I'm looking forward to Lion, but I don't want to jump into the pool before testing the water first. I got to thinking about how many applications and or hardware items I depend upon daily to do everything it is I do and I have a list so far of about 29 items.

I'm sure the number 1 most important thing to do before upgrading to Lion is to make a duplicate/backup of my system drive and making sure it boots up without any issues.

Then I guess I will painstakingly make sure each of my 29 hardware/software items are compatible with Lion before upgrading. I don't remember going through all of this checking and double checking when I upgraded to Snow Leopard. But I do recall the biggest issue I had at that time was my eSATA controller card. I didn't yet have new drivers for that, as a matter of fact, I had to purchase a new PCI Express card for my External Enclosure to work properly.

So does anyone else have any additional recommendations, or heads up of things to watch out for before making the upgrade?

Here's an article in MacWorld talking about the issue:

http://www.macworld.com/..._ready_for_lion.html

Also, I was just reading that With Lion, they are sunsetting Rosetta, meaning any old PowerPC-based app you may still have kicking around will no longer work. Here's an interesting article on that:

http://netninja.com/...ready-for-os-x-lion/

UPDATE: I was a little concerned about Quickbooks 2007 if it would be compatible with Lion. I've found that 2007 was the first Mac version that was Intel based, so since it doesn't need Rosetta, it should work fine. However, if there is problems, I don't think Intel is going to support it as far as any updates to fix any incompatible issues. So if you are running 2007 like me, this might be a very important software to insure compatibility before upgrading to Lion.

Found this in the MacWorld article. It's an table listing Lion compatible apps:
http://roaringapps.com/apps:table
_____________________________
Ron Priest - Louisville KY
Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Vimeo

I received an email from Quicken that says 2007 will not work on the new Mac OS.

Dear Valued Quicken Customer,

Apple is scheduled to release a new operating system this summer (Lion Mac OS X 10.7). If you are using Quicken for Mac 2005, 2006, or 2007 and are considering upgrading to this new operating system, please click here to see how it could impact your Quicken Mac product.


Will Quicken for Mac work on the new Mac operating system, Lion (Mac OS X 10.7)?
Currently, Quicken for Mac 2005, 2006 or 2007 will not work on Lion. However, Quicken Essentials for Mac will work on Lion. If you are using Quicken Essentials for Mac, make sure you are on the latest Quicken Essentials patch version for full compatibility.
Why will Quicken for Mac not work on Lion, Mac OS X 10.7?
Quicken for Mac 2005, 2006 and 2007 were originally built for the older PowerPC architecture, and were able to run on newer Intel-based Macs due to an Apple technology called Rosetta. As of Mac OS X 10.7, Apple has discontinued support for Rosetta.
What are your plans related to personal finance solutions for Apple customers?
We are committed to supporting Apple products and our Mac customers. We are actively working on a personal finance solution for the iPad, as well as continuing to deliver the highly rated Mint.com iPhone application. In addition, we are evaluating options for Quicken Essentials for Mac.

Hi Scott

Yet it is true, Quicken 2007 for Mac will not be compatible with Lion because it does not support Intel Processors. Up to this point it has been assessable under Snow Leopard via Rosetta, but Rosetta will no longer be supported under Lion.

However, I believe your getting confused between Quicken 2007 for Mac and QuickBooks 2007 for Mac. We're talking about 2 different applications. QuickBooks 2007 was the first year Intuit designed a dual supported Power PC and Intel compatible application for Mac. It's my understanding that Intuit has never have designed an Intel based Quicken financial management application for the Mac yet.
_____________________________
Ron Priest - Louisville KY
Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Vimeo

However, I believe your getting confused between Quicken 2007 for Mac and QuickBooks 2007 for Mac. We're talking about 2 different applications.

You're absolutely right. I used to have QuickBooks and (for some unknown reason down the line) I changed over to Quicken.

I took the plunge yesterday and upgraded my MBP to Lion. Loving it! Everything seemed to run so smooth I went ahead and upgraded my Mac Mini and Mac Pro. I don't think I've found anything yet that wouldn't at least run under Lion. I say that because I haven't spent too much time any any one program to make sure I wouldn't have any problems, but the ones I was most concern about seemed to run okay. They would be:

Quickbooks 2007 for Mac
Sonnet Tempo SATA E4P card (I did download and install the new Lion compatible driver)
Sonnet Card/34 for the MBP (Also downloaded and installed new driver on MBP for it)
Compress HD card (Downloaded and installed new Lion Driver)
FCP 7
Black Magic Intensity Pro with FCP 7
SugarSync
Adobe CS4 Photo Shop and Bridge (haven't tried the other CS4 Apps yet)
Toast 9.0.7
Bento 3.0.6
NeatWorks 3.5.4
EyeTV 3.5.3
ToDo 1.0.2
_____________________________
Ron Priest - Louisville KY
Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Vimeo

Eyedroppers in PPro CS5.5 are broken under Lion. Hopefully Adobe will get a fix out soon.

Things broken in Lion:

I upgraded a Macbook Pro 2.6 ghz 17inch from 10.6 to 10.7. My experience has been horrible.

Although it says 2gig minimum it won't run on 2gig! You must have 4gig. I tried it, it hesitates and is so slow it isn't useable with only 2 gig of ram. Flip video editor (made by Cisco for the flip camera) no longer functions, major broken piece is the export function. Cisco indicates that they do not plan on upgrading the software for 10.7.

I started having crashes in Aperature and Imovie. Final Cut Pro 5.x import has audio out of sync really bad since the upgraded OS. Of course, the solution is upgrade to the latest Final Cut Pro but no upgrade price, it's $300. Any PowerPC program will no longer function. You may not realize you have a PowerPC application until after the fact and it won't run. Example is the Epson Print CD for printing on CD's/DVD's. They do at least have a free upgrade. Canon printer drivers and EOS utility won't be updated until 2012. The EOS utility is important if you use it to control the camera and shoot still photo's live. Without the update the application often crashes. In fact, since the upgrade to 10.7 my Mac crashes more often than a PC!

If you have your Mac set to prompt for a username and password upon login it will often lockup right after you log in, it's been reported by many Mac users. If you set your Mac to bypass the login and just go straight to the desktop then it's not a problem.

There seems to be a problem with some USB external drives causing a system lockup.

You will see the spinning beach ball much more often than before while you wait.

The experience is likely better on an updated hardware platform but for an older system it's not so good from my experience.

.... Gary

Does Final Cut X run on the previous software?

Not sure I understand the question.
_____________________________
Ron Priest - Louisville KY
Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Vimeo

Hi Gary

I can't imagine anyone trying to run a MacBook Pro on just 2 GB of RAM. In my opinion, you're asking for trouble. I would suggest you upgrade your RAM. I upgraded my MBP which came with 4 GB to 8 GB for something like $200 at MacSales.com.

Also, have you upgraded to 10.7.2? I was having some of the problems you mentioned on my old 2006 Mac Pro until I updated to Lion 10.7.2 and that really ironed out some issues for me. Afterwords (as is was running smoother) I upgraded the Mac Pro from 9 GB to 16 GB ram. It seems to be humming along quite nicely. Keep a watch on your System Memory via the Activity Monitor.

I use an application I picked up from the Mac Apple Store called iCleanMemory. It works great as it allows you to basically purge your memory and change that inactive RAM to Free RAM. However, if you only have 2 GB of RAM total, I doubt you have much left after you actually boot up Lion. The minimum RAM required for Lion might be 2GB but my gosh man, you aren't going to have anything left to run other applications.
_____________________________
Ron Priest - Louisville KY
Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Vimeo

Sorry Ron I had just woke up. I meant to say does it run on previous versions of the OS or just on Lion.

Yes, 10.6.8 or Later

http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/specs/
_____________________________
Ron Priest - Louisville KY
Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Vimeo