Any issues with Lion?

[BernardLanguillier]

According to most reports I have seen Lion appears to be a poor OSX release best avoided for now, but I was wondering whether anyone had first hand experience with image edition related applications?

Although I am having increasing doubts about trusting Apple as a provider of anything non consumer grade, I might have to stick with OSX for a last round of hardware upgrade cos I won't have the time to manage a migration back to Windows.

In this context I am looking for visibility about the usefulness of Lion as an OS. That will impact the timing of hardware renewal.

Thanks.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Mark D Segal]

Bernard, I am interested in this question too, as I am sure a great many others are. But to call a whole OS release "poor" seems to me kind of sweeping. The biggest generic issue I'm aware of is that by finally dropping Rosetta from the toolbox, they are forcing all developers to re-write or up-date their application codes to operate without workarounds and crutches in the current system architecture. If the developers haven't done that, either because they don't want to spend the money, or they can't, or they will but they're late, or whatever the reason, then people who depend on those applications shouldn't upgrade to Lion, or should delay upgrading till their applications become compliant or they find substitutes. I think it boils down pretty much to that. A second issue I would be concerned about is whether Lion breaks certain aspects of colour management any more than Apple had broken them already. And the third point I would be mindful of is the risk of being an early adopter. No matter who the provider is these days, early adopters will likely be at the front of the line for whatever pain didn't get swept-up in the alpha and beta testing. And who knows, there may be some. So three reasons for caution, none of which necessarily mean the OS is "poor". For all of these reasons I am not up-grading yet. I guess the final point is that having looked through all 252 "improvements", I couldn't find a single one of them that was truly compelling. It's not like Photoshop where every up-grade has those few "killer features" you never knew you couldn't live without till they were invented. However, I have read that Lion has a new security architecture which makes it yet much more impregnable than all former systems. That alone is worth a bundle these days, so when I'm satisfied on the above-mentioned items I'll likely upgrade.

[Photo Op]

According to most reports I have seen Lion appears to be a poor OSX release best avoided for now, but I was wondering whether anyone had first hand experience with image edition related applications?

Although I am having increasing doubts about trusting Apple as a provider of anything non consumer grade, I might have to stick with OSX for a last round of hardware upgrade cos I won't have the time to manage a migration back to Windows.

In this context I am looking for visibility about the usefulness of Lion as an OS. That will impact the timing of hardware renewal.

Thanks.

Bernard

I could be wrong, but I gather from the tone of your questions that you are less than satisfied with your Apple experience. Were you a happy Vista user? I actually left Windows for the world of Jobs from XP. Actually, I just upgraded to Lion because I purchased a MacMini to replace my 1st edition Intel MacPro that was 5 years old and getting a little long in the tooth. Using the Apple supplied Migration app the transition was seamless. It transferred everything- apps, data, permissions, logins, printers - everything. I use Lightroom with an Epson 3880. No problems, what so ever with LR or printing. Was I skeptical after the Snow Leopard issues with Apple, Epson and Adobe? You bet! Did everything turn out OK for me, Yes. I'm going out on a limb here to suggest that the reports you read that "Lion appears to be a poor OSX release" is coming from charter members of the Piss & Moan Club (a Jeff Schewe description). Obviously, YMMV. If your happy with Leopard or Snow Leopard stay there for a few dot releases of Lion. Give the developers a chance to rewrite your specific software for Lion if necessary. If you're seriously thinking of going back to Windows, then.........let us know how you make out.

[BernardLanguillier]

I could be wrong, but I gather from the tone of your questions that you are less than satisfied with your Apple experience. Were you a happy Vista user? I actually left Windows for the world of Jobs from XP. Actually, I just upgraded to Lion because I purchased a MacMini to replace my 1st edition Intel MacPro that was 5 years old and getting a little long in the tooth. Using the Apple supplied Migration app the transition was seamless. It transferred everything- apps, data, permissions, logins, printers - everything. I use Lightroom with an Epson 3880. No problems, what so ever with LR or printing. Was I skeptical after the Snow Leopard issues with Apple, Epson and Adobe? You bet! Did everything turn out OK for me, Yes. I'm going out on a limb here to suggest that the reports you read that "Lion appears to be a poor OSX release" is coming from charter members of the Piss & Moan Club (a Jeff Schewe description). Obviously, YMMV. If your happy with Leopard or Snow Leopard stay there for a few dot releases of Lion. Give the developers a chance to rewrite your specific software for Lion if necessary. If you're seriously thinking of going back to Windows, then.........let us know how you make out.

My core question is about the readiness of Lion for photographers. It took a really long time for Snow Leopard to be usable because many application providers needed month to release stable versions of their software.

I have been a happy OSX (Snow) Leopard user for a few years. I have never used Vista, but have been using Win7 at work for more than a year and have had zero issues with it.

I don't care about Win or OSX, really. I am looking for a stable platform that I will be able to keep using for years to come with confidence that my needs as a performance user are well cattered for.

My main concern with Apple going foward:
- their reduced focus on the Pro line, Mac Pro in particular has seen slow updates and is falling behind the mark in several domains compared to equivalent workstations from leading Windows providers (lack of USB 3.0 support, lack of Thunderbolt support, lack of memory lanes, total bandwidth of bus,...),
- Lion itself seems half finished if I have to believe reports from Loyd Chambers and others on forums. This shows to me that they best engineers are now working on iOS.

Overall, the problems I have had with Apple in terms of product quality are:
- Sudden death of my iMac a few days after the end of the 3 years Apple care period
- Chronic shut down of my Mac pro related to overheating of the graphic card resulting from poor design of air intake filter,
- Very poor battery life with Mac Book Pro,
- over heat of my 2010 mac mini HDMI chip causing display to shut down intermitently on the flat screen TV,
- Unusable Raid card for Mac pro - got a full refund after having wasted 2-3 full days of tuning,

So I would say that as a heavy user of Apple products, I have had a mixed experience with their products so far.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Photo Op]

I know I'm going to regret this reply, but I have not had a failure in any Apple computer in ten years. That's 2 DeskPro's, 2 Mac Book Pros and MacBook.  My current DeskPro has 4, 7500 rpm hard drives, an upgraded graphics card and 8 gig of memory with never a heat problem ( I use SMCfanControl). I agree the DeskPro is due for upgrade. Since the MacMini and Mac Air have Thunderbolt, I'd expect the next DeskPro will also. So again, in line with the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" theory, hold off on Lion til the DeskPro update comes out (2-4 months). By then, Lion will have 1 or 2 dot releases. If you use Adobe, LR will be at v4 (with soft proofing) and CS6 will only be a few months away. Sounds like a plan to me. Oh, as to the photography thing, did I mention I've not had a problem with LR3 and the current Epson 3880 driver. So far my stuff is playing nice!

[Schewe]

I know I'm going to regret this reply, but I have not had a failure in any Apple computer in ten years.

Oooooh...you shouldn't have said that, you're tempting fate. At least edit you post to include a "knock on wood".

In the grand scheme of things, that Mac platform has been disappointing at the high end for a couple of revs of towers. On the other hand, MacBook Pros and Imacs have really beefed up nicely. I'm hoping the next rev of the towers brings some long needed upgrades and improvements–although I won't be buying any time soon because I just put in a new system last year so I'll not be in the market for a new tower for a couple of more years.

And, to tell you the truth, I would consider getting a tower that could run Windows 7. I've been running Win 7 in Bootcamp and Parallels on the laptop and you know, it doesn't hardly suck at all. Yeah, some of the stuff is irritating and maximum compatibility of hardware components when building a system can be a nightmare...(not so much a problem with Bootcamp though cause it Apple hardware and drivers).

I did install Lion in a boot clone of my laptop and it seemed to run all my major apps ok. But I've got workshops coming up that require I at least seem to know what I'm doing so I'll defer Lion to some future date. I won't be putting Lion on my main tower for a good long time. I don't really like major updates because of low level incompatibilities that only seem to show up when you are really pushing the hardware.

BTW, even though I read an article about how to create a bootable installer from the Lion download, I missed the point where the installer started...so, I lost the installer because Lion seems to like to clean up after itself...once installed the installer goes away which will require another 3+ GIG download to install on additional machines–uh, ok...BTW is it me or does the app store kinda suck compared to iTunes?

Just sayin'

:~)

[Photo Op]

BTW, even though I read an article about how to create a bootable installer from the Lion download, I missed the point where the installer started...so, I lost the installer because Lion seems to like to clean up after itself...once installed the installer goes away which will require another 3+ GIG download to install on additional machine

Does this do anything for you-

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/08/08/apple-releases-utility-to-create-lion-recovery-usb-key/

[Schewe]

Does this do anything for you-

Yep...it addresses the issue...wish Apple had thought to release this when they released Lion. I guess the blowback was pretty loud :~)

[francois]

Yep...it addresses the issue...wish Apple had thought to release this when they released Lion. I guess the blowback was pretty loud :~)

Better solution than Apple stuff: Lion DisMaker ( http://blog.gete.net/lion-diskmaker-us/ )

Edit: Differences between Apple's solution and Lion DiskMaker: http://blog.gete.net/2011/08/09/lion-recovery-disk-assistant/

[francois]

According to most reports I have seen Lion appears to be a poor OSX release best avoided for now, but I was wondering whether anyone had first hand experience with image edition related applications?

Although I am having increasing doubts about trusting Apple as a provider of anything non consumer grade, I might have to stick with OSX for a last round of hardware upgrade cos I won't have the time to manage a migration back to Windows.

In this context I am looking for visibility about the usefulness of Lion as an OS. That will impact the timing of hardware renewal.

Thanks.

Cheers,
Bernard

So far no real problem with Lion but I'm not using a lot of tools (Xcode, BBEdit, TextMate, Photoshop CS5 [basic stuff], Lightroom, Mail, Safari, Chrome, Firefox etc.). I've printed without problem on many HP printers and on a couple of Epsons. The only software that I deactivated is Dropbox, it crashed the Finder when moving files too quickly (it's a know problem).

[BernardLanguillier]

So far no real problem with Lion but I'm not using a lot of tools (Xcode, BBEdit, TextMate, Photoshop CS5 [basic stuff], Lightroom, Mail, Safari, Chrome, Firefox etc.). I've printed without problem on many HP printers and on a couple of Epsons. The only software that I deactivated is Dropbox, it crashed the Finder when moving files too quickly (it's a know problem).

Thanks for the feedback Francois.

Cheers,
Bernard

[francois]

Thanks for the feedback Francois.

Cheers,
Bernard

You're welcome Bernard.
I would add that I don't use system "gimmicks" or extensions and no additional hardware that would require specify drivers. My system is bare bones with the exception of the problematic Dropbox software (removed until fixed).

[Josh-H]

I took the plunge and upgraded to Lion on my macbook pro - just to see what it was like. I have been running it now for about a week and a half and have had no issues at all. In fact, to me it seems faster and Safari seems more stable (I am not getting the odd crash like I used to in Safari). Lightroom and CS5 run just fine under Lion.

I have not yet been game to install Lion on my main editing Mac Pro. Principally because I wanted first ascertain if there were any printing or color management issues; which so far it appears there is not. I print with Canon printers and Canon have now released Lion drivers; which according to users on the wiki are working just fine. I will wait at least another month before I migrate my main mac pro over to Lion just to be sure.

What isn't working fine on my macbook pro running Lion is the imagenomic portraiture plug in. It causing Lightroom to hang and/or behave quite erratically. So, I would expect to see an update from the imagenomic boys relatively soon for this.

I cant speak to much else about Lion as so far my experience is somewhat limited to my macbook pro and I dont run huge suite of software on it Outside of the common mac programs like mail and safari I am basically just a Lightroom and CS5 user. I do like most of the GUI changes in Lion; not sure about the new version of  ical though.

[John S C]

Loaded Lion onto my MBP via a bootable drive and it seems to run fine. Lion picked an old Power PC app that wouldn't run but that's about all...Except, Color Eyes Display Pro throws up an error that it can't find a driver for the display. ( It's a known problem within Lion apparently) However I ignored it and told it to carry on. It calibrated and profiled my laptop, with readings being similar to the calibration under SL.

Will probably try it on my iMac ( via bootable drive ) next week and see how it behaves. So far on the MPB CS4 and Lightroom 3 seem to behave OK

If you check out  For Mac Eyes Only  TV there is a video on making a install USB stick.

Lion deleting it's installer can be a pain, fortunately I copied to  "My Downloads" folder as well as to DVD.

[francois]

…
If you check out  For Mac Eyes Only  TV there is a video on making a install USB stick.

Lion deleting it's installer can be a pain, fortunately I copied to  "My Downloads" folder as well as to DVD.

Lion DiskMaker can take care of that. It can create either a bootable DVD or USB stick. I agree 100% that deleting the installer is a pain, especially for people with limited bandwidth.

[francois]

I took the plunge and upgraded to Lion on my macbook pro - just to see what it was like. I have been running it now for about a week and a half and have had no issues at all. In fact, to me it seems faster and Safari seems more stable (I am not getting the odd crash like I used to in Safari). Lightroom and CS5 run just fine under Lion.

I have not yet been game to install Lion on my main editing Mac Pro. Principally because I wanted first ascertain if there were any printing or color management issues; which so far it appears there is not. I print with Canon printers and Canon have now released Lion drivers; which according to users on the wiki are working just fine. I will wait at least another month before I migrate my main mac pro over to Lion just to be sure.

What isn't working fine on my macbook pro running Lion is the imagenomic portraiture plug in. It causing Lightroom to hang and/or behave quite erratically. So, I would expect to see an update from the imagenomic boys relatively soon for this.

I cant speak to much else about Lion as so far my experience is somewhat limited to my macbook pro and I dont run huge suite of software on it Outside of the common mac programs like mail and safari I am basically just a Lightroom and CS5 user. I do like most of the GUI changes in Lion; not sure about the new version of  ical though.

Helicon Focus seems to work OK but I only use it rarely. I also tried Enfuse Plug-in in Lightroom and it runs without any problem.

[Chairman Bill]

I checked with Apple 'cos I couldn't get through their billing system to download via the App Store - a thumb-drive with Lion will be available from the Apple Store sometime in the Autumn.

[Rajan Parrikar]

CS5 and all its plug-ins (Nik, Topaz etc) work fine with Lion on my Macbook Pro.  There are a few non-photography related niggles, however.  The ability to increase/decrease audio volume in 1/4 step increments is gone (earlier you could do Shift-Option Volume Up/Down to get this).  I hope Apple fixes this.  Then, certain applications quit without you quitting them.  This is apparently a feature, not a bug.  See - http://tidbits.com/article/12398

[Craig Lamson]

Question...anyone using Lion in a mixed environment?  I run both W7 machines and two MBP's on a network. I've read of problems transferring files to and from a Mac to the W7 machines.  I've not seen any mention of a remedy yet.  Anyone have updated information?

[Raw shooter]

Question...anyone using Lion in a mixed environment?  I run both W7 machines and two MBP's on a network. I've read of problems transferring files to and from a Mac to the W7 machines.  I've not seen any mention of a remedy yet.  Anyone have updated information?

No problem with a Windows network.  Lion finds Windows Servers and Windows 7 workstations.