“I suppose this is the sort of uncertain question that many ask in one form or another whenever Apple or Microsoft releases a major OS upgrade,” Gene Steinberg writes for TechNightOwl. “Early so-called ‘version one-point-zero’ bugs appear, one or two quick updates are released, and you have to wonder whether they might have done better to wait rather than rush the product out.”
“With Lion, Apple has changed the mold. Unlike previous versions of OS X, most Mac users are expected to download their copies from the Mac App Store, for $29.99,” Steinberg writes. “But the methodology of delivering Lion isn’t the problem. It’s the persistent bugs reported in the initial 10.7 release that trouble a number of Mac users.”
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Steinberg writes, “First and foremost, I do not regard OS X Lion is necessarily buggier than other OS X upgrades. They all had early-release flaws of one degree or another. It makes sense there will be problems because of all the serious changes in Lion. At the same time, I have little doubt that Apple is going to straighten out the worst ills in the months to come… Despite some of the complaints, I do not see Lion as being necessarily less stable than other versions of OS X. But there’s nothing wrong with waiting out a few maintenance updates before diving on.”
Read much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Aside from some funkiness with artifacts on desktops with dual monitor setups (iMacs), we’ve had smooth sailing with Lion. No issues to report at all with Lion on any of our MacBook Airs or MacBook Pros.
Are you experiencing issues with Lion? If so, please describe them below.
I had a *very* minor issue with items on my desktop not aligning to the grid properly (they were randomly at the very edge of the screen. All I did was undo/redo the “align to grid” setting in the view options. That fixed it.
Lion is perfect in every way so far.
yes. next story.
Lion is cool. No issues here. Most of the stuff that Lion added that I’m not so fond of can be turned off. Rock and roll.
The finder doesn’t update in the new 3 column view listed in a sort order and the mail can’t send issues – all other is great.
No issues with Lion, in my dual-monitor setup. No artifacts.
Bought a ‘maxed-out’ 27″ with SSD and 16GB RAM myself and just finished installing 20 X 27″ iMacs (entry-level) at college!
NOT ONE single issue anywhere, not one dead pixel, no issues with light leak/variation, blemishes on the aluminium, OR any issues with Lion whatsoever!
One beautiful, perfect Mac suite to begin the new academic year! Congratulations Apple – stunning quality control here!
I have all Apple hardware and most of my apps are from the Mac Appstore. Since Lion I had to increase my RAM after receiving too many beach balls. I also notice my wireless Airport taking to time to connect when waking up computer.
I do have some problems with Lion, but they are limited to UI problems.
Desktops: Programs don’t stay on their assigned desktops. Programs that are assigned to one desktop can open windows on other desktops without my consent. “All desktops” behaves like “this desktop.” Sometimes. When I switch desktops, there is a delay before the desktop items appear, and sometimes they don’t appear. These problems didn’t exist in Snow Leopard. (Adobe is the exception, because they never play by the rules.)
Launchpad replaces Shift-Cmd-A with a function key and a different way of displaying the icons, but it is less useful. There are five kinds of programs on my computer. 1) Programs that I always launch directly, such as iCal and Mail. 2) Programs that I always launch by finding and opening a file first, such as Preview. 3) Programs that I launch either way, like Pages and Numbers. 4) Programs that I seldom use, such as uninstallers. 5) Programs that I never launch because they are launched by other programs or because they are part of a suite and I have no idea what they are or whether it’s safe to remove them. Launchpad treats all of the programs as if they belonged to the first type, and it isn’t natively configurable. It took hours to group them into something useful and then it turns out I don’t use it. The Dock combined with Shift-Cmd-A is a better solution. Nevertheless, if they are going to have Launchpad, it should be easy to use.
All My Files puts my 3,102 files into three categories. Too much information is the same as no information. I removed it from the Finder sidebar. I cannot imagine a scenario in which it would even be useful. All My Files gives me too much to sift through. I don’t need to see the file system for Mail, Address Book, iPhoto and programs like that, but my folder hierarchy makes things easier to find than All My Files ever could.
The iPhone and the iPad can obscure the file system and put all programs on the screen at once, but a Mac is not a giant iPad any more than an iPad is a giant iPhone. A computer is an entirely different beast and needs a different solution. Or in some cases, no solution at all, because what already exists is already optimal.
Overall OK, but have Safari freezes and system is just s-l-o-w
Here are a couple of nagging issues:
1. In Mission Control, I constantly “lose” the contents in one of the top smaller desktop images. The apps are still running in that desktop. But, there are no apps showing in that desktop in Mission control. Reported to Apple.
2. When I open a new window, it takes significantly longer for Lion to draw the custom icons. The app icons are teh default page/pen. Takes several seconds for Lion to draw all of the icons. This was/is not the case with Snow Leopard.
3. While I use Mission Control, I do not understand why Apple removed Spaces and Expose. Why not simply add Mission COntrol and let the user decide.
4. The sidebar in the Finder window is not flexible enough. I would like to have colored icons and I would like to be able to move the various groupings like devices, shared and favorites around. I like SL’s arrangement of devices on top….followed by Favorites.
5. I do not use LaunchPad. It was a waste of time to even look at it. But, nothing ventured nothing gained. I think they could have saved the code space on that one. A test group of users should have told them that well before the launch.
6. Almost forgot, I used Spaces extensively along with BetterTouchTool. I now use Mission Control. But, they are missing the obvious: Can’t move Desktops around, Can’t name desktops and do not have the simple method of rearranging and locking aps to a specific desktop via sytem references.
Like the MDN staff, our brand new iMac 27″ (with Radeon 6970) is having random graphics glitches. Lion’s new features are worth it though, because it doesn’t happen too often and paired with a Magic Trackpad, Lion is quite awesome.
Lion so far has been reliable however it’s features lacks the normal “Attention to detail” that Apple was good on. For example.
Mission Control: Loved Spaces. Now it’s a joke now that it’s combined with Mission Controls. Can’t move windows from primary to secondary monitor. Can’t move windows directly from space 1 to say space 3. Can’t assign programs to specific space anymore
Full Screen Mode and Dual Monitor: …. Sucks. I have a laptop with a 20 inch monitor as my secondary screen. Anything in full screen mode gets moved to my primary laptop display and a grey background appears on my secondary monitor. This makes the full screen mode practically use less with two monitors.
Spotlight: Can’t see file locations anymore when you mouse is hovered over the file name. Makes it impossible to know what file you opening if two files have the same name in different folders or drives.
File Version: Very slow, especially for big files in Pages. The program appears to freeze every once in a while as the program auto saves.
I have noticed that Lion needs to spin up the external disks to do things that have nothing to do with the external disks, like display a dialog box or launch Preview. This really slows things down, because I have four external disks. This was not a problem in Panther, Tiger, Leopard, or Snow Leopard.
Incidentally, I like Mission Control a lot, but it needs to be fixed.
Ken, I completely agree with you on your point about Lion pausing to wake up external disks each time an SF Dialog box is invoked. I have four drives attached too.
I find it the most irritating flaw in Lion!
I have several problems with Lion on 2009 Mac Book Pro
Wi-Fi drops, and loss of Wi-Fi when waking from sleep.
Very slow to boot.
Safari lock-ups, pages won’t load.
I have done 2 clean installs but problems persist.
I’ve done two upgrades and 1 clean install. I had the most problems on the clean install…
I love most of the new features, but I experienced a very disturbing problem of audio “leaking” from one account to another. I woke it from sleep and it started playing some very R-rated audio from from no app that I could identify. I switched user accounts and discovered a video playing from preview mode in the finder. It was the audio from that video.
This happened to me. While I was working, I suddenly heard the dialog from a TV show in iTunes. I think this is a long-standing problem on all Apple platforms. There is alway something that is “now playing” and various events can trigger it to play the last song or video that you were playing. One time I was listening to music on my iPhone when a phone call interrupted it. When I hung up, the music resumed. I was impressed. However, after that, almost every timeI ended a call (note the “almost”), the music started up, even though I had not been listening to it before the call. That song was permanently “now playing.” I had to remove all the music from my iPhone and never put it back. My suggestion is to make sure that they last video or song you play is G rated. That way, if it plays what is “now playing” won’t be embarrassing.
Yes, good idea. I’ve experienced something similar in iTunes too. But this was even more disturbing because I had to take the time to log in to the other user account to find the source of the audio. Guess I could have just hit the mute button if there was someone else in the room.
OS crashes at least every other day which then screws up blue tooth; Safari does not recognize mail. app to send a link. No crashing or mail problems on SL.
Brand new MacBook Pro 13
Very sluggish performance, especially in Safari
802.1x support when on corporate wifi is also buggy. Auto config is nice, but Authentication bugs keep locking me out, requiring a help desk call to re-enable my account.
Sorry to report some serious issues with Lion that have NEVER happened (running OS X since the day it came out) such has multiple hard freezes, lots of video artifact issues, can’t use Expose, some documents (such as with Pages), won’t appear without coaxing, and a few more. I know they’ll get resolved though.
There aren’t many bugs in lion but there are a few. 1) programing new airports is a bit flaky. Worked much better under snow leopard. I’m sure it will be addressed soon. 2) I have a large keychain with many wifi network passwords in it. It takes my computer 3-6min to finish the wifi scan before I can connect to a new network.
Having problems with WiFi. On a brand new iMac it keeps dropping the connection, on my MacBook pro, after I wake it up from a sleep, it doesn’t always reconnect. I have to turn off WiFi and turn it back on again. Nothing major serious, but very annoying.
Version 1.0 Syndrome goes on forever.
But how easily Gene has forgotten Tiger 1.0. THAT got let out of the pen too early and Apple suffered for it. Even Leopard had a worse initial release than Lion.
The only bad bug so far in Lion is it’s big fat LDAP security hole. Apple have yet to announce any impending fix. The bug is an Apple internal coding blunder. It took a hacker to find it. Such protocol bugs are not something likely to show up in general beta testing.
Surprised no one from the Enterprise side has mentioned the Elephant in the room, which is the complete mess that is smb and AD integration. It just flat doesn’t work.
Since Apple could not continue their use of Samba, they needed to write thier own smb connector. Unfortunately, it does not work!
If you have a machine that binds to Active Directory, or needs services from AD, then you must use a 3rd party tool, or wait until they iron the bugs out of 10.7.2 (which the current development build still didn’t resolve my current test machines woes).
I don’t know how Lion was released with AD binding not working correctly. That is just ridiculous and Apple is adding insult to injury by treating this so lightly. 10.7.2 won’t be released until the iCloud pieces are ready to be released! Really???
So all corporate deployments that bind their machines to AD must wait to deploy, for another month or so. And this also means that Lion Server cannot be tested and used to deploy and manage mobile devices.
Overall, very little issues otherwise. I dislike some of the decisions made with the look and feel for things (Why not have color icons in the toolbar??? Why hide the Library when some of us actually do troubleshoot these systems? Doesn’t have the KISS framework going for it (I feel that Snow Leopard was fine). Even after getting used to it, it has not become like an old friend. Just a new acquaintance that makes me miss my old friends.
Beach ball and system freezes on 2009 MacBook with 4GB RAM. Tend to believe combination of Safari, Mail, Time Machine backing up over network, MobileMe Sync and auto-save features all running at same time and fighting over resources. Can’t even start Activity monitor to see what is going on. Perhaps sandboxing glitch?
Screen zooming is random…sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t
One I did a clean install everything was great, prior to that it was a dog. Too many migrations from system to system I think has brought over garbage that just did not play well.