A web designers 1st few months of owning a Lion

Hello again awesome readers, today I wanted to make a blog post about the new OS that recently roared out of the Apple Campus. There are quite a few blogs that have talked about OSX Lion and what they feel about it. But I haven’t seen that many blog posts about how the average computer user has found it, or average in the web design industry anyway.

My relationship with OSX Lion

When OSX Lion was launched, I was waiting on the app store for it to pop up, mouse and login details ready. I couldn’t wait, the main thing I was looking forward to was the fresh new design of various applications. Since the iPad was launched and I saw the new iCal, Address Book and Mail.app I knew it was only a matter of time until Apple brought this stunning user interface to the mac itself. Once it popped up I downloaded it right away and I couldn’t wait to install it. Apple took over my Mac and installed the new OS within minutes, seemless easy installation, something I am so grateful of after many years of being a Windows user.

Honeymoon period

The first few days and weeks of me using the new OS I was loving it, the new application design was exactly what I expected and other additions like reverse scrolling took some getting used to. After those first few weeks the honeymoon period was coming to an end and I started to realise what this big cat was doing to my computer. Obviously as a web designer, I usually have 2 different browsers open, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, occasionally Illustrator. As well as Filezilla, Spotify, Twitter app Mail and so on, something of which my previous install of Snow Leopard easily handled. I started to realise that not only was my Mac bogging down dramatically, but apps started to crash left, right and centre.

Now, I know Adobe Photoshop has a reputation of wimping out when it encounters a 72kb document and crashing on us, but never have I seen it crash as many times as this. I also found it killing off some of my designs, I would save them, go away and when I return to open it, Photoshop tells me the file is corrupt and can’t be opened. After some Google’ing I found that once this message shows, there is no way to retrieve it.

The sluggishness of my computer was very noticeable and sometimes I felt I was back in the world of Windows XP. Applications that would once open in a matter of a few seconds was now taking 10-20 seconds to load. Try and open a 8mb+ psd file and I may aswell go and put the kettle on and this is also the same for actually starting the computer up, what was once a very quick operation turned into something of a battle for my machine.

Now I don’t want you thinking I’m running one of the first Jony Ive designed Macs. I’m running a 2010 iMac 27” 3.2Ghz Intel Core i3 with 4 GB of RAM (wow, I even surprised myself on how geeky I just sounded) – this Mac is no slouch, back in it’s Snow Leopard days, it would run circles around Usain Bolt, but after I ‘upgraded’ to Lion, I felt the Mac was approaching retirement and needed to get it’s bus pass out.

Then we go onto other little niggly things I have found annoy me:

1. Shut down the computer and close all your Photoshop windows (if you’re like me, you’ll have a good 20 or so different windows open) turn the computer back on, open Photoshop, and I’m greeted with all the windows I had already closed.
2. Airport is rubbish – if I want decent internet it has to be a hard wire jobbie, this Mac couldn’t pick up a signal if I put a satellite ontop of it.
3. Bluetooth and syncing to other macs is very poor at best
4. Front Row is no more! – I was gutted with this when I went to sit down to watch a good James Dean film and realised Front Row had been deleted. What a waste of money buying that little plastic remote control

Loads more, well I say loads, a few more, but I don’t just want to sit here ripping into Lion there are many many good no, amazing things about this OS and Apple, I’m sure, would be proud. Personally, doing my every day job in web design, I can’t see myself sticking with Lion purely because of the slowness, crashing and glitches. I’m not saying these are Apple’s fault, the apps I’m running may just not like Lion, but either way, I need my apps to do my job but I can do my job using OSX Panther if need be.

If things change and I find it’s speeding up, or if someone has some suggestions on how to make this particular Lion roar, then please let me know by leaving a comment below and your thoughts on this new OSX.

But one thing we can all agree on – iOS5, pretty rad right?!

Thanks guys

(p.s to any of my peers that are reading, I kid, I can’t use OSX Panther to do my job, please don’t suprise me by installing it on my machine)