Why I will not be updating my Macs to OSX Lion

by David on Tuesday 11th October, 2011 at 09:10 COMMENTS (5)

June Saw the release of the new OSX Lion from Apple, is it worth the upgrade?

Lion OSX

No-one can argue about the cost of the upgrade, £21 is not a huge sum of money for a major upgrade, but this small amount could turn into hundreds if not thousands of more pounds if the upgrade does not go well.

A short while ago...
Shortly after upgrading both my iMac and MacBook Pro from Leopard to Snow Leopard I had terrible trouble with my Adobe Creative Suite, and this was no small problem as it was software I relied on to do my job and to earn a living, Dreamweaver would crash constantly, ftp failed or was reduced to a crawl and if I tried switching between anything else and Fireworks then I may as well give up and go home.

After nearly a year of Snow Leopard updates and fixes, and having to purchase a newer version of Adobe Creative Suite, it has all become stable and usable once more.

Not something I relish going through again anytime soon, I have learnt my lesson and learnt it well, do not be an early adopter, it does not pay to buy the latest and so called greatest new software release of all time especially if you rely on your equipment for any reason than having fun surfing or generally playing around on a computer.

Do your homework
Read the reviews and you will see they range from a fantastic 5 stars "Love it", "it is the best thing ever", "this is the way an operating system should work", to a staggering 1 star "crap", "utter rubbish", "crashes my computer after 20 minutes of use". By the way all those 1 star reviewers say they would give 0 stars if they could.

Who to believe? It is a difficult one, seeing as Apple computers are almost all the same, they are not bastardised like Windows PC computers where you can have any number of different devices installed and any number of strange software interfaces added on, they should all be completely compatible and "just work".

Check your software compatibilities
Read the forums and check direct with the software companies you use, such as Adobe in my case, to find any information they have on issues relating to the new OS. Read everything.

The main problem is with companies like Adobe who do not adapt easily and move very slowly compared to Apple, they chug along working on their latest software upgrade in the hope of generating more income, but they pay little or no attention to the OS or the market or more importantly their customers. Trying to get Adobe to resolve an issue is next to impossible, they will always say something like "it worked with your previous OS", or "it was not designed to work on that OS", or "the OS is so new we do not support it yet".

Whatever the problem and whatever the OS as long as my computer works, I want it to stay that way.

Backup, Backup, Backup
Ensure you have run Time Machine and even made manual backups of all your files and applications. Copy everything to an external drive, and make notes of all serial numbers and registration details so you can reinstall if all else fails.

One option if you have two or more computers, install the new OS on your least used system and see how that goes, if all works OK and without a hitch then install it across your other devices.

Remember, if you do upgrade and you do have problems it will take many hours of frustrating bashing at the keyboard and trawling through forums trying to resolve any issues, and possibly will cost far more than expected when some software will need upgrading along with your shiny new OS.

Should I? Shouldn't I?
Well that is really up to you, I can't make that decision for you. Choose wisely though, it could shatter your peace of mind and happiness if something does go wrong.

No upgrade for me though, not until I know it all works without any problems.

Please leave your comments if you have experienced anything good or bad with the new Lion OSX, let us know what happened to you if you upgraded.