# mountain lion opinion wanted



## mistyd107 (May 22, 2009)

I'm still running snow leopard  on my imac and was considering updating to mountain lion. However I've seen a lot of negative review/comments about it. has anyone here upgraded and if so what are your thoughts? Is it worth it?


----------



## chilady1 (Jun 9, 2009)

I am one of the millions who upgraded Day 1 to ML.  I really like it however, I will say there are some battery issues with the new upgrade.  There is a thread on the Apple Forum that is literally over 100 pages long of people complaining about the decreased battery life they are seeing as a result of the upgrade.

Now, many of the folks on that thread also talked about the fact that Apple contacted them, had them run diagnostics on their machine and report those results to Apple.  I also know that Apple released 10.8.1 however, that didn't seem to cure the battery issue.  The rumor has it that 10.8.2 which is in the works right now, supposedly will resolve a lot of the battery issues.

Personally, right out of the gate I noticed a degradation of my battery life.  Original = 8+ hours without AC, after ML somewhere around 3 -4 which is ridiculous.  It was actually quite interesting to see those who had recently purchased a MacBook Pro Retina complain because obviously they had just spent a buttload (over $2500) on these new machines.

I notice the battery life and also, my machine started to heat up significantly along with the fans swirling.  Now I know the fans run all the time however, since I purchased my MBP 13 - I had never heard the fans.  All of a sudden, the machine was getting extremely hot and the fans were constantly on.  Went to the forum and did a search - one individual had posted that the SEND TO KINDLE app was the cause.  I un-installed the app and IMMEDIATELY the fan quieted down and the temperature went down to about 44 degress C.  Normal ranges.   I would never have guessed that app was the cause because it was only using about 3-4% of the CPU but it was the culprit.  Now, I am still contending with the battery life and like most, hope 10.8.2 fixes the longevity of the battery.

I know this is a long winded answer to your question and I would probably tell you to WAIT for now.  Let 10.8.2 come out and monitor the Apple forums to see if in fact, this release does fix the issues with the battery drainage.  This way, you don't upgrade and have to deal with problems.  Hope this helps.

P.S. Amazon did know about the SEND TO KINDLE app and has since fixed it.  I re-loaded an updated version onto my Mac and it works fine now - no problems.


----------



## KR Jacobsen (Jul 19, 2011)

Since you're running on an iMac, the battery issue is a non-factor. I think Lion had some significant upgrades (namely in versioning), and I think ML further refines some of those changes (speaking a little more generally to the iCloud integration). If you use the built-in apps (Safari, Mail, etc.) then those have received facelifts and look a fair bit better (and offer more functionality). If you have an Apple TV, Airplay from your Mac via ML is pretty neat (I do it from my iPad from time to time). Dictation also looks neat and I've read good things about it, though I'm yet try it (see my caveat below about ML).

However, I think the biggest change that most people should consider is that ML is inherently more secure (theoretically, and also depending upon you to enable certain settings) by its design. Sandboxing theoretically limits access to the system by apps, and the addition of Gatekeeper makes it possible that you can't run software on your machine that isn't "signed" by Apple (or an Apple-approved developer). While this is something you can enable or disable (or make it optional), it's a good idea to at least set it to its middle setting. OS X is becoming a larger target every for viruses and other Bad Stuff (tm) because more people are using it and Apple gets so much press.

Now, having said that, there are other benefits, but I have to admit I haven't installed it yet. Why not? Battery issues. I have a couple of Mac laptops and I don't update those until everything is solid. I also have a desktop that I haven't upgraded, but it's running Lion without any issues. On a one-to-one comparison, I think I prefer using Lion to Snow Leopard, but I can't point to any one specific reason why other than a general "Lion feels better." Assuming all else is equal, I think ML should be roughly the same as Lion, somewhat akin to how Snow Leopard was similar to Leopard, only it was a little smoother and better overall.

As chilady1 says, the next patch for ML should address some issues, particularly the battery drain, at which point I'll install it on one of my machines for evaluation.


----------



## hsuthard (Jan 6, 2010)

I've upgraded and like it! My kids all have the latest versions for school, so we've got it on four computers here with no problems.


----------

