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Mac OS X Mountain Lion. Move your Mac even further ahead

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RBH

Member
Still no code. Anyone else in the same boat?

I applied for a code at 1am ET on July 26th, received it today at 2pm ET.

I re-applied for the up to date code earlier this morning, and the code I received was connected to that reference number rather than the first reference number from the 26th.

Maybe try filling out the up to date form again and see if it works for you as well.
 

Tuck

Member
Do they send codes on the weekend? Ive done the process twice now.

EDIT: I guess we can't really know if they send codes on the weekend. Sigh. What a mess.

Even though I'm liking Mountain Lion, I'm starting to feel Apple is running out of ideas on the OS front...anyone else starting to think this? After using the Windows 8 beta with metro for awhile and using the latest versions of Windows Phone 7 with the new features at work for a bit, the iOS and Mac OSX is really getting extremely boring and archaic in comparison.
I think Apple are in a really dangerous position at the moment and if Microsoft take note and do the right thing they could clean up.
They have a new console, OS, tablet and phone coming next year and what do apple have? Their usual yearly updates, that will not be enough.

I have like a million ideas on how to improve OSX. And none of them involve porting iPad apps or making apps look like shitty versions of real world objects.

Apple should totally hire me.
 
So I know that you can buy a copy of Mountain Lion and then install it with 5 other computers that you own.

Here is my situation, my brother and I both have Macbook Pro's. He is going to purchase Mountain Lion. Now from reading posts and searching around it seems that if he wanted to install Mountain Lion on my macbook as well he would have to Log onto my computer and then sign in on the Mac App Store under his name on my Macbook and then download like that.

Is this correct??

You don't even need to go to the trouble of making a USB boot disk if you just doing an upgrade not a clean install. All your brother needs to do is drag copy the installer out of the applications folder to a USB stick / burn to a DVD when it's finished downloading before installing and then you can run it on any amount of macs without any apple id issues.
 

scorcho

testicles on a cold fall morning
Well, fuck.

eLlhC.jpg


I'm stumped.

You might have to go full hog and reformat the drive and start from there. It sucks, but it's a feature we all have to get used to in Mountain Lion.

I spent a few hours between some other chores and have my MBP nearly back with my default install of apps and settings. Mountain Lion still doesn't feel faster than Lion, though it's nice that whatever bugs preventing me from upgrading my old install are now gone after formatting the old data.

So long as you have access to an external firewire/thunderbolt/usbX drive, it's trivial to make a CCC backup of your old drive, reformat and reinstall using the recovery partition (remember to input your Apple ID so that your purchase can be verified!) and selectively throw settings and apps back to make it 'feel' like an upgrade.

Google and Firefox sync saved my bacon with my browser settings and passwords, and I even remembered to transfer my remaining Keychain passwords for apps. Now I just have to trove for the registration codes for some apps that are in Gmail and install the CS5.5 suite and its litany of updates.

Then I will allow myself to enjoy GameCenter, feature #94.
 

Korosenai

Member
I applied for a code at 1am ET on July 26th, received it today at 2pm ET.

I re-applied for the up to date code earlier this morning, and the code I received was connected to that reference number rather than the first reference number from the 26th.

Maybe try filling out the up to date form again and see if it works for you as well.
Thanks for the tip. Ill try it out and post in here again later if it works.
 

noah111

Still Alive
Does in Terminal show the Lion(if you had Lion prior to this) recovery space?

Also, did you manually partition Bootcamp when you had it?(ex: did you allocate more space after the fact?) I've read that doing that will cause it to fail.
Not that I can tell.

And I might have done that at some point, but i'm not sure. I remember removing the partition manually altogether once and installing Windows all over again when I wanted to allocate more space, so..

@scorcho, is it safe to just use the disk utility to manually erase my main HD partition? I was going to do a clean install anyway, so either way i'm ready. I just want to fucking install ML already! :lol
 

dmshaposv

Member
Snow Leopard user here.

Can I directly upgrade from SL to ML?

Also, how is the plugin support for Cinema4d? I don't want half my shit not working...
 

scorcho

testicles on a cold fall morning
@scorcho, is it safe to just use the disk utility to manually erase my main HD partition? I was going to do a clean install anyway, so either way i'm ready. I just want to fucking install ML already! :lol

yep, the disk utility in the recovery partition will protect itself while allowing you to clean everything else out on your primary drive.
 

mrkgoo

Member
Oh my, the pinch to zoom on Safari to see tabs is niiiiice. Usefulness is up in the air, considering clicks are probably easier, but it's nice.
 

JackEtc

Member
Damn, just went through an entire clean install and restore from Time Machine, and the frame rate on Launchpad still kinda blows, and there's still occasionally small graphics glitches on the top of the screen when opening Launchpad folders. That was a waste of time...


Is anyone else seeing stuff like this when opening and closing Launchpad folders?


It kinda flickers and changes into some pattern like those. Sometimes have to open and close folders multiple times to make it happen. A little concerned.
 

Sye d'Burns

Member
I'm not seeing anything like that. I'd be concerned too. :\

edit: I went on a multiple folder opening spree in Launchpad and couldn't recreate it. I'm not sure what the deal would be with that.
 

JackEtc

Member
I'm not seeing anything like that. I'd be concerned too. :\

edit: I went on a multiple folder opening spree in Launchpad and couldn't recreate it. I'm not sure what the deal would be with that.

I did a clean install, and did NOT restore from Time Machine, and I couldn't recreate it. Then I did a SECOND clean install, and DID restore from Time Machine (User, Apps, everything), and it was there. You think that Time Machine restore has anything to do with it? The Applications part of the Users part?
 

Sye d'Burns

Member
BTT?

Bleh.

My only regret is that BTT isn't on windows 7 as well. It leaves me feeling empty and disoriented when I am about to launch one of my boot camp forays, knowing that I will have to resume using a multi-buttoned apparatus.


I did a clean install, and did NOT restore from Time Machine, and I couldn't recreate it. Then I did a SECOND clean install, and DID restore from Time Machine (User, Apps, everything), and it was there. You think that Time Machine restore has anything to do with it? The Applications part of the Users part?

All signs point to yes. I'm not sure where you would start in trying to locate what is doing the damage. Was your time machine backup created in snow leopard or lion?
 

JackEtc

Member
All signs point to yes. I'm not sure where you would start in trying to locate what is doing the damage. Was your time machine backup created in snow leopard or lion?

Lion, but then did an upgrade to ML, did a Time Machine backup, clean installed ML, and restored from that Time Machine backup.

Maybe I should just manually restore my data from an external, then manually reinstall the apps I want?
 

Sye d'Burns

Member
Lion, but then did an upgrade to ML, did a Time Machine backup, clean installed ML, and restored from that Time Machine backup.

Maybe I should just manually restore my data from an external, then manually reinstall the apps I want?

Were I in your shoes, those are the steps I would take. It's a pain but in the long term you'll be happier for having done it.
 

JackEtc

Member
Were I in your shoes, those are the steps I would take. It's a pain but in the long term you'll be happier for having done it.

Yeah, that's what I've began doing. Not even gonna use Time Machine at all, just going to manually drag files I want to keep on to another external I have. I'll clean install Mountain Lion, an then treat it like I'm moving to a new computer. Put those files on the system, download and install the Applications I would like, and then format my Time Machine drive and re-set that up. Luckily it's a pretty new computer, so there's not a lot of stuff on it, and with USB3, things'll move pretty quickly.

I do have a few questions though.

Do iPhoto libraries transfer across computers just as easily as iTunes libraries do? In the "Pictures" folder, the iPhoto library doesn't exactly look like it's a folder, so I don't really know what to do with it. Can I just drag it back onto my hard drive and iPhoto will detect it and it'll work?

I also have a Bootcamp partition on my MBP, do I need to worry about that throughout this entire process? Will that still work? It's also set up to boot in Parallels if I want it to, but I'll have to obviously reconfigure that when I redownload Parallels.
 

KingKong

Member
2 questions:

1) are Notes and Reminders supposed to quit when you close the window? that seems dumb to me. also there's no way to make a new note/reminder from right clicking on icon like I could when it was in Mail, that's weird.

2) is there any way to make Reminders work with a gmail account? it's set up for gmail on my Mac but it looks like on iPhone I don't have an option for reminders, only notes (but iCloud has an option for both). I'd turn it on for iCloud but it wants me to sync both Reminders and Calendar
 

noah111

Still Alive
yep, the disk utility in the recovery partition will protect itself while allowing you to clean everything else out on your primary drive.
Then this is what i'll be going through tomorrow. Gonna be a pain in the ass now that I think about it tbh. Would it be wise to delete my entire user as well and make a new one? :s

LwQGy.png


My Safari setup. I use a 4-finger tap and it is glorious.
Mine is basically identical, but in addition I use three finger tapping on a link to open it in a background tab (i.e. cmd click), four finger tap to refresh, rotate left to undo (close tabs or text), double tap top left corner of the trackpad for reading list, and top right corner for downloads popup.
 

KtSlime

Member
2 questions:

1) are Notes and Reminders supposed to quit when you close the window? that seems dumb to me. also there's no way to make a new note/reminder from right clicking on icon like I could when it was in Mail, that's weird.

2) is there any way to make Reminders work with a gmail account? it's set up for gmail on my Mac but it looks like on iPhone I don't have an option for reminders, only notes (but iCloud has an option for both). I'd turn it on for iCloud but it wants me to sync both Reminders and Calendar

Yes. The Apple HID for many years has said that single window utility like applications are supposed to quit on window close. The HID was recently changed in Lion so that the closing of the last window causes quit. This behavior seems to be optimal for most people. Not all Apps have contextual app icon menus, however hopefully Apple will come around. Here is an example that has been bugging me for coming on 8 years now - you can't close a window that is minimized using its contextual menu.

Yes, enable it for Calendar and Reminders. they both use the same protocol and files, so I guess Apple just decided to keep them together as a single switch.
 

mrkgoo

Member
Explain. What's wrong with BTT? It's amazing. Or was the "Bleh" part directed at the second answer?

Nah, nothing wrong with BTT. It's amazing what can be done with it. I personally don't like too many customisation options, as it it overwhelms me and I get all obsessive.

That's why I appreciate Apple's approach generally - just give a few important options.

Granted, that actually doesn't work out either sometimes, as we get some important options missing, but they generally find their way there.

I feel that part of my continuing success of relatively few issues with MAc OS X is that I tend not to use third party solutions for stuff, especially ones that sit in between the actual system and myself as the user. Apps are fine, but extensions, add-ons, kexts etc, I tend to find an 'in-built' solution, or adapt to what is in the system.

You may call me just naive, but part of what I enjoy about the Apple Mac environment is simply "not dealing with crap", so I find it works better for me to adapt. That's not to say I never use third party solutions, but it seems much more smooth sailing when I stay inside the box, if you know what I mean.
 

Raine

Member
Blah. I finally realized why my 'open new link' (CMD-Click) gesture wasn't working. It's because BTT doesn't support it with the three finger drag enabled :\
 

KingKong

Member
hmm, I turned iCloud on for everything and now its syncing Reminders. It looks like it didnt mess with mail and calendar, it just added an icloud option (I was afraid it would overwrite the calendar)

do people here use iCloud for that stuff? I only use it for Photo Syncing and Find my Mac, I've been using google stuff for too long to switch to iCloud
 

firehawk12

Subete no aware
I still can't believe Apple hasn't come up with a way to re-order third party menu icons... and the only app someone wrote to solve this was to either hide the icons completely or shut down everything and re-open them in the order that you want.

Maybe with the next release. lol
 
Has anyone else who's using Safari 6 had an issue where the Top Sites don't have the blue star when an update has happened?

I see the thumbnails updating, but no star appears.
 

Sye d'Burns

Member
Nah, nothing wrong with BTT. It's amazing what can be done with it. I personally don't like too many customisation options, as it it overwhelms me and I get all obsessive.

That's why I appreciate Apple's approach generally - just give a few important options.

Granted, that actually doesn't work out either sometimes, as we get some important options missing, but they generally find their way there.

I feel that part of my continuing success of relatively few issues with MAc OS X is that I tend not to use third party solutions for stuff, especially ones that sit in between the actual system and myself as the user. Apps are fine, but extensions, add-ons, kexts etc, I tend to find an 'in-built' solution, or adapt to what is in the system.

You may call me just naive, but part of what I enjoy about the Apple Mac environment is simply "not dealing with crap", so I find it works better for me to adapt. That's not to say I never use third party solutions, but it seems much more smooth sailing when I stay inside the box, if you know what I mean.

I can respect your viewpoint but in the case of BTT I just have to disagree. There is so much potential held in the trackpad and the magic trackpad (heart) and Apple has yet to scratch the surface. I mean, they've trickled out added functions over time but, when the magic mouse was initially released, it was very bare bones. Not long after, BTT came to the rescue and really opened up what you could do with it, especially with the magic mouse and later the trackpad, and suddenly was less than useless. By the time more functions were added by apple, I was long used to the more extensive functions made possible by BTT.

What I like about BTT is it does such a fantastic job at making it easier for you to do your work, your way. Not very apple, I know.

Do iPhoto libraries transfer across computers just as easily as iTunes libraries do? In the "Pictures" folder, the iPhoto library doesn't exactly look like it's a folder, so I don't really know what to do with it. Can I just drag it back onto my hard drive and iPhoto will detect it and it'll work?

I also have a Bootcamp partition on my MBP, do I need to worry about that throughout this entire process? Will that still work? It's also set up to boot in Parallels if I want it to, but I'll have to obviously reconfigure that when I redownload Parallels.

On two different computers, my bootcamp partitions emerged unscathed. No issues whatsoever.

I am not sure about the Photos.
 
Is there any way I can install Bootcamp Windows 8 preview on my Retina MBPro? I cannot burn a dvd, and the only USB device I have that is large enough is an old iPod Nano.

Does Mountain Lion include drivers that make W8 compatible with my MBPro?
 

Tobor

Member
hmm, I turned iCloud on for everything and now its syncing Reminders. It looks like it didnt mess with mail and calendar, it just added an icloud option (I was afraid it would overwrite the calendar)

do people here use iCloud for that stuff? I only use it for Photo Syncing and Find my Mac, I've been using google stuff for too long to switch to iCloud

Yep, I use it for everything except for one gmail address.
 

KtSlime

Member
I still can't believe Apple hasn't come up with a way to re-order third party menu icons... and the only app someone wrote to solve this was to either hide the icons completely or shut down everything and re-open them in the order that you want.

Maybe with the next release. lol

They have a way, it is just not a public API. Frankly I am a bit surprised Apple approves apps that put stuff in there - they are making it hard on themselves if they ever plan to depreciate the menubar.
 

firehawk12

Subete no aware
They have a way, it is just not a public API. Frankly I am a bit surprised Apple approves apps that put stuff in there - they are making it hard on themselves if they ever plan to depreciate the menubar.
Weird. Why not allow devs to move their menu bar icons around? I don't really need the half the icons I use up there, so I wouldn't mind just moving them over to the left side but... of course, they're just locked.
I wish they just worked like the Windows system tray, where you could hide the ones you don't need immediate visual access to.

Of course, they probably don'e expect people to use iStat menus either (and that currently takes up 4 spots on my end).
 

Tuck

Member
They have a way, it is just not a public API. Frankly I am a bit surprised Apple approves apps that put stuff in there - they are making it hard on themselves if they ever plan to depreciate the menubar.

I don't care if they get rid of the drop down menus on the left side of the screen (Relic of the past - Windows was right to eliminate them). But being able to add stuff the the right side of the menu bar is great. Especially stuff like Fantastical. Very convenient, and should be used much more often in different apps.
 

KingKong

Member
Yep, I use it for everything except for one gmail address.

man, I gave it a chance but it's just so slow. Calendar takes forever to load and gmail/calendar seem to have so many more features (not to mention the labs)

edit: talking about on the web, not apps
 

Bildocube

Member
Got Mountain Lion on my MBP Retina. Pretty great so far. Very impressed.

A couple of things though, some iCloud issues - my Notes (and my iCloud Mail too) aren't synching with my iPhone, but the MBP and iPad 2 that I got are synching together - not sure what gives. Yes I have enabled Notes and Mail on my iPhone, and yes I have selected the iCloud account on Notes. It's definitely going in the cloud because I created a Note on my iPhone under the iCloud account and then I disabled the Notes in my iPhone settings and that Note disappeared until I reenabled it. I've tried creating a a few notes, nothing doing so far.

I also have a mid 2010 Mac Mini that is running Lion right now. I'm not gonna lie it seemed like that when I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion that it brought down the performance a tad, so I'm a bit hesitant to do the upgrade. What does Mac GAF think? Should I upgrade my Mac Mini as well? Specs on it are 2.66 core 2 duo, 4 gb ram, geforce 320m i think. I've been mainly using it as media storage and emulators. There are some issues getting 5.1 sound working on Lion but maybe that was fixed on the update (doubtful), but I digress.

Good job Apple.
 
Got Mountain Lion on my MBP Retina. Pretty great so far. Very impressed.

A couple of things though, some iCloud issues - my Notes (and my iCloud Mail too) aren't synching with my iPhone, but the MBP and iPad 2 that I got are synching together - not sure what gives. Yes I have enabled Notes and Mail on my iPhone, and yes I have selected the iCloud account on Notes. It's definitely going in the cloud because I created a Note on my iPhone under the iCloud account and then I disabled the Notes in my iPhone settings and that Note disappeared until I reenabled it. I've tried creating a a few notes, nothing doing so far.


Good job Apple.


Did you install Bootcamp on your Retina? Any tips? I never get any replies from this thread about that issue.

Also, does Gmail support Notification Center? When I visit Gmail.com it asked for my permission to use notifications, and I seem to recall getting a pop-up in my finder requesting permission.. but I can't find any documentation about it.

And what's the deal with iCloud's @me mail address? Can I sync any other mail accounts through iCloud?

Is it possible to change the horrendous fonts used in Notes? (It's possible to do so on iOS)
 

lunch

there's ALWAYS ONE
Just installed Mountain Lion. I wish I could make Reminders stay in the notification center, Safari's blazing, etc.

Damn, just went through an entire clean install and restore from Time Machine, and the frame rate on Launchpad still kinda blows, and there's still occasionally small graphics glitches on the top of the screen when opening Launchpad folders. That was a waste of time...
I don't have the graphical glitches you mentioned, but I have the awful framerate problem when switching pages, and it's a bit annoying. I guess I'll live.
 

JackEtc

Member
OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDD

I did a COMPLETELY clean install of Mountain Lion, NO Time Machine restore, MANUALLY moving my data over, and those graphic glitches ARE STILL FUCKING THERE.

First the burn in, NOW THIS. FUCK

I need to exchange this, but I just don't have the time to until the end of this year/beginning of next year...shiiiiiit
 

lunch

there's ALWAYS ONE
Is there a way to change my Game Center name? It's coming up with a username of mine, but I'm not actually sure where it's pulling that from, and I'd like to change it.

OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDD

I did a COMPLETELY clean install of Mountain Lion, NO Time Machine restore, MANUALLY moving my data over, and those graphic glitches ARE STILL FUCKING THERE.

First the burn in, NOW THIS. FUCK

I need to exchange this, but I just don't have the time to until the end of this year/beginning of next year...shiiiiiit
Are you going to swap your Retina Macbook Pro?
 

JackEtc

Member
Are you going to swap your Retina Macbook Pro?

Yeah, for a non-defective one, I guess. I wish I could now, but I'm working on a video project right now, and then I'm going off to college, and I'm not able to be computer-less at the moment, or at any time during school. I don't know when I'll be able to afford not having the laptop.

I have AppleCare, so I guess that means I have some time, right?

*sigh*
 

lunch

there's ALWAYS ONE
Yeah, for a non-defective one, I guess. I wish I could now, but I'm working on a video project right now, and then I'm going off to college, and I'm not able to be computer-less at the moment, or at any time during school. I don't know when I'll be able to afford not having the laptop.

I have AppleCare, so I guess that means I have some time, right?

*sigh*
Good luck. I'm also starting college in the fall, so if my Air were to stop working I'd be screwed as well.
 

Sye d'Burns

Member
Yeah, for a non-defective one, I guess. I wish I could now, but I'm working on a video project right now, and then I'm going off to college, and I'm not able to be computer-less at the moment, or at any time during school. I don't know when I'll be able to afford not having the laptop.

I have AppleCare, so I guess that means I have some time, right?

*sigh*

That really sucks. Good luck with it.

I also have a mid 2010 Mac Mini that is running Lion right now. I'm not gonna lie it seemed like that when I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion that it brought down the performance a tad, so I'm a bit hesitant to do the upgrade. What does Mac GAF think? Should I upgrade my Mac Mini as well? Specs on it are 2.66 core 2 duo, 4 gb ram, geforce 320m i think. I've been mainly using it as media storage and emulators. There are some issues getting 5.1 sound working on Lion but maybe that was fixed on the update (doubtful), but I digress.

Good job Apple.

I've got it running on a 2010 13" mbp with the exact specs you quote, except 8GB memory, and I think it is easily on par with snow leopard in terms of performance. I can't tell any noticeable decline in performance. Seems rather snappy all around. I've not noticed choppy animations, sluggishness or any of the other more common complaints.

I also have it running on a firewire external to a 7200 drive, through a 2010 mini 2.4 core 2 duo, 8gb, 320m and it feels the same, in terms of performance, with a snow leopard installation on a separate partition of the same drive outputting to an ACD.
 
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