Comments on: Mac OS X Lion costs more than you think

By: Finally Updated to Mac OS X Mountain Lion – Muskblog

Finally Updated to Mac OS X Mountain Lion – Muskblog — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 05:16:30 +0000

[...] the fun that was upgrading to Mac OS X Lion and tired of battling ongoing issues with WiFi/Time Capsule/Time Machine and because Opera [...]

By: Muskie

Muskie — Sat, 12 May 2012 17:05:00 +0000

It is sad that this goes on. The computer industry is focused on an approximately 3 year hardware replacement cycle. For video game systems it is closer to five years, so some people may still replace their computers every five years or more. But basically since the hardware changes so fast, the software has to change. More could be done to allow old software to run on new hardware and some vendors do pride themselves on backward compatibility. However when the operating system manufacture decides to cease supporting software or hardware made more than X years in the past, the consumer has to take it on the chin. My old Power Mac G4 Tower is still running, I’ve spent 1000′s of dollars upgrading it over a decade or more, but it isn’t running the latest Mac OS nor does it run modern games. It plays music and it can be used to surf the net. Computers that are only used for specific tasks can be made to run for a decade or more, but if you have one single computer that your entire professional or personal life is on, you are generally forced to upgrade or replace it every three years.

By: Jennifer Chang

Jennifer Chang — Sat, 12 May 2012 07:36:00 +0000

You stated everything that has been running through my mind this past month. Being a secondary teacher, my MBP was my chalkboard and resource. The only reason why I updated to Lion was I could no longer enter information/rather no information would appear for Installer and I was trying to download a new assessment program. I was running Snow Leopard with Office 2008…my computer was efficient in doing what I needed to teach 5 periods. I truly regret the upgrade. Office 2008 programs had never EVER crashed on me until the upgrade. I was quite surprised. Word/Power Point crashes at least 3-4 times with any significant use or during initial launch. Some of my classes just sit around talking while I am desperately force quitting and trying to restart the program. It’s quite embarrassing and students lose interest during this very inconvenient moment. I paid good money for the MBP, I deserve a for an effective product that I paid for in the first place.

What surprised me as how Pages, Keynote & Numbers mysteriously disappeared…I do have some documents created on there that still existed, but programs GONE!! I don’t remember deleting them, nor could I have accidentally deleted them. Since I had purchased Pages for iPad, I thought the issue could be resolved through downloading it through the App Store. It was asking for me to BUY the program again…for $9.99. It’s a robbery!

I never wanted to upgrade Snow Leopard, nor did I want to upgrade Pages, and the rest of iWorks. If I could jailbreak this MBP, I’d do it. I think Apple purposely creates updates/upgrades to essentially turn old products obsolete. I’m glad to hear from another person who has similar concerns. I’m not sure what to say anymore, but rather I don’t like Mac right now, and I don’t like PC, guess it’s back to square one.

By: Muskie

Muskie — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 17:37:00 +0000

Warcraft 3 and likely many older games will be ‘X-ed’ out after a Mac OS X Lion install. I’m not big into RTS games, but I have friends who like it so I got talked into buying that game. Diablo III is another matter, but with Mac OS X Mountain Lion already announced I’m sure major game publishers like Blizzard are testing with it already. Even a game as popular as Warcraft 3 is unlikely to get patched/ported to Mac OS X Lion unless they do so as part of some re-release of classic games in one box like you sometimes see.

By: Theorigionalmattieg

Theorigionalmattieg — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 04:58:00 +0000

Hello,

I was just about to upgrade but I play Warcraft 3 like it’s going out of fashion…I woulda killed someone if mac stopped that game.. yes, I have Vista on my Boot Camp assistant…but I only go to my Microsoft side when i’m making music on my Fruity Loops 6…. I don’t like using Vista – it’s killed my Dell Laptop and my Prius PC…seems quite stable on my Mac….takes up 20GB but it hasn’t crashed…

By: Muskie

Muskie — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 04:44:07 +0000

There are student prices for Office, but I agree. I liked Microsoft Office 2004 and didn’t like the version that came after it. Removing VBA was not an upgrade. Obviously since they put it back I was not alone in this opinion. Plus based on the popularity of this one blog posting, many people have had issues upgrading to Mac OS X Lion. Unfortunately you just have to get used to scrolling backwards and Lion’s other quirks because all Mac software made now will be made for Lion.

By: Aegillesp

Aegillesp — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 04:09:00 +0000

So I found this post because I wanted to see if there was a fix for my Microsoft Office 2004, because the programs I use for school required Lion to even run them being a digital editing student, and I’d have to say that I agree with the anger this has caused. As a student, who is barely working to pay for anything, I don’t have the money to upgrade to a newer version of Microsoft Office. For my graphics degree earlier on in my small life, I had to use Office 2007/2008 and I hated the layout more than any other program I’ve ever used that had an upgrade. Office 2004 was much, MUCH easier for me to use and now I’m stuck with Open Office because It is free. I haven’t seen the layout of 2011, and I fear is hasn’t changed at all, not to mention I knew where everything pretty much was in 2004. I really don’t like Lion and I’ve only used it for maybe 2-3 hours today… I would switch back to SL if the programs I use for my school didn’t require it. I’m just glad there are other people who are just as angry!

By: Muskie

Muskie — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:01:00 +0000

Using open source on the desktop is not an option for most people. They need Microsoft Office or iTunes or MS Outlook or something. I used to use the UNIX underpinnings of Mac OS X more, back when there were a lot less tools and system settings. Samba integration is pretty good now, that is definitely a debt Mac OS X owes to the Linux/BSD community. Safari is based on open source browser and with all there sales is probably more popular than Opera which I still use primarily.

A lot of people don’t like Lion but with record sales of iDevices, Apple isn’t worried about people who still like PowerPC or don’t want to run the latest greatest Apple software because they enjoy older software and established workflows.

Good luck running open source on your laptop.

By: avei

avei — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 03:45:00 +0000

I too just upgraded to Lion and have been a power mac user since the LISA. LION will be my last mac, as I use FreeBSD/KDE 3.5.x on the desktop and was offered a new MacBook Pro to replace my aging Powerbook. 10.6 was fine. Addressbook alone is enough for me to downgrade to SL, but why? I’ll just buy an intel notebook, off the shelf, install FreeBSD and KDE and use OpenSource, as is my server, my desktop and most other things. I bought into the OSX world when Apple used BSD/Unix as the basis of Darwin, and I could use KDE tools like X and QuantaPlus. I’ll go back to 10.6 soon as I can make the appropriate backups and restores to this box, and probably 10.6 will be my final upgrade of the Macs, and in a few years, I’ll sell ‘em on craigslist as FreeBSD and LINUX continue to move ever forward.

Too bad. It was a nice ride while it lasted.

By: Muskie

Muskie — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:03:00 +0000

Thanks for posting that Yuhong. As a note, Mac OS X Lion came out well before January 10th, 2012. ;-) I’ve gotten used to Mac OS X Lion now for the most part and the newest version of MS Office. However there are still a few things I have trouble doing on my Mac.

Lots of people must still be having difficulties with Mac OS X Lion, MS Office, and Warcraft III based on keyword referrals I’ve noticed. I still don’t think Blizzard Entertainment has plans for offering upgrades to Warcraft III, they are all about World of Warcraft, Starcraft II, and Diablo III now. All those programs must run on Mac OS X Lion.