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Snow leopard or Lion?

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 8:43 pm
by dosuna11
Thought I would pick your brains again. I received my 2.7 iMac i5 and it came with Lion on it. Should stay with Lion in my set up or just load in the Snow Leopard discs? I will be using DP7 on it.

Snow leopard or Lion?

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 8:54 pm
by kgdrum
1st Congratulations on the new Mac!
Even though I'm still parked in Snow Leopard my instinct would be to advise try using Lion.
Most users report no problems when you tweak a few default settings in Lion to be more S Leo like, on the other hand I've seen some users report their Macs taking a performance hit when the Mac has been back dated with a SL install because of firmware conflicts on Macs that were tweaked by Apple to have Lion.
Hope that makes sense but I'm curious what others say?
Either way enjoy your exodus from the G5 ghetto!

Re: Snow leopard or Lion?

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 10:05 pm
by dosuna11
Apple told me that imacs pre July 2011 were not optimized for lion yet. So I hope I'm Ok. Thanks for the info.

Snow leopard or Lion?

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 11:09 pm
by kgdrum
I might be incorrect about this but they might have been saying this iMac can operate with installation of either OS but doesn't the installation of Lion do firmware updates that are more problematic rolling backwards?
Recently I've seen posts by users who reported the ability to go back to SL but they noticed a performance hit with the step backwards.
I hope someone else here more in the know would answer on this, before you proceed with going back to SL.
Lion isn't brand new and most users that have it already in their Macs say with a few tweaks it's a great OS & IMO sooner or later most will be going towards Lion or Mountain Lion in the fall.
Yeah I'm in Snow Leopard but as a 2nd OS after SL is already announced I think my days as well as most others are probably numbered.
There undoubtably will be some release soon that we will want that will require Lion or Mountain Lion sooner than we'd like.

Re: Snow leopard or Lion?

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 11:21 pm
by mikehalloran
dosuna11 wrote:Apple told me that imacs pre July 2011 were not optimized for lion yet. So I hope I'm Ok. Thanks for the info.
That is correct.

I run Lion and have no issues that would be fixed by running SL.

You cannot authorize any version older than 7.24 - you can install the older versions of 7 but till you run the 7.24 updater the authorization will not work.

The only reason I can think of for installing SL is if you want to run DP 5.13 in Lion. 5.13 works well in Lion but won't install. You must have SL with Rosetta running, have your 5.13 or 6.03 install, upgrades and authorization completed. Once this is done, update the OS to Lion.

I am having problems with 7.24 not opening many of my 5.13 files correctly so I need both working.

I do have problems with a few applications that are just not behaving. For those, I have a G4 running Tiger that boots into OS9 if necessary.

Re: Snow leopard or Lion?

Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 1:23 pm
by dosuna11
I see you both have IK plugs. Any other issues with VI's I like my Native instruments and Mach V 2. I will East West Platinum Plus the most. This is my main concern. So as I understand once Lion is installed it tweeks the firmware so it won't go back without a CPU hit. Boy that's not what they told me at Apple.

Snow leopard or Lion?

Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 1:30 pm
by kgdrum
dosuna11 wrote:I see you both have IK plugs. Any other issues with VI's I like my Native instruments and Mach V 2. I will East West Platinum Plus the most. This is my main concern. So as I understand once Lion is installed it tweeks the firmware so it won't go back without a CPU hit. Boy that's not what they told me at Apple.
Yeah that's what I was trying to say last night ,re: try using Lion
I have no problems with any of my NI products,I have many from IK but Amplitude is the only one I use with regularity.
I swore off EW when they moved to Play engine, so if I use any of their products(rarely) i use older editions & it's in K5.

Re: Snow leopard or Lion?

Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 7:33 pm
by theaks2002
Hi List... here's what I posted in another topic in this forum..


Chose a new iMac quad i7 late last year (Lion) because of impressive Geekbench score of 10000+. And when I tested after setup, indeed the score was similar. Then downgraded to Snow Leopard for reasons mentioned here and on other groups. Recently re-tested and the score was half (5500). I posted my concerns on the Geekbench BB and John from GB responded:


"Hi John,

The drop in performance you're seeing is common when migrating a late-model Mac from Lion to Snow Leopard. You'll have to find a system restore disc that's designed to work with the 2011 iMac in order to bring your system performance back up. In order to get the maximum performance out of your system you either need to install Snow Leopard from a system restore disc that's designed to work with your iMac, or you need to install Lion. Retail copies of Snow Leopard don't fully support your iMac hence the reduced performance."

Best,
John

In seeing the CPU performance at 3/4 when running studio drummer and a couple of other Kontakt instruments, I thought that I would have gotten better performance with this 2.8 quad i7 (12gigs of ram).

Just a heads up to anyone who is unaware of this performance drop when migrating back to SL.

Question: are things fine with Lion and DP/Kontakt/Stylus , etc?

Anyone care to weigh in with knowledge, experience, perspective on this?

thanks!

John Theaker
Windsor Ontario
http://www.johntheaker.com
theaks2002

Posts: 15
Joined: Mon Jul 06, 2009 6:45 am

Re: Snow leopard or Lion?

Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 8:34 pm
by dosuna11
This is so confusing. Apple told me that iMacs pre July 2011 were not the same as those after Lion came out which as I understand the word "late means." Is this what you mean by late? Mine is May 2011.

Snow leopard or Lion?

Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 9:10 pm
by kgdrum
It's pretty simple,you asked Apple if your new iMac can run on SL, it can so they said yes.
Your Mac was originally built and designed pre-Lion to run SL.
Apple in their wisdom ships the Mac with the latest OS (they think its a plus)so people don't complain they have to update from an outdated OS & it's probably easier to sell a refurb to the average user with a current OS.
People want to feel they're buying the newest and latest etc....not a refurb with an outdated OS.
If the firmware has been updated for Lion,reinstalling SL at this point will work but Lion will work better.
Later editions of Macs that are designed after SL designed for Lion are much harder or virtually impossible to install an OS that predates the original build for most users.

The average person on the tech support phone answers general questions & he was correct but also probably unaware of the performance hit issue backtracking the OS might cause.
They are trained to address questions from general users.The orientation and focus DAW users have with Macs are unique & out of their field of expertise,they don't encounter our type of questions or requirements with the average user.

Why don't you try the iMac in Lion as it shipped and then determine if there's any compelling reason to go back to SL?
As it is this will be infinitely better than your PPC,if your coming from Leopard,
Lion and or SL will be better in either case.
Numerous users have reported,with a few preference tweaks Lion as a great OS !
Jump in you'll love it ;-)

Re: Snow leopard or Lion?

Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2012 9:59 am
by bad andy
I own a recent iMac 27" i7, purchased June 2011. It came with SL, which I was happy to see since at the time Lion was very new. It's running well under SL, though I admit I'm a bit curious to try Lion out. Perhaps with DP8 gets released I'll make that jump. Definitely going to weigh that option though since reading this thread makes it obvious down-grading would be a PITA.

Re: Snow leopard or Lion?

Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2012 11:07 am
by dosuna11
Hi I agree. This is the place for answers. This has been the best info board I have found. I really appreciate the answers. Great informed by experience people and with a sense of humor. My goal is to contribute and head off any potential problems rather than reinventing the problems. More research on Lion compatibility. Right now is a good time as I am just getting ready to head into a project. I plan on loading one program at a time and then one VI at a time. No migration! I will still have my G5 for what doesn't work to sync up if I choose. Nice thing when DP8 stabilizes I get the upgrade. Thanks for the info.

Re: Snow leopard or Lion?

Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2012 8:49 pm
by dosuna11
I went and talked to a tech at genius bar as I was picking up my SL software and he told me he had the same problem. He has the same iMac I have and the retail discs will not install if there has been an upgrade to Lion. He said as stated above I need the original discs (restore) that came with the computer. He said Applecare will send them to me if I ask. Here is the catcher for free he said if I bring my iMac into the apple store he will partition my drive and install Sl and lion claiming that is the best of both worlds. How do you think DP will respond to that? Won't there be different libraries etc.?

Re: Snow leopard or Lion? completed

Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2012 1:37 pm
by dosuna11
Final update. I looked at what the longtime users here are using and went to 10.68 as DP 7 & 10.68 this is as stable as DP 3 and OS 9.11 Also the plug-in considerations. They wiped my hard drive which was data empty with 10.7 on it and installed 10.68 on it from their hard drive at the genius bar. Works great. Applecare is sending me the restore DVD of 10.66 that came with the computer and they refunded my $ on the retail SL disc. Memory and firewire 800 to 400 adapter from OWC and DP 7 arrives tomorrow. Sibelius 7 is installing as I write this. Thanks so much for all your help. No migration so this will be slow but I have my list of passwords and serial numbers from my registration codes notebook. Thanks for all the help.