Day 4 of OSX 10.8 AKA Mountain Lion

Monday I mentioned having put a Samsung SSD in the Macbook instead of the original drive (now nearly 4 years old, although for 1 year not in use due to 'upgrading' with a Western Digital drive that wasn't much faster but vibrated and made a lot more noise and then failed in use - the warranty replacement vibrates even more!).

It's been an uncomfy 3 days since.

ML downloaded overnight (4.4 Gb) and after saving the application, ran the install which took about 30min. I then restored my data from a Time Machine backup, keeping a spare so I could revert (Apple updates will work in 1 direction only, and they will not let you go back) restoring data only but no applications.

Initial reactions were mostly along the lines of 'why did I bother' except that updating now might mean holding off obsolescence for another 18 months. Macbooks made in August 2008 were already too old and no longer have an OS upgrade path. Not necessarily a big deal unless you need to use a more recent piece of software or hardware, in which case it becomes a very big deal indeed. There are a couple of features that seem neat, like reminders of calendar dates, and I can see the cross over with iDevices.

I've not really figured out the point of mission control yet. There presently seem several systems for displaying applications, open windows etc spread across the desktop, all of which are a mess and don't work as well as a windows style taskbar for finding open application windows. I can see these making more sense on a small device that doesn't have a mouse, where you won't run many apps open at the same time - it makes no sense on a desktop and never did. The application icon is shown at the bottom of each window, again confirming that this is designed for a device with a small screen so you can see which window is a browser, mail, calendar etc. On a 20" monitor where you have 8 spreadsheets and 6 word docs open it may not be so useful. Choice is good, but only where those offered are intelligent and useful.

Some have complained about short battery life and overheating. For the first day it was running really hot, fans humming away and battery capacity dropping rapidly. Yesterday that seemed to stop, and it was running cooler (not checked battery life again) an explanation from the Apple forums being that the OS was indexing all the data for spotlight, and that would seem reasonable.

The app launcher is OK - familiar from Pear Linux. For reasons that I've not yet investigated, all the Microsoft applications have been placed on the second launcher page while other apps like Firefox and Libreoffice were added to the first page (where there's still a lot of space). I keep Office in the dock, along with any other apps I'd normally use, so it doesn't matter, but it's an odd thing to do. That side of things all seems to work normally and just like it ever did, so no problems there.

Hiccups?

I mentioned an uncomfy 3 days. Well getting it to talk to my Samsung 2043NW monitor has been difficult. Initially the monitor would occasionally flicker if monitors were set to mirror, showing the same resolution as the laptop screen despite being set to 1680X1050. When set up as a separate monitor behaviour was erratic over resolutions and in any case that was not how I needed it to work. After much hunting I found a piece of software - SwitchresX4 - through a link on the apple forum where other users had seen similar problems with 10.6.3. This enabled me to adjust the individual sync settings for the monitor - so now it would remain on, but the Macbook signal was sent mirroring the screen res at 1280X800. :p  Sometime after the first day the icon for screen control in the top toolbar disappeared too. Finally, trying to start it in clamshell mode was totally ineffective - it would display the grey 'booting' screen on the external monitor  for a few seconds, then the screen would go black and the macbook would go to sleep.

I'd wrestled with it too much and eventually gave up, just using it as a laptop sat on my desk because I needed to be productive, promising myself that I would find a replacement as soon as Windows 8 was out.

This morning I came in, thought "wonder if I can get that screen control icon back" and started it in clamshell mode again. The monitor went grey, then black & I thought it must have gone into sleep mode. Suddenly voila! There was my desktop, a bit fuzzy and with wonky colours, but back at native resolution and the Macbook running with closed lid. It's nice to have enough space again, to give my eyes a break too. I've since recalibrated the display but fonts are just plain fuzzy, almost certainly due to screen sync, but I'm reluctant to adjust further since it does actually work.

As for the SSD, it has made the system more responsive, although I've noticed that after a couple of days programs open less quickly and boot no longer seems so strikingly rapid - probably just all part of the way an OS slows down after first install and updating. there is distinctly less beachballing, and the machine is less frustrating to use. So that's good. Definitely an upgrade I'd recommend.


*edit*
Worth putting some context on this - going from Leopard to Snow Leper made the machine almost useless (i.e. printing was no longer possible). Guess I should be grateful this particular service pack for OSX has been so well behaved.