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| OS X Mountain Lion released, Siracusa's review also up |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-07-25 12:53:59 |
| Apple has just released Mountain Lion to the Mac App Store. For a measly $20, Lion users can move to the new release right now, and honestly, at that price, there's little reason not to for the Mac users among us. It's not a huge or massive release or anything, but if you're a fan of iOS, you're going to love all the OS bits and pieces that are being transferred to your desktop. Have fun installing, and, as always, be sure to read the only review that matters: John Siracusa's 25000 words long review (that's almost as long as the thesis I wrote to earn my master's degree, holy cripes!). I know what I'll be reading today on my brand new Nexus 7. If you can, please support Siracusa by buying the ebook version on Amazon (currently stuck in the review process, should show up any minute now). Why? Because Siracusa's kind of technology writing is something we need to cherish, because we have less and less of it. |
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| RE: It can onlyi get better... |
| By viton on 2012-07-25 20:55:03 |
| The next release will be called "Angry Lions" ;-) |
 - Score: 5 |
| You're kidding, right? |
| By sgtrock on 2012-07-25 23:12:32 |
|
A 250,000 word review of a point release of an OS? Seriously? Look, just how much of a geek do you have to be to read something that long about such a dry subject for enjoyment? rofl (Mind you, I speak as a long time geek. Former network admin/engineer/architect, PC support, Novell Netware support, Unix/Linux/VMS/Windows server sysadmin, board level/component level electronic repair tech. I can't imagine wading through something that long for fun unless I was planning to use the material to build my own Hackintosh.) |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE: You're kidding, right? |
| By ebasconp on 2012-07-26 02:18:21 |
|
Apart of exposing your curriculum vitae, you should take a look to John Siracusa's reviews of all OS X versions, starting from 10.0. His reviews are amongst the best tech reviews over there and therefore his work is truly respectful. Edited 2012-07-26 02:18 UTC |
| - Score: 2 |
| And still... |
| By fithisux on 2012-07-26 03:59:24 |
| no Darwin live CD. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: Well.... |
| By MOS6510 on 2012-07-26 05:24:38 |
|
The latest I heard is that if you bought Lion it will show up in the app store in your purchases list, but yesterday it was not possible to download it. I assume they'll fix this and I guess they turned it off not to make downloading Mountain Lion even slower. |
| - Score: 2 |
| Quality means several things |
| By renox on 2012-07-26 08:30:56 |
|
His review are very detailed, so they are very "high quality" for those who want to know every detail of Mac OS X. For the other who want to know what are the interesting points (and not the pointless details), they are not very good because they dilute the interesting points among a lot of unininteresting details. |
| - Score: 3 |
| Nice release overall |
| By darknexus on 2012-07-26 08:55:21 |
| I've been playing with ml for a while now, via dev builds, and did the official upgrade today. Overall, I've been impressed with it. The later builds, including the final release, feel quite snappy on my machine and most of the changes are improvements. The notification center, messaging, and the general act of bringing OS X and iOS closer together feels and operates as it should, i.e. this isn't some attempt at an OS X Metro. Apple does seem to understand that, while you can bring the same functionality to both, desktops/laptops do still have a different interaction paradigm than mobile devices. That being said, there are a few things I don't care for. Safari in particular has a few new quirks that I'm not too fond of relating to keyboard use, e.g. shift+arrows in a multiline text field no longer seem to select text properly but seem to select parts of the web page other than the text field I'm working in (just noticed this one as I'm writing this). The new password remembering feature in Safari gets in my way, as it keeps bugging me to save my passwords on a per-website basis and I've not found a way to turn that off. Ah well, that's what Chrome is for :). The other thing I don't like is that Gatekeepr is partially turned on by default. Yes, at the moment it's easy to shut it off, but I am concerned with this trend that every os manufacturer seems to be taking these days, i.e. trying to take ever more control away from the user. I'm sure this is the point where the Linux fans will jump in, so please, don't bother. I actually have to get work done, and Linux is a POS for audio work, so it's not an option for me and I therefore find myself caught in the middle between my dislike of what the companies are slowly imposing and the fact that I have to deal with it anyway. In either case, a pleasant upgrade for the most part. |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE: You're kidding, right? |
| By sithlord2 on 2012-07-26 10:56:54 |
|
> (Mind you, I speak as a long time geek. Former network admin/engineer/architect, PC support, Novell Netware support, Unix/Linux/VMS/Windows server sysadmin, board level/component level electronic repair tech. Are you trying to compensate for something? Because I surely get that impression... |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE: Comment by marcp |
| By darknexus on 2012-07-26 11:59:49 |
|
> 20$ ... not much for putting yourself voluntarily in a virtual prison. *Yawn*. I knew it wouldn't be long. It's a good thing OS X isn't a virtual prison then, seeing as how you can run whatever the hell you want on it. Give me a break. There's no such thing as a virtual prison imposed by your choice of os, seeing as how you can decide at any time to use a different product/os/device. Get over it, people. Your choice of an os does not imprison you. You want to see a virtual prison as you call it? Take a trip over to North Korea and have a look at their little intranet. *That* is a virtual prison. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[2]: Comment by marcp |
| By karunko on 2012-07-26 12:47:13 |
|
> It's a good thing OS X isn't a virtual prison then, seeing as how you can run whatever the hell you want on it. For the time being, but it's worth noting that Gate Keeper is "halfway" turned on and although it can easily be configured to let you run anything you like, there's zero guarantee that this will be the case in the future. And what about APIs available only to applications for sale on the App Store? Yes, anyone can apply to be a developer, the membership price is very reasonable, X Code is free, yadda yadda yadda, but not every (perfectly legit) application would qualify for the App Store -- not to mention Apple's proverbial capriciousness when it comes to what gets accepted and what gets refused (or maybe accepted and then yanked from the store a few weeks later). And don't get me started with this fixation with iCloud in general and an iCloud account in particular. John Siracusa's review says (http://arstechnica.com/apple/201...): It's nearly impossible to set up and use a Mac running Mountain Lion without being prompted to enter an Apple ID for use with "the iTunes Store, the Mac App Store, iCloud, and more," to quote one of the many dialog boxes Apple throws at the user. Oh yes, of course it's for my own convenience! In fact everybody knows that I'm just a dummy who doesn't know when or where save a file... *sigh* RT. Edited 2012-07-26 12:47 UTC |
| - Score: 2 |
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