Mountain Lion is out: Yay/Nay?

[foxfirefey]

Any verdicts yet?

ETA: Holy moly there is a 24 page review on Ars Technica.

Comments

[holyschist]

...I just realized my new computer (Lion preinstalled) didn't come with an install disc. How...exactly is one supposed to reinstall in the event of, say, a replacement harddrive? Burn your own install disc? Schlep it to the Apple Store? (I wasn't thrilled that it took 12+ hours to download ML, either, and that when I lost my internet connection partway through the first attempt, the App Store couldn't resume, but started over entirely.)

:-/

I don't know what I think of Mountain Lion yet.

[lauredhel]

This link shows you how to make a bootable/installable system on a thumb drive or SD card:

http://www.mactalk.com.au/content/creating-bootable-usb-sd-card-mountain-lion-drive-2431/

But you need to do it after downloading and _before_ installing the new system.

I'm mostly OK with Mountain Lion so far. The one thing that's really cheesing me off is that the partly-configurable snooze on iCal alarms is now a completely unconfigurable 15-minute snooze on Calendar/Notification alarms. Which is a massive step backwards, and a big interruption in my workflow. And it was not picked up on in the Ars Technica review, as far as I can tell.

[holyschist]

Whoops, too late. So...what IS Apple expecting people to do? Never have to reinstall?

[kareila]

Well, I think in every circumstance /except/ replacing the hard drive, you can reinstall from the recovery partition. That became a thing at the same time that they moved to downloadable installers.

Apple probably did the math there and decided that the few power users who would want or need to upgrade or replace their own hard drives (as opposed to having a Mac Genius do it for them) were not worth the added expense of producing and distributing physical install media, especially since most or all of their current laptops and even the latest Mac Mini machines don't have CD drives anyway. Plus by distributing the installer through the Mac App Store, they ensure that more people will pay for the upgrade instead of borrowing the installer from a friend. It makes good business sense for them.

But yeah, I would definitely make a backup of the installer, especially now that I know they're pulling earlier versions when the newer versions come out.