OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion: the Ars Technica review

Where Lion stumbled, Mountain Lion regroups and forges ahead.

Read the whole story

 

[hd580]

[moderation="link spam"]

tl;dr

The Marco.org Review of John Siracusa’s Review of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion[/moderation]

 

[TheAce-MGT]

This review just saddens me. I know that I'm going to have to update sooner rather then later, as my job requires me to be using the latest version of XCode, and it doesn't tend to exist on older versions of OS X for very long.

As a creator, rather then consumer, then growing trend towards consumer-friendly (and creator be damned) features is making my life harder rather then easier. The way iCloud apparently works, would destroy any possible use in my workflow. (Not being able to see stuff done in Photoshop in Preview would be annoying, especially since 95% of the time I just want to view stuff as a coder) Although, I already have SVN to do remote storage and retrieval from other devices (or even just web access to my important day-to-day data). All My Files has similar issues, as I generally end up with multiple copies of the same files showing because of the separation of the art repo and code repos.

Everything else read like incremental updates, although I do appreciate the changes to Obj-C, make life a little easier there when I actually need to use it. I'm sure there's stuff I will appreciate, and I'm sure its an improvement for 95% of the users out there with macs, but I don't see how its much of an improvement for people who create for a living.


(Personal, but first thing that I thought of: I also think I wont like the conversation with my wife if iCloud syncs open tabs to my iMac about anything I may be looking at from my laptop. )

 

[Entegy]

I wonder why the ARS resident Apple Newsie (Chris Foresman) doesn't get to write the Mac OS reviews ?

Hmm....

Um because John does them and no offence to Chris, but Chris probably doesn't know half the things John does of both usage and development on OS X.

 

[Entegy]

tl;dr

The Marco.org Review of John Siracusa’s Review of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

Clever.

 

[smokedart]

I'm almost not sure which I look forward to more: the release of a new OS X, or the review by John Siracusa.

 

[marcusj0015]

The ONLY problem I have with OS X's looks, is those HUGE drop shadows. I hate to admit it, but I wish Apple would take Microsoft's approach in Windows 8 with the drop shadows. (Only the drop shadows.)

 

[foresmac108]

I wonder why the ARS resident Apple Newsie (Chris Foresman) doesn't get to write the Mac OS reviews ?

Hmm....

Um because John does them and no offence to Chris, but Chris probably doesn't know half the things John does of both usage and development on OS X.

I bet I know about half of what John knows about OS X. Maybe even 55%.

 

[Entegy]

I stand corrected

 

[andrei.timoshenko]

The disappearance of RSS from Safari is a shame. I never used Safari as my RSS reader, obviously, but the RSS icon as a quick link to all of the RSS feeds available on the given page was an incredibly useful feature. Any alternative to hunting around for RSS feed links manually? Is there scope for having this done by an extension?

 

[fferitt25]

But hang on a second. For a desktop OS in the year 2012, which direction is "forward," anyway? The obvious answer is "toward iOS," but Lion proved that it's not quite that simple. And really, there has to be more to it than compulsive imitation, otherwise why continue development of the Mac platform at all?

Hell you can point that out for any OS - not just Apple's.

Win 7 was a new wrapper for Vista was a new wrapper for XP. Win 8 is supposedly a new iteration with minimal legacy elements - but I guarantee - M$ won't hit the bullseye dead on fresh out of the gate.

Don't slam Apple for that - it's an industry-wide issue that has been around since the start of the industry.

And it's amazing how after 30-50 years of software development - people still can't seem to code much of anything correctly.

What happened to learning from predecessors ?

Remember those old jokes about what if M$ and Apple were car manufacturers and how badly their cars would run (or breakdown) ?

Whart if they were architects putting up a new 1000 story building and they discovered a series of flaws in the structure halfway thru constreuction ? Building construction does not have the luxury of carrying flaws over for a design for 10-20 years or buildings collapse and people get hurt.

You'd think that software companies would know how to write software correctly after 30 years.

 

[Thorzdad]

Those changes to the Save As/Duplicate mess reads more like a developer's grudging alteration-but-not-really-a-change to something that really didn't need changed. The better method would simply have been to make the Lion system a toggled option, with the regular Save/Save As paradigm the other option. My wife's office has been on Lion since it was released and they do a ton of work using Pages. They still hate the Lion way of doing things. She had occasion to have to use my iMac this week (still on SL) and she couldn't believe how much better and faster it was to use Pages in SL compared to her Lion Macs.

I don't really see this ML amendment to the process as helping them. The keyboard shortcut alone is an obvious "have to wedge this stupid function in here for the idiot users" thing.

 

[brazuca]

Wow, iCloud looks like a terrible implementation. I can't navigate the files outside the app that created them? Email attachments require you to "share" from the app?

There is no way I'm going to use iCloud until this is changed. I can't even imagine trying to explain these limitations to my wife and family. Unbelievable.

 

[flyingz626]

I might've missed this in the review, but... does Mountain Lion make any improvements over Lion's use of multiple monitors -- specifically with the "full screen" feature...?

 

[Entegy]

I might've missed this in the review, but... does Mountain Lion make any improvements over Lion's use of multiple monitors -- specifically with the "full screen" feature...?

You can put that single window on any monitor, but the rest of the montiors are still filled with linen.

 

[aep528]

A couple of questions come to mind:

1. Is it possible to set up the system using an Apple ID and NOT use iCloud?

2. How robust is the integration between Mail, Calendar, Reminders, and Notes?

 

[backtomac]

How is ML's memory management work compared to Lion? I have noticed more page outs on my iMac with 4 gbs of RAM using Lion than I did with SL. Will ML be more gentle with older hardware and less maxed out specs?

 

[timacheson]

WARNING: Apple's new "Mountain Lion" OS is infected with a serious virus.

MORCUT VIRUS CHARACTERISTICS
- Allows others to access the computer
- Drops more malware
- Downloads code from the internet
- Reduces system security
- Dropped by malware
- Leaves files on computer
- Enables remote access

More info: http://www.sophos.com/en-us/threat-cent ... cut-A.aspx

Apple is institutionally complacent about security. They famously never even attend the regular Black Hat security conference which everyone else in the industry supports. Apple customers are therefore advised to exercise special caution to ensure that Apple's negligence doesn't leave them with a serious problem.

 

[JPan]

Wow, iCloud looks like a terrible implementation. I can't navigate the files outside the app that created them? Email attachments require you to "share" from the app?

I actually think the iCloud approach works well for MOST areas of the long tail. In 90% of all cases we have one app for a given filetype and honestly using share for making an email attachement does not seem to be too terrible.

On the other hand there are a couple file types that simply are cross-applications: movies, pictures, text files, even PDF and here the iCloud approach breaks totally down. And what about if you change apps? For example you have enough of Adobe and switch to a different PDF viewer? Can you easily migrate the files?

Bottomline I could see myself using it for many apps but sadly not for the file types that actually count.

Here DropBox/GDrive >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> iCloud.

In the end I like the file concept and even if the app-centric approach is a bit easier on the complete newbie, I think Apple lost an opportunity here making the iCloud more useful for more "advanced users" (Although I wouldn't call someone who understands what a file is advanced).

 

[BakaRakuda]

This review just saddens me. I know that I'm going to have to update sooner rather then later, as my job requires me to be using the latest version of XCode, and it doesn't tend to exist on older versions of OS X for very long.

If you're already on Lion, and I assume you are based on the fact that you need to keep up on Xcode updates then ML will not affect you appreciably in any way that Lion didn't already do.

As a creator, rather then consumer, then growing trend towards consumer-friendly (and creator be damned) features is making my life harder rather then easier. The way iCloud apparently works, would destroy any possible use in my workflow. (Not being able to see stuff done in Photoshop in Preview would be annoying, especially since 95% of the time I just want to view stuff as a coder) Although, I already have SVN to do remote storage and retrieval from other devices (or even just web access to my important day-to-day data). All My Files has similar issues, as I generally end up with multiple copies of the same files showing because of the separation of the art repo and code repos.

As a creator nothing in ML will make your life "harder", it is better than Lion in every way. Less bugs and many weird missteps from Lion have been corrected.

The solution regarding iCloud is simple; don't use iCloud for your dev assets. Obviously iCloud is not geared towards those kinds of things. It's geared towards your personal documents.

Your dev assets belong in your repository.

You'd probably due well to upgrade to Git from SVN too, but thats a whole other topic.

Everything else read like incremental updates, although I do appreciate the changes to Obj-C, make life a little easier there when I actually need to use it. I'm sure there's stuff I will appreciate, and I'm sure its an improvement for 95% of the users out there with macs, but I don't see how its much of an improvement for people who create for a living.

It is mostly incremental updates. The desktop is relatively mature now. Over time a lot of incremental updates will add up to a huge change. With OS X updates expected yearly I wouldn't expect this paradigm to change.

The improvements you get as a creator is to use the shiny new developer tools that require the new OS.

Having a more secure, up-to date and incrementally improved version of your OS *is* an improvement too, even if it doesn't seem like it. Especially for $20.

(Personal, but first thing that I thought of: I also think I wont like the conversation with my wife if iCloud syncs open tabs to my iMac about anything I may be looking at from my laptop. )

Probably best not to look at porn on your laptop behind your wife's back then.

Alternatively you can just enable privacy mode when you don't want new tabs synced.

 

[Doubter]

{snip automotive metaphor} {snip architecture metaphor} You'd think that software companies would know how to write software correctly after 30 years.

And you'd think that carping amateurs would have come up with better metaphors after 30 years of (over) using motor cars and large buildings as proxies for making (idiotic) criticisms of software.

Here's a couple of facts: a state-of-the art V8 engine has something less than 2,000 parts; state-of-the-art large buildings have something less than 100 mostly-identical floors which are mostly comprised of cladding material clumsily attached to tons of reinforced concrete by semi-skilled labourers. Note that both of these things rely on designs that have changed minimally in 100 years.

Operating systems, on the other hand, are comprised of tens (nay, hundreds) of thousands of lines of code, each line handcrafted by someone with at least a decade of combined university study and experience, and engineering all that code to work together is literally the most complex and impressive feat of group organization that our species has ever accomplished. And we do it over, and over, and over again, and completely change the design at least once a decade.

So shut the fuck up about cars and sky-scrapers, already. Those metaphors were dumb 30 years ago, and they're now thirty years dumber.

 

[nickf]

The better method would simply have been to make the Lion system a toggled option, with the regular Save/Save As paradigm the other option.

I agree with this. The Lion way of saving docs still has to be widely adopted by 3rd party developers.

Perhaps my brain isn't as agile as it once was, but the Save/Duplicate/Revert/Save As mess often causes me to stop and pause during my workflow to think about what I want the system to do, when it absolutely isn't needed

 

[rmcrowley2000]

Thanks for the great review, John! While I don't use a Mac, as a tech enthusiast it's nice to keep up on what every OS is up to.

Apple is institutionally complacent about security. They famously never even attend the regular Black Hat security conference which everyone else in the industry supports. Apple customers are therefore advised to exercise special caution to ensure that Apple's negligence doesn't leave them with a serious problem.

Haven't been keeping up on news, have you? http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/24/apple-black-hat/
I'm not saying their security is any better, just that they are attending Black Hat this year.

tl;dr

The Marco.org Review of John Siracusa’s Review of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

That was pretty entertaining, I must say.

 

[tipoo]

Great review. I'd love some benchmarks though, especially with Safari 6. I'm curious if ML is back to Snow Leopard speed.

 

[aleppowalki]

Nothing about the disaster that has become Preview?
Really, this is a critical piece that should get coverage. The "epic" Lion review last year didn't catch it either. When you have a piece of an OS that has become buggier over time and affects what the OS can and cannot print, that is a major issue. There should have been a full page about it, and yet not a peep. Instead, we get large sections of fluff like the width of scrollbars.

 

[fjpoblam]

FU Gatekeeper

I'm curious and eager to see how a couple of my menu-bar favorites (notably, Evernote) will work.

 

[solomonrex]

So, is this the best cloud-based OS? I'd say I prefer the minimalism of Chromium in that regard, but OSX has superior functionality and real, robust 'local' computing. Obviously, it's hugely different philosophies, you couldn't even write 24 pages about Chromium.

Windows 8 I thought was a huge step forward for the cloud integration, but not the actual computing part, though I will be upgrading just to leave Vista. We've moved our budget and such to Google Docs to accommodate our chromebook and Windows 8 (no more 'family user' PC account). Android and ios to me aren't as good, phones' connections are too slow to do very much in the cloud, like portable music. My phone has more storage than my laptop, just because music works so much better that way. Firefox OS will have an issue with that, I think, if it's just a 'mobile chromium' which is what it sounds like.

It's certainly a great, interesting space and I was also thrilled for the link to early OSX.

 

[xfx]

I've been in the wrong forums for a long time -- I'm glad I now use Ars as my first daily-tech-news blog.
That is an impressive review which I read from start to finish (even if I rarely use OS X).
It is just THAT good!

Thank you John for a wonderful morning read!

 

[SilverRubicon]

Nothing about the disaster that has become Preview?

You need to be more specific. What is wrong with preview? Haven't had an issue myself.

 

[Doug Dolde]

Two words.... Snow Leopard. I don't need any of this new bling

 

[rex86]

Short and sweet.

really? It contains 26000 words. I wouldn't call it short. I'd rather call it overblown.

 

[cheezsu]

Omg that's a fantastic review, seriously. For the ones who are not quite sure how to upgrade their Macs to OS X Mountain Lion, go here : http://dreevoo.com/en/content.php?id=769 I just send that link to my Aunt and she didn't have to call me once.

 

[Wolfcoyote_J]

Two words.... Snow Leopard. I don't need any of this new bling

I'm in the same boat, as 10.6.8 still treats me well. It took a long while to set everything up with little hassle but I have practically no issues and it runs practically everything I toss at it. WAY better than 10.5.

There is the issue of continued support, and for that reason upgrading the OS in the near future is a possibility. Either that or wait until tax time to purchase a new Mac which will come with ML preinstalled.

Two parts of the review made me wince, however:
1) iCloud document storage and accessibility. Apple tosses away MobileMe and replaces it with THIS? No thanks, I'm keeping Dropbox and my on-site backups handy.
2) Saving. Why the heck did Apple attempt to "fix" the ye-olde process of saving documents when it wasn't broken? Consumer-level desktops have been available for about thirty-five years now. Surely one has learned (or can learn) the simple process of saving.

Both of these issues had me wanting to bang my head against the desk (I'm at home on vacation, I don't mean an office ). While ML isn't enough to make me want to give up SL, security support plus minimum requirements of intriguing software may cause me to upgrade.

One point that I think JS might not have mentioned - ML (according to the MAS) can be installed over SL. So Those of us who chose to skip Lion won't have to pay $30.00 and then pay the additional $20.00? If that's true, then great.

 

[agnuke1707]

For the past several OS X iterations, my ritual has been to wait and read John's review, install ASAP, then read it again and follow along. Looks like I'll be repeating that once I get off work today.

Thanks for all of your hard work, John. I've been using Mac OS since System 7 - it's amazing to see how far both the OS and Apple have come in 20 years.

 

[reco2011]

Is it me or do others think Apple has lost their way with a consistent look? One application uses leather without stitching, another uses leather with and without stitching (depending on view), while another uses black leather (or plastic), while another does away with leather altogether. Seems very un-Apple like.

 

[captainstarlifter]

As they say in the movies: Well Done Pig!

 

[Chris Krycho]

Two words.... Snow Leopard. I don't need any of this new bling

I'm in the same boat, as 10.6.8 still treats me well. It took a long while to set everything up with little hassle but I have practically no issues and it runs practically everything I toss at it. WAY better than 10.5.

There is the issue of continued support, and for that reason upgrading the OS in the near future is a possibility. Either that or wait until tax time to purchase a new Mac which will come with ML preinstalled.

Two parts of the review made me wince, however:
1) iCloud document storage and accessibility. Apple tosses away MobileMe and replaces it with THIS? No thanks, I'm keeping Dropbox and my on-site backups handy.
2) Saving. Why the heck did Apple attempt to "fix" the ye-olde process of saving documents when it wasn't broken? Consumer-level desktops have been available for about thirty-five years now. Surely one has learned (or can learn) the simple process of saving.

Both of these issues had me wanting to bang my head against the desk (I'm at home on vacation, I don't mean an office ). While ML isn't enough to make me want to give up SL, security support plus minimum requirements of intriguing software may cause me to upgrade.

One point that I think JS might not have mentioned - ML (according to the MAS) can be installed over SL. So Those of us who chose to skip Lion won't have to pay $30.00 and then pay the additional $20.00? If that's true, then great.

You'd be surprised how many people haven't learned that. Those of us who write or develop code for a living have probably had it pounded into us by too many failures to save. But lots of people don't. Perhaps they don't find themselves writing long documents often; perhaps most of their content is consumption; perhaps they're coming to computing having only felt like they started to get it after an iOS or Android device. And having to save frequently – just in case – is not intuitive for those folks.

I agree that Apple's implementation is annoying. (There's really no reason they couldn't have left the name in place, even: Save As works just fine with the new conceptual system, doesn't jar existing users as much, etc.) But the goal is a very, very good one.

 

[elh]

Thanks, I'd gladly buy it for my Kindle, but it only makes sense while its hot.
Is there some sort of delay in the approval process or the conversion?
Just curious what is causing the delay...

 

[Goofball_Jones]

Why is it that when a new version of something that comes out, people have to take the time to sit down and write how they're not going to be upgrading to that new version? What insight are you hoping to instill upon us unwashed masses? That you're a fricken genius or outsider or someone that's a rebel? Who gives a shit if you're not upgrading? We saw it in Leopard, then Snow Leopard, then Lion and now in Mountain Lion. Oh, and it's not just relegated to the Mac. I STILL see people proclaiming they'll never upgrade past Windows 2000. I swear, it's like they're toothless hillbillies with shotguns on their laps warning the men from the gov-ment to GIT! But hey, that's just my opinion! Don't you dare question my opinion!!! (that's another thing that irks me, people saying boneheaded things then hiding behind "i'm entitled to my opinion!)

But anyway, as far as this update not being mind-blowing, sorry. You're not going to see anything mind-blowing on the desktop anymore. I mean, how much more innovation can there be? Windows 8 kinda wants you to think it's all new and innovative, but it's not really anything new. Just a little different. Are you all expecting some major shift in the way people use computers like last great mind blowing experience of going from a command-line interface to a GUI? It ain't gonna happen folks. The major innovations of the recent past were in mobile, but even there they're running out of ideas. They're moving into the "tweak, refine, tweak, refine" mode now...which is where the desktop has been for about a decade now.

Oh, and as always, thanks John for the very detailed, thoughtful and fair review.

 

[rmcrowley2000]

Thanks, I'd gladly buy it for my Kindle, but it only makes sense while its hot.
Is there some sort of delay in the approval process or the conversion?
Just curious what is causing the delay...

John posted here that they underestimated the lag time to get the Kindle version up on Amazon.

 

[groovestar]

Mission Control

Mission Control now has an option to display windows independent of their application. The resulting arrangement is a bit haphazard, but it does show more of each window's content.

Oh thank the maker! The option to revert to the old Expose behaviour means that Mission Control is now useful for my document- instead of app-centric workflows.