I really dislike Mountain Lion

[Jester]

I must admit I hate ML, and the only reason I'm still a Mac user is, essentially, because of Nisus. So, keep up the good work, everyone!

PS: It'd be great if the new update will address the issue of the lag with the red lines :p .

[greenmorpher]

Go back to X.6.8 which is still just as good as it was!

Cheers, geoff

[Jester]

Is there actually a way to easily downgrade the OS? I've been wanting to do so for a while, ML is way to unstable (see File:///). Then again, I've the most recent Air, so probably not good to downgrade it here, although will do in my desktop, for sure. Thanks!

/Daniel

[exegete77]

That is interesting because I have been using ML and have found it the most stable of all versions since 10.2 (when I made the swtich). On the old Mac 7.1 was the most stable.

[Jester]

Really? I too am a rather old Mac user, although I really didn't pay attention to the OSs themselves until Panther, and I think ML is incredibly unstable. For example, type File : /// (no spaces) into any programme and it'll crash (unless they fixed the bug in the latest update). It works ok in my iMac, but not the Air; it's insane the amount of glitches it had before I formatted it (yes, I had to format); e.g. at one point it'd go all crazy after waking up, showing weird lines in the screen. Lots of complaints about ML.

[exegete77]

Really? I too am a rather old Mac user, although I really didn't pay attention to the OSs themselves until Panther, and I think ML is incredibly unstable. For example, type File : /// (no spaces) into any programme and it'll crash (unless they fixed the bug in the latest update). It works ok in my iMac, but not the Air; it's insane the amount of glitches it had before I formatted it (yes, I had to format); e.g. at one point it'd go all crazy after waking up, showing weird lines in the screen. Lots of complaints about ML.

I have an iMac (late 2011) and have not had a problem (some problems with Lion).

I upgraded my MBP 15” (early 2008) to ML and have not really had any problem. Although since my job has changed 18 months ago and I seldom travel now, I only use the MBP sporadically (and soon to be given to my son and his five children).

[Hamid]

The 'File : ///' bug has been fixed in the latest OS update.
Interestingly, the bug did not cause NWP to crash.

[Jester]

The 'File : ///' bug has been fixed in the latest OS update.
Interestingly, the bug did not cause NWP to crash.

Hmm it did for me! :p

So I'm seriously thinking of downgrading my iMac to Snow Leopard (it worked so much better then), any tips concerning that?

[xiamenese]

I must admit I've had more glitches with 10.8.3 than with any earlier versions of the software. The most common one is that when booting up, periodically, the menu-bar doesn't appear and I have to relaunch Finder; and I have also had more apps locking up the system. But none of that has happened so much that I wish to downgrade. 10.8.1 and .2 were pretty much totally stable for me, as was 10.7.x.

Mark

[Jester]

I must admit I've had more glitches with 10.8.3 than with any earlier versions of the software. The most common one is that when booting up, periodically, the menu-bar doesn't appear and I have to relaunch Finder; and I have also had more apps locking up the system. But none of that has happened so much that I wish to downgrade. 10.8.1 and .2 were pretty much totally stable for me, as was 10.7.x.

Mark

Ohhh did that happen to you too??? I hated that SO SO much it made me *format* my laptop. If that were to happen with my desktop I'd ask for a refund (HA! TOO BAD WE HAVE YOUR SOUL! - Steve Jobs). I got that glitch all of the sudden after waking my (latest model) Air from sleep, I was like "hva faeeen?" and then it suffered massive glitches every time it went to sleep, so no sleep for you, MacAir! The formatting seemed to have fixed it, although I was scared because the other day, when pluggin it into an external projector, a small glitch on the menu bar appeared for like 3 seconds ("not again!!!"), but nothing after that.

And yes, just like you I've had more glitches with 10.8.2+ than any other version. For me I really noticed a massive difference when it went from .1 to .2; the computer got slower when shutting down and the battery consumption became higher. I think it's 10.8.2. that really screwed things up, for some reason. And on Air because my iMac hasn't experienced those glitches.

/Daniel

[xiamenese]

I agree about shutting down being slower too ... though my problems really came with 10.8.3, and also on my late 2010 Air, rather than my late 2011 17"MBP.

Mark

[Jester]

I agree about shutting down being slower too ... though my problems really came with 10.8.3, and also on my late 2010 Air, rather than my late 2011 17"MBP.

Mark

For some reason when I shut down I get a bunch of "VBox Drive" or something that didn't appear before, which is what's making it so slow. Plus, it's kind of random, as sometimes my Air will shut down in 2 seconds, but in others it'll take it as much as 10 s.

I noticed lots of problems with .2, not .3, .3 actually seemed to fix a lot of the stuff. I tried PRAM resets and it helped, but it's still worse than usual. It seems ML sucks for Air.

[Jester]

I'd appreciate Hamid's and Greenmorpher's input on downgrading the OS on my iMac. Thanks!

[Groucho]

Hello, Jester.

You are not alone. Search for “downgrade snow leopard” in Apple Support Communities. Looks like Apple made it an almost impossible task to downgrade any recent machine. I suspect they fiddled with the firmware. As for me, I am sticking to SL and MacBook for reasons that are to do with app compatibility, hard times ahead and empty pockets.

Greetings, Henry.

[greenmorpher]

I'd appreciate Hamid's and Greenmorpher's input on downgrading the OS on my iMac. Thanks!

Sorry, mate, I can't help. I never upgraded so I have no idea how to downgrade. I'm sitting happily on a 2010 MacBook Pro 6,2, X.6.8 with high rez screen. It does all I want and allows me to use three of my five core programs which all require Rosetta, Canvas X, Eudora 6.2.4, and Personal Organizer 4.5. (My other two core programs are NWP, of course, and Firefox.)

I believe your best bet might be to check the some of the Mac forums, one would be DPReview Mac Forum http://www.dpreview.com/forums/1017 to look for help.

Unfortunately, just last week, the old Canvas diehard independent Wizaerd's forum shut down. There was stuff on there about doing what you want to do but I didn’t pay any attention except to say "told you so"! (Nasty, aren’t I?)

This is a quote from DPReview'sMac forum some months ago:

You cannot downgrade new macs to older OSes because many of the drivers for the different components are built into Mac's OS. You may find some of the current macbook line still shipping with 10.7, the current OS being 10.8, but you will not be able to downgrade them to 10.6. Even if you have an installer it will say you cannot do it.

So it looks as though you can't go back if you are running one of the latest Macs. However, if you have an earlier Mac, going back to, say, 2011, then I believe you can go back to X.6.8. Check the forums or simply google.

What was being discussed on the Wiz's forum a little while ago was to leave your machine running ML or whatever, get Parallels or Fusion or whatever for a virtual machine, install OS X.6 Server then use that for your actual work. Mr "I love you all, send money" Jobs made Server mandatory so you had to pay to retain your old stuff (there's no technical reason why the ordinary X.6.8 could not be used, I have read -- just as there was no technical reason not to include Rosetta in late OSs; Jobs made the commercial decision to not do it and, in fact, to make it impossible). However, while this was quite costly initially, the price for X.6 Server is now down to around $19. Of course, you still have to buy Parallels of whatever).

If you go on to any of the Mac forums talking about shifting back to X.6.8 you will be assailed by the fanboys. Be prepared to stare goggle-eyed at the mindless fanaticism of their responses. It’s amazing and instructive. But there are others who will be helpful, I'm sure. But I would sim;ly google first.

Cheers, geoff