Lion?

[BarbaRosa]

I've put off installing Lion (from Snow Leopard) because until recently I've been on dial-up modem, and read that Lion doesn't support the Apple modem. So, now we're updated to cable internet, wireless router and relatively fast internets.

My question, is Lion inevitable, leading to Mountain Lion; worth it anyway; or wait until Mountain Lion?

I'm not a power user by any means, surfing, word processing, drafting, spread sheets, music, all in limited amounts.

thanks

[NV Whino]

1. It's cheap enough.

I say go ahead. Be sure and check out that the rest of your software is compatible. Word will need an upgrade, or switch to Pages. If you use adobe Suite, you will need CS6. There may be others. Just Google Lion compatibility.

[onehandle]

2. Mountain Lion will likely be announced in June and ship by July.

I'd wait.

[winstars]

3. Snow Leopard is perfectly fine. I have Lion and had to do upgrades...

for Office and several other apps I have. I bought a new MBP so it came with Lion, so I had no choice. But, for whatever Lion gives me, I would have stuck with SL and saved some dough given the choice. If I had still had SL, the soon to come Mountain Lion would need to be something special to upgrade, IMHO...

[GoneOffShore]

4. Lion does not have Rosetta Stone.

So if you have any legacy apps that use it - Appleworks springs to mind.
So be careful.

[klook]

5. You should be fine with Snow Leopard.

I installed Lion and have lived to regret it. I'm OK at this point, but it was a bit traumatic at first.

Like a dope, I didn't do any reading about compatibility of applications and devices before upgrading. I just decided one day, "Well, Lion's been out for a while, and it's not expensive, so why not install it and be current with my OS?" Big mistake! I lost access to Photoshop CS2, MS Office 2004, and a couple of lesser applications -- only the newer versions of those work with Lion!! Arggh!!!

And, even worse, my Logitech trackball quit working, so I was forced to go back to the piece-o'-crap Apple "Magic" Mouse, which in my experience constantly lost Bluetooth connectivity and needed fresh batteries every day to be even somewhat reliable. I finally broke down and got a Bamboo Capture, which I like a lot -- although I wasn't thrilled about being forced into it. (Again, my fault for not investigating, but it's always a frustrating experience for the user.)

Instead of MS Office I'm now using Open Office, which works great, is free, and is totally compatible with MS Office as near as I can tell. For images I'm using both Pixelmator (only $30 and a very good alternative to PS) and Photoshop Elements (got a free copy of that with the Bamboo tablet). PS Elements 8 includes everything I was using in CS2 anyway (comes with Adobe Bridge also), so I'm once again a happy camper.

And I've learned my lesson about verifying compatibility with favorite apps before upgrading the OS!!

[rocktivity]

6. I did my homework as to which of my Snow Leopard applications were compatible

Last edited Sat Jun 2, 2012, 11:40 AM - Edit history (1)

before using Time Machine to transition to my late-model Mac Mini. I was particularly happy about not needing to replace my Fetch FTP program or my favorite FLV player. My Logitech USB optical mouse works works fine, too -- maybe you need to download a driver.

I had to say goodbye to my HTML/raw text editor, but I found free substitutes. I tried Libre Office, which I'm keeping because it has an Access-compatible database program. But since it doesn't have an email program and I don't like Apple Mail, I got an OEM copy of Microsoft Office 2011. The only mistake I made was not saving my Microsoft Office Outlook e-mails first!


rocktivity