Official Lion OS X Discussion and Troubleshooting Thread

Had to leave for work this morning before the upgrade on my MBP was done (it was telling me 10 mins left in the instal).  When I get home tonight, I'll have a surprise -- good or bad, no idea.

OK, I'll repeat my last post from the other Lion thread, and add to it.

The first casualty of Lion is Firefox, which does not support the swipe page left / right gesture. I've had to revert to Safari. Oddly, swiping left / right worked with Firefox under 10.6.8. I'm already missing password management in Firefox that Safari does not have.

The Lion download worked fine. I did not time it, but I've got fast internet, and it ran quickly. The install once downloaded took about 30 minutes on my 2010 Mac mini.

I tried to run something Java-based, it said that Java was not installed, and offered to download it for me. That worked fine.

I tried running Microsoft Office X, and as expected it came back with an error that I can not open the application because PowerPC applications are no longer supported. So I trashed Office X.

So far, so good.

All you need to know:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.ars

Also, be sure to run system update, the iWork apps and iTunes are now fully 64 bit and fullscreen enable-able apps.

Mossy moss:
http://allthingsd.com/20110720/mossberg-lion-review/

Known Adobe issues:
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/905/cpsid_90508.html#main_Photoshop

Skimming reviews. Versioning and auto-save look great. The UI stuff leaves me cool. (how is reverting 20 years backwards to 1990's monochrome NeXT icons an improvement over 2010's color?) Hopefully it's more awesome than it sounds, because simply reading about the UI changes are putting me off.

 

And torn paper? On my pixel-perfect display? I remove all such detritus when tearing out paper sheets from real pads. That threatens to drive me batty.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.ars/5

My casualties:
1. MacMP3Gain absolutely does not work (despite my reading in Macforums that it did).
2. Back/forth finger swiping gesture navigation in Firefox and Chrome does not work, but does in Safari. I think Apple changed the code on it to enable new gestures in Lion and it's just a matter of Google and Mozilla releasing new versions of the browsers.

Nothing else so far, Office 2011 seems to work as does Lr3. Haven't tried the native Apple apps but I'm going to assume they do (otherwise I've have read about it on the web by now - latest versions of iLife, iWork, Logic Pro, etc.)

If you use Droplets at all in CS5 you are going to have issues for a bit.

MG has a pretty good run down on actual use:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/20/os-x-lion-upgrade/

Never mind about my #2 casualty. If you go to the Preferences for trackpad, and under More Gestures there is a swipe between pages setting that is defaulted to a two-finger swipe which doesn't seem to work for both Chrome and Firefox. If you change it from two finger to three finger swipe (left/right) it magically works on both Chrome and Firefox!

So my only casualty thus far is MacMP3Gain (which is a real loss for me).

In his podcast, Hypercritical, Jon Siracusa noted that the traffic stats over the years show most people read the first page or two and the conclusion of his review. There's a dramatic drop off in readership by page three or four. So you're in good company.

 

But I'll read it all :) It may take a couple days, though.

 

And MacWorld is going gonzo with their coverage.

Carlo, thanks for the fix...I can use Firefox now!

Yup: http://www.macworld.com/lion has all their coverage!

Well the first time I downloaded it the download was corrupted. This appears to be an issue that is occurring with Macbook Pros for some reason. On the support forums it has taken downloading multiple times before getting one that worked. I'm downloading the second time now it looks like it is going to take awhile. 20hrs remaning... :(

Installing on the Wife's MBP right now.  I've played with the developer ed, so I'm pretty aware of what we're getting into.  The biggest loss for me is a piece of software I'm sure they will update so I won't worry about it yet.

Good info, what to do if you want to put a clean install on an older mac:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/guides/2011/07/ask-ars-do-i-have-to-use-the-mac-app-store-to-install-lion.ars

Setup tips:
http://www.macstories.net/mac/the-first-five-things-i-do-when-i-set-up-lion/

Andy!
http://www.suntimes.com/technology/ihnatko/6621563-452/apple-os-x-10.7-lion-roars-with-futuristic-and-maddening-upgrades

News to me, apparently Apple will make Lion available on a thumb drive in August $69:

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/07/20Mac-OS-X-Lion-Available-Today-From-the-Mac-App-Store.html

 

-KeithP

Finished reading Siracusa's review yesterday. As always, practically exhaustive and tells me everything I wanted to know, and then some. There's little point in reading other reviews after that one, but I'm skimming Ihnatko's and TIMN's.

 

The functional improvements, particularly revisions and restore, make it worthwhile despite my concerns about weird UI decisions (torn paper, no scroll bars).  But I think I'm waiting for the eventual point-one update before upgrading. I need to check that my software and my wife's software is compatible. And while I might be tempted to do my machine sooner, after my staggered Snow Leopard upgrades, I decided it's best to keep our machines in OS-sync and I don't want to be hasty with her iMac, since it has professional use. Assuming everything's compatible, I expect to do the upgrade in a month or so, depending on Apple's update pace.

 

Look forward to hearing about everyone's experience, favorite features, recommended software, and tips. Expect to join the roaring club later this summer.

I'm having Firefox problems again. Embedded video is not working in Firefox. It is working in Safari. I think it has something to do with the QuickTime plugin...I've noticed Firefox complaining about QuickTIme plugins here at HTF, and YouTube is not working under Firefox. Bother.

Also, when you enable swipe left / right by 3 fingers, you no longer have the pages sliding left/right in Safari. That only happens when you have swipe left/right enabled for 2 fingers. Very strange.

I've encountered a major bug in the nVidia driver for Lion and Macbook Pro 2010 models. There's a fast growing thread in the Apple support forums for it as well.

Currently it seems to be limited to 2010 Macbook Pro models (many have i7 and SSD - I only have i7 with a traditional HD). And in all the kernel panics there is a traceback to nVidia drivers. What's alarming is that unlike traditional kernel panics, where your screen goes grey and you get the kernel panic wording, this bug just shuts off your monitor (and presumably your laptop as well, as hitting caps lock doesn't light up the green button). Users then have to press the power button for several seconds, then again to reboot. And no, resume doesn't work perfectly, I lost a Word doc I was working on. It happened three times yesterday and once this morning. I've gone ahead and installed gfxCardStatus which allows me to force my MBP to use the Intel integrated graphics. I'm hoping Apple gets on this ASAP.

It's a totally sporadic, random problem. What pisses me off is that some of the feedback in that thread says that the dev builds were also doing this, so Apple didn't do its due diligence to ensure this was fixed!

Any reviews, or experiences, commenting on performance on older machines? I want to make sure upgrading my 2007 MBP won't be like putting iOS4 on an iPhone 3G.

Ok, brief rundown now that I've had numerous clients update:

 

The Good:  

It is polished, looks and runs slick, some functions perform very well.   Snappy - on new macs (ie, those issues this year) really great.  Looks great on my wife's.

 

The bad:

 

From clients I've discovered these problems:

 

There is now no way in hell to make TimeMachine back up to a NAS that I've found.   This became a minor heart attack for a client with 8 PowerMacs.   Still working up a good solution on this.

 

On a Core2Duo Powerbook, battery life suddenly went about 60% of what they were getting before.   We're not sure of what's causing that.   It may be a zombie service or something, still a work in progress.

 

I have never played with Spaces, but I guess it's been removed.   Some grousing about that.

 

iSCSI targetting is not right.   Still sorting that out.

 

I think personally my experience has been very good.   Very positive.   The issues clients have aren't out of the ordinary or real deal breakers for anyone, they are the kind of thing that does happen in an upgrade from OS to OS.. and they'll get sorted out.   The loss of TimeMachine to a NAS sucks bad, but I'm sure someone will figure out a way around it soon enough.  

 

I will say: the download to install thing SUCKS.   I have several clients who have as a maximum download 768k d/l DSL Modem service.   It's not that it's all they want to pay, it's that's all that is in their area.   They can't get faster service if they wanted to.   With an estimated download time of almost 2 days, they'll just wait for discs.

 

Well my expeience has been a disaster. Frankly I'm upset enough I wish I just had replace my wife's computer with a windows laptop instead. I have loved my MacBook but this upgrade is crap. It took downloading it 4 times before I got a valid copy. Then during the install it encountered an error and left my MacBook non-functional. Finally I figured out how to restore from a backup and I'm hoping it is fuctioning when I get home. Think I'm done with Lion. I really wanted to play with the new features but this whole process has made me bitter. Maybe because I have only been a Mac guy for a few months. I never had issues like this with windows upgrades but I know the tricks there.

Spaces has been replaced by Mission Control...

 

You will need a firmware update from the NAS vendor. I ran into this with my NetGear ReadyNAS. Fortunately in my case NetGear had released a firmware update on the 20th. After that Time Machine is working again.

 

That has been my only issue so far on a 2nd generation MacBook Air but I'm not done testing yet.

 

Dmiller, sorry to hear about your problems. This doesn't help you, but your experience isn't typical. I've done the last two OS X upgrades 10.4 to 10.5 to 10.6 without problems. And the overall comments online seem to be positive about the Lion upgrade. But there's always situations that don't go well; I'm sure you're not alone in having disastrous outcome. And because of that, I'm waiting a bit this time. And rumor is 10.7.1 will be out soon, since 10.7.2 is already in beta.

And your problems and recovery is a reminder (for any upgrader) to never do a system upgrade without a complete and updated backup offline.

I hope you can sort out your upgrade problems.
Edited by DaveF - 7/24/11 at 9:25am

Ah, I will mention that.   Never used spaces, so didn't come up for me at all.  As to the NAS bit.. well... for those of us running a Linux based NAS (like FreeNas) or WHS (Windows Home Server) a "firmware update" isn't in the offing anywhere.