Apple's Lion drives 26% rise in Mac sales during July

13»

Comments

  • Reply 41 of 58
    elrothelroth Posts: 1,201member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sflocal View Post


    Lacking just about all details. Why did you reach that conclusion with Lion? After using Lion, I won't go back to Snow Leopard. There's still some tweaking issues that need to be resolved (WiFi) but all-in-all, it was a great first-release of a new OS. The multi-touch gestures makes it a gem to use!



    Besides, there are options to tweak Lion to mimic just about every behavior that SL had.



    So what's your concern with it?



    Starting with Auto-Save and Versions - terrible for the way I work. I need to save exactly what I want to save, and not have to go try to find which version I want. Waste of time. Continuing with the new multitouch gestures - the ones I use all the time (4 finger swipe up and down for the desktop and Expose) have been changed to Mission Control, which I also don't like nearly as much as spaces. The new gestures for showing desktop involves pinching with 4 fingers - I really dislike it. I also want constant scroll bars with arrows - sometimes a window is small, and with arrows I can go down one line at a time (I use that surprisingly a lot, though not on web pages - more on lists with small print, where it's hard to scroll line by line). Those are off the top of my head - there may be more.



    Lion may be great - just not for me, as it is right now. No reason for me to switch.
  • Reply 42 of 58
    2oh12oh1 Posts: 503member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nagromme View Post


    (I haven?t tried 10.7.1--I don?t like to jump on OS updates early--so I?m sure Lion is somewhat better now.)



    Think again. 10.7.1 doesn't fix any of the poor design elements. iCal, for example, is still a mess.
  • Reply 43 of 58
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by monstrosity View Post


    I'm dead impressed with Lion, the UI is slick as hell.





    When you used the word "slick," it reminded me of "stick" and my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE thing about Lion: the $70 Lion restore USB stick.



    The price of it undercuts Apple's external optical drive for the MacBook Air and Mac mini by $9, and is FAR more versatile.
    __


    __
  • Reply 44 of 58
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by shen View Post


    Yeah, been hearing that since 2002. It will happen right after the virus threats come true...



    If Mac OS ever becomes a dominating OS in terms of market share, then it will be worthwhile for hackers to target. Right now, it's still less than 10% of the global market. However, Apple can prevent a lot of these attacks if they only allow software to be installed from the App Store.
  • Reply 45 of 58
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by digitalclips View Post


    Strange I saw thew opposite. I upgraded a range of Macs from the newest MBP to an old MacBook. The old MacBook seemed far more responsive with Lion for me. As to not using its new features ... that seems an odd thing if indeed truly possible (even if you try to avoid them). Why upgrade?



    For $30 to upgrade 4 machines to a 'newer' operating system was worth it. After a couple of weeks, I went back to the Apple website to see what new functionality perhaps I wasn't using. Mission control and launchpad wasn't anything special. Launchpad reminded me of a Windows desktop. I prefer using a mouse over a trackpad. I don't like the idea of autosave. Airdrop is cool once I have the other 4 machines with Lion, but I already had a NAS in the house, so this doesn't add too much. Switching to the Dashboard is nicer (2 finger swipe on the magic mouse)



    I don't have regrets since I only paid $30, but it might be awhile before I upgrade the other machines.
  • Reply 46 of 58
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JunkMailfever View Post


    If Mac OS ever becomes a dominating OS in terms of market share, then it will be worthwhile for hackers to target.



    Oh, shut up. This is abject nonsense and you know it. It has been said for decades. Where are the viruses?
  • Reply 47 of 58
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    Oh, shut up. This is abject nonsense and you know it. It has been said for decades. Where are the viruses?



    That's classy. That's how you have a discussion. For decades, Windows has dominated the market. Mac OS hasn't even hit 10% market share yet. Why build a virus to target a small percentage of the market.
  • Reply 48 of 58
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JunkMailfever View Post


    That's classy. That's how you have a discussion. For decades, Windows has dominated the market. Mac OS hasn't even hit 10% market share yet. Why build a virus to target a small percentage of the market.



    Better tell Lamborghini to stop making cars, then. There's obviously no money in 1% of the car market.
  • Reply 49 of 58
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    Better tell Lamborghini to stop making cars, then. There's obviously no money in 1% of the car market.



    I never said there was no money, I said they had a smaller market share. I'm actually surprised it hasn't grown more in the last few years.



    Using your example, how many after market parts do you see selling at Walmart for Lamborghini's. Probably none, since after market manufacturers will make more money on higher volume cars. Mac OS is a great OS, but hasn't been challenged yet by virus attacks IMHO.
  • Reply 50 of 58
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JunkMailfever View Post


    I never said there was no money, I said they had a smaller market share. I'm actually surprised it hasn't grown more in the last few years.



    Using your example, how many after market parts do you see selling at Walmart for Lamborghini's. Probably none, since after market manufacturers will make more money on higher volume cars. Mac OS is a great OS, but hasn't been challenged yet by virus attacks IMHO.



    Note that windows 7 infection rate is far less, only 4 infections per 1000 machines (the 64 bit version is even less than that), than it was back in the Windows XP days when nearly 18 of every 1000 windows machines acquired malware at some point. So the chances of virus/malware issues ever being a serious problem with Mac's is slim to none IMO.
  • Reply 51 of 58
    scadesscades Posts: 35member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sflocal View Post


    I had a couple of "interesting" behaviors with address book sync. Scratched my head a few times with why it was behaving that way. Did it in the beginning, but resolved itself. I think I just re-edited the entry in question and did a manual sync and problem was resolved. Didn't have a problem since then. All in all, a five-minute hiccup that for all I know, may not even (for me at least) have been a Lion issue but perhaps a cloud-syncing issue at that particular time and I was a victim of bad-timing. Dunno.. I didn't dwell on it after it was resolved.



    But when folks slam Lion without giving any details whatsoever, well then I just question the sincerity of that poster.



    Lion is not perfect, but then again neither is SL. On the other hand, I think every OS out there be it Windows, Linux, OSX, Amiga, <insert any other OS> all are not perfect.



    If he's going to preach the uselessness of a product, be prepared to be called on it. Otherwise, accept that he's probably some shill trolling around as he has nothing better to do.



    I haven't used Office2011 on the Mac yet. I'd consider it and would appreciate feedback since I have many clients that are considering the move to Macs and using Office would seal the deal. I've heard issues with it, but I'm still trying to get a feel if its more a user-adapting issue or something downright wrong with the product. I'm playing the wait-and-see approach since I still can.



    With respect to Office 2011, I'm not a multiple-platform guy, so I can't make useful comparisons, but the core pieces, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are solid packages, I really dislike MS Ribbons, but they do work, and they'll be immediately familiar to Windows users. In fact, the 2011 version of PP is a solid improvement on 2008. Can't speak to VB, Outlook, etc; I use mostly Apple apps for those functions.
  • Reply 52 of 58
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by elroth View Post




    Lion may be great - just not for me, as it is right now. No reason for me to switch.



    Finger gestures like scrolling, swiping (which, BTW, you can't do on the "Genius" page of the App Store -- HA! "Genius" -- what an unfortunate use of the term), pinching and un-pinching are certainly intuitive for "The rest of us" (actually, "rest of them," as I am a Power User and a Geek).



    But three and four finger gestures, twists, triple taps, and more are NOT intuitive and don't lend themselves to intuitive "self-discovery."



    As much of a geek as I am, a great many gestures and other iOS HUI interactions I learned only by "rote": reading about them online or in MacLife or somewhere. Once, I had apparently accidentally touched the iPad's screen with three fingers and found myself in "zoom hell." When I tried to scroll across a zoomed page to see more content, as soon as I lifted my finger, the screen "sprung" back, and I was unable to see more content. Worse, I was powerless to release the device from this mode.



    I tried to escape my situation by visiting "Settings," but was unable to find any clues. (It is in fact there, buried in "Accessibility" where I, blessed with no infirmities, was not inclined to look.)



    I tried shutting down the iPad. But after reboot, I was still trapped in "zoom hell."



    I even tried (which I learned about, again, through "rote," by reading about it) to do a heavy-duty shutdown by holding down the Home button and Sleep button simultaneously for a long time, even past the "Slide to shut down" screen, until the Apple logo appeared and then the screen went REALLY black.



    I waited a bit, rebooted, only to be still trapped in "zoom hell."



    I finally READ and learned (again) by "rote" (not discovered intuitively) about three finger taps and how to escape the hell I found myself in -- WHEW!



    Steve Jobs maintains that finger gestures are natural for evolved Homo Sapiens, and provide a more "intimate" computing experience because there is nothing like a mouse standing between you and direct manipulation of the device (to include, I guess, the "Magic Trackpad" on the Mac -- soon to replace the mouse that Apple will stop making, which I am FAR more productive with -- I'm a Whiz with a mouse!)



    Pressing and holding iOS app icons until they wiggle, is something that can only be learned in a rote fashion. And if a non-technical user succeeds at that, organizing app icon screens, including moving an app to a different app screen, and creating and adding to "Folders" (a revolutionary iOS innovation) is tiresome and difficult and time consuming. (But is "none of the above" on a Mac. It's like "buttah.")



    So much for intuitiveness -- just when was its Death Knell rung and its need become no longer necessary?



    The list goes on, but I could finger scroll a web or other page just fine, except within a text box like the one I'm using now. I finally READ and learned, once again, by "rote" (not discovered intuitively) about two finger scrolling within text boxes within web pages. (It's SO much easier and INTUITIVE with a mouse!)



    Two finger scrolling does not seem to work in single line text entry field, however, and if what you type exceeds the dimensions of the text field, have fun navigating back to see what you wrote at the beginning, which is no longer visible. Aside from pairing my iPad with a Bluetooth keyboard with cursor keys (oh, how much I've failed to appreciate them for so long! Sorry, cursor keys!). Absent using a Bluetooth keyboard, if anyone knows how to get to the beginning portion of something you've typed in a single line text field -- and back to the end in iOS -- PLEASE tell me!



    Finger scrolling, swiping, pinching, un-pinching, touching, tapping, double-tapping are easy and natural for non-technical users, but learning -- only by rote -- ever-increasing and ever more complex three and four finger contortions, reverses the innovative progress of the iPad, and turns the user-friendliest, most natural computing device on Earth into a suddenly difficult, technical, unnatural device that isn't the joy and the breeze to use that it used to be.



    Triple-clicking the Home button only to find stale programs still running via "multitasking" when I had used them only briefly eight hours earlier, was something I also learned by rote, reading about it somewhere, two months after buying my iPad 2. By all indications and behaviors of the iOS UI, I always thought that when I "exited" a program by pressing the Home button, I was quitting it, and when I tapped its icon again, I was launching it, upon which it presented itself the same as when I quit it, which I thought was some sort of Auto-resume feature.



    Finally, I stumbled upon information that showed me how to see all running programs and how to REALLY quit them. (I can also now switch between running programs instead of pressing the Home button and pressing the app's icon seven screens away. Now I can switch between running apps.....HEY! Kind of like with the Dock or Command-Tab in Mac OS X! (Except with more steps -- and less "intimate.")



    I've always wanted to learn ASL, but I'm not ready yet. And learning by rote an unknown number of additional and more complex, multiple finger gestures is starting to make me think learning ASL would be the easier of the two.



    I love my iPad for many things -- usually things not possible with a Mac. And I love my Mac for things, not possible, or not as easy, on an iPad. There are times when I'm trying to accomplish something on my iPad, that I get a "Microsoft product" feeling. If I didn't know better, I'd swear it was working against me or throwing roadblocks in my way on the road to getting things done. I feel like I'm wading through a swimming pool filled with pudding.



    John Siracusa's review of Lion, insofar as what he was given to work with, devoted much to covering the user-visible iOS UI "overlays," and not as much to covering major advances to the OS's non-user-visible, underlying technology advances as he has always done in every Mac OS X review -- because Lion is shockingly bereft of such changes. Seven long years before Lion, Tiger was essentially a "tectonic shift" from its predecessor (innovations found in no other OS, exciting new Core APIs, Photoshop essentially "baked in" to the OS), and then Leopard was a tectonic shift from Tiger.



    Snow Leopard was a serious, Apple-committed, company resource and priority backed effort to fundamentally overhaul and refine Mac OS X's underlying tecnicals, and in turn, improve the Mac itself -- or what I call "The Mac Experience." (The hardware, the operating system, the "Digital Hub," the "ecosystem" -- the whole package.)



    Then seven long years after Tiger we have Lion.



    Visible in what's changed with the Lion release is an unmistakably fainthearted commitment and motivation to advance and modernize the underlying fundamentals of this desktop OS, and a spirited drive and commitment to "iOSing" (Mac) OS X.



    An organic reaction to Lion has resulted in the form of instructional articles, "how-to's," and a veritable "Cottage Industry" of apps to "de-iOSify" Lion. What works on a horizontally-oriented mobile device does not always comport with a device using different user input methods and a display that is more vertically oriented (Steve Jobs said exactly that himself). A "face transplant" simply isn't workable.



    But expect ("Mac") OS X to essentially "freeze" in its progress as a full-fledged desktop and notebook OS from now on, and expect all new changes to "OS X" (minus "Mac," a word that will eventually be "deprecated," so to speak, by Apple/Jobs) will be solely about "iOSing" it.



    The insignificant, ephemeral word "Mac," bereft of any Global brand name recognition, has been banished from the title of OS X, and Apple will "Apple TV" the -- I'm predicting -- "AirBook," a cloud computing (used to be called NetBooks) notebook computer with a keyboard (though I don't know if its keys will press in at all -- after all, thinner trumps all other considerations, technical or otherwise, which is why the Mac mini is an exorbitant, non-portable laptop), will go from running Mac OS X to running iOS, just like the Apple TV.



    *At the last Quarterly Earnings conference, either Tim Cook or Peter Oppenheimer referred obliuquely to "a major transition coming this Fall." I don't think he was referring to the iPhone 5, but to "the major change to the Mac product line" stories that are finally being written today. I believe the MacBook Air will run iOS instead of ("Mac") OS X and will not contain that word with zero brand name recognition, "Mac."



    Coca-Cola is a brand name that is, what, more than 100 years old and recognized the world over, and long overdue for retirement in favor of a new name. And don't get me started on Hershey's, Q-tips, Pampers, Rolex, Mercedes -- all antiquated! Come on! Shelve them and choose a new brand name, and spend the billions and the years necessary to garner it name recognition! As Charlie Sheen said, "Duh!"



    As for the rest of the (until further notice, presently named) Mac product line? I have no guess, (but perhaps I'm repressing my worst fears).



    Why wouldn't Apple/Jobs/Jopple want me to pony up for an iPod nano AND an iPhone AND an iPad AND a Mac?



    Though some capabilities overlap, they're different enough that I NEED THEM ALL, and hope to be able to buy them all well into the future. Don't you want my money, Apple?



    With only marginal product line cannibalization, I would think Apple would be elated at the revenue implications, instead of being bent on killing the Mac.





  • Reply 53 of 58
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Macs2InfinityAndBeyond View Post


    I've always wanted to learn ASL, but I'm not ready yet. And learning by rote and motorizing more and more multiple finger gestures is starting to make me think learning ASL would be the easier of the two.



    Signing Exact English is better, anyway.



    And are you just copying and pasting essays you've written here?
  • Reply 54 of 58
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    Signing Exact English is better, anyway.



    Thanx!



    Quote:

    And are you just copying and pasting essays you've written here?



    Nope.
  • Reply 55 of 58
    cvaldes1831cvaldes1831 Posts: 1,832member
    These numbers can't be right. Gene Munster published them.
  • Reply 56 of 58
    kpomkpom Posts: 660member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JunkMailfever View Post


    That's classy. That's how you have a discussion. For decades, Windows has dominated the market. Mac OS hasn't even hit 10% market share yet. Why build a virus to target a small percentage of the market.



    You can launch a pretty nasty DoS attack with a small percentage of computers. Since most Macs aren't running with any anti-malware software of any kind (other than what Apple provides), you might actually think that targeting that 10% would be an easy way to launch an attack.
  • Reply 57 of 58
    macrulezmacrulez Posts: 2,455member
    deleted
  • Reply 58 of 58
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sflocal View Post


    I haven't used Office2011 on the Mac yet. I'd consider it and would appreciate feedback since I have many clients that are considering the move to Macs and using Office would seal the deal. I've heard issues with it, but I'm still trying to get a feel if its more a user-adapting issue or something downright wrong with the product. I'm playing the wait-and-see approach since I still can.



    Well, I have 15 people in my office on Macs and Office 2011, and the other 85 on Office 2007 on a mix of XP and Win7 boxes. While I can't claim too deep of knowledge of exact functions and such, overall it is much, much better than Office 2008 was. I find Excel and Word in particular to be much easier on the eyes and faster and easier to use.



    Outlook is still missing a fair bit of the Window's version, but it is certainly much improved over Entourage. There are several Exchange things that just work, finally, on a mac, such as Out of Office, shared calendars, Tasks sync'd, etc... But there are some bizarre things that they did as well, the way the calendar works when you have multiple ones (such as viewing conf rooms) they all overlap, and are all the same gray color, whereas on a PC they open side-by-side and each is a different color, which I find much easier to view what's going on).



    So while Outlook is not perfect, it sure is easier to setup, and is actually pretty functional for using, so I don't use the PC version all the time (in VMWare Fusion). I prefer Outlook to AppleMail/iCal/Address book though, having all together is much more intuitive, and is a rare miss for Apple that I have never agreed with.
Sign In or Register to comment.