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John Siracusa's OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Review
- nicholassmith 14y agoThis is almost the best part of every OS X release.
- stephen_g 14y agoI have to agree - I love all the technical details in these articles so much that I used to read them in detail long before I switched to the Mac... It was probably the biggest thing that convinced me to change (that, and I wanted a laptop that didn't look and feel like cheap plasticy rubbish, which apart from Apple products were few and far between then).
- mdonahoe 14y agoHas anyone here tried any of the macbook air clones? http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/models/aspiresseries http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/models/aspiresseries
- rhizome 14y agoThis isn't really the right place for that question, but all of those have bad resolution screens, as do all of the linux-able ultrabooks. I'm not saying that they should be Retina, but 768 vertical px is unacceptably regressive.
- jackbravo 14y agoI have a ZenBook from asus (UX21 with i7) and it is great: slim, fast, neat screen.
- elmindreda 14y agoHis reviews are what got me interested enough to Switch back in 2002.
- m_st 14y agoAnd there goes my spare time... Every OS X release I'm more eager for Siracusa's review than the actual disk (or now download) itself :-)
- dasil003 14y agoSo glad I waited and am having a late lunch today.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- thisisblurry 14y agoThe quickest/easiest way is to subscribe: http://arstechnica.com/subscriptions/ http://arstechnica.com/subscriptions/ You can pay $5 for a month and then cancel it. For the amount of work Siracusa puts into this thing, it's worth it.
- furyg3 14y agoYeah, i just saw the link on the side to buy it for my Kindle (which is what I wanted anyway), so I deleted the comment. Apparently decades on the internet have made me immune to advertising, even for things I want. :)
- gaius 14y agoAm I missing an obvious single page link, or do they really want you to pay not to have to click through 25 pages?
- danso 14y agoJesus. I dont know how many words are in the OP but I'm sure it's an astonishing number. And all made available for free. Are you really zipping through the piece that fast that a five second intermission is too much to tolerate for a free massive article?
- smackfu 14y agoYeah, it's one thing to arbitrarily break up an article to get page views. It's another thing to break up a huge long page to make it more accessible.
- masklinn 14y ago> Jesus. I dont know how many words are in the OP About 25000 edit: more precisely, from Siracusa's blog: 25935 words, 167 images, 206 external links
- aprendo 14y agoYes, they do. Do you have a problem with that? Why? Besides, the page breaks are not arbitrary (like on so many other websites), they actually make sense. They are basically chapters. I do not think there is anything wrong with those kinds of page breaks. (Though your personal preference may be different and if it is you are free to pay, suffer through the page breaks or not read the review. It's up to you.)
- adestefan 14y agoThere is no single page link for non-subscribers.
- rewtraw 14y agoI agree that Ars deserves the page views, but if you really want a single page, use Readability: http://www.readability.com/articles/6ynwkoyx http://www.readability.com/articles/6ynwkoyx Pictures seem to be stripped out, though.
- agumonkey 14y agoDefinition of a review, by ArsTechnica : http://imgur.com/RdohV http://imgur.com/RdohV
- masklinn 14y agoNotsureifpraiseorcriticism
- agumonkey 14y agoNeither do I.. truth lies in between I guess. Rare are articles that long, which I value, but it can be a bit "overwhelming" at first.
- checker 14y agohttp://www.anandtech.com/ http://www.anandtech.com/ also has some pretty awesome reviews (for hardware).
- agumonkey 14y agoAgreed, it's a reference, but I don't recall 20+ pages reviews. (Both had very well executed website redesigns too)
- masklinn 14y agoGeForce GTX 680: 20 pages http://www.anandtech.com/show/5699/nvidia-geforce-gtx-680-review http://www.anandtech.com/show/5699/nvidia-geforce-gtx-680-re... Ivy Bridge: 21 pages http://www.anandtech.com/show/5771/the-intel-ivy-bridge-core-i7-3770k-review http://www.anandtech.com/show/5771/the-intel-ivy-bridge-core... I'm sure there are others. The SSD series were not technically review but went well beyond 20 e.g. http://www.anandtech.com/show/2829/ http://www.anandtech.com/show/2829/ is 27 pages.
- agumonkey 14y agoYou're right. It probably felt shorter because of the game testing parts.
- kyleslattery 14y agoSome info from Siracusa about the different ways to read the review: http://siracusa.tumblr.com/post/27978338524/about-my-mountain-lion-review http://siracusa.tumblr.com/post/27978338524/about-my-mountai... Sounds like if you buy the Kindle version when it comes out ($5), he'll get a direct cut, which is nice.
- rb2k_ 14y agoOn twitter, he actually points to the Arstechnica subscription (5$) which will give you the review in pdf/epub/mobi At least he seems to be fine either way.
- shimonamit 14y agoIsn't there a TL;DR;TL;DR;TL;DR^25 somewhere?
- Tyrannosaurs 14y agoHere you go: "Better"
- quotemstr 14y agoDon't you mean "one step away from a walled garden"?
- Tyrannosaurs 14y agoNo, else that's what I'd have typed. The walled garden thing is interesting. I (and a couple of other people I know) instantly reacted to Gatekeeper with "fantastic, I can lock down my Dad's machine and keep him out of trouble". One step towards a walled garden doesn't place you inside a walled garden and in it's current form Gatekeeper is a good thing. Disabling it was the first thing I did when I installed Mountain Lion and it took about 15 seconds (including me not knowing where the option was). In this version of OS X I honestly think it's a non-issue. The big question is whether this is the first step on a journey into the walled garden or just an individual step that happens to be in that direction. Personally my feeling is that they won't ever take that final step. I think they get that OS X isn't iOS and that you can't apply the same standards for any number of reasons, both practical and political. Taking something away from people (which is what this would be) is a whole different thing to never having given it to them in the first place (which is what has happened with iOS). But for now no-one knows. As I say, for now I don't see it as any issue with 10.8. Whether there is an issue with 10.9 or 10.10 or whatever, time will tell.
- blinkingled 14y agoTL;DR "In some ways, Mountain Lion is a refinement, enhancement, and yes, a major bug-fix for Lion. But the changes and additions are significant enough that they will inevitably come with their own set of bugs. Let's not forget Snow Leopard, which promised no new features but still brought plenty of bugs in its 10.6.0 release." I hope they fixed memory management - Lion is too swap happy and slow on a decent 3Gb RAM Core 2 MBP. Windows comparatively flies on the same machine but of course suspend resume is flaky and other Win-Mac integration annoyances mean it's not a win-win.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- rhizome 14y ago3GB, my word, son...crucial.com is your friend!
- blinkingled 14y agoThe machine supports a maximum of 4GB, and believe me it only gets marginally better with the added 1GB. I guess Crucial also sells SSDs and Apple sells new MBPs with 16GB RAM :) - but at this juncture I hate to spend money on anything when the other supposedly more bloated OS named Win 7 works just great with 3GB - that seriously ought to be more than enough for browsing, email and occassional Word/PPT stuff. As for the swappiness - it seems to be at least somewhat better than Lion - hasn't used up swap after 20 minutes of doing normal stuff. But the Apple ID/Password annoyance is still there - I still had to enter Apple ID / password several times during and after the installation! The last time hopefully was for iTunes. Why can't they use one single sign on?
- primatology 14y agoAgreed. I finally bit the bullet and upgraded my 4GB MBP to 16GB of memory. Officially unsupported, but it works like a charm.
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- taylorwc 14y ago"Once the OS has been out for a while, try asking a Mac-using friend who is not obsessively reading multi-thousand-word operating system reviews on the Internet if he has noticed anything different about scrolling in Mountain Lion." ...priceless...
- kristofferR 14y agoI find it fascinating that he "wrote" this piece using Dragon Dictate, a dictation program.
- aprendo 14y agoHe has RSI.
- da_n 14y agoEpic review as usual from John Siracusa. Dan Benjamin volunteered to do a reading of this for release in audio format, but I think John Siracusa ruled it out. Understandable as I think too many problems to overcome (images, footnotes, licensing etc), so just a dream really. Would happily have paid for that though. Hope they can sort out the Kindle release, definitely going to purchase that.
- duaneb 14y ago> Hope they can sort out the Kindle release, definitely going to purchase that. Whatever for? It's interesting, I'll give you that, but why don't you just spend $20 on the OS itself?
- tbonnin 14y agoMarco made a review of John Siracusa review ;) http://www.marco.org/2012/07/25/siracusa-mountain-lion-review-review http://www.marco.org/2012/07/25/siracusa-mountain-lion-revie...
- xutopia 14y agoThe review doesn't say how long it takes to install once downloaded. Is this a lunch break install or a "wait-till-evening" installation?
- rewtraw 14y agoI did it during my lunch break ;) "Preparing to install" took 10 minutes (you can still use the system during this time) and the install itself took ~30 minutes on a 2011 MBA. Rebooted right to the desktop with no fuss.
- xutopia 14y agoPerfect! Did you have any services like postgresql or redis or anything that needed to be reinstalled? /EDIT I just rebooted and my services were still present with no change. They had been installed with homebrew.
- vdm 14y agoTL;DR full screen with multiple monitors is still broken http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/os-x-10-8/18/#full-screen-multiple-monitors http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/os-x-10-8/18/#full-scre...
- pkamb 14y agoAt least Mission Control has been fixed. New option that brings back Tiger/Leopard's all-windows Exposé: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/os-x-10-8/19/#mission-control http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/os-x-10-8/19/#mission-c...
- rsync 14y agoHow is this even possible ? Do I even understand this correctly ? If you have multiple monitors, and an application goes full screen, the other two monitors go grey ? I am still on SL on my mac pro, so I have yet to see this ... what the fuck do people working at apple (with multiple screens) do ?
- high5ths 14y agoI just don't use full screen mode. (I've got 4 monitors.) I assume that's what others do. Though there are some niceties to the dedicated mode, I figure that it's mostly important for my laptop (where I do use it, along with Spaces).
- aprendo 14y agoIf you go full screen, the app in full screen mode gets to use all your monitors. It gains control over every last pixel available to you. The other monitors are not unavailable, they are greyed out because the app you are using doesn’t take advantage of them. It could if it wanted to. That’s the decision Apple took. It makes sense† but it’s also utterly stupid. For some reason they stick to it. I don’t think it’s a big deal. Fullscreen apps suck anyway and there is no reason whatsoever to use them on a big screen, much less when you have more than one screen available to you. They might make sense on the 11" Air but certainly on no other computer or screen Apple sells. Just use apps like you always did (before Apple introduced their stupid fullscreen mode) and they will work fine. Like before, like nothing changed. I have the sneaking suspicion that only maximize-crazy Windows converts run into this problem. On the Mac you don’t maximize. Apple only implemented fullscreen mode the really stupid way to make that abundantly clear to everyone. — † More than Apple just disabling other monitors, anyway.
- keithpeter 14y agoI've suggested this before (and not done much about it), but that is not going to stop me suggesting it again. How about a crowd-sourced 'Siracusa style' review of Ubuntu 12.04? Or Debian Wheezy, or Fedora (large integer, preferably 18 because that is the version that RHEL 7 will be based on)? Or the safe and conservative CentOS/SciLi/PUIAS version 6.3, now being targeted by Oracle. Or your favourite GNU/Linux, or BSD? So many of the free software reviews are shallow. I think the Penguins have done enough work to merit something with depth
- keithpeter 14y agoOK, upvotes are occurring, so what do we do? https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8403291/unityessay2.html https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8403291/unityessay2.html for an inadequate and partial outline for the 12.04/unity gui Challenge: put your suggestions/contributions on dropbox or githib or wherever and post here and I'll attempt a synthesis.
- masklinn 14y ago> How about a crowd-sourced 'Siracusa style' review I don't think a crowd-sourced review could ever be that, as it most likely won't be a cohesive work and will have a hard time finding talented writers (which I hold Siracusa to be). And will probably fail to balance the emphasis (at all) between features of differing importance and levels of interest. Furthermore, Siracusa's reviews are also the result of more than a decade of writing these things. Don't aim to write "Siracusa-style" reviews, aim to write in-depth reviews which are not complete dreck. That will probably work better. Or work at all, for that matter.
- keithpeter 14y ago"Don't aim to write "Siracusa-style" reviews, aim to write in-depth reviews which are not complete dreck. That will probably work better. Or work at all, for that matter" OK, challenge still stands, even this would be an improvement in what we see in Linux reviews
- JonnieCache 14y agoMaybe there could be a kickstarter to just pay Siracusa to write 26,000 words about ubuntu?
- abc_lisper 14y ago> But I walked my dog briefly in the middle. Don't take the article too seriously. If you did, you probably missed the point.
- jacoblyles 14y agoI just want to know if it will be easier or harder to compile ruby and python libraries with native extensions that depend on, say, libxml2. I upgraded to Lion and it took 8 hours off of the installation process for lxml. But nokogiri was still nearly impossible.
- masklinn 14y ago> I upgraded to Lion and it took 8 hours off of the installation process for lxml. Am I misreading this? It took 8 hours to compile libxml2, libxslt and lxml? Surely that's not possible and I missed something, I just tried making a full static build (to ensure I'd have to build libiconv, libxml2 and libxslt as well) from the current HEAD, on 10.6, using the stock gcc 4.2 on a 2.4GHz 2010 MBP and it took 3:48 total including downloading the tarballs for libiconv, libxml2 and libxslt and cythoning lxml.
- adamrt 14y agoCould you elaborate on your issue? I've not run into this and am interested.
- ditoa 14y agoSiracusa really does an outstanding job with these reviews.
- abruzzi 14y agoMy biggest pet peeve with 10.7 (besides the loss of arrows on my scroll bars) is the dumbing down of the Network control panel. In 10.7 you couldn't configure your WiFi to connect to 802.1x networks (i.e. WPA Enterprise.) You had to download the iPhone configuration utility, build a config file, then import it. 10.6 would let you set the configuration in the network control panel. Even iOS doesn't require ICU to connect. I didn't see anything about it in the review so I assume 10.8 is still set up the screwy 10.7 way.
- wkral 14y agoIf you need to properly prepare for this review checkout this video: http://patdryburgh.com/blog/preparing-for-john-siracusas-review-of-mountain-lion/ http://patdryburgh.com/blog/preparing-for-john-siracusas-rev...
- swdunlop 14y agoJust don't put it on your development workstation yet; XCode 4.4 is blocking the install of Command Line Tools for some developers. This means Homebrew doesn't work, VIM doesn't work (no /usr/include for pyconfig.h), and things are generally horked unless you want to play end-user in the app store. Welcome to release day, Apple style. :)
- jevinskie 14y agoYup, getting 403 on http://adcdownload.apple.com/Developer_Tools/xcode_4.4_21362/xcode44cltools_10_86938106a.dmg http://adcdownload.apple.com/Developer_Tools/xcode_4.4_21362.... This is really disappointing!!! Why is it taking Apple so long to fix?
- swdunlop 14y agoLooking at my inbox? Because they are too busy declaring that they can't reproduce it.
- jevinskie 14y agoUgh, I would let them VNC into my computer to repo it if it would mean I could get the CLI tools. I see a lot of reports of it on Twitter as well. Can't they just look for the 403's in the server logs?
- jevinskie 14y agoIt WFM now. Hope you get it working soon as well!
- swdunlop 14y agoFinally sorted itself out this evening. I just went back to Lion for the day and waiting for the #xcode rage to die down on twitter. :)
- zoul 14y agoNot sure about 4.4, but at least the 4.5 preview works fine.
- thought_alarm 14y agoThe new iCloud support is interesting. I just edited the same iCloud document in TextEdit on two different machines, and I gotta say that is really damn cool. On the other hand, this new iCloud support sadly highlights another unrelated new feature in Lion, and not in a good way: Automatic Termination. You must use TextEdit to browse your iCloud documents, which is fine, but TextEdit keeps fucking disappearing on you because it has no open documents. Command+Tab away for a split second and it's gone, forcefully removed from your Dock and Command+Tab list. Automatic Termination is a feature that is meant to serve only the most novice of Windows users who are coming to OS X for the first, while it breaks an existing feature of the OS that has been fundamental to Mac OS X and NeXTSTEP for the last 23+ years. And it's not even an option. It is hugely frustrating and hugely disappointing.
- jsz0 14y agoI can't recall ever experiencing auto termination on Lion or Mountain Lion throughout the DP previews. My hardware is nothing fancy -- 2011 MBA /w 4GB of RAM. What are your specs? Do you often have memory hungry applications open? Most of mine are pretty modest. I'm just curious what would cause such different results. Auto termination should definitely be the last resort and most low memory footprint apps should be totally excluded.
- thought_alarm 14y agoUnfortunately, there two different and unrelated features called "Auto Termination", which only muddies the water. One feature aims to preserve system resources during low memory conditions in way that's completely invisible to the user. The other forcefully removes running applications from the Dock and Command-Tab list even though these apps remain running in the background. My frustration is with the latter feature.
- ghshephard 14y agoTo be clear though - Auto Termination of the latter form only occurs if no windows are active. It's basically saying, "If the user no longer has any active documents, and has moved this application to the background, then close it down." Siracusa does a good job describing his annoyance with this feature - and points out that while appropriate for IOS, which has the MRU task switcher, it doesn't work very well on OS X which lacks that metaphor.
- yskchu 14y agoFor me, the update to the messages beta app alone was worth it: iMessage on the Mac is so useful to keep in touch with friends, and the beta app was buggy as
- yskchu 14y agoFor me, the update to the messages beta app alone was worth it: iMessage on the Mac is so useful to keep in touch with friends, and the beta app was buggy as
- outworlder 14y agoIs it just me, or did anyone else notice an increase in graphics performance? I did not measure, but it should be significant, as I am noticing it in normal usage. I'll hook it up to an external monitor later to try and stress it a little bit more. I have a Late 2009 Macbook White, with 8GB and an SSD.
- hiddenstage 14y agoWhat's with his obsession with iOS? He makes it sound like iOS is the quintessential operating system.
- Evbn 14y agoHe suspects that Apple's customer base is iOS focused, akin to the Mac users of the 80s who were afraid of the scary keyboard. On a proportional numbers basis, he may be mostly right.
- shinratdr 14y agoIt's not his obsession with iOS at all, it's Apple's obsession with iOS leading to that being by far the most logical explanation for why something has changed in OS X if the answer isn't immediately obvious. Last time I checked the only iOS device Siracusa owns personally is a 2nd generation iPod touch. Why does a button now look like that, or a feature now work that way, why is that app renamed or that texture changed? The answer is usually "because that's how it works in iOS". You're making a mistake in assuming that because he's trying to explain Apple's motivation behind it that he agrees with it. As for why Apple is obsessed with iOS, it's probably because it has made them tens of billions of dollars, has vast and focused mindshare, and it's wildly popular. iOS makes tons of hard decisions in the name of making a device that users can pick up and run with. Our opinions on it (you, me, and Siracusa's) are basically irrelevant. The key is Apple thinks iOS is the quintessential operating system and it has the sales to back it up. That's why ML is the way it is. Acknowledging that when trying to write a review about it is important.
- locusm 14y agoWhy is it when you enable dictation it needs to send your contacts to Apple?
- tomkr 14y agoI'm assuming this is so that if you speak the name of one of your contacts, it understands the word. Names can be weird, especially last names, so they're bound not to be in the standard list of words that can be used. This way you can name your contacts when dictating without the system freaking out.