Mountain Lion = ....meh?


Recommended Posts

Performance is way better, even on older hardware. You're not just getting a new interface, you're getting benefits you'd normally only get from a hardware upgrade. That's worth $40 (roughly what I paid to upgrade my RAM to 8GB).

Quite a few people here noticed the same with OS X Mountain Lion. Beyond that a lot of users complain Metro apps currently take for ever to load and it isn't because of debug code. My The time you save during startup you basically loose when trying to launch an app.

I disagree. Mission Control isn't as good as it could be, but full screen options in Lion are really welcome.

Well there is nothing wrong with liking full screen and I'm happy for you if you do, but even that is an example of a complete **** implementation of a feature. If you have more than one screen, full screen only uses one monitor and disables your second monitor. Tiles it with that stitched pattern Apple likes using now, and doesn't let you use it, at all. And supposedly that was being fixed in Mountain Lion but lo and behold, it actually isn't. The only improvement in ML is that you can now choose which monitor gets to use the full screen. But your other monitor is still disabled. Why? How stupid is that? Especially considering apps such as VLC have had proper full screen implementation since before Lion.

--x-snip-x--

People have put Apple on a pedestal for so long. They are no longer underdogs. Success is basically a given. They don't have the same fight anymore.

--x-snip-x--

I absolutely agree with your sentiment there. Now that they are "on top" (at least from a profitability stand point and especially now that they are the darling of the media) there are different expectations. But I'll probably be one of the firsts to download ML when it is finally released. When the hell is it going to be released anyway? Didn't they say July?

Well there is nothing wrong with liking full screen and I'm happy for you if you do, but even that is an example of a complete **** implementation of a feature. If you have more than one screen, full screen only uses one monitor and disables your second monitor. Tiles it with that stitched pattern Apple likes using now, and doesn't let you use it, at all. And supposedly that was being fixed in Mountain Lion but lo and behold, it actually isn't. The only improvement in ML is that you can now choose which monitor gets to use the full screen. But your other monitor is still disabled. Why? How stupid is that? Especially considering apps such as VLC have had proper full screen implementation since before Lion.

The direction they took with fullscreen apps seems to be the culprit and I don't expect that they are going to be able to fix it anytime soon. The fullscreen API is intertwined with the virtual desktops API. I can't really say if it was just a bad choice of direction. I love the fullscreen apps when I'm just using my 15" laptop screen or if I'm connected remotely on my iPad. When I'm hooked up to my 27" monitor putting an app into full screen mode just doesn't make any sense and always looks terrible. I think that as your desktop real estate goes up, the utility of going into full screen mode goes down anyway...

I was more interested in the possibility of new iMac hardware than anything else, I'm starting to feel a little in the dark

Count yourself lucky that the iMac still exists! :rofl:

They axed my beautiful 17" MacBook Pro completely. Now I have to step down to a 15" model if I want to "upgrade".

Quite a few people here noticed the same with OS X Mountain Lion. Beyond that a lot of users complain Metro apps currently take for ever to load and it isn't because of debug code. My The time you save during startup you basically loose when trying to launch an app.

That's an app specific problem, not an OS level one. The apps that get coded well will see preference, and overall you'll see better performance throughout.

Well there is nothing wrong with liking full screen and I'm happy for you if you do, but even that is an example of a complete **** implementation of a feature. If you have more than one screen, full screen only uses one monitor and disables your second monitor. Tiles it with that stitched pattern Apple likes using now, and doesn't let you use it, at all. And supposedly that was being fixed in Mountain Lion but lo and behold, it actually isn't. The only improvement in ML is that you can now choose which monitor gets to use the full screen. But your other monitor is still disabled. Why? How stupid is that? Especially considering apps such as VLC have had proper full screen implementation since before Lion.

It's mainly people with laptops, or smaller screens who benefit from full screen, and for those people, the lack of proper support for a second monitor is hardly a problem. If my MacBook had HDMI out to allow hooking it up to my HDTV without going to the hassle of an expensive converter cable that's not even officially allowed and therefore not available from any reputable site, then I suppose that might materialise as a real problem. I'm not otherwise defending the crappy implementation of it, but I think it's telling that the people who like it the most never noticed anything wrong with it.

It seems like Mountain Lion is akin to a maintenance release with just a few added features. Similar to Snow Leopard. Except that SL concentrated on under the hood changes whereas Mountain Lion's focus is more on refining user-visible features.

Yeah, I'm not too fond of the visual changes. Back when OSX had the pinstripe Aqua look and XP had Luna, I liked that OSX was cleaner and more consistent in look throughout, while each program in XP seemed to have its own skin that contrasted (usually quite badly) with the default UI. Now Apple is baking that bad contrast right in. Their whole brushed metal phase got a bit boring too, but at least it was consistent. Not a big deal if I hardly use any of the apps that ship with OSX, but it will get annoying if devs start taking after it as well.

It's $20/year now if you want to keep up. You can get Windows 8 for $40, and that's for a 3 years of development.

If you can't spend 20 bucks every year and a half then upgrading it's not the biggest of your problems I'm afraid.

Even though some apps spot a different texture window chrome they all work alike so in that regard OS X is still highly consistent. Like you said, things were getting too boring.

That was the wrong way to fix the boredom though. It just shows that they weren't sure what to do and figured they had to do something.

Apple charge for updates (service packs?) to their os? If so will they start charging for updates to ios then? Or should I not give them ideas :(

No, if they charged for updates they wouldn't be able to squish JB exploits so easily, and would have to continue supporting older versions.

That was the wrong way to fix the boredom though. It just shows that they weren't sure what to do and figured they had to do something.

In your opinion. If everything looks exactly the same things get boring, no way around that but to introduce some change here and there. Since the apps don't actually work any different than the norm I really don't see the issue.

That's always the worst reason for justifying any price.

It's an OS upgrade. You can't compare OS X upgrade model to Windows. OS X has always been about constant refinements over the years, Windows is about change of paradigms within their own system.

That's an app specific problem, not an OS level one. The apps that get coded well will see preference, and overall you'll see better performance throughout.

Who cares where the problem lies? In the end the result is the same. FYI, we're talking about Microsoft's own apps here.

Dictation on the ML works well a friend of mine has a copy of it on his system and it is one thing that makes things much simpler in so many ways for things as she is back to school and stuff and could use it for her courses and stuff so yea that is 1 upgrade well worth it also seems to run faster on her imac then regular lion did with 12gb of ram

Apple charge for updates (service packs?) to their os? If so will they start charging for updates to ios then? Or should I not give them ideas :(

Not going to have this debate again.

Not going to have this debate again.

Not going to have this debate again.

IT'S NOT A GOD DAMN SERVICE PACK!

Damn it...oh well, here we go again...

  • Like 3

Both Lion and Mountain Lion are crap....

Are you running the latest GM of Mountain Lion. Compared to Lion it's a speed demon and right up there with Snow Leopard and this is on a mac that went through several "over the top" installs rather than clean installs.

Agreed there is nothing revolutionary like Xp to Vista or the new Metro interfaces, theres nothing glaringly looking at you to say it's different but theres an undeniable speed increase and some nice tweaks to general apps. For ?13.99 I'm really on the fence about if it's worth it so far..

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • >Improved system sounds when using Windows in dark mode. The story being that bug would be an interesting one.
    • Edifier S3000MKII hi-fi audiophile grade bookshelf speaker is at its lowest price now by Sayan Sen Yesterday we covered a bunch of Dolby Atmos soundbar deals with several ones from Sony, as well as from JBL, Samsung, Polk Audio, and more. You can check them out in this dedicated piece. Those are not audiophile category speakers though as they are built with home theater use in mind. If you are searching for the former then Edifier has its S3000MKII at its lowest price at the moment (purchase link under the specs table down below). This is a two-way bookshelf monitor speaker designed to produce accurate sound. While it may not produce the best high-fidelity audio possible out there, it should still be significantly better than what you will get on soundbars of this price range. As such it will do justice to high-res audio played back through it. The only thing that may feel lacking is sub-bass as Edifier claims the unit can go down to 38 Hz, which should be enough for studio monitor purposes, but not for deep room-shaking rumbling bass. Where this does excel though is in its treble reproduction. With its super-tweeter, it claims to go as high as 40 kHz in the frequency spectrum, which should offer a sense of "air"yness. This is an active speaker which means it packs its own amplfication. It has a top-notch Class D amp that may be able to rival many Class AB designs too in terms of sound reproduction quality. The technical specs of the Edifier S3000MKII are given in the table below: Specification Value RMS Output Power 256W RMS (Treble: 8W × 2, Mid-Low: 120W × 2) Tweeter Driver 107mm × 107mm Planar Magnetic Tweeter Mid-Low Driver 6.5-inch (179mm) Long-Throw Aluminum Diaphragm Driver Frequency Response 38Hz – 40kHz Signal-to-Noise Ratio ≥ 85dB (A) Bluetooth Version Bluetooth 5.0 Bluetooth Codec Qualcomm® aptX™ HD Wireless Speaker Link Proprietary 5.8GHz wireless connection between speakers Supported Hi-Res Audio Hi-Res Audio Certified, up to 24-bit/192kHz Digital Processing XMOS XU216 Digital Signal Processor Audio Inputs Balanced XLR, Optical, Coaxial, USB Type-B, Line In, Bluetooth Input Sensitivity (USB) 400 ± 50mFFs Input Sensitivity (Optical) 400 ± 50mFFs Input Sensitivity (Coaxial) 400 ± 50mFFs Input Sensitivity (Bluetooth) 450 ± 50mFFs Input Sensitivity (Balanced XLR) 1000 ± 50mV Input Sensitivity (Line In) 600 ± 50mV ADC Capability Up to 24-bit/192kHz DSP Capability Up to 24-bit/192kHz DIX Capability Up to 24-bit/216kHz DAC Capability Up to 32-bit/384kHz XMOS Processing Power Up to 2,000 MIPS Edifier S3000MKII Audiophile Active (Powered) Wireless Speakers: $799.99 (Sold by Edifier US, Shipped by Amazon US) If you do not have the kind of budget to spend on the S3000MKII, you can also check out the Edifier R1280Ts which is right now on sale at just $114 (its lowest price in a very long time). Good to know This Amazon deal is U.S. specific, and not available in other regions unless specified. We only use first-party seller links (at the time of article publishing); ensure that you purchase from a first-party seller link only. Check out Today's Deals on Amazon | or our recent tech deals. Become a Prime member (for Students or SNAP) via Neowin Get Prime Access - Prime for half price (for qualifying Medicaid, EBT, SNAP) Subscribe to Prime Video, Audible Plus, Music Unlimited or Kindle Unlimited via Neowin As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
    • > The G 7 Pro supports wireless (XBOX Wireless, proprietary dongle, or Bluetooth) If anybody else's brain translates this to 'it works wirelessly on Xbox', according to the linked product page, it does not.
    • Ignoring the fact that this "colony" kicked the empire of King George's arse during those early years... You are confusing the First Industrial Revolution (which was clearly pulled out of some butt-hurt Brit historian's arse after the fact) with the Second Industrial Revolution (aka now called the Technological Revolution, undoubtedly by that same butt-hurt Brit), which transitioned the world from the UK/UPS Empire to the USA as the world's only superpower. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution I hope you realize that I am having big fun here.
    • OpenAI announces GPT‑5.6 Sol, its next-generation flagship model beating Claude Mythos 5 by Pradeep Viswanathan Credit: OpenAI OpenAI today announced a limited preview of its new GPT-5.6 model series, which includes the Sol, Terra, and Luna models targeting different price points. GPT-5.6 Sol is the flagship model targeted at demanding reasoning and agentic workloads. GPT-5.6 Terra is positioned as a balanced model for everyday work, featuring performance competitive with GPT-5.5 while being half the cost. GPT-5.6 Luna is the fastest and most affordable model, delivering strong capability at a lower price point. Unlike previous model releases from OpenAI, GPT-5.6 is starting with a limited preview for a small group of trusted partners due to U.S. government restrictions. As expected, OpenAI previewed its plans and the models' capabilities to the U.S. government ahead of launch, and the government asked OpenAI to limit the first wave of access to select partners. OpenAI also mentioned in the official announcement blog post that it does not believe this type of government access process should become the long-term default. OpenAI highlighted that GPT-5.6 Sol comes with a robust safety stack featuring improved protections for higher-risk activity, sensitive cyber requests, and repeated misuse. The company also spent several weeks pressure-testing the system and hardening it against real-world attacks. On the capability side, as expected, GPT-5.6 Sol is OpenAI’s strongest model yet. It delivers better results in agentic performance across coding, biology, and cybersecurity. On the Terminal-Bench 2.1 benchmark, which tests command-line workflows requiring planning, iteration, and tool coordination, GPT-5.6 Sol sets a new record with a score of 91.9%, beating Anthropic's Claude Mythos 5. Additionally, GPT-5.6 introduces a new "max" reasoning effort for even deeper reasoning. The new "ultra" mode uses subagents to accelerate complex work beyond what a single agent can handle. Pricing starts at $5 per million input tokens and $30 per million output tokens for Sol. Terra costs $2.50 for input and $15 for output, while Luna costs $1 for input and $6 for output. GPT-5.6 comes with more predictable prompt caching, including support for explicit cache breakpoints and a 30-minute minimum cache life. Sol will also launch on Cerebras in July at speeds up to 750 tokens per second for select customers. OpenAI plans to make GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra, and Luna broadly available in ChatGPT, Codex, and the API in the coming weeks.
  • Recent Achievements

    • One Year In
      bernmeister earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Week One Done
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Week One Done
      tuben earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • First Post
      OffsetAbs earned a badge
      First Post
    • Reacting Well
      OffsetAbs earned a badge
      Reacting Well
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      441
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      197
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      154
    4. 4
      FloatingFatMan
      71
    5. 5
      Steven P.
      67
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!