Paul Henman technology Living with Lion

Living with Lion

I upgraded my Mac Book Pro to OS X Lion last Wednesday evening; on the whole, I’m not convinced it was the effort. It’s not bad but it’s really not much of an improvement over Snow Leopard. In fact it’s hard to think of much that’s changed for the better. (Hmmm; whole disk encryption.) On the other hand, there are quite a few annoyances – admittedly they’re not all Apple’s fault but they’re annoying nonetheless:

  • I took care to make sure everything was backed up to my Network Attached Storage device before I started the upgrade … only to discover that my Netgear ReadyNAS wasn’t accessible under Lion! (A beta patch came out Thursday afternoon and seems OK now, after a few warning messages at first.)
  • The operating system has crashed twice since I installed Lion – it’s never done this before! Coincidentally it was the hottest day of the year, so maybe my MBP overheated; hopefully the worst of the heat is over so if Lion crashes again I can rule out that as a possible cause.
  • A lot of people have complained about the inverted – sorry, natural scrolling; I switched it back to normal straight away because I use a mouse and it feels backward.
  • I miss Spaces; the new Mission Control isn’t as useful/configurable but I’m slowly finding ways to make it do some of what Spaces could.
  • Launchpad seems pointless; it’s just another view of the Applications folder. OK, you can group the apps together but you can do that within the Applications folder too.
  • When I downloaded Lion I pulled out the installation media and burned it to DVD, just in case the upgrade failed and I had to install from scratch. (Instructions on Lifehacker.) That was simple. Then I went to create a label to print on the DVD and discovered the Epson software (“EPSON Print CD”) won’t run on Lion.
  • Other software which currently won’t run on Lion (or have major issues) and are as yet not updated:
    • Activity Monitor
    • AirPort Utility keeps saying there’s a new update available but Software Update disagrees
    • Canon EOS Utility to import photos from my camera – oddly all the other Canon utilities are fine
    • Cisco Connect – not sure why this is in my Apps folder
    • Console crashes (quits unexpectedly) sometimes
    • DeskLickr wallpaper changer refreshes on login but automatic/manual change (“New desktop thanks”) doesn’t work
    • DigitalColor Meter won’t start
    • Disk Utility runs but is insistent that it’s the incorrect version
    • Parallels complains the Boot Camp partition /dev/disk0s3 is not supported! (The other 3 VMs are OK)
    • Synergy crashes
    • System Profiler!? Strange thing is it’s OK when run from About This Mac -> More Info -> System Report

Lastly, there are a couple of other new features which I haven’t tried as yet (AirDrop and AutoSave/Versions) but they appear to have potential, so expect an update in about a week.

p.s. Lifehacker have published “How to De-iOS-ify Mac OS X Lion” 🙂

10 thoughts on “Living with Lion”

  1. Paul, I feel the same about Lion, nothing major in the release. Mine hasn’t crashed yet and I hope it doesn’t.

  2. Mine’s not crashed since the temperature dropped a bit, so I’m thinking that might have been the cause.

    I’m hoping there are updates coming soon to fix these annoyances – I’m running Software Update at least once every day 🙂

  3. I meant to do an update after a week but instead it’s exactly 2 weeks; so here’s what’s changed:
    * NetGear ReadyNAS NV+ is now running RAIDiator 4.1.8-T9 but it’s still beta, not a full release;
    * no O/S crashes since the two I mentioned in the first day or two, so I suspect it was heat-induced and not Lion’s fault;
    * Epson Print CD has not been updated (so my Lion installation DVD is still unlabelled);
    * Activity Monitor _was_ updated with Lion but the previous version was still in my Applications folder (and wouldn’t run) – solution was to delete the old version and all is well 🙂
    * AirPort Utility updated itself OK;
    * Canon EOS Utility still hasn’t updated and refuses to run on Lion 🙁
    * Console was the same issue as Activity Monitor; old version deleted and new one works fine;
    * ditto for DigitalColor Meter, Disk Utility and System Profiler;
    * DeskLickr still not updated; updates the wallpaper on 1st desktop on login but only at login, and not the other screens at any time;
    * Parallels updated but still refuses to run WinXP.
    (I’ve not had time to check for a new version of Synergy.)

  4. re: Canon EOS Utility – Canon.ca’s page for my camera (7D) still only lists drivers for Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6 (Lion is 10.7); newest EOS Utility is v2.10.1, which is what I have installed already.

    A discussion on MacRumors suggested removing the update.plist from the UpdateInstaller.app; I just tried that and it still says I have the latest version installed.

    (Aug10: sent email to Canon support asking for ETA or workaround.)

    Reply from Canon:

    At this time, the current version of EOS Utility (2.10.1) is not compatible with the Mac OS X Lion. When an update to this application becomes available, it can be found on the following Canon Canada website. There is no time-line available for this update.

  5. Don’t know why it occurred to me but I just deleted my WinXP VM within Parallels, then created a new one (from Boot Camp), and it seems to be fine now! (XP requires lots of security updates to be applied, but that’s normal.)

    Meantime I kicked off a distro update for Ubuntu; it’s busy upgrading to 11.04 “Nutty Narwhal”… (done)

    Also Fedora has an update to release 15 (Lovelock) … download failed repeatedly; disk space?
    Deleted Fedora.pvm; downloaded & installed ISO for Lovelock
    Starting Fedora -> hangs at login screen! 🙁

  6. Tweet from Epson said Print CD v2.02 works on OS X 10.6 and should work on 10.7
    Uninstalled Print CD (don’t know which version because it’s a PowerPC app)
    Downloaded & installed Print CD v2.02 – app starts up OK
    No time to design & print label tonight…

    [Aug 11]
    Printer (Epson R280) keeps flashing warning lights when I try to use the CD printing tray 🙁
    Finally convinced printer to accept CD tray; trick is to leave tray off until status light goes steady green, then attach tray.
    Worked OK (eventually)

  7. Another week has gone by.
    NAS is still running beta software.
    I did see one more o/s crash but it was another stupidly hot day, so I’m pretty sure the heat is the cause, not Lion.
    EPSON Print CD software working fine since I removed and reinstalled it.
    Canon EOS Utility still hasn’t updated; official reply confirms it doesn’t work with Lion; no info about any update.
    DeskLickr still not updated & no help in the forum; looks like it downloads a new image but doesn’t update the wallpaper.
    Fedora hangs on startup, but that’s probably a Fedora and/or Parallels problem.
    I’ve still not checked Synergy.

  8. It’s over 3 months since I upgraded to Lion but what about those left-over problems?
    * Canon EOS Utility still hasn’t been updated
    * DeskLickr still hasn’t been updated
    * Epson Print CD works OK since I reinstalled v2.02
    * NetGear RAIDiator has been updated but Time Machine still has the occasional hiccup
    * OS X has only crashed twice since but both times it was really hot
    * I updated Parallels but haven’t needed to use it since so I’m not sure if it’s fixed.

  9. Finally, about 6 months after Lion was released, Canon have managed to update their EOS Utility software. I just downloaded it and updated my MBP – the EOS Utility works just the same as it used to (i.e. no new features) so what on earth took them so long?

    In order non-news, DeskLickr still hasn’t been updated, so I think it’s safe to say the developer(s) have let the application die. 🙁

    I fired up Parallels a few weeks ago and updated the VMs that I’ve installed (WinXP, Fedora and Ubuntu) and all seems fine.

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