in preferences.

Troy,

You're right; it says it wants some Java stuff before Photoshop will work.

Will look into it at home.

H

[kustard]

Hey Humayun, I found that I need to do a four finger swipe to do the top/bottom of page shortcut (this is in firefox (yes yes, one day I might change to safari but I've decided to be a stick in the mud hehe)).

I grabbed a 2TB external drive and am now using it as my Time Machine drive so that I can keep my other TM drive as a Snow Leopard backup just in case.

Grabbed a trackpad whilst I was at Dick Smith's and it's pretty cool to use it along with my mouse though I'm running out of desk real estate hehe.

[Octane]

Hey, Simon. I'll try the swipe out.

I was close to getting a trackpad today but grabbed a Magic Mouse and remote instead. :)

H

[Omaroo]

Actually Gary - give it a go for a while. I'm completely used to it now after a few hours with it. It really does wok like an iOS device in this regard, and that isn't all bad! :) Think that you're flicking the screen object the way you want it to go, and it makes sense.

[Octane]

Simon,

The four finger thing doesn't work! Four fingers up brings up Mission Control. :~(

H

[kustard]

:(

Weirdness, the three-finger swipe up brings up Mission Control for me, and down brings up Expose... Maybe it's a difference in the Magic Trackpad and the Macbook?

[Octane]

You can set those things in the trackpad preferences. I even tried setting Mission Control to three fingers and tried using four fingers in Firefox. No dice.

Never to mind -- as the scrolling is now directly proportional to how much force you apply in the actual flick, it's a matter of aggresively flicking to get to the top/bottom of the page.

I'm more concerned about getting Photoshop up and running now. :)

H

[Omaroo]

What's wrong with Photoshop Humayun? Mine (CS4) works fine... :question:

In fact, my entire CS4 suite works perfectly.



This inertial flick control has been in effect for ages on Leopard... you've never used it?

[Octane]

Oops. Maybe it's just more noticeable now? I don't know. :)

Umm, Photoshop is complaining about requiring a JRE.

Where can I get an OS X compatible one?

H

[gbeal]

H, I got a note to say it needed some Java stuff, which I agreed to, my CS4 works OK.
Chris, biggest "difference" apart from Mail is the lack of Spaces. I used to have Spaces with four windows to have about 4 programs open. Now I end up using Command/Tab to go between Mail/Safari/Skype etc. Or do I have this wrong?
Gary

[Omaroo]

Like Gary, mine asked wether I want to install the new JRE as part of the install process. Go here: http://support.apple.com/downloads/

Four up from the bottom: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1421

[Omaroo]

Ctrl-Left & Right arrows Gary - same as before. :thumbsup:

[Octane]

Thanks, mate. :)

I'm home now. Just having some dinner -- will have a crack afterwards.

H

[gbeal]

Not with mine, maybe I set it up differently, but it was Command/Apple left/right/up/down.
May have to set it up again, I miss it.
Gary

[gbeal]

Well, it has been a few days since I opted into Lion, and the warm and fuzzy isn't really there. Some of the features are nice, none are that nice though, sorry guys. And this is from a self-confessed MacFreak too.
If I was honest, the biggest gripe is the loss of my old Word/Excel/PP. I have had to revert to Pages/Numbers/Keynote, and some of the files I have don't open "nicely". If that isn't enough, now my old version of VM Ware won't start, it is 32bit, and won't run on Lion. I wish I'd looked a bit more when the euphoria was setting in.
No matter, I can always "go back".
Gary

[Omaroo]

It's OK to have a grizzle once in a while Gary. :)

Remember - it's still considered a "heavy" update, not a new system. It's not the same as upgrading from XP to Win 7 for example, where the base technology has gone through a complete overhaul. For an update, OSX 10.7 it is spectacular. I'm still loving it. The email system is so superior to the old, which is what I use in business all day. Fantastic. I'm really into the gesturing now too - it's sped up my experience no end. On the subject of autosaving - I also love being able to shut down and restart an app back to its exact state when I left it. I can't wait to see how it will integrate with iOS 5 in a few weeks. After a few days I'm already so used to "natural" scrolling, that I'm thinking it should have been this way in the first place - but then again we didn't have trackpads and iOS back then. I have my head around the notion that a flick of a finger is relative to the content, not the screen boundaries.

Auto-saving full-screen documents in Pages and Numbers is great - and I don't, won't and never will entertain using Word or Excel. I converted years ago and will never go back, but that's me. The simple creativity that Pages gives you is so superior to Word it's ridiculous. I somehow think that Microsoft will come to your rescue...maybe.... or not. Hmm... tough one.

VMware? Mine's good - but I installed 64-bit when I did. PM TrevorG, he'll help out.:thumbsup:

I think that so much is under the hood, so to speak, that you'll only slowly find features that make you just sit there and go "hey... that's great".

[gbeal]

Grizzle over Chris. I actually like it, and have managed to revert Mail to "Classic" and will try both, settle on the way I like it.
Scrolling etc is OK, it is just the VM Ware headache, so I'll dig out Trev and see.
Cheers
Gary

[Octane]

Hrm, must get VMware Fusion for my little MacBook Pro!

H

[gbeal]

Well H, make sure it is V3, as the V2.something we have is 32bit only.
Gary

[Omaroo]

Ah! You didn't mention that it was the old V2 before...