OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion: the Ars Technica review
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Thank you for such a detailed review. I am looking to avoid windows 8 and was thinking about getting a mac. The document model was nice to understand.
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I look forward to John's reviews almost as much as the new Operating System itself. Knocked it out of the park again!
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Not sure whether this has been asked somewhere before, but if you use FileVault along with ICloud to store documents, does it mean whats stored on ICloud is the encrypted data.. i.e even Apple can't read it if it wants too?
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There's a high probability that the Windows 8 review will be longer because it is so different.keath":1dc1bm1e said:
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John":1hg0mlij said:
Care to compare OGL performance?
It feels radically different to me. Maybe they restricted the 650m driver to ML... (Mature 3d driver.)
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Is there any way to restore spotlight in its top-right position? For me it would be a much better use of the coveted hot corner than a almost useless notifications icon.
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I like the people who complain over saving and icloud
You'd be surprised how many people still don't save documents even when they know they should.
You'd be surprised how many people still don't save documents even when they know they should.
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I've been reading these since the Developer Previous more than a decade ago, and I still have the same reaction every time one comes out:
Oh John... ::swoons::
Oh John... ::swoons::
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yea. I was actually looking forward to have a kindle version that bundles all the reviews John has written over the years on Mac OS X (at least from Tiger all the way to ML).
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The review seemed to overlook the main questions I had. It seems a note on upgradability from Snow Leopard (and/or earlier versions in general) should be added to the installation section. Does anyone know how upgrades from snow leopard will work?
Secondly, I had a lot of trouble finding the review of the airplay features. Finally I found it under the section on preferences, but maybe more detail on the features or at least what is missing? For example, can you AirPlay from QuickTime player now? Can other apps like rdio implement AirPlay streaming too? Also omitted was any notes on the feature of using an airplay device as sound output in the system preferences.
Secondly, I had a lot of trouble finding the review of the airplay features. Finally I found it under the section on preferences, but maybe more detail on the features or at least what is missing? For example, can you AirPlay from QuickTime player now? Can other apps like rdio implement AirPlay streaming too? Also omitted was any notes on the feature of using an airplay device as sound output in the system preferences.
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As always, thank you for the thorough review. I certainly have decidedly mixed feelings about many of Apples choices with OS X (although at the same time some are unabashed improvements). I certainly don't disagree with all their apparent goals, but I think their implementation has often left much to be desired. All too often the theme of "the power user must give up features to make it easier in general" has come up, but for at least a few cases I'm convinced it's a false dichotomy, and that it's possible to make everyone happy.
One significant thing that you didn't cover (perhaps because it remains below most people's radar) is the state of Apple's cryptographic frameworks going forward. Apple deprecated their (very crusty) old system in Lion, but I think that multifactor security has the potential to be very important going forward. It's an excellent example of something that is both far more powerful and far easier, and Apple is in an excellent position to push it to the general consumer market.
Regardless though it's great to have a solid overview of what's new, including (or even particularly) features I'm not interested in myself but I may be required to have knowledge of. Thanks again, and here's to the next few years as well.
One significant thing that you didn't cover (perhaps because it remains below most people's radar) is the state of Apple's cryptographic frameworks going forward. Apple deprecated their (very crusty) old system in Lion, but I think that multifactor security has the potential to be very important going forward. It's an excellent example of something that is both far more powerful and far easier, and Apple is in an excellent position to push it to the general consumer market.
Regardless though it's great to have a solid overview of what's new, including (or even particularly) features I'm not interested in myself but I may be required to have knowledge of. Thanks again, and here's to the next few years as well.
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I enjoyed the last few OS X reviews, but this one is too wordy. Maybe your dictation software enables too much of a good thing?
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Can you go from Snow Leopard ---> Mountain Lion? Or do you need to install Lion first?
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fferitt25":ra9xvv31 said:
Perhaps you're new here or you're trolling (you capitalized ARS as if it's an acronym???).
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One question - I've seen several reviews mention that performance seemed better with ML. Right now I'm stuck on the original aluminum iMac, the mid-2007 model, with a 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo and maxed out with 4 GB of ram. Performance took a noticeable drop after I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion. Anyone have any idea if it may improve a bit under Mountain Lion?
I know the obvious answer is to upgrade from a five-year-old computer, but I'd prefer an iMac and I'm waiting on a refresh, and even then I may have to wait a little longer thanks to some unforeseen expenses with my car.
Anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance.
I know the obvious answer is to upgrade from a five-year-old computer, but I'd prefer an iMac and I'm waiting on a refresh, and even then I may have to wait a little longer thanks to some unforeseen expenses with my car.
Anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance.
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So it looks like the greyscale icons in the sidebar and for file folders is still in 10.8? I was hoping for the return of color. Apple why do you love gray!!
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fferitt25":3dfa4vg4 said:
It's really hard to take you seriously when you use "M$" in any of your comments, that kinda stuff is old. One could argue that the new "M$" might be Activision, Capcom, EA, Google, or even Apple. Heck, both Google and Apple seem to be all about the money, lawsuits and bickering with other companies as of late.
That said, great review!
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I have to agree with another posted who said a Siracusa review is like Christmas in July... ;-)
There is obviously way too much here to comment on, but here's a few things that jumped out at me:
That's awesome. In other words, the installers are updated "in the background" (in a sense) so that if and when you do need one, you already have the latest version. Really smart.
Ha! That's crazy (good, that is).
Damn! That's probably the biggest thing I was hoping for. I get that there are weird implementation issues that have to be dealt with, but I would have thought that by now they could have come up with a solution.
That's effectively the reincarnation of the "original" Exposé, where all windows are scaled down only enough so that they can all appear without overlapping, and no more. That changed in Snow Leopard when they formatted them in even rows (which admittedly did look neater). Then in Lion, it went away entirely as they switched to grouping windows by application.
I actually like the grouping a lot more than I first thought I would; the big app name and icon makes it a lot easier to find a specific Safari window, for example, than when you have 15 windows from different apps strewn all over. But there's one thing I wish they would change: have the two-finger swipe up on a group perform app Exposé (what you get if you hit fn-F10), so that you could see giant thumbnails of just that app's windows with no overlap. That would be perfect.
There is obviously way too much here to comment on, but here's a few things that jumped out at me:
That's awesome. In other words, the installers are updated "in the background" (in a sense) so that if and when you do need one, you already have the latest version. Really smart.
Ha! That's crazy (good, that is).
Damn! That's probably the biggest thing I was hoping for. I get that there are weird implementation issues that have to be dealt with, but I would have thought that by now they could have come up with a solution.
That's effectively the reincarnation of the "original" Exposé, where all windows are scaled down only enough so that they can all appear without overlapping, and no more. That changed in Snow Leopard when they formatted them in even rows (which admittedly did look neater). Then in Lion, it went away entirely as they switched to grouping windows by application.
I actually like the grouping a lot more than I first thought I would; the big app name and icon makes it a lot easier to find a specific Safari window, for example, than when you have 15 windows from different apps strewn all over. But there's one thing I wish they would change: have the two-finger swipe up on a group perform app Exposé (what you get if you hit fn-F10), so that you could see giant thumbnails of just that app's windows with no overlap. That would be perfect.
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Nice review John. I got through around a third of the ML download while reading your article. 
Not a lot on the spatial finder this time around though? Are you giving up on it?
Edit: Forgot to mention this. Loved the section on Scenekit. Your 3-D image looks very nice, but it feels like the letters are are going to drop out of my iPad !!!
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/u ... xt-big.png
Not a lot on the spatial finder this time around though? Are you giving up on it?
Edit: Forgot to mention this. Loved the section on Scenekit. Your 3-D image looks very nice, but it feels like the letters are are going to drop out of my iPad !!!
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/u ... xt-big.png
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sunshinerag":1ls51an9 said:
Well you key is stored on apples servers in case you lose it and need to retrieve it. So they can use it to read your iCloud data.
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I haven't read the review yet, but you can make your own PDF very easily.
1) Open this page (duh)
2) Go into Reader mode
3) Print
4) choose "Save as PDF" from the PDF menu from the PDF button.
1) Open this page (duh)
2) Go into Reader mode
3) Print
4) choose "Save as PDF" from the PDF menu from the PDF button.
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It certainly won't be worse. Scrolling in safari will be better thanks to Core Animation (that's the only performance improvement I noticed.)mamoore1982":3i591ewo said:
Klatzy":3i591ewo said:
They love grey because it "emphasizes your content," Jobs explained once. This logic breaks down in the Finder, though, when the sidebar *is* my content, and in practice it just makes icons harder to distinguish.
I agree that would be very nice, and it puzzles me that is not the way it works now. Why does two-finger scroll move the windows just a little bit? Doesn't make any sense.
My ideal Expose/Mission Control solution would be that and a separate dedicated view of All Window Expose (like app expose) and that improved version of grouped window expose. Both have their uses--grouped window is better with a ton of windows, but I think all window expose is more useful the majority of the time. I switched back to it as soon as I started using ML and haven't looked back.
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andrei.timoshenko":1brk9p84 said:
Yes, there is an extension by Daniel Jalkut (Red Sweater Software). It mostly replicates the functionality lost, but opens in an RSS reader instead. http://red-sweater.com/temp/SubscribeToFeed.zip
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Great as usual, but disappointed by lack of memory management mention, especially dynamic pager that Adam Fields wrote in his blog (http://workstuff.tumblr.com/post/204647 ... management).
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Ars folks: any idea as to when any of the PDF or other digital versions will be available? I'm not seeing any links anywhere on the site.
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PDF was available from the beginning for me. *Checks again*, yep link is still there. There is a "Premier" header just to the right of the article headline and below it are all the subscriptor options - including the PDF.ecotone":3u5co9i6 said:
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Hap":1at4zd62 said:
Um, nothing whatsoever here in three different browsers. WTF?
EDIT: Should it be indexed in the PDF Technical Library? The last item I see there is "How software-defined radio could revolutionize wireless" from 7/7.
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Hey John,
I believe the AppleScrollAnimationEnabled preference has been renamed to NSScrollAnimationEnabled. (Why? I think the offical reasoning is along the lines of user-configured preferences having an Apple prefix whereas preferences which are internal to AppKit and not exposed to the user having the old NS prefix)
so if you really hate the scrolling animation, try
defaults write -g NSScrollAnimationEnabled -bool NO
I haven't tried it myself; I like the animation.
From the AppKit Release Notes:
Smooth Scrolling
Smooth scrolling has been removed from user preferences. A consequence of this is that the default name has changed. Any use of @"AppleScrollAnimationEnabled" should be replaced with @"NSScrollAnimationEnabled". If you need to determine the default state of smooth scrolling, the following code will return the correct BOOL value
[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] boolForKey"NSScrollAnimationEnabled"];
I believe the AppleScrollAnimationEnabled preference has been renamed to NSScrollAnimationEnabled. (Why? I think the offical reasoning is along the lines of user-configured preferences having an Apple prefix whereas preferences which are internal to AppKit and not exposed to the user having the old NS prefix)
so if you really hate the scrolling animation, try
defaults write -g NSScrollAnimationEnabled -bool NO
I haven't tried it myself; I like the animation.
From the AppKit Release Notes:
Smooth Scrolling
Smooth scrolling has been removed from user preferences. A consequence of this is that the default name has changed. Any use of @"AppleScrollAnimationEnabled" should be replaced with @"NSScrollAnimationEnabled". If you need to determine the default state of smooth scrolling, the following code will return the correct BOOL value
[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] boolForKey
"NSScrollAnimationEnabled"];
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I don't understand why Apple insist on making application interfaces mirror their physical counterparts. What purpose does it serve? In many cases it hampers or detracts from the application, such as the leather flap in the lower left corner of the notes app.
I also thought there were many negatives highlighted in this review. It would seem Apple often experiment with new designs and features on users which irritate and cause inflexibility. I can see why they do it. They've been highly successful with iOS in dictating to people how they should use and interact with a device. But a lot of the changes in each iteration of OSX feel like a failure in this mission. They're not giving people what they want. They're telling you how it's going to be and be damned if you don't like it. A bit like the fiasco with Final Cut.
Lastly Apple seem to opt for really basic functionality in their apps and are slow to add expected functionality. The notes app is basic. Safari on iOS is awkward (I.e. you have to create a new folder before choosing to create a bookmark when often you only realise you want or need a new folder for said bookmark when you're creating it). I do like Apple products but I feel frustrated more and more at their design decisions.
I also thought there were many negatives highlighted in this review. It would seem Apple often experiment with new designs and features on users which irritate and cause inflexibility. I can see why they do it. They've been highly successful with iOS in dictating to people how they should use and interact with a device. But a lot of the changes in each iteration of OSX feel like a failure in this mission. They're not giving people what they want. They're telling you how it's going to be and be damned if you don't like it. A bit like the fiasco with Final Cut.
Lastly Apple seem to opt for really basic functionality in their apps and are slow to add expected functionality. The notes app is basic. Safari on iOS is awkward (I.e. you have to create a new folder before choosing to create a bookmark when often you only realise you want or need a new folder for said bookmark when you're creating it). I do like Apple products but I feel frustrated more and more at their design decisions.
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Here's more info: http://meincmagazine.com/apple/2012/07/ge ... or-e-book/ecotone":4dp3gtp6 said:
If you are a subscriber and logged in, you should see the links near the top of the article in the right sidebar.
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I held off upgrading to Lion because of the desktop-refresh delay which happened when switching between desktops, unlike the smooth-as-silk switch between Spaces in Snow Leopard. I'd be interested to know if ML has fixed the desktop transition into something smoother?
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