So finally took the plunge and took the weekend (14+ hr each day) to upgrade my MBP to MoLi. Rather than just upgrade I took the opportunity to do a clean install, so started with a virgin copy of SnoLeo, upgraded direct to MoLi, then reinstalled all my apps and data. To add a further level of difficulty (and security) I installed a new HD; so I can always start off my old SnoLeo HD if I have to.
Here are my impressions (for those bored at the moment, or have insights into what I've missed) and towards the bottom there is an actual LiveCode reference: Printer Driver The whole shebang almost came to an abrupt halt when I discovered that my Samsung printer driver was only compatible with SnoLeo. No point running an OS if I can't print. Fortunately some Forum post indicated some were lucky enough to have their printer work, so I tried and so far so good. CardBus eSATA adaptor Driver Also listed by the manufacturer as not upgraded since SnoLeo. This was also no go as I need my external HDs, but thankfully, again I installed and it's been working flawlessly none stop since then. USB Display adaptor Listed by the manufacture as partially compatible with MoLi, basically we blame Apple if you experience problems. This never worked 100% under SnoLeo, but good enough for 2D on a 3rd display. Seems to have a few more glitches under MoLi, see Displays and Safari entries below. Gate Keeper Surprised at what Apps were OK by Apple and which aren't. iStumbler by a bloke in a shed was OK, but Roxio (Toast), ProSoft (DriveGenius) and a bunch of other big names got the thumbs down. Easy enough to get around. Less options to fine tune System settings: Displays use to have an icon in the menu bar which was very convenient if you run multiple monitors (or a HTPC and need to change from 1080P to 720P). You could change the resolution on any display but best of all it had "Detect Displays" which would always fix display anomalies on extra displays that might occur after you woke a sleeping computer. MoLi has no Menu icon and doesn't have "Detect Displays" so one of my monitors in particular is regularly being registered as "VGA" and only occasionally correctly as "SyncMaster". Under SnoLeo the monitor connected to the USB adaptor would occasionally come up as hash and was fixed by 'Detect Displays', with MoLi, it seems to be more frequent and takes a lot more clicks to fix. Recent items you could have different numbers for Documents, Apps and Servers; now it's the same number for all three - stupid. I use Spotlight to open most Apps/Documents which makes it even more frustrating that those few occasions when I go to Recent items I can't see the the 11th (21st…) document I had open because old Servers/Apps are listed instead. Trackpad tapping is way too sensitive. On SnoLeo (and before) you had the option to "Ignore accidental trackpad input" but that option has gone, so now I'm regularly dragging things across my screen or opening files I don't mean to. Finder Open Finder windows don't remain after restarts, or at least are random. On my Wife's Lion machine when I shut it down, if there are Finder windows left open, if the box "Reopen windows when logging back in" is NOT ticked, the Finder windows will be open when I restart. SnoLeo has no box to tick and just works this way. On MoLi it's random, sometimes they will open, more often than not they won't. Sometimes it's only one window when I always shutdown with two open. Even if I tick the box it doesn't matter, the left open Finder windows regularly do not open at startup. Every startup there is a dialog that appears for a split second then disappears, so I have no idea what it's about, but it may be an improvement; on SnoLeo I always get a dialog to say that it can't connect to Servers that aren't running and they don't self clear and even if I clear them they will pop up again at least one more time. Column view is occasionally rendered wrong, with the second last column rendered extremely wide so the last column is off the right edge. This appears to effect Folders I've not opened before - but doesn't happen every time. Documents open on the wrong monitor. On SnoLeo this happened too, particularly LiveCode has problems with additional monitors; I set it up to have the Dictionary on a separate monitor and if I forget to move it back to the main monitor on shutdown, then when I'm on the road and I start LiveCode the Dictionary will be off the screen - easy enough to fix. Other apps are better, when there are no additional monitors they will open on the main screen. The problem now occurs when I have monitors plugged in but not switched On - a typical config for me as I only turn them On when I need them. Under SnoLeo the Finder knows that monitors are plugged in but not On as the cursor can be taken off screen - MoLi is the same, so no change. But under SnoLeo, as long as I moved the documents back to the main screen prior to shutdown, they'd be opened on the main screen when Opened. Under MoLi it's as if the last Saved location was on another monitor and this is remembered, if all you do is move the document to the main screen, and it hasn't been edited, so doesn't need saving, then closing the app doesn't remember that the document is now on the main screen so when it is Opened if the screen it was last saved on is attached, even if it is Off, the document is opened on that screen. Have had the Finder not wake up after falling asleep. Again to be fair I've had this happen on Leo and SnoLeo but this is a rare event usually associated with a combination of events, like selecting sleep, closing the lid, then suddenly realising you needed to do one last thing and opening the lid again. Just surprised I've already experienced this with MoLi, but if it doesn't happen again for 6 months I guess it will be on par with SnoLeo. Dictation Every speech to text app I've every tried has never worked anywhere near good enough so I wasn't expecting much. Still Dictation failed to meet my low expectations; it worked for one line and now doesn't work at all. Nothing, zip. The Finder actually FROZE on me and basically locked the computer up forcing me to do a hard reboot; something I've not done for years. Yes, I've had plenty of Apps freeze, and needed to Force Quit those, and I've had my fair share of kernel panics from incompatible kext files and/or hardware I'm testing, but the Finder has always been solid for me in OS X. This occurred after Dictation stopped working and I tried to change something in it's Preference Pane. It's probably my inability to speak English. Safari Is acting weird and sometimes doesn't do anything when I click on a button - not a Safari app button but a button or link in a web page. May have to do with the fact I mostly run it on the monitor connected to the USB adapter that isn't fully compatible with MoLi - I occasionally end up with dual cursors in echelon right. I think I'll like the Safari iCloud tabs option, so when I crack open my iPad Safari will look exactly the same but I haven't got around to testing that it actually works. Preview When I open a new pdf and Preview starts up, the last pdf document that I had open also opens. I'm guessing if I Quit Preview without actually closing the document it assumes I want it to open when I next start Preview. I'll have to do further testing. LiveCode Seems to be 'running' OK and a little faster, and thanks to several posts here I didn't have any trouble getting it to talk to xCode 4.5.2 + the old SDKs from 4.4. The only anomaly I have noted, and probably already registered as a bug, is the Tools Palette doesn't render Tabs correctly and the icons used for Tabs and Option buttons etc are incorrect. I thought when I first opened my stack of years of blood, sweat and tears that it had been mangled. The tabs and option buttons no longer had blue in them, but instead were rendered in what I'll call '1980s traditional unadventurous IBM solemn sombre suit grey.' A quick check of some Apple Preference Panes and I realised, no, this is how Apple presents itself now. So although LiveCode renders this horribly correctly in my stacks, in the LC Tools Palette the Tab at the top to select your Tool is still shown in 'let's copy MicroSoft' Blue as are the respective icons for controls you can drag onto your stacks. Shutdown is much slower. From forums MoLi appears to have a problem with apps that have open internet connections, which I have a couple (MySQL, postgreSQL, Dropbox to name a few). I'm still experimenting, simply pulling the ethernet cable out prior to shutdown makes no difference - which to be fair I have a G5 running Leo that is set to auto shutdown at 00:30 which regularly fails because connections to servers have not been closed properly, simply pulling the ethernet cable out on this would guarantee it will still be running in the morning so the fact that MoLi actually does is a step forward. I just need to experiment some more to see if I can pinpoint which process I need to kill so I can go back to instantaneous shutdowns, which I was getting after I installed MoLi but before I installed all my apps and data. SnoLeo wasn't an instantaneous shutdown either, but it was much faster than MoLi. MySQL postgreSQL Talking of which, MySQL seems to be getting easier and easier to update and transfer data from one OS X to another but not as easy as postgreSQL. Thanks Andre for the pointer to the Postgres app at: http://postgresapp.com/ ~/Library Many online complaints about the missing User Library Folder. OK so it's easy to get back but I just don't understand why you would hide it when the /Library/ and /System/Library/ folders aren't hidden. As I spend a bit of time in these higher level Library folders I'm glad they are visible. iCloud Not sure yet. Most Forum comments suggest that Dropbox is a better option. Haven't had enough time to figure out what part of iCloud is good, and what I'll leave with Dropbox and Google Drive. On a more positive note: Notifications I'm liking it a lot. I often get tunnel vision and miss things coming in, and even with Notifications I've missed a few pop-up banners (although it's much harder to miss) so the ability to single click and quickly see what's come in and what's coming up from a wide variety of apps is very useful to me. Reminders Very minor change, but so much better now it's separate from Calendar. The ToDo apps I've downloaded have been a waste of time. Note to self, add a Reminder to uninstall them. Backwards Scrolling I thought 20+ years of habit were going to be painfully hard to change, but after two days of intense scrolling around, dragging stuff here and there, it hasn't been that bad at all and I think I'm not too far away from this becoming natural behaviour. I'll concede Apple have got this right, so much so that I'll be investigating if I can get our SnoLeo Mac Mini HTPC to work this was as I'm sure I'll soon consider it frustrating and working wrong-way-round. Disk Utility After a Repair Permission it actually comes back with nothing! My wife's Lion Mac Mini usually has 2 or 3 files. On SnoLeo it didn't matter how many times I ran Repair Permissions there were always 50+ files that it said were wrong and it fixed, but it never did. A lot of frameworks associated with JavaVM. I know Java isn't installed by default on MoLi, but I've installed it, so it now has no permission problems. Repair takes about 1 min to check there are no permissions to repair whereas SnoLeo took about 3 to 5 min to say it repaired stuff it didn't. Save As I've seen complaints about autosave and the lamentation that Save As is gone, but on my system, for Apple Apps I have both Save and Save As so it appears to be back. Startup of the computer and apps is faster, but that's usually the case after a clean install. Another factor could be that after archiving years of old and outdated work/data my HD went from 80% full to 40%. It may also have something to do with replacing the 500 GB 5400 rpm HD with a 500 GB 7200 Hybrid HD (one with a bit of SSD storage built in). To be fair I also put a Hybrid drive into a SnoLeo Mac Mini that has exactly the same processor as my MBP, but the Mini is still woefully slow at starting up. It has always been much slower to start than my MBP, which I was hoping the Hybrid drive would help, but it hasn't, so a Hybrid drive may just be a gimmick. Another possible speed booster is, from what I can tell, MoLi is now 100% 64bit intel, although the apps that weren't aren't exactly system hogs, Address Book, Automator, Calculator, Chess, Font Book and a few other small utility type apps. The only ones of substance, that I use regularly were iCal, Mail, and Preview, but again, these were probably upgraded to 64bit intel with Lion. So now all that is running that is not pure 64bit intel is a couple of processes associated with Dropbox, a TechToolProDaemon, A Silicon Image process for the CardBuss adapter and two processes for the USB Display adapter. Summary MoLi would have to be, hands down, the most underwhelming OS upgrade I've ever experienced and I skipped an OS! From what I can tell all that happened is Apple is now dull conventional corporate grey - and that happened in Lion, so apart from a non-working Dictation, I'm not exactly sure what MoLi bought to the table. If anyone has suggestion on what I might be missing I'd be happy to hear about it. _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
