Is mountain lion any good?

ivorito · 19 Feb 2013 at 17:25

Hi,
On a 2010 macbook white and was thinking of upgrading to mountain lion from snow leopard. What are the pros/cons? From what I have heard there are some performance increases and more integration with IOS. I dont have an Iphone or anything and was wondering if there are many positives and not gimicky features that you use day to day?
Thanks and apologies if this topic has already been discussed many a time!

Turbo-G · 19 Feb 2013 at 21:13

For the price, why wouldn't you?

Aside from the integration with iOS, mission control, Mac App store, notifications, dictation and sharing are all pretty good.

No cons as far as I'm aware, unless you use any rosetta supported apps as I think support was dropped from Lion onwards.

ivorito · 20 Feb 2013 at 07:54

Turbo-G said:
For the price, why wouldn't you?

Aside from the integration with iOS, mission control, Mac App store, notifications, dictation and sharing are all pretty good.

No cons as far as I'm aware, unless you use any rosetta supported apps as I think support was dropped from Lion onwards.

Okay sweet, price is not an issue or anything its just making sure that there aren't any major negatives. Thanks for your response

theheyes · 20 Feb 2013 at 08:30

Turbo-G said:
For the price, why wouldn't you?

I think because a lot of us got burned with 10.7. It used to be the case you could just roll with it, but any software Apple churns out these days it's worth holding off on before you upgrade.

I regretted upgrading my Snow Leopard Mac to Lion, and while I still don't feel Mountain Lion runs as well as Snow Leopard did, it's much better than its predecessor.

likwid · 20 Feb 2013 at 08:56

I'd stick with Snow Leopard on an older machine. Its performance is much better and there really isn't a great deal of difference except icloud integration.

slinxy · 20 Feb 2013 at 11:30

I don't think your mac will upgrade to to ML.

That aside, ML its great for stand alone machines, but several issues with the removal of what apple now calls legacy support is making it a pain for me supporting them on the network, but that occurred during lion.

bloodiedathame · 20 Feb 2013 at 12:14

If you have any Samba devices then they won't work with ML no matter how much you fiddle. I wish I'd not upgraded to ML.

ivorito · 20 Feb 2013 at 18:15

theheyes said:
I think because a lot of us got burned with 10.7. It used to be the case you could just roll with it, but any software Apple churns out these days it's worth holding off on before you upgrade.

I regretted upgrading my Snow Leopard Mac to Lion, and while I still don't feel Mountain Lion runs as well as Snow Leopard did, it's much better than its predecessor.

Sounds like I should stick with this then, features wise I'm happy with what I have got, just increased performance would be nice. There seems to be a lot of conflicting information about that. Glad I didn't jump on the (not mountain) Lion bandwagon as I haven't heard good things about that.

ivorito · 20 Feb 2013 at 18:19

slinxy said:
I don't think your mac will upgrade to to ML.

That aside, ML its great for stand alone machines, but several issues with the removal of what apple now calls legacy support is making it a pain for me supporting them on the network, but that occurred during lion.

As far as I am aware it can upgrade, it is one of the last generation of white macbooks before they were discontinued. However, it seems performance takes a hit so I probably wont go for it.

android guy · 22 Feb 2013 at 10:15

Snow Leopard is far better - I have new Mac Mini & wish I could put Snow Leopard on it - Mountain Lion is pants.

ivorito · 22 Feb 2013 at 17:36

android guy said:
Snow Leopard is far better - I have new Mac Mini & wish I could put Snow Leopard on it - Mountain Lion is pants.

Okay I may as well stick with this then. Thanks for the input

mark66 · 22 Feb 2013 at 17:48

android guy said:
Snow Leopard is far better - I have new Mac Mini & wish I could put Snow Leopard on it - Mountain Lion is pants.

What specifically don't you like?

I have got a iMac with Snow Leopard on, but have just picked up a Mini with Mountain Lion and haven't really had time to discover the positives or negatives.

However, one thing I have noticed, that as far as I can see is not a keyboard setting, is that characters do not repeat when the key held down?! If I hold down the key 'A' now, I would expect to see 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA' etc etc, but I just get one 'A' no matter how long I leave it?

Anyone else got this in Mountain Lion?

lamboman · 22 Feb 2013 at 23:19

mark66 said:
However, one thing I have noticed, that as far as I can see is not a keyboard setting, is that characters do not repeat when the key held down?! If I hold down the key 'A' now, I would expect to see 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA' etc etc, but I just get one 'A' no matter how long I leave it?

Anyone else got this in Mountain Lion?

Feature to allow you to get alternate characters without typing in weird codes. You should get a little pop-up window above the cursor for this. Pop into Terminal and type the following to revert to the expected behaviour:

Code:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

Raymond Lin · 22 Feb 2013 at 23:34

I have a 2010 MBP (2.4Ghz core2duo) so should be the same spec as that macbook in the OP.

ML here and it runs it fine, albeit i put in a SSDD and 8G of ram.

In general use like email/web it is almost as quick as my new i7 3.4Ghz late 2012 iMac with 32G ram wit Fusion drive.

ivorito · 23 Feb 2013 at 08:32

Raymond Lin said:
I have a 2010 MBP (2.4Ghz core2duo) so should be the same spec as that macbook in the OP.

ML here and it runs it fine, albeit i put in a SSDD and 8G of ram.

In general use like email/web it is almost as quick as my new i7 3.4Ghz late 2012 iMac with 32G ram wit Fusion drive.

Nice, there seems to be very mixed opinions on the performance of it. I too have 8gb of RAM but have been considering adding an ssd too... Only problem is that I have like a 3 year warranty and want to wait till thats over

slinxy · 25 Feb 2013 at 09:25

in general if its not going on some sort of network infrastructure and you can live without 32 bit mode, rosetta and front row, I would upgrade. I have it running at home and its great. be it a faster cpu and 16 GB of memory.

If its going on a network infrastructure that uses any of which apple now calls legacy, its a pain but I'm currently working on the infrastructure so that at some point we can upgrade the 300+ macs to the latest OS whatever is at the time.

ivorito · 25 Feb 2013 at 10:12

slinxy said:
in general if its not going on some sort of network infrastructure and you can live without 32 bit mode, rosetta and front row, I would upgrade. I have it running at home and its great. be it a faster cpu and 16 GB of memory.

If its going on a network infrastructure that uses any of which apple now calls legacy, its a pain but I'm currently working on the infrastructure so that at some point we can upgrade the 300+ macs to the latest OS whatever is at the time.

Its difficult deciding what to do. I guess I will leave it for now, I don't want to upgrade and then find there is a poorer performance and I cant go back.