4 ms·

I'm somewhat of a new mac user, so I can't speak historically, but I will say that lion was quite a downgrade. It broke things that were previously working fine

I'm somewhat of a new mac user, so I can't speak historically, but I will say that lion was quite a downgrade. It broke things that were previously working fine (my network drivers and my dev tools), removed useful features (rosetta), and really didn't add anything new that I care about. I never use the app store; I dislike mission control; really the only thing I actually like is the better window resizing.

tptacek 15y ago
What network drivers did Lion break? Are you plugging custom network hardware into your Mac? Why? We're a pretty dev-tools-intensive shop here and while the transition to XCode4 has been hiccupy, I don't think Lion has broken anything for us.
- fauigerzigerk 15y ago
  A lot of people (including me) are suffering from dropped wifi connections. There's a thread on the Apple support forums that has 1264 replies and 157731 views: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3191630?start=0&tstart=0 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3191630?start=0&tst... Apple has been trying to fix it ever since Lion came out. After 2 updates it's still not working for me.
  - watmough 15y ago
    I fixed my WiFi not reconnecting by zapping my PRAM. Cmd-Opt-P-R on boot and hold down until you get a couple of loud bongs. Yeah! I know! First time doing that has ever fixed a damn thing for me, but not reconnecting to my WiFi was starting to become an annoyance. This was on a new main logic board on my 2007 MBP running a fresh install of Lion 10.7.2 copied out of the Install app and burned to an 8GB USB key.
    - sounds 15y ago
      Switched to a Broadcom chip and still can't resolve all the silicon-level bugs. http://wiki.debian.org/MacBook http://wiki.debian.org/MacBook Broadcom may make Tim Cook happier, but Atheros is more the "Steve" of wifi chips. However, the 2007 MBP uses Atheros - yours is actually a different issue.
      - watmough 15y ago
        I actually made myself a Broadcom airport card, for less than $20 and it's faultless. Atheros cards have always worked great for me too. The only time I've ever had WiFi problems is under really really old versions of Ubuntu on a ThinkPad. I suspect a lot of problems are caused by interference, or really densely populated areas. Even out here in the boonies of North Houston, there are 8 - 10 WiFi networks visible, neighbors etc.
- overgard 15y ago
  As someone else mentioned, it constantly drops the builtin wifi now. I think what makes it somewhat funny is that this is the kind of thing that I'd expect and live with on windows or linux, but on mac with the whole hardware-software integration thing I would expect better. Plus, since they've basically taken driver management out of my hands, there doesn't seem to be much I can do to fix it myself. It's minor, but irritating. The dev tools thing is that they seemed to have moved the libraries and sdk's around, or outright removed them (I'm not sure). I'm mostly doing python development, and I used to just be able to run "pip install SomePackage" and it would just work. Now I find that almost everything fails to compile, and most of the recommended fixes (installing the official interpreter and older or newer versions of xcode for gcc) haven't really done anything to alleviate the problem. I /could/ go and really track down the exact issues, of course, but that sort of thing is time intensive so I find now that I just reboot into windows when some random package won't work for me.
dhughes 15y ago
I'm very new to Mac I just got a Macbook about two months ago it's my first ever apple computer. I got it to become familiar with it since I like to be familiar it and other operating systems. My first impression after using Linux as my primary OS for the last ten plus years is OS X is very Linux-like in behaviour. But I feel like I am in a glossy, trendy prison with a guard constantly next to me. Everything works well because it was all made by Apple or at least with hardware it was hand-picked by Apple to work with their OS. If Linux or Windows made a computer and the hardware was specifically hand-picked for each OS version I'm sure it also would run as smooth and be as glossy as OS X. Rebooting after software updates was alien to me (use Ksplice on Linux) but I figured OS X was BSD/Unix based and never expected so many reboots for simple things. I never use the App store either because I don't see why I need to enter my credit card information to update a free app. Plus the lack of real separate delete and backspace keys is driving me crazy! (yes I know fn+delete is Win/Linux "delete")
- X-Istence 15y ago
  On Apple's full size USB keyboards you have a separate delete and backspace key. Both still called delete, but they do the same task as on other machines. As for rebooting, that is slowly going away, only for major updates that modify libraries that may currently be in use by applications is it still required, mainly to be sure that those apps start using the updated version rather than keeping the old one around. With Lion's support for going back to a previous state upon logging in that has become almost seamless, my windows are back in the same location after a reboot as they were before the reboot.

tptacek 15y ago

What network drivers did Lion break? Are you plugging custom network hardware into your Mac? Why? We're a pretty dev-tools-intensive shop here and while the transition to XCode4 has been hiccupy, I don't think Lion has broken anything for us.

fauigerzigerk 15y ago
A lot of people (including me) are suffering from dropped wifi connections. There's a thread on the Apple support forums that has 1264 replies and 157731 views: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3191630?start=0&tstart=0 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3191630?start=0&tst... Apple has been trying to fix it ever since Lion came out. After 2 updates it's still not working for me.
- watmough 15y ago
  I fixed my WiFi not reconnecting by zapping my PRAM. Cmd-Opt-P-R on boot and hold down until you get a couple of loud bongs. Yeah! I know! First time doing that has ever fixed a damn thing for me, but not reconnecting to my WiFi was starting to become an annoyance. This was on a new main logic board on my 2007 MBP running a fresh install of Lion 10.7.2 copied out of the Install app and burned to an 8GB USB key.
  - sounds 15y ago
    Switched to a Broadcom chip and still can't resolve all the silicon-level bugs. http://wiki.debian.org/MacBook http://wiki.debian.org/MacBook Broadcom may make Tim Cook happier, but Atheros is more the "Steve" of wifi chips. However, the 2007 MBP uses Atheros - yours is actually a different issue.
    - watmough 15y ago
      I actually made myself a Broadcom airport card, for less than $20 and it's faultless. Atheros cards have always worked great for me too. The only time I've ever had WiFi problems is under really really old versions of Ubuntu on a ThinkPad. I suspect a lot of problems are caused by interference, or really densely populated areas. Even out here in the boonies of North Houston, there are 8 - 10 WiFi networks visible, neighbors etc.
overgard 15y ago
As someone else mentioned, it constantly drops the builtin wifi now. I think what makes it somewhat funny is that this is the kind of thing that I'd expect and live with on windows or linux, but on mac with the whole hardware-software integration thing I would expect better. Plus, since they've basically taken driver management out of my hands, there doesn't seem to be much I can do to fix it myself. It's minor, but irritating. The dev tools thing is that they seemed to have moved the libraries and sdk's around, or outright removed them (I'm not sure). I'm mostly doing python development, and I used to just be able to run "pip install SomePackage" and it would just work. Now I find that almost everything fails to compile, and most of the recommended fixes (installing the official interpreter and older or newer versions of xcode for gcc) haven't really done anything to alleviate the problem. I /could/ go and really track down the exact issues, of course, but that sort of thing is time intensive so I find now that I just reboot into windows when some random package won't work for me.

dhughes 15y ago

I'm very new to Mac I just got a Macbook about two months ago it's my first ever apple computer. I got it to become familiar with it since I like to be familiar it and other operating systems. My first impression after using Linux as my primary OS for the last ten plus years is OS X is very Linux-like in behaviour. But I feel like I am in a glossy, trendy prison with a guard constantly next to me. Everything works well because it was all made by Apple or at least with hardware it was hand-picked by Apple to work with their OS. If Linux or Windows made a computer and the hardware was specifically hand-picked for each OS version I'm sure it also would run as smooth and be as glossy as OS X. Rebooting after software updates was alien to me (use Ksplice on Linux) but I figured OS X was BSD/Unix based and never expected so many reboots for simple things. I never use the App store either because I don't see why I need to enter my credit card information to update a free app. Plus the lack of real separate delete and backspace keys is driving me crazy! (yes I know fn+delete is Win/Linux "delete")

X-Istence 15y ago
On Apple's full size USB keyboards you have a separate delete and backspace key. Both still called delete, but they do the same task as on other machines. As for rebooting, that is slowly going away, only for major updates that modify libraries that may currently be in use by applications is it still required, mainly to be sure that those apps start using the updated version rather than keeping the old one around. With Lion's support for going back to a previous state upon logging in that has become almost seamless, my windows are back in the same location after a reboot as they were before the reboot.