[OT] MoLi Upgrade - Long and Boring Post

[Kay C Lan]

So finally took the plunge and took the weekend (14+ hr each day) to
upgrade my MBP to MoLi. Rather than just upgrade I took the
opportunity to do a clean install, so started with a virgin copy of
SnoLeo, upgraded direct to MoLi, then reinstalled all my apps and
data. To add a further level of difficulty (and security) I installed
a new HD; so I can always start off my old SnoLeo HD if I have to.

Here are my impressions (for those bored at the moment, or have
insights into what I've missed) and towards the bottom there is an
actual LiveCode reference:

Printer Driver

The whole shebang almost came to an abrupt halt when I discovered that
my Samsung printer driver was only compatible with SnoLeo. No point
running an OS if I can't print. Fortunately some Forum post indicated
some were lucky enough to have their printer work, so I tried and so
far so good.

CardBus eSATA adaptor Driver

Also listed by the manufacturer as not upgraded since SnoLeo. This was
also no go as I need my external HDs, but thankfully, again I
installed and it's been working flawlessly none stop since then.

USB Display adaptor

Listed by the manufacture as partially compatible with MoLi, basically
we blame Apple if you experience problems. This never worked 100%
under SnoLeo, but good enough for 2D on a 3rd display. Seems to have a
few more glitches under MoLi, see Displays and Safari entries below.

Gate Keeper

Surprised at what Apps were OK by Apple and which aren't. iStumbler by
a bloke in a shed was OK, but Roxio (Toast), ProSoft (DriveGenius) and
a bunch of other big names got the thumbs down. Easy enough to get
around.

Less options to fine tune System settings:

Displays use to have an icon in the menu bar which was very convenient
if you run multiple monitors (or a HTPC and need to change from 1080P
to 720P). You could change the resolution on any display but best of
all it had "Detect Displays" which would always fix display anomalies
on extra displays that might occur after you woke a sleeping computer.
MoLi has no Menu icon and doesn't have "Detect Displays" so one of my
monitors in particular is regularly being registered as "VGA" and only
occasionally correctly as "SyncMaster". Under SnoLeo the monitor
connected to the USB adaptor would occasionally come up as hash and
was fixed by 'Detect Displays', with MoLi, it seems to be more
frequent and takes a lot more clicks to fix.

Recent items you could have different numbers for Documents, Apps and
Servers; now it's the same number for all three - stupid. I use
Spotlight to open most Apps/Documents which makes it even more
frustrating that those few occasions when I go to Recent items I can't
see the the 11th (21st…) document I had open because old Servers/Apps
are listed instead.

Trackpad tapping is way too sensitive. On SnoLeo (and before) you had
the option to "Ignore accidental trackpad input" but that option has
gone, so now I'm regularly dragging things across my screen or opening
files I don't mean to.

Finder

Open Finder windows don't remain after restarts, or at least are
random. On my Wife's Lion machine when I shut it down, if there are
Finder windows left open, if the box "Reopen windows when logging back
in" is NOT ticked, the Finder windows will be open when I restart.
SnoLeo has no box to tick and just works this way. On MoLi it's
random, sometimes they will open, more often than not they won't.
Sometimes it's only one window when I always shutdown with two open.
Even if I tick the box it doesn't matter, the left open Finder windows
regularly do not open at startup.

Every startup there is a dialog that appears for a split second then
disappears, so I have no idea what it's about, but it may be an
improvement; on SnoLeo I always get a dialog to say that it can't
connect to Servers that aren't running and they don't self clear and
even if I clear them they will pop up again at least one more time.

Column view is occasionally rendered wrong, with the second last
column rendered extremely wide so the last column is off the right
edge. This appears to effect Folders I've not opened before - but
doesn't happen every time.

Documents open on the wrong monitor. On SnoLeo this happened too,
particularly LiveCode has problems with additional monitors; I set it
up to have the Dictionary on a separate monitor and if I forget to
move it back to the main monitor on shutdown, then when I'm on the
road and I start LiveCode the Dictionary will be off the screen - easy
enough to fix. Other apps are better, when there are no additional
monitors they will open on the main screen. The problem now occurs
when I have monitors plugged in but not switched On - a typical config
for me as I only turn them On when I need them.

Under SnoLeo the Finder knows that monitors are plugged in but not On
as the cursor can be taken off screen - MoLi is the same, so no
change. But under SnoLeo, as long as I moved the documents back to the
main screen prior to shutdown, they'd be opened on the main screen
when Opened. Under MoLi it's as if the last Saved location was on
another monitor and this is remembered, if all you do is move the
document to the main screen, and it hasn't been edited, so doesn't
need saving, then closing the app doesn't remember that the document
is now on the main screen so when it is Opened if the screen it was
last saved on is attached, even if it is Off, the document is opened
on that screen.

Have had the Finder not wake up after falling asleep. Again to be fair
I've had this happen on Leo and SnoLeo but this is a rare event
usually associated with a combination of events, like selecting sleep,
closing the lid, then suddenly realising you needed to do one last
thing and opening the lid again. Just surprised I've already
experienced this with MoLi, but if it doesn't happen again for 6
months I guess it will be on par with SnoLeo.

Dictation

Every speech to text app I've every tried has never worked anywhere
near good enough so I wasn't expecting much. Still Dictation failed to
meet my low expectations; it worked for one line and now doesn't work
at all. Nothing, zip.

The Finder actually FROZE on me and basically locked the computer up
forcing me to do a hard reboot; something I've not done for years.
Yes, I've had plenty of Apps freeze, and needed to Force Quit those,
and I've had my fair share of kernel panics from incompatible kext
files and/or hardware I'm testing, but the Finder has always been
solid for me in OS X. This occurred after Dictation stopped working
and I tried to change something in it's Preference Pane. It's probably
my inability to speak English.

Safari

Is acting weird and sometimes doesn't do anything when I click on a
button - not a Safari app button but a button or link in a web page.
May have to do with the fact I mostly run it on the monitor connected
to the USB adapter that isn't fully compatible with MoLi - I
occasionally end up with dual cursors in echelon right.

I think I'll like the Safari iCloud tabs option, so when I crack open
my iPad Safari will look exactly the same but I haven't got around to
testing that it actually works.

Preview

When I open a new pdf and Preview starts up, the last pdf document
that I had open also opens. I'm guessing if I Quit Preview without
actually closing the document it assumes I want it to open when I next
start Preview. I'll have to do further testing.

LiveCode

Seems to be 'running' OK and a little faster, and thanks to several
posts here I didn't have any trouble getting it to talk to xCode 4.5.2
+ the old SDKs from 4.4.

The only anomaly I have noted, and probably already registered as a
bug, is the Tools Palette doesn't render Tabs correctly and the icons
used for Tabs and Option buttons etc are incorrect. I thought when I
first opened my stack of years of blood, sweat and tears that it had
been mangled. The tabs and option buttons no longer had blue in them,
but instead were rendered in what I'll call '1980s traditional
unadventurous IBM solemn sombre suit grey.' A quick check of some
Apple Preference Panes and I realised, no, this is how Apple presents
itself now.

So although LiveCode renders this horribly correctly in my stacks, in
the LC Tools Palette the Tab at the top to select your Tool is still
shown in 'let's copy MicroSoft' Blue as are the respective icons for
controls you can drag onto your stacks.

Shutdown

is much slower. From forums MoLi appears to have a problem with apps
that have open internet connections, which I have a couple (MySQL,
postgreSQL, Dropbox to name a few). I'm still experimenting, simply
pulling the ethernet cable out prior to shutdown makes no difference -
which to be fair I have a G5 running Leo that is set to auto shutdown
at 00:30 which regularly fails because connections to servers have not
been closed properly, simply pulling the ethernet cable out on this
would guarantee it will still be running in the morning so the fact
that MoLi actually does is a step forward. I just need to experiment
some more to see if I can pinpoint which process I need to kill so I
can go back to instantaneous shutdowns, which I was getting after I
installed MoLi but before I installed all my apps and data.

SnoLeo wasn't an instantaneous shutdown either, but it was much faster
than MoLi.

MySQL postgreSQL

Talking of which, MySQL seems to be getting easier and easier to
update and transfer data from one OS X to another but not as easy as
postgreSQL. Thanks Andre for the pointer to the Postgres app at:
http://postgresapp.com/

~/Library

Many online complaints about the missing User Library Folder. OK so
it's easy to get back but I just don't understand why you would hide
it when the /Library/ and /System/Library/ folders aren't hidden. As I
spend a bit of time in these higher level Library folders I'm glad
they are visible.

iCloud

Not sure yet. Most Forum comments suggest that Dropbox is a better
option. Haven't had enough time to figure out what part of iCloud is
good, and what I'll leave with Dropbox and Google Drive.

On a more positive note:

Notifications

I'm liking it a lot. I often get tunnel vision and miss things coming
in, and even with Notifications I've missed a few pop-up banners
(although it's much harder to miss) so the ability to single click and
quickly see what's come in and what's coming up from a wide variety of
apps is very useful to me.

Reminders

Very minor change, but so much better now it's separate from Calendar.
The ToDo apps I've downloaded have been a waste of time. Note to self,
add a Reminder to uninstall them.

Backwards Scrolling

I thought 20+ years of habit were going to be painfully hard to
change, but after two days of intense scrolling around, dragging stuff
here and there, it hasn't been that bad at all and I think I'm not too
far away from this becoming natural behaviour. I'll concede Apple have
got this right, so much so that I'll be investigating if I can get our
SnoLeo Mac Mini HTPC to work this was as I'm sure I'll soon consider
it frustrating and working wrong-way-round.

Disk Utility

After a Repair Permission it actually comes back with nothing!

My wife's Lion Mac Mini usually has 2 or 3 files. On SnoLeo it didn't
matter how many times I ran Repair Permissions there were always 50+
files that it said were wrong and it fixed, but it never did. A lot of
frameworks associated with JavaVM. I know Java isn't installed by
default on MoLi, but I've installed it, so it now has no permission
problems. Repair takes about 1 min to check there are no permissions
to repair whereas SnoLeo took about 3 to 5 min to say it repaired
stuff it didn't.

Save As

I've seen complaints about autosave and the lamentation that Save As
is gone, but on my system, for Apple Apps I have both Save and Save As
so it appears to be back.

Startup

of the computer and apps is faster, but that's usually the case after
a clean install. Another factor could be that after archiving years of
old and outdated work/data my HD went from 80% full to 40%. It may
also have something to do with replacing the 500 GB 5400 rpm HD with a
500 GB 7200 Hybrid HD (one with a bit of SSD storage built in). To be
fair I also put a Hybrid drive into a SnoLeo Mac Mini that has exactly
the same processor as my MBP, but the Mini is still woefully slow at
starting up. It has always been much slower to start than my MBP,
which I was hoping the Hybrid drive would help, but it hasn't, so a
Hybrid drive may just be a gimmick.

Another possible speed booster is, from what I can tell, MoLi is now
100% 64bit intel, although the apps that weren't aren't exactly system
hogs, Address Book, Automator, Calculator, Chess, Font Book and a few
other small utility type apps. The only ones of substance, that I use
regularly were iCal, Mail, and Preview, but again, these were probably
upgraded to 64bit intel with Lion. So now all that is running that is
not pure 64bit intel is a couple of processes associated with Dropbox,
a TechToolProDaemon, A Silicon Image process for the CardBuss adapter
and two processes for the USB Display adapter.

Summary

MoLi would have to be, hands down, the most underwhelming OS upgrade
I've ever experienced and I skipped an OS! From what I can tell all
that happened is Apple is now dull conventional corporate grey - and
that happened in Lion, so apart from a non-working Dictation, I'm not
exactly sure what MoLi bought to the table.

If anyone has suggestion on what I might be missing I'd be happy to
hear about it.