OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion: the Ars Technica review

Where Lion stumbled, Mountain Lion regroups and forges ahead.

Read the whole story

 

[rhenley]

Well I made through half the great review before I decided it looked as if Mtn Lion would be better than the problematic Lion release.

Too bad I didn't read the rest of the review, OR these comments before I erased my Lion partition and did a fresh install of Mtn Junk.

Let's put it this way, when I went to configure my mail accounts all seems to do is lose the account, argue with me about the settings, and refuse to update my changes to two accounts which use the same SMTP server.

IF I can't use Mail, then no matter how interesting a fix this OS is for the Lion problems I'll never find that out. But as far as I'm concerned Mail is busted, and if I can't get it in shape soon I'll be back on Lion.

 

[rhenley]

And then even if I manage to beat Mail into submission next; my day to day machine uses Snow Leopard so nicely I can't understand why I actually will want to use Mtn Lion, which right now only appears to be this years extension of Apple's previous Lion mistake.

By not cleaning up the Lion Save fiasco - that by itself has largely kept me happy as a clam on Snow Leopard. Every time I do forget and attempt to keep up with the latest iteration of the OS, there is always the constant reminder of a inflexible utility dealing with any open document.

 

[till213]

So I just came to finish this great review!

"Sandboxing is an opt-in technology; Mac developers must choose to sandbox their applications."

That is one of my favourites


Thanks!

 

[till213]

Even in the danger of my comment being "lost in space" at this time (but it really did take me quite some time to read the entire -great!- review), but I'm still very curious about this one:

From the chapter about Retina displays:

"For example, the rightmost, highest-resolution choice offered in the "Displays" preference pane on a 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro creates a virtual 3840x2400 pixel screen upon which retina-savvy applications can draw using a 2x scale factor, effectively making it a double-density 1920x1200 display. The resulting 3840x2400-pixel screen image is then scaled down to the actual native LCD screen resolution of 2880x1800."


I know that in digital photography "oversampling" your photo by taking it in the highest possible (camera) resolution and then downscaling it to the actual size can greatly enhance image quality, because "noise is cancelled out".

But with computer generated images which are "crisp and clean" from the very beginning - what is the gain here? I mean, drawing the thinnest possible line in that virtual resolution (thickness of say 1 point which would result in an integer amount of 2 pixels when drawn vertically or horizontally) and then downscaling that line would require anti-aliasing for a thickness of (mathematically) 1.75 pixels (or whatever - any decimal number, didn't do the exact math here...) - which would clearly result in an anti-alisased line (which admitedly wouldn't probably be noticed at this high DPI, as mentioned in the article as well - but still, there can't be any visual improvement either with that).

What about font sizes? Does the system downscale their physical size as well (as to gain more real estate on the screen) - is that the purpose of this, to make the appearance of the UI elements smaller?

What am I missing here?

Thanks

 

[JohnnyTheGeek]

Not trying to be derogatory in my comments. But Mountain Lion is for the Apple purists and nothing more.
If you are just a fan of Apple hardware such as a Mac and you have no other Apple devices to sync with or your friends use Linux or Windows machines. Then Mountain Lion seems less of a important upgrade.
Such is the case for me as I have a Google Nexus 7, a Windows phone and both a Macbook Pro and a Windows laptop. In my case Mountain Lion means nothing but a little faster Safari and a OS that ads more junk that I myself don't use.

 

[John]

"For example, the rightmost, highest-resolution choice offered in the "Displays" preference pane on a 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro creates a virtual 3840x2400 pixel screen upon which retina-savvy applications can draw using a 2x scale factor, effectively making it a double-density 1920x1200 display. The resulting 3840x2400-pixel screen image is then scaled down to the actual native LCD screen resolution of 2880x1800."

I know that in digital photography "oversampling" your photo by taking it in the highest possible (camera) resolution and then downscaling it to the actual size can greatly enhance image quality, because "noise is cancelled out".

But with computer generated images which are "crisp and clean" from the very beginning - what is the gain here?

The gain is that applications only ever have to draw at two scaling modes (1x and 2x), even if the effective screen resolution is not an integer multiple of native pixels.

 

[till213]

"... The resulting 3840x2400-pixel screen image is then scaled down to the actual native LCD screen resolution of 2880x1800."

...

But with computer generated images which are "crisp and clean" from the very beginning - what is the gain here?

The gain is that applications only ever have to draw at two scaling modes (1x and 2x), even if the effective screen resolution is not an integer multiple of native pixels.

Okay, I must still be missing the very obvious: the screen has a physical pixel size of 2880x1800. So the logical screen size would be half of that: 1440x900 points. The gain here is that all "retina" image resources need to have exactly double the size, the scaling is simply a factor of 2 in order to preserve the same physical size of UI elements and the performance in doing so is much better than scaling with some random floating point factor of 1.4142 or so.

That's the gain of choosing an integer factor of 2 which, simply said, "makes the scaling easier and more performant". That's what I understood so far.


But now Apple chose to also offer a logical size of 1920x1200 points, which corresponds to a non-physical pixel size of 3840x2400, which is then scaled down to the physical size with some odd factor (and I assume all UI elements then appear smaller by that factor as well - right?). What's the gain in doing *that* (to offer a logical size which exceeds the physical capabilities of the screen)? Simply to pretend that there is more resolution available than there really is, at the cost of smaller fonts etc?

If the answer is "yes" then I think I understood

 

[John]

But now Apple chose to also offer a logical size of 1920x1200 points, which corresponds to a non-physical pixel size of 3840x2400, which is then scaled down to the physical size with some odd factor (and I assume all UI elements then appear smaller by that factor as well - right?). What's the gain in doing *that* (to offer a logical size which exceeds the physical capabilities of the screen)?

At 3840x2400, applications draw using a 2x scale factor (it's 2x 1920x1200). The resulting 3840x2400 screen image is then scaled as a whole down to the native screen resolution of 2880x1800. Applications are totally unaware of this final whole-screen scaling step. They only need to know how to draw at 1x and 2x, which is easy to do without introducing pixel cracks, etc.

 

[larrymcj]

This is without a doubt, the best and most complete review of Mountain Lion to date. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

 

[bombcar]

Also, because the way scaling algorithms work, it is much better to scale by a large amount than by a small amount. 3840x2400 to 1920x1200 is easy, 2000x1300 to 1920x1200 is very difficult.

 

[dmarcoot]

Another amazing read. The only review of OS X that has ever mattered.

 

[till213]

But now Apple chose to also offer a logical size of 1920x1200 points, which corresponds to a non-physical pixel size of 3840x2400, which is then scaled down to the physical size with some odd factor ...

At 3840x2400, applications draw using a 2x scale factor (it's 2x 1920x1200).

Yesyesyes, I think I understood the advantage of an integer scaling factor of 2. And I did realise that 3840x2400 was "double" the size of 1920x1200

So let me try to rephrase my question...

The resulting 3840x2400 screen image is then scaled as a whole down to the native screen resolution of 2880x1800. Applications are totally unaware of this final whole-screen scaling step. They only need to know how to draw at 1x and 2x, which is easy to do without introducing pixel cracks, etc.

My actual question is: why does Apple offer a logical screen size of 1920x1200 points which corresponds to a physical pixel size of 3840x2400 (and we do have a common understanding here that an integer scale factor of 2 is a Good Thing(tm) here), which then needs to be scaled down by some non-integer factor to the actual physical screen size (resulting in loss of quality of e.g. thin "1 point" lines, which according to the article above would hardly be noticed due to the high DPI, but still...)?

I mean: why not simply offer a logical size of 1440x900 points, which when applied matches *exactly* with the physical size of the screen of said 2880x1800 pixels?

My *assumption* is that Apple wants to offer a larger logical size of 1920x1200 points to applications, such that they gain "more real estate to draw upon" - but at the cost that all elements appear *smaller* on the screen, smaller by the non-integer scale factor from 3840x2400 down to 2880x1800, i.e. 0.75 (elements appear 25% smaller, if my math doesn't fail me...).

So if that later assumption is correct, if the intention really is to "squeeze more UI elements onto the screen", then I think I understood the reason of providing a "larger than physical screen" virtual size


Thanks for your answers so far And again, I VERY much enjoyed your review!

 

[till213]

Also, because the way scaling algorithms work, it is much better to scale by a large amount than by a small amount. 3840x2400 to 1920x1200 is easy, 2000x1300 to 1920x1200 is very difficult.

Yes, but why the non-integer scale of the "doubled-up" virtual screen (3840x2400) down to the physical screen size (2880x1800) in the first place? Why not only provide a logical screen size of 1440x900 points which - when scaled up by 2 - corresponds *exactly* to the physical screen size (pixels) and be good with it? *That* is my question

Since I don't have a Retina MacBook Pro I can only *assume* that it is to provide more "real estate" to applications, but at the cost of having smaller UI elements and font sizes (by a factor of 0.75, the factor from 3840x2400 down to the physical size 2880x1800).

So can anyone confirm that text and graphics etc. are indeed physically smaller on the screen when choosing that "Highest" resolution? Smaller as compared to the 'Best (Retina)' option.

 

[yadda yadda yadda]

I came here to say I just finished reading the review and it's once again the definitive read about OS X. I learned a lot about the technical underpinnings of Mountain Lion that literally no other review would cover. There were also plenty of "a-ha!" moments in which I learned the reasons behind some of the behavioral changes in Mountain Lion that I've noticed while using it over the last few days. Great, great work as always. I've been reading Siracusa's Mac OS X reviews since the beginning, and I always look forward to them as much as I do the new OS releases. It's just not an OS X release without a Siracusa review. Thanks for another wonderful piece.

 

[bb-15]

Top notch tech jounalism; detailed, knowledgeable and well organized.

 

[John]

My actual question is: why does Apple offer a logical screen size of 1920x1200 points which corresponds to a physical pixel size of 3840x2400 (and we do have a common understanding here that an integer scale factor of 2 is a Good Thing(tm) here), which then needs to be scaled down by some non-integer factor to the actual physical screen size (resulting in loss of quality of e.g. thin "1 point" lines, which according to the article above would hardly be noticed due to the high DPI, but still...)?

Because it lets the user see more content on the screen at once, with only a minor sacrifice in visual quality.

I mean: why not simply offer a logical size of 1440x900 points, which when applied matches *exactly* with the physical size of the screen of said 2880x1800 pixels?

That size is offered, and it's the default (labeled "Best (Retina)" in the Displays preference pane).

 

[till213]

My actual question is: why does Apple offer a logical screen size of 1920x1200 points ...

Because it lets the user see more content on the screen at once, with only a minor sacrifice in visual quality.

... because the content is finally scaled down by a factor of 0.75, resulting in font sizes and UI elements to be 25% smaller than in the "Best (Retina)" resolution. Smaller UI elements -> more size. Okay, got it!

I mean: why not simply offer a logical size of 1440x900 points, which when applied matches *exactly* with the physical size of the screen of said 2880x1800 pixels?

That size is offered, and it's the default (labeled "Best (Retina)" in the Displays preference pane).

I actually meant "why not *only* offer a logical size of 1440x900 points..." - but I understand now that with the "Highest" resolution the UI elements indeed become smaller, hence the application can squeeze more UI elements onto the screen ("more content").

Thanks for confirming!

 

[well is it.]

Great review, John.

 

[whquaint]

In this forum, I swore on my father's grave that the App Store would always be optional. We would always be able to install any app we wanted on Mac OS X.

In one way, I'm still right. Apple has not banned non-App Store apps. However, they are using indirect pressure, limiting some features to only App Store apps. It seems that I must now eat crow. Non-App Store apps will become ugly step-children with fewer rights and features than the in-crowd.

I don't like the structure of iCloud either. Two folder levels is crap. (Plus, iCloud predecessors mangled my Calendars like a wolf on a lame calf.) I pressed "Skip" on the iCloud window. Dropbox is still my friend.

Here it is Apple: iOS works for stupid little games apps, fart apps, and boob apps. The iOS design does not work for productivity. Please keep in mind those of us who actually DO WORK. Microsoft, you need to listen up as well (W7 good, W8 bad).

 

[aIDENe]

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?

I was wondering in this would be brought up in the review, but it wasn't.

Almost the first thing I noticed after installing ML was the noticeably longer time it takes for spaces to finally 'lock' into their final position. That is, after swiping to a new space, the very end of the movement, when the space is finally settling into the stopped position, lasts longer than in Lion.

So, overall, switching seems a bit slower to me because the slow locking into a stop movement seems longer. But it seems as smooth overall as before to me, so not sure if you'd notice anything. And now that I've been using ML for a week, it doesn't bother me any more.

One thing I really like that has not been mentioned: When switching spaces, the desktop icons would disappear, then pop up when the new space was settled. I found this annoying and a bit jarring. Now, they stay on screen and move right along with the space, staying where they should be. I like this a lot better.

 

[till213]

In one way, I'm still right. Apple has not banned non-App Store apps. However, they are using indirect pressure, limiting some features to only App Store apps. It seems that I must now eat crow. Non-App Store apps will become ugly step-children with fewer rights and features than the in-crowd.

Luckily the limitation goes in both ways: on the one hand "AppStore applications" do have the "privilege" to use the Notification infrastructure - and I'm mentioning the word "infrastructure" here explicitly, because there are servers behind that which Apple has to maintain and keep running. Hence fair enough they get their share of 30% of that.

(On a closer look, isn't it that a non-AppStore application actually CAN publish LOCAL notifications? I might be wrong on that one though...)

On the other hand, AppStore applications are limited in other ways: they might not scan the file system (FTP applications which want to provide a file browser view, for instance), they might not use AppleScript to control other applications such as iTunes, they might not install kernel extensions, they might simply be rejected because they "duplicate" functionality that Apple does or intends to offer as well...

 

[Daniel Smith]

iCloud documents syncing over the local network is a big deal! This opens the door to syncing photo libraries and iTunes videos between machines without having to use up gigabytes of cloud storage. (Ideally, they would sync the iTunes/iPhoto metadata but not the big files.) Here's hoping they go there!

 

[tim1724]

(On a closer look, isn't it that a non-AppStore application actually CAN publish LOCAL notifications? I might be wrong on that one though...)

Yes, any application can display local notifications in Notification Center. It's just push notifications coming from Apple's servers which are App Store-only.

 

[DABurack]

Fascinating review.

One thing that I have never understood, or have always missed, in 25+ years of Mac and even PC user experience is the absence of a "Save & Close" command. It has always been a two-step procedure for me. Have I missed something?

 

[Entegy]

Fascinating review.

One thing that I have never understood, or have always missed, in 25+ years of Mac and even PC user experience is the absence of a "Save & Close" command. It has always been a two-step procedure for me. Have I missed something?

There won't really be a "Save and close" in an app because you just achieve the same thing by attempting to quit an app with an unsaved document open. The app should ask you to save.

Of course OS X apps that follow the new Lion document model will just quit...

 

[jkhgkhgkhgkjhgkjhg]

The verb "scroll" indicates a rolling motion as one unrolls a scroll of paper - as you "scroll" upwards the text appears below.

When this visual image does not apply you should not use the verb "scroll". You simply push up or pull down the document.

 

[DABurack]

DABurack wrote:
"One thing that I have never understood, or have always missed, in 25+ years of Mac and even PC user experience is the absence of a "Save & Close" command. It has always been a two-step procedure for me. Have I missed something?"

Entegy wrote:
"There won't really be a 'Save and close' in an app because you just achieve the same thing by attempting to quit an app with an unsaved document open. The app should ask you to save."

But that was exactly my point. Closing a doc is (at least) a two-step process. Inexplicably, no one seems to mind about this obvious 25-year flaw in all document persistence programming, although they can obsess endlessly about whether scroll bar thumbs are too thin, etc. Well, why should I care, it has only cost me probably an hour or two over my lifetime.

 

[Entegy]

What if the document was new? Then save and close is also two steps.

But as I pointed out, any app following the Lion document model just saves and closes automatically.

 

[waynetech]

Yes, but why the non-integer scale of the "doubled-up" virtual screen (3840x2400) down to the physical screen size (2880x1800) in the first place? Why not only provide a logical screen size of 1440x900 points which - when scaled up by 2 - corresponds *exactly* to the physical screen size (pixels) and be good with it? *That* is my question

Because people have always wanted different screen resolutions. My old MacBook Pro offered probably a dozen different resolutions, though obviously the display was a fixed resolution. That allows people to choose larger onscreen appearance or more stuff.

I've chosen to go with 1920x1200 because it matches what I'm used to from my 17" MacBook Pro. With the extra sharpness of the Retina display, I'm comfortable with that resolution on a 15" screen.

 

[waynetech]

I get that the iCloud document model is supposed to be simple enough that the lay-person doesn't get confused. That's fine. But, for it to be truly useful to more than computer illiterates who only work on one document in one application at a time, iCloud needs a proper file system. Leave the per app, simple, springboard style functionality in, but maybe throw in an advanced mode that actually lets you work with a real file system within Finder. Or create two versions... iCloud and iCloud Pro, maybe? I'd happily pay a few bucks a month for access to the latter..

I think that you're missing the point that the iCloud document model works on more than just Macs: it works on iPhones and iPads, and it could work on Apple TV's too. So a typical usage scenario is:

1. Create Pages document on your laptop Mac at home in the morning.
2. Continue tweaking it on your iPad on the subway ride to work.
3. You get a call while out at lunch and open the document on your iPhone to look at the relevant information.
4. You get back to your desk and continue editing the document there on your desktop.
5. You get home, and make a few more changes on your laptop.

You really have to think through the details of your iCloud Pro idea. How will you designate which files on your Mac filesystem get mirrored? How do you access these deep filesystems on an iPhone? (Remember, the interaction can happen in both directions: laptop to phone, phone to laptop.)

So, yes, iCloud isn't the perfect fit for your situation. In that case, simply carry your laptop around with your documents.

 

[waynetech]

When someone can love their OS so much that it can do no wrong

Do you think that's a good summary of my views on OS X?

I hope their answer is "No". I've watched you hound Apple about particular UI issues for a decade. (I've strongly disagreed with you on several of those points, but the overall review is priceless.)

I had a hard time parsing the comment you're replying to, though. I couldn't tell if they were saying that you are passionate about MacOS and it'd be better if Windows reviewers (or users, or anyone for that matter) were as passionate, or if they were saying that being passionate and digging into things is somehow a negative.

 

[outsdr]

When I finally got a new iMac for work in March, it came with 10.7 pre-installed. However, I had so much trouble with it working with the software I use, especially fonts, that I had to downgrade it to 10.6 (that was a hassle, but at least now my fonts work properly.) Since I'm in a production environment, I haven't tried switching back to 10.7 to see if the problems have been fixed, although I'd like to- 10.6 on the newer machinery has its own share of problems.

I'm leery of upgrading to 10.8 because of the trouble 10.7 gave me.

On a different note, has 10.8 fixed the problem of focus stealing? It just seems to get worse and worse each year.

 

[jakerobb]

Great review as always, John.

Based on past experience, I was expecting at least two pages on filesystem metadata. Nary a mention, though? I take it nothing has changed since Lion on that front?

 

[daGUY]

When I finally got a new iMac for work in March, it came with 10.7 pre-installed. However, I had so much trouble with it working with the software I use, especially fonts, that I had to downgrade it to 10.6 (that was a hassle, but at least now my fonts work properly.)

How did you do that? Isn't the version of OS X that ships with any particular Mac the minimum version it will support?

 

[Entegy]

There always exists some hackery to get it done. Don't know how worth it it is though.

 

[outsdr]

Well, it was worth it to ME, because I HAD to have working fonts! (Newspaper design & layout).

I installed 10.6 onto an external drive from a different, older model. I then applied the latest update to that installation, then booted the new iMac from the external drive, formatted the OS partition on the new iMac's drive (I left the restoration partition alone.) Then I used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the external drive to the OS partition.

I also had to do some adjustments to a system file (I don't remember exactly which one) to enable 10.6 to run faster on the new iMac than it would otherwise. It runs slower than 10.7 would, but until I can have reliably working fonts, I have to live with it.

 

[eugenie]

Still the best, most-comprehensive Mac OS reviews anywhere. 13 years and counting. Great job, John.