Mountain Lion Released Today

[mikehalloran]

>This is good news for those who never got into Lion should they want to or are able to upgrade. It means that 10.6.8 is their ticket forward. 10.6.7? Not so much.<

10.6.8 made changes to the App Store so that Lion (now ML) could be purchased and installed.

The installer will work if you have compatible hardware. I am expecting that it will ask you to log into the App store and purchase - perhaps not. I will try a clean upgrade from 10.6.4 to see (spare drive w/ clean install from the System Restore Disk).

Update: I tried to install Mountain Lion from a copy of the installer that I burned to DVD for this test. I then got the error that ML required 10.6.8 first - so I ran Software Update and then ML installed.

[mikehalloran]

Been testing Mountain Lion all day. So far I have found one thing I don't like: My fans have been on most of the day - this is new. They are not roaring but definitely on and it feels that the machine is running hotter than before.

I am running ML on a 2T external via the eSATA port that OWC installed new so really the only thing to run hotter are the CPUs.

Up till now, my 27" iMac has been very quiet and reasonably cool running. It takes my studio getting pretty hot before I turn my air conditioner on - and, usually, the fans still are silent. OK, it's not like the roaring heat pump that was my G5 - but it's still annoying.

Since I am in year two of AppleCare on this, I get to complain - and I will.

[bayswater]

Been testing Mountain Lion all day. So far I have found one thing I don't like: My fans have been on most of the day - this is new. They are not roaring but definitely on and it feels that the machine is running hotter than before.

There were a couple of posts on this at Apple communities. Turning SMC fan control and iStat on and off, assuming any reindexing of drives is complete, worked in one case.

Please let us know if you get the fan speed under control. This would be a non starter for me if it persists on the 27" iMac.

[mikehalloran]

It has calmed down by the end of the second day but I will keep monitoring the situation. This article seems to be accurate - scroll down to find it.

http://gigaom.com/apple/is-mountain-lio ... to-handle/

Also, I turned off Find My Mac in the iCloud Preferences. It could also be that the OS was trying to access a GPS that, as far as I know, my machine doesn't have.

[mikehalloran]

I found this bit of freeware called Temperature Monitor.app
http://www.bresink.de/osx/0TemperatureM ... nload.php5

Ignore the message saying that you have to find the Intel drivers - as you click through the installer, it installs the right drivers and works in both Lion and Mountain Lion. The only issue is that it shows my iMac as having 8 cores - v6.1 of TechTool did the same thing before the 6.2 update so I am thinking it's a non-issue.

I have been switching on and off between drives (internal with ion; external with ML) and, on day 4 of my testing, have concluded that any differences are minor -- plus/minus 1-2 degrees warmer based on ambient comparisons. I keep screen shots of the last test next to the open window of the current one.

My first observations may have been because of Spotlight and unnecessary processes. I will give it another day or two before drawing conclusions.

[Kubi]

Sending audio and screen to airplay, if it indeed lets me send DP's main outs, already is going to be worth the upgrade. I could not believe the hoops I had to jump through to get my work to play on the TV in my living room for client playbacks. This is awesome...

[HCMarkus]

Check Mac Rumors about Airplay under Mac Pro Forum... I seem to recall reading that Airplay and the Mac Pro are a no-go because the Xeon CPUs used in the Pro don't have integrated graphics.

Good luck!

[renderful]

Anyone else seeing the CueMix FX software crashing about twice a day since the Mountain Lion upgrade? I'm using an Ultralite MK3.

Thanks!

[mikehalloran]

Anyone else seeing the CueMix FX software crashing about twice a day since the Mountain Lion upgrade?

Not I. My system has been rock solid.

Back to the fan issue. ML is definitely running a bit warmer - I estimate 7-9 degrees overall. This has the fans running at the next increment much of the time - which keeps the internal temperature about the same (makes sense if you think about it). DP has always kicked my fans to this level when my office AC isn't on but it would be better if normal operation was cooler.

I have opened a support case with AppleCare but do not expect it to help. It would be nice if there was an unneeded feature or two that I could just turn off to keep cooler.

It's all going to come down to the Dictation feature for me. If it works as advertised, I will update my system drive to ML - otherwise, Pages over iCloud might not be convenient enough for me to switch at this time (it does work great, though).

[mikehalloran]

Apple suggested that I remove all startup items, launch items and launch daemons. While this did have the effect of lowering the internal temp, it also hosed DP, PACE and a couple of other items.

I did notice some ancient files that were PPC only - After I restore the drive, I will try deleting those only and see what happens.

No big deal, it's a test drive so, when I have time, I'll re-build it again, this evening or tomorrow. For now, I have work to do and am back on 10.7.4.

[bayswater]

I put ML on my MBP yesterday after recreating backups. Things were very slow while Spotlight recreated it's stuff. Today the temperature is sitting about where it used to be and fans are running at the baseline speed, but applications are still quite slow to start up, even on a second or third launch. Mike, did you find the same?

[Michael Canavan]

I just got a ridiculously great deal on a near top of the line Mac Pro 2.66 dual Quad core, (4th in the list of fastest macs! Woo Hoo!!), off craigslist, and it had Lion installed on it with the old owner as Admin... $19 for Mountain Lion, and I'm going to let this machine ride the wave of the new.

One thing, Mountain Lion will be probably more stable with a 64 bit OS running 64 bit plug ins in 64 bit DP8, and I would say probably more so than brand spanking new DP8 on Windows with Windows VSTs etc. Plus Windows 8 is even more so going the way of the mobile OS, in fact Microsoft is attempting to use the exact same OS for their phones, tablets and computers! So even though I'm in my heart an OS9 and Windows 98 fan looks wise, it's going to be even more of a mess to use Windows in terms of candy mobile phone OS-izing!

Mainly, if you want to use DP8 with third party 64 bit plug ins, the majority of the trouble shooting and bug fixing is going to go into Mountain Lion, at least on Apples end if there's ever an issue,---- and they will not do a dammed thing to fix any Snow Leopard or Lion issues if plug in behavior can be blamed on an outdated OS issue.

[mikehalloran]

>but applications are still quite slow to start up, even on a second or third launch. Mike, did you find the same?<

No I don't. In fact, one of the apps that I complain about being slow to start in 10.5/6/7, Word 2008, is much faster in ML. I upgraded to Office 2011 for that reason but don't like the interface as much - now that 2008 is fast, I'll go back to using it.

In Leo, Word 2008 launches in 35 - 110 seconds when I time it; Word 2011 takes 14 to 15. In ML, 2008 launches in 3 seconds; 2011 in 2. Update: I went back and re-timed Word in Lion to see if updating to 20G RAM had made a difference: I timed 2008 at 72 seconds and Word 2011 at 13 seconds in OS 10.7.4. 2008 is always faster the second time I open it and dropped to 27 seconds on the 2nd try.

Have you checked for duplicate fonts? If not, go to Font Book.app and resolve any duplicates - takes a few seconds. This is a well known cause of slow launching in Leo and ML.

DP loads as fast or faster. The other apps I use on a daily basis are Acrobat Professional, Chrome, Mail, Photoshop Elements 6, FinalDraft 8 and Pages. Elements 6 and Pages both load noticibly faster (Elements 6, like Word 2008, a lot faster). Temperature Monitor takes a long time on both OS but is also quicker in ML.

On this test drive, I used Migration Assistant to port over everything. When I finally commit, I may do a clean install of all my applications.

On the temp issue, I removed some PPC startup items that I didn't know were still there. It's helping a little. I will see if any of the Launch Agents or Daemons might be an issue but I recognize most as being essential. We'll see...

[mikehalloran]

I found the culprit responsible for the temperature issue on my iMac in ML

It was a folder in /Library/Startup Items called IKStealthPedalMIDI. Sending it to the trash and rebooting brought my temperatures and fans back to normal. Having done so earlier with known PPC only apps didn't do the trick but I am glad they're gone, too.

I remember Stealth Pedal MIDI as a freebie from IK a year or two ago when I installed it. I have never used it but noticed that it still works when I start it from the Applications folder. Why it would cause a temperature spike in ML but behave in Leo is a mystery but I'll give them the heads up. Hmmmm....

Anyway, I feel better about ML now.

[bayswater]

I found the culprit responsible for the temperature issue on my iMac in ML

Just to be sure, this is on your iMac, right?
I checked for duplicate fonts as a cause of slow application launches, but there weren't any. Launches have sped up but still seem a bit slower than before. May be Safari. Activity monitor shows Safari Web Content using about 15% of CPU, even on a static page.

BTW, there is a DSP Quattro update for ML. Usually, an email notification arrives, but I didn't get one this time.