There's one version of Lion. Your install went badly, then.
I know there is only one version of Lion. I was being sarcastic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Nope, that brings up the definition at the same time.
Yeah the problem is, on my Macbook at least, there is a long delay while the system tries to format the dictionary text into that annoying pointless popup that is attached to the word. On SL it would instantly open a new window with the full definition, wikipedia articles etc. You can still get this on Lion, but you have to open it from the popup definition that appears by the word. Basically the whole thing seems like a kludge. Lion forces you to jump through hoops to get to something that was instant on SL.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Given that they left the hit boxes for them the same size, they were thinking about aesthetics.
Well personally, as a graphic designer myself, I think the aesthetics are worse now, than the previous version.
Yeah the problem is, on my Macbook at least, there is a long delay while the system tries to format the dictionary text into that annoying pointless popup that is attached to the word.
You realize that that's NOT what is going on by ANY stretch of the imagination, right? You realize that your hard drive is spinning up to access where the Dictionary application information is stored, so it takes a while because that's not an oft-accessed part of the OS, right? Rendering the box is a fifty nanosecond job.
Quote:
On SL it would instantly open a new window with the full definition, wikipedia articles etc. You can still get this on Lion, but you have to open it from the popup definition that appears by the word.
Yes, that 'new window' was the Dictionary application itself, which took even more time to open than either pop-up on either OS.
This could be true long ago but not anymore. And it is not Apple but the general technological evolution forcing you to upgrade. You cannot keep a computer for five years or more and expect it to run flawlessly under any situation like it did in the begninning. The most notable example is the ubiquitous internet. It taxes more and more the CPUs and on top of that, it may need software that will never be available for older Mac OS X versions.
I have a black Macbook which is now trhee and a half years old and it can painfully keep up with the internet CPU demand. In youtube the CPU temperature will skyrocket in no time, while more recent Macs go happily through it. Or, scripts running behind the scenes in some web pages may bring it to its knees, especially when paging out starts (and it has 4 GB of RAM).
So, yes, you are forced to upgrade, although not by Apple.
You are talking about something totally different. There was no real reason we had to upgrade to Lion. It's not new hardware. It offers nothing we MUST have.
You are talking about something totally different. There was no real reason we had to upgrade to Lion. It's not new hardware. It offers nothing we MUST have.
But the point is still valid. For the last 11 years, you could buy a new PC and put XP on it, whether that pc was purchased in 2004 or 2011.
I have a 2010 macbook pro, and I can't put tiger on it. Can the newest macbook air's run snow leopard? I seriously doubt it. This is by Apple design, not any technological reason.
So if I buy a new mac, I am forced into Lion, not recommended that I run it, FORCED. So whether I put it on voluntarily now or am forced to with the next generation of hardware, it's just a matter of when, not if. That's why I am bothered by the changes. If I could stay at snow leopard for years, then I wouldn't care so much. But the minute I upgrade hardware, I have to make the jump.
The stuff they added I don't want and the stuff they took away I do want.
Lion might be nice for some people, but not me. There are a few defaults write hacks that can help but I still have issues with auto save and versions in particular. I work with a lot of big files and save to various network storages and I don't want things being auto saved to my hard drive or making versions like time machine unless I specifically and deliberately execute that command. Unfortunately those "features" are so deeply intertwined into the OS there is probably never going to be a defaults write command to turn it off. I'll stick with SL on my professional machines as long as possible thank you. I have Lion on my MBP but that is not a critical machine.
I like the idea of auto-save in the same way I like the idea of automated backups but Apple's implementations just don't work very well.
Auto-save doesn't have to replace standard saving methods but supplement them. If you start on some creative streak in Photoshop and it hangs or crashes after an hour of work, it's gone. That really sucks and auto-save features are great to help you recover data but being able to manually define save points is almost essential.
I guess it's meant to be like source code versioning in which case you only ever have one copy and the version control software maintains your commits and you can checkout the code at various stages. The problem with Apple applying this to any kind of save file is that they don't have this checkout ability in the way it needs to be implemented.
In the example of the reusable template, you can't go back to a blank slate from a single file and fill the document in again and save another state, nor can you prevent others seeing certain versions.
It just seems like another of those marketing things they can put on a billboard but won't see much practical use. How often do people use the flashy back-in-time Time Machine interface?
If they'd even offered a solution to auto-save open documents in any app to a central database, that would be worth it. Kind of like "Adobe can't be bothered putting auto-save in some of their apps. Don't worry, Apple's got your back and we kept a backup for you". That kind of auto-save would be worth it. The kind they made is the kind you want to find workarounds for and that's entirely wrong.
There are also limits to auto-save of course, which is why Adobe can't put it in all the apps or it would be saving hundreds of MBs to disk and would go really slowly but there's bound to be a happy medium somewhere.
I like the idea of auto-save in the same way I like the idea of automated backups but Apple's implementations just don't work very well.
Auto-save doesn't have to replace standard saving methods but supplement them. If you start on some creative streak in Photoshop and it hangs or crashes after an hour of work, it's gone. That really sucks and auto-save features are great to help you recover data but being able to manually define save points is almost essential.
I guess it's meant to be like source code versioning in which case you only ever have one copy and the version control software maintains your commits and you can checkout the code at various stages. The problem with Apple applying this to any kind of save file is that they don't have this checkout ability in the way it needs to be implemented.
In the example of the reusable template, you can't go back to a blank slate from a single file and fill the document in again and save another state, nor can you prevent others seeing certain versions.
It just seems like another of those marketing things they can put on a billboard but won't see much practical use. How often do people use the flashy back-in-time Time Machine interface?
If they'd even offered a solution to auto-save open documents in any app to a central database, that would be worth it. Kind of like "Adobe can't be bothered putting auto-save in some of their apps. Don't worry, Apple's got your back and we kept a backup for you". That kind of auto-save would be worth it. The kind they made is the kind you want to find workarounds for and that's entirely wrong.
There are also limits to auto-save of course, which is why Adobe can't put it in all the apps or it would be saving hundreds of MBs to disk and would go really slowly but there's bound to be a happy medium somewhere.
AutoSave needs a lot of work. It's way to slow for my Keynote file with a lot of slides, videos and graphics. Doesn't help that many slides were imported from PowerPoint files. Don't get me wrong, Keynote is still surprisingly responsive on Lion, but the AutoSave Revert To Version Space-Flying Interface Thingy is very, very slow for significant Keynote files.
Other than that, honestly I'm liking Lion a lot and can't see myself going back to anything else. I don't even want to touch Windows 7 nowadays, it just feels so hideous.
I was using multi-touch mice (using USB overdrive in the dark days of OS9) when apple said that one button was all you'd ever need, and a scroll wheel was not important. Now look, they have indirectly said they were wrong all those years ago.
The Magic Mouse was the first multi-touch mouse. You mean "multi-button" mouse. Apple has still never had a multi-button mouse, unless you count the ball on the Mighty Mouse.
I think it's a good idea to share some of our least favourite features in Mac OS X Lion and how to mitigate them.
Thanks, stratokaster! You've got a great idea here, and it's already helped me better my Lion knowledge and speed up my work.
My gripe is about uncontrolled scrolling.
When I have Mail's new 3 pane look open, and the list of messages (thousands) in the middle, there's a tiny little scroll bar available just to the right of that middle window.
When I try to scroll through these 2-line previewed messages, either nothing happens or I scroll thru 5,000 instantly. There's no fine granularity to the scroll bar movement, it's all or nothing. Very frustrating and really shows a lack of attention & detail.
It reminds me of Excel in Office 2001. Trying to scroll thru a spreadsheet, I would start on Row 1 but was immediately transported to Row 26457! Or whatever. Just no control. M$FT eventually fixed this freak out.
This has nothing to do with natural or synthetic scrolling. This is all about speed & stability, using the mouse pointer on the scroll bar control. Any scroll in that middle window, regardless of direction, moves messages at the speed of light.
So I head off to the Apple Store because of course, I have nothing better to do with my time than devote all of it to a machine. Surprisingly, the Genius at the Apple Store couldn't help me. He said that the team there hadn't been given time by Apple to study Lion, and he didn't know the OS's in's & out's. He tried to control a scroll in that middle window on my computer, and zipped through 2 weeks of email messages, rather than moving only 1 or 2 up, which was his goal. His main suggestion was to send feedback to Apple.
So, I got back to the office and started playing around with the scroll bar in the middle Mail pane, using the mouse pointer (I don't like using finger gestures on my computer, I usually just use them when somebody cuts me off on the highway :-).
I discovered through goofing around that if you HOLD DOWN the OPTION KEY while moving the mouse pointer, you can scroll with great granularity in the middle message window, very slowly. You can vertically move in pixels at a time if you like. This is a temporary solution, I think; I'd dislike having to use two hands all the time to review the hundreds of email I receive nearly every day. But it works.
The Genius did tell me that I should learn to use my fingers (I thought I was a big boy now & could use my entrenching tools :-) instead of the mouse pointer because Apple is making OS X more like the iPhone. He didn't like it when I told him I didn't want my $2500+ computer acting like a $29 cellphone...
I think this bug or lack of attention has more to do with the length of the data in the window than the window or application itself. I do not think there was much effort paid to this by Apple (duh). When I was filing a report with Apple in Safari, I had pixel-pinpoint control using the scroll bar & moving the data in the window vertically... UNTIL I copied & pasted a large hardware report under my bug report text. At that point, the window's vertical size grew substantially, scrolling behavior changed abruptly and became wildly uncontrollable. So, it's not just Mail, it's scrolling using the mouse pointer on the scroll bar controller in 10.7 inside lengthy windows. Hopefully, they'll fix this in .1 or .2.
Anyway, a discovered work-around for those out there who are also struggling with this wild scrolling behavior. Enjoy!
Matt, I'm not sure I follow you. Two-finger scrolling on the trackpad is fine for me in Mail and everywhere in Lion. Dragging the thingy on the scroll bar also seems alright. About 2,000 messages in one mailbox for example.
My Logitech external mouse scrolls fine.
Is the issue with an external mouse? What brand? I take it you've tried to adjust the scrolling speed in System Preferences?
Comments
defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false
I thought I was going nuts trying to comment some code I'm writing and not having my characters repeat.
Sheldon
There's one version of Lion. Your install went badly, then.
I know there is only one version of Lion. I was being sarcastic.
Nope, that brings up the definition at the same time.
Yeah the problem is, on my Macbook at least, there is a long delay while the system tries to format the dictionary text into that annoying pointless popup that is attached to the word. On SL it would instantly open a new window with the full definition, wikipedia articles etc. You can still get this on Lion, but you have to open it from the popup definition that appears by the word. Basically the whole thing seems like a kludge. Lion forces you to jump through hoops to get to something that was instant on SL.
Given that they left the hit boxes for them the same size, they were thinking about aesthetics.
Well personally, as a graphic designer myself, I think the aesthetics are worse now, than the previous version.
Yeah the problem is, on my Macbook at least, there is a long delay while the system tries to format the dictionary text into that annoying pointless popup that is attached to the word.
You realize that that's NOT what is going on by ANY stretch of the imagination, right? You realize that your hard drive is spinning up to access where the Dictionary application information is stored, so it takes a while because that's not an oft-accessed part of the OS, right? Rendering the box is a fifty nanosecond job.
On SL it would instantly open a new window with the full definition, wikipedia articles etc. You can still get this on Lion, but you have to open it from the popup definition that appears by the word.
Yes, that 'new window' was the Dictionary application itself, which took even more time to open than either pop-up on either OS.
This could be true long ago but not anymore. And it is not Apple but the general technological evolution forcing you to upgrade. You cannot keep a computer for five years or more and expect it to run flawlessly under any situation like it did in the begninning. The most notable example is the ubiquitous internet. It taxes more and more the CPUs and on top of that, it may need software that will never be available for older Mac OS X versions.
I have a black Macbook which is now trhee and a half years old and it can painfully keep up with the internet CPU demand. In youtube the CPU temperature will skyrocket in no time, while more recent Macs go happily through it. Or, scripts running behind the scenes in some web pages may bring it to its knees, especially when paging out starts (and it has 4 GB of RAM).
So, yes, you are forced to upgrade, although not by Apple.
You are talking about something totally different. There was no real reason we had to upgrade to Lion. It's not new hardware. It offers nothing we MUST have.
You are talking about something totally different. There was no real reason we had to upgrade to Lion. It's not new hardware. It offers nothing we MUST have.
But the point is still valid. For the last 11 years, you could buy a new PC and put XP on it, whether that pc was purchased in 2004 or 2011.
I have a 2010 macbook pro, and I can't put tiger on it. Can the newest macbook air's run snow leopard? I seriously doubt it. This is by Apple design, not any technological reason.
So if I buy a new mac, I am forced into Lion, not recommended that I run it, FORCED. So whether I put it on voluntarily now or am forced to with the next generation of hardware, it's just a matter of when, not if. That's why I am bothered by the changes. If I could stay at snow leopard for years, then I wouldn't care so much. But the minute I upgrade hardware, I have to make the jump.
Can the newest macbook air's run snow leopard? I seriously doubt it.
And you'd be correct.
So if I buy a new mac, I am forced into Lion, not recommended that I run it, FORCED.
So what's your point? Tech changes; get over it. You're acting like you still want to be running System 7 today. In 2011. TWENTY years later.
Lion's great. If you have old (read: Rosetta) software, you'll want to be running it on old hardware, anyway, so there's no issue.
Lion's great.
That is your opinion. I disagree.
The stuff they added I don't want and the stuff they took away I do want.
Lion might be nice for some people, but not me. There are a few defaults write hacks that can help but I still have issues with auto save and versions in particular. I work with a lot of big files and save to various network storages and I don't want things being auto saved to my hard drive or making versions like time machine unless I specifically and deliberately execute that command. Unfortunately those "features" are so deeply intertwined into the OS there is probably never going to be a defaults write command to turn it off. I'll stick with SL on my professional machines as long as possible thank you. I have Lion on my MBP but that is not a critical machine.
http://www.blueboxmoon.com/wordpress/?p=281
This guy articulates it better than I. I destructively edit all the time.
http://www.blueboxmoon.com/wordpress/?p=281
I like the idea of auto-save in the same way I like the idea of automated backups but Apple's implementations just don't work very well.
Auto-save doesn't have to replace standard saving methods but supplement them. If you start on some creative streak in Photoshop and it hangs or crashes after an hour of work, it's gone. That really sucks and auto-save features are great to help you recover data but being able to manually define save points is almost essential.
I guess it's meant to be like source code versioning in which case you only ever have one copy and the version control software maintains your commits and you can checkout the code at various stages. The problem with Apple applying this to any kind of save file is that they don't have this checkout ability in the way it needs to be implemented.
In the example of the reusable template, you can't go back to a blank slate from a single file and fill the document in again and save another state, nor can you prevent others seeing certain versions.
It just seems like another of those marketing things they can put on a billboard but won't see much practical use. How often do people use the flashy back-in-time Time Machine interface?
If they'd even offered a solution to auto-save open documents in any app to a central database, that would be worth it. Kind of like "Adobe can't be bothered putting auto-save in some of their apps. Don't worry, Apple's got your back and we kept a backup for you". That kind of auto-save would be worth it. The kind they made is the kind you want to find workarounds for and that's entirely wrong.
There are also limits to auto-save of course, which is why Adobe can't put it in all the apps or it would be saving hundreds of MBs to disk and would go really slowly but there's bound to be a happy medium somewhere.
I like the idea of auto-save in the same way I like the idea of automated backups but Apple's implementations just don't work very well.
Auto-save doesn't have to replace standard saving methods but supplement them. If you start on some creative streak in Photoshop and it hangs or crashes after an hour of work, it's gone. That really sucks and auto-save features are great to help you recover data but being able to manually define save points is almost essential.
I guess it's meant to be like source code versioning in which case you only ever have one copy and the version control software maintains your commits and you can checkout the code at various stages. The problem with Apple applying this to any kind of save file is that they don't have this checkout ability in the way it needs to be implemented.
In the example of the reusable template, you can't go back to a blank slate from a single file and fill the document in again and save another state, nor can you prevent others seeing certain versions.
It just seems like another of those marketing things they can put on a billboard but won't see much practical use. How often do people use the flashy back-in-time Time Machine interface?
If they'd even offered a solution to auto-save open documents in any app to a central database, that would be worth it. Kind of like "Adobe can't be bothered putting auto-save in some of their apps. Don't worry, Apple's got your back and we kept a backup for you". That kind of auto-save would be worth it. The kind they made is the kind you want to find workarounds for and that's entirely wrong.
There are also limits to auto-save of course, which is why Adobe can't put it in all the apps or it would be saving hundreds of MBs to disk and would go really slowly but there's bound to be a happy medium somewhere.
AutoSave needs a lot of work. It's way to slow for my Keynote file with a lot of slides, videos and graphics. Doesn't help that many slides were imported from PowerPoint files. Don't get me wrong, Keynote is still surprisingly responsive on Lion, but the AutoSave Revert To Version Space-Flying Interface Thingy is very, very slow for significant Keynote files.
Other than that, honestly I'm liking Lion a lot and can't see myself going back to anything else. I don't even want to touch Windows 7 nowadays, it just feels so hideous.
I was using multi-touch mice (using USB overdrive in the dark days of OS9) when apple said that one button was all you'd ever need, and a scroll wheel was not important. Now look, they have indirectly said they were wrong all those years ago.
I think it's a good idea to share some of our least favourite features in Mac OS X Lion and how to mitigate them.
Thanks, stratokaster! You've got a great idea here, and it's already helped me better my Lion knowledge and speed up my work.
My gripe is about uncontrolled scrolling.
When I have Mail's new 3 pane look open, and the list of messages (thousands) in the middle, there's a tiny little scroll bar available just to the right of that middle window.
When I try to scroll through these 2-line previewed messages, either nothing happens or I scroll thru 5,000 instantly. There's no fine granularity to the scroll bar movement, it's all or nothing. Very frustrating and really shows a lack of attention & detail.
It reminds me of Excel in Office 2001. Trying to scroll thru a spreadsheet, I would start on Row 1 but was immediately transported to Row 26457! Or whatever. Just no control. M$FT eventually fixed this freak out.
This has nothing to do with natural or synthetic scrolling. This is all about speed & stability, using the mouse pointer on the scroll bar control. Any scroll in that middle window, regardless of direction, moves messages at the speed of light.
So I head off to the Apple Store because of course, I have nothing better to do with my time than devote all of it to a machine. Surprisingly, the Genius at the Apple Store couldn't help me. He said that the team there hadn't been given time by Apple to study Lion, and he didn't know the OS's in's & out's. He tried to control a scroll in that middle window on my computer, and zipped through 2 weeks of email messages, rather than moving only 1 or 2 up, which was his goal. His main suggestion was to send feedback to Apple.
So, I got back to the office and started playing around with the scroll bar in the middle Mail pane, using the mouse pointer (I don't like using finger gestures on my computer, I usually just use them when somebody cuts me off on the highway :-).
I discovered through goofing around that if you HOLD DOWN the OPTION KEY while moving the mouse pointer, you can scroll with great granularity in the middle message window, very slowly. You can vertically move in pixels at a time if you like. This is a temporary solution, I think; I'd dislike having to use two hands all the time to review the hundreds of email I receive nearly every day. But it works.
The Genius did tell me that I should learn to use my fingers (I thought I was a big boy now & could use my entrenching tools :-) instead of the mouse pointer because Apple is making OS X more like the iPhone. He didn't like it when I told him I didn't want my $2500+ computer acting like a $29 cellphone...
I think this bug or lack of attention has more to do with the length of the data in the window than the window or application itself. I do not think there was much effort paid to this by Apple (duh). When I was filing a report with Apple in Safari, I had pixel-pinpoint control using the scroll bar & moving the data in the window vertically... UNTIL I copied & pasted a large hardware report under my bug report text. At that point, the window's vertical size grew substantially, scrolling behavior changed abruptly and became wildly uncontrollable. So, it's not just Mail, it's scrolling using the mouse pointer on the scroll bar controller in 10.7 inside lengthy windows. Hopefully, they'll fix this in .1 or .2.
Anyway, a discovered work-around for those out there who are also struggling with this wild scrolling behavior. Enjoy!
My Logitech external mouse scrolls fine.
Is the issue with an external mouse? What brand? I take it you've tried to adjust the scrolling speed in System Preferences?
Updated to 10.7.1?