Did anyone try OS X Lion on a MBA?

[TheMud]

This is the "other operating systems" subforum and considering the high number of mac users on this site, it's totally appropriate.

Couldnt agree more :-)

[koaftder]

If you download the OS X Lion from the app store, you wil see in the app bundle when you select "show package contents" in finder you can navigate to one of the subfolders and you'll find a 3.5GiB dmg file. I burned that file to a DVD and formatted a 1TiB external USB disk drive as an HFS journaled fs. The DVD was bootable and I installed Lion to the USB drive.

The point I'm getting to here is that you can purchase the "upgrade", burn it to a DVD and then easily install it to an external drive if you want to test it out before upgrading.

I wasn't impressed with inverting the scroll direction on my mouse. I turned that off, "natural" my ass. I don't like what they have done with the scroll bars through out the UI. The space for the bars are still there only now they "hide" so you can't see where you are in a document. That's irritating. They've screwed with the "back" and "forward" function on the Magic Mouse. What was "back" now makes the whole screen slide to dashboard. Annoying. Now back and forward takes three fingers.

Expose is changed. I kind of like what they did with it though. Can still set corners to show all windows for a single app and show desktop. Keys don't auto repeat any more, holding down O for example brings up a pop-up so you can select the modifiers on that letter. Some will appreciate that, I don't. I wonder how that will affect games that use W-A-S-D ?

Ical is fugly as hell now. Mail.app has been made annoying, at least you can go back to a "classic" view. Over all, it's just business as usual. They've dorked with the UI. Seems like they've run out of things to innovate, so they do stuff like screw with the mouse wheel direction and make the scroll bars less useful. Google chrome has some issues, back and forward don't work any more and it gets trapped in "full screen". Ouch, new UI changes shouldn't break existing apps.

[persia]

System Preferences > General > Show Scroll Bars > Always

Automatically based on input device is a brain dead selection, unfortunately it's also the default....

Also you may be interested in System Preferences >Trackpad > Scroll & Zoom > Scroll direction: natural

This is what reverse the mouse and trackpad scrolling directions....

[Fullflavormenthol]

If you don't like the feature that gives you accents when holding down a key the way to re-enable key repeating is to first close all open applications and type the following command in terminal.

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

I have tested this on my system and it works, but if like me you want back the ability to hold down a key and get accents it is simple to reverse the change. Again quit all open applications and in terminal type.

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true

This will restore the default settings.

I posted this elsewhere, but given that I actually researched this and tested it on my own system and some forum members here might want to know I decided to share it.

[dougal]

I believe Lion should run perfectly fine on my 1.6ghz Macbook Air with 2GB ram. My MBA is the late 2008 model which uses DDR3 ram and has the faster bus.

I say it should run fine because the new MBA's must be shipping with Lion, even the 2GB ones. The 11" MBA is only 1.4Ghz. Apple wouldnt ship them with Lion if it were to slow.

[dougal]

I just installed Lion on my iMac (Late 2009) 4GB DDR3 ram 3.06 Core 2 Duo and it is working great and super smooth even right now while indexing (i just upgraded now).

Now hoping my MBA will also fair well.. Like in my previous post my MBA has 2GB ram and 1.6Ghz Core 2 Duo but as a plus point it is the late 2008 - mid 2009 model with the DDR3 ram, so fingers crossed.

[koaftder]

I recently install Lion on my 2007 MacBook and the performance isn't any slower than with Snow Leopard.

Code: [Select]


Model Name: MacBook
  Model Identifier: MacBook3,1
  Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
  Processor Speed: 2 GHz
  Number of Processors: 1
  Total Number of Cores: 2
  L2 Cache: 4 MB
  Memory: 4 GB
  Bus Speed: 800 MHz
  Memory Type: DDR2 SDRAM
  Memory Speed: 667 MHz


[tone007]

There are still Apple computers? Seriously?

[dougal]

Thats great. Though your Macbook is 2Ghz, my Air is 1.6 and your Macbook has 4GB ram, mine has 2GB.

What is better on mine is the Bus speed which is 1.07Ghz against your 800Mhz. And my ram is 1066Mhz DDR3, L2 is 6MB.

I may try installing Lion to an external USB drive if its possible and try it from there first.

I recently install Lion on my 2007 MacBook and the performance isn't any slower than with Snow Leopard.

Code: [Select]

Model Name: MacBook
  Model Identifier: MacBook3,1
  Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
  Processor Speed: 2 GHz
  Number of Processors: 1
  Total Number of Cores: 2
  L2 Cache: 4 MB
  Memory: 4 GB
  Bus Speed: 800 MHz
  Memory Type: DDR2 SDRAM
  Memory Speed: 667 MHz


[dougal]

Model Name:   MacBook Air
  Model Identifier:   MacBookAir2,1
  Processor Name:   Intel Core 2 Duo
  Processor Speed:   1.6 GHz
  Number Of Processors:   1
  Total Number Of Cores:   2
  L2 Cache:   6 MB
  Memory:   2 GB
  Bus Speed:   1.07 GHz