Photofocus

UPDATE: Lion has stabilized a bit – and when I bought computers that came with Lion installed – they were very stable. But I would not upgrade to Lion unless and until it becomes even more stable.

Executive Summary – Lion Sucks!

I waited to buy Lion to make sure all the software plugins and drivers I depend on had been upgraded. I got IOS5 on my iPhone and decided – what the heck – I’ll bite the bullet and upgrade my MacBook Pro running a 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 with 8GB memory.

Wow – I wish I hadn’t.

I usually embrace most Apple system updates – (the exception was from 9 to 10 – I was probably the last guy to make that move because I had so much invested in System 9.) This time, I was excited to see how all the new promised sync features worked and wanted to test iCloud.

I am very disappointed.

Let’s start with the bad news. I can’t get any of this new-fangled sync stuff to work. Yes, I am sure there is someone out there who could help me figure it out – but that’s not the point. Apple’s reputation has been built on easy-to-use systems that just work – right out of the box. My experience, and the experience of many others judging from the forums, is that Lion’s promised sync features aren’t ready for prime time.

Now here’s some worse news. My computer is slower. Everywhere. Using every application. Even my WIFI speed is slower. The entire machine has simply slowed down. Aperture takes longer to open and longer to process images. Photoshop runs slower. Plugins are slower to load. While I didn’t expect a major speed enhancement, I didn’t expect things to slow down either.

And speaking of Aperture – it just started randomly crashing when I upgraded. I also had to upgrade libraries that now can’t be migrated back Great. It’s not like I rely on Aperture for every single thing I do – oh wait – I DO! I had to restore all my libraries from their Vaults. Now I’ve migrated my libraries to an older Mac running the previous OS so I can keep Aperture stable.

More bad news … my iCal crashes every time I open it. Every time. Hundreds of times. It’s utterly useless now – which by the way – means that even if I get the syncing thing working – it won’t matter because central to all of it is iCal. It’s such an important part of the system that the OS won’t even let you delete it. I tried.

I used iCal to keep my photo workload managed. Now we’ve had to hand transfer all that information to Google Calendar. Not happy. Not at all.

There are a host of smaller issues.

Safari opens with the last page used no matter how you set it up.
Adobe Flash no longer works properly.
Spinning beach balls abound every time I do just about anything.

In short, Lion is for me, a disaster. I’m having my MacBookPro wiped after copying everything to another machine. Then I’m using the DVD that came with it to reinstall Snow Leopard. Then I’m reloading everything back. It’s the kind of hassle that I expect Windows users to be tolerant of, but I am not a Windows user. If I didn’t have so much money (we’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars) tied up in Mac software and hardware, I’d consider the switch to Windows because of this. And those are words I never thought I’d utter.

My advice is to avoid the Lion upgrade – period. Skip it for as long as you can. Maybe someday Apple will fix it. For now, avoid it. Period.

P.S. To all of you who will read this and feel compelled to tell me how much you like Lion – there’s no need. It won’t change the fact in any way that my experience sucked. Thanks.

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