[jdcfsu]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 That's fine, but my copies of iLife and iWork were installed from discs (I know iWork was). They'll still get updated somehow, as needed, won't

They will. The updates will just be downloaded from, and installed by, the Mac App Store. In fact, yesterday's iWork update was downloaded and installed for me through the Mac App Store. My iWork 09 installed originally from a disc.

[thegeriatric]

Yep same here my iWork was updated through the App store. Install was originally from disc.

[pscates2.0]

Originally Posted by Xaqtly I do like the new frosted glass dock. It definitely makes it easier for me to distinguish dock icons from busy backgrounds. I haven't been using icloud up till now, but it's pretty obvious that I need to start using it. I have my Mac Pro, my Macbook Air and my iPhone, and it really would be nice to have things synced across all of them. I haven't done it till now because when Lion and iCloud came out, I tried it and it nearly wiped out all my contacts, so I swore off using it. Hopefully it won't do that again.

I've had nothing but good luck and success with iCloud, and all the contact/calendar syncing. It's really nice. It's seamless and fast, and a real time-saver. I'm always adding or editing contacts, either on my iPhone or iMac, and they just instantly appear on the other, no fuss or effort. Bookmarks and other things too.

Give it another try!

[pscates2.0]

Originally Posted by jdcfsu They will. The updates will just be downloaded from, and installed by, the Mac App Store. In fact, yesterday's iWork update was downloaded and installed for me through the Mac App Store. My iWork 09 installed originally from a disc.

Originally Posted by thegeriatric Yep same here my iWork was updated through the App store. Install was originally from disc.

Good enough. Cool.

BTW, I'm typing this at my Mom's on her iMac, that I just updated to Mountain Lion. Her MacBook has about 12 minutes left...

Just gonna run through and make sure everything is like it's supposed to be, and give her a little once-over. Functionally, and appearance-wise, there's really nothing "different" about Mountain Lion compared to Lion. Just some new little apps and features. I'll show her the Notification Center. She's got an iPhone 4s, so she's already familiar with its appearance and function. It's just now on her Macs.

The Notes and Reminders stuff is pretty nice. I use both quite a bit, and she does too.

[torifile]

I use iCloud for syncing everything all the time and I haven't had a single issue that I can remember. It handles my complicated schedule and contacts management seamlessly.

[Xaqtly]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 I've had nothing but good luck and success with iCloud, and all the contact/calendar syncing. It's really nice. It's seamless and fast, and a real time-saver. I'm always adding or editing contacts, either on my iPhone or iMac, and they just instantly appear on the other, no fuss or effort. Bookmarks and other things too. Give it another try!

Originally Posted by torifile I use iCloud for syncing everything all the time and I haven't had a single issue that I can remember. It handles my complicated schedule and contacts management seamlessly.

Yeah I'm going to do it this weekend, very carefully, one program at a time and one machine at a time, haha. I figured what happened to me was just early adopter karma, I'm sure it'll be fine this time.

[thegeriatric]

Anybody else here use Candybar? If so it's just been updated for 10.8 and you can't change the Dock anymore.

[Dorian Gray]

Wait a minute… Where's Safari's Activity Window? How am I supposed to download embedded videos now? I used to Option-double-click the file in Activity Window to download files (a video file was easy to find because it was the big one still loading… if you're quick! ).

I've blundered around the Develop > Page Resources menu, but—since I'm not a developer—it feels a lot less friendly than Activity Window. How do you download Flash videos in Safari 6?

[chucker]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 That's fine, but my copies of iLife and iWork were installed from discs (I know iWork was). They'll still get updated somehow, as needed, won't they?

Yes, through the App Store 'app'. I'm not sure if they've consolidating technology, but they've brought the two interfaces together.

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 Also, I like the look of the new Dock. It's not glassy now, and more of an opaque silver (like plastic or matte metal). And I like that the indicator lights are on the front lip. Is this how the Dock looks in iOS 6, I wonder? I assume they'd want to unify/match them?

iOS 6 Dock is unchanged thus far. I definitely approve of the change compared to the gaudy Leopard one.

[torifile]

Is it just me, or did anyone else never really get into Lion? I don't know if it's that I mostly use my iPad nowadays or what, but I never really got it. So far, I really like what I'm seeing with ML, though. Smooth upgrade process, very nice additions. I didn't ever feel that way with Lion.

I wonder if these yearly upgrades will continue to keep me from "getting into" the OS. I know that I love many of Tiger and Leopard's additions.

[pscates2.0]

I was quite late to the Lion party, and I I only had it for a short time (because of my Adobe CS situation, and having to force an upgrade to it, etc.). But I didn't like it as much as Snow Leopard. I think Tiger and Snow Leopard have been my two favorites, in terms of stability, usability, lack of overall goofiness, etc.

But in the 2-3 days I've had Mountain Lion, I've got zero complaints. I'm still discovering little things...subtle tweaks to the interface and so forth. But I've had no hang-ups, freezes, crashes or other things that I did indeed experience in Lion.

I think Mountain Lion addresses most of what needed addressing in Lion, fixing and putting right the things we didn't like and adding just enough sensible iOS goodness to better tie the Mac in with all these iPhones and iPads floating around out there.

And you can't beat the price, especially when it wasn't that long ago we were (gladly) paying $129 for the privilege.

I'll be happy to pony up $20 a year if things continue like this (cool new features that seem to actually work as advertised, no performance hit or degradation, improvement to existing apps and features, etc.). Kinda what an OS upgrade should be, IMO. Some other companies could learn a thing or two...

[Chinney]

I am glad to hear that about ML. Maybe Lion was an interesting but messy step into new territory and Moutain Lion is the necessary clean-up, leaving us with something that is interesting and good.

[pscates2.0]

Wasn't the Leopard-to-Snow Leopard thing a similar situation? I remember Leopard having some bugs and gripes, and then Snow Leopard came out and you never really heard much bad after that. I know Snow Leopard's focus was "under the hood" and performance/stability enhancements, and it showed. Mountain Lion adds a bit more surface features than Snow Leopard did, but it also addresses some of the gripes about Lion's more "WTF?!" aspects.

FWIW, I'm still sporting the blue galaxy default desktop, which is a first for me (this long). Usually it's gone within minutes of an upgrade. But this is just too pretty to part with.

They've included some equally gorgeous ones as well. I was poking around in the Desktops System Preferences earlier. Also, I assume that Screen Saver feature is new to Mountain Lion (the animations and transition choices)? I didn't notice it in Lion, although I never really fool with them. I usually just choose Flurry or Arabesque and be done with it and never look back...

[Xaqtly]

I synced most of my stuff with iCloud and most of it worked, but Safari bookmark syncing is having the same issues I had before. On the Mac Pro, everything is ok for right now, but the first time I synced it, it generated a couple thousand empty folders in my bookmark bar. After I deleted those it's been fine, but when I synced the macbook air to icloud, it got the same empty folders. I deleted those but it never synced correctly, so I trashed the whole safari folder on the MBA and then told it to resync.

When I did that it half worked. It got the folders it was supposed to get, but they're empty. It didn't pull the rest of my bookmarks down and most of the bookmark bar folders are named correctly but are empty.

So basically everything is fine on the Mac Pro, but safari bookmarks are not syncing correctly to the MBA from icloud. Anybody experienced this?

[709]

I think it may be time for a clean install with ML. I've been upgrading the OS since either Tiger or Leopard (can't remember which), so a fresh start may make this even more pleasant.

[billybobsky]

I think I am glad I skipped Lion and just went with the mountain variety.

So far so good. AND applications I have written for my own purposes (nefarious, I assure you) still work.

Now i just have to get used to the reversed scrolling behavior and the stupid autofill that keeps popping up in this fucking text box. god damn it apple you fuck everything up...

Edit: ok. a little overboard there. everything is ok. safari is just awful sometimes. actually, i don't understand when it chooses to pop up a suggestion. most of the time the word is written by the time the little tool tip pops up. i find this irritating. ok it picked up irritate before the word was finished, but not this time. i think i type too quickly for it. perhaps. its like a game. i don't want to stop. because if i stop. i will lose. and it will have a chance to suggest the next word i am thinking. must not let the computer win. computers must not win.

Edit 2: ok. a little further overboard there. if that was possible. i suspect it is. this is a long plank. my sentences are becoming shorter as i am running out of logorrhea. i mean, i can type for hours on the subject currently occupying most of my time: targeted delivery of proteins in vivo, but i am not sure that many here would like for me to expound on the virtues of the various techniques now available or how i am going to try to one-up them. then again, sometimes you folks surprise me.

[pscates2.0]

You can turn that reverse scrolling thing off in the System Prefs. Don't don't if you knew that, so don't bite my head off if you did.

[709]

I hate the auto-fill spelling on the iPhone, so I hope that's not something that's going to happen in Safari as well when I upgrade.

I spell just fine, thank you, no need to be a marm. I hate that.

[billybobsky]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 You can turn that reverse scrolling thing off in the System Prefs. Don't don't if you knew that, so don't bite my head off if you did.

thanks, paul. I had forgotten...

[pscates2.0]

I tried to use it for a few days after installing Mountain Lion, but I went back to the regular way. The natural thing seems to work on a smaller, touch-based device because it feels as though you're directly pushing the content around. It makes sense, mentally and physically.

But when you add the mouse to it, and you're no longer directly touching the screen, something just doesn't "click" and it feels off. There's a real disconnect, and it feels like you're constantly crawling uphill. Backwards. With a blindfold on. And drunk.

And it somehow feels like more work/effort, although I can't exactly explain why.

I realize that years and years of doing something a certain way obviously factors in, but doing the directional scrolling for 2-3 days saw a huge drop in how quickly and efficiently I could get around and do things. So after three full days, I was like "okay, enough of this silliness...".

That Apple makes that the default behavior has no doubt freaked out thousands of users!

[dmegatool]

I tried when it came out with lion. Well I installed somerhing to do it as I'm still on Snow Leopard. After a week it became kinda natural. Note that this is on a MBP.

But I couldn't get over it in Photoshop or Illustrator. When browsing, it was ok but when switching to Adobe apps, it felt just wrong.

[pscates2.0]

Yeah, that was my big stumbling point too. Felt like I had no control, which is something you kinda need in such apps.

[Dorian Gray]

On the other hand…

My girlfriend's dad inherited her iBook when she got a MacBook Air. He'd never used a touchscreen device or a trackpad before, and had very little computer experience. When I was on holiday in Romania I was tasked with teaching him how to use the computer (mainly Safari), and for two days I watched him scroll up when he wanted to scroll down. So there must be something more intuitive about the new scrolling direction, at least for some people (the iBook runs Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, so has the old scrolling direction).

I use the new scrolling direction. Took me about a week to get used to it.

Safari 6: the offline Reading List is pretty slick, for laptop users. Not really relevant to me on my Mac mini.

Still no way to get Activity Window back?

[chucker]

At this point, I'm honestly surprised they're still supporting (let alone shipping) mice at all. Maybe kill it off by 10.9? Maybe a "mouse for stuff like games" compromise?

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Dorian Gray Still no way to get Activity Window back?

The classic Activity Window, View Source, etc. are gone. They're both replaced, of sorts, with tabs in the Web Inspector, which requires the Develop menu.

[Dorian Gray]

Originally Posted by chucker At this point, I'm honestly surprised they're still supporting (let alone shipping) mice at all. Maybe kill it off by 10.9?

What? What can replace a mouse at a desktop? Edit: ah, you probably mean a trackpad. Okay, though I still prefer my Magic Mouse to my Magic Trackpad (I have both).

Originally Posted by chucker The classic Activity Window, View Source, etc. are gone. They're both replaced, of sorts, with tabs in the Web Inspector, which requires the Develop menu.

Yeah. I'm having trouble using this for downloading Flash videos, which was more or less the only thing I used Activity Window for. I'm not the only one.

[torifile]

The reversed scrolling took me a couple months to be completely acclimated and now it's very natural.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Dorian Gray What? What can replace a mouse at a desktop? Edit: ah, you probably mean a trackpad. Okay, though I still prefer my Magic Mouse to my Magic Trackpad (I have both).

OS X is so heavily trackpad-oriented by now. I know the Magic Mouse does gestures, but most mice don't, and as Paul said, the original scrolling direction makes far less sense on trackpads, too.

Originally Posted by Dorian Gray Yeah. I'm having trouble using this for downloading Flash videos, which was more or less the only thing I used Activity Window for. I'm not the only one.

It's certainly more convoluted. Let's take YouTube as an example:

1. Head to the video. Say, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0079I9MqSNw
2. In the YouTube, choose "Pop Out" from its contextual menu. Apparently, they serve a stream of sorts otherwise now.
3. Hit ⌘⌥A. Wait for the video to start loading, and wait for the sidebar in the Inspector to start showing categories such as "Others".
4. Wait for one item in Others to say "videoplayback" (for YouTube, anyway). Double-click.

[pscates2.0]

I do love all the iOS and OS X Multi-Touch gestures. When I was selling my friend's iMac a few months back, I had her Magic Trackpad in my possession for a few weeks and when I wasn't doing anything in Illustrator I used it for day-to-day stuff (surfing, mail, iTunes, iPhoto, navigating around, etc.). It's really nice...so nice that I keep toying with the idea of getting one for my own, but I need to see how the next few months shake out and what Mac I wind up with).

But I can't get the hang of it when in Illustrator or Pixelmator and drawing or doing any sort of precision, fiddly work. I've gotten so comfortable - and fast - with a mouse for that stuff.

But if I stay on an iMac, I'll probably get the Magic Trackpad for regular use, then jump to the mouse when I'm doing specific tasks/apps.

If I wind up with a notebook, I know I'll use the trackpad for regular, non-drawing use. I'll keep my Magic Mouse for that sort of stuff.

But it's definitely easier, and more fun, to boogie around the system, and the core apps, when you can push, swipe, pinch, flick, rotate, etc. in such a natural, fluid way.

Sure enough, I wonder if the trackpad might eventually become the default pointer device included in iMacs or other Apple desktops? Part of me can see that. It's already offered as a free option when you purchase an iMac or Mac Pro at the online Apple Store. They're halfway there and it wouldn't take much at all, especially since they only ship two desktop lines with included mice and keyboard, for them to make that switch.

They'd hinge it on the touch stuff, of course and simply say "if you do specific tasks that require a mouse or pen, there are many quality options available...but, starting today, a touch-based trackpad is the default navigation tool for all Macs."

With so much of the OS now built on, and supporting, those gestures and controls it really makes more sense. The Magic Trackpad offers a lot more functionality than the Magic Mouse (sadly they never saw fit to update the mouse over time with some new software enhancements). I assumed they would, but it's sat unchanged for, what, at least two years now?

[thegeriatric]

Since getting my Magic Trackpad sometime ago, I haven't used a mouse at all.

Having said that I don't use Illustrator or Pixelmator.