Apple OSX - 4th Rebuild since LION

I have had to rebuild my Apple system (OSX) for the 4th time and so mail doesn't have a contacts list connected up.  The contacts are in  iCloud and you have to have OSX Lion for it to operate.  This time I only rebuilt the system to Snow Leopard and not Lion. We bought two Apple Computers back in 2008 when in Spain, as I was fed up with Microsoft.  I  used to spend Saturday backing up and Sunday rebuilding XP and various programs.

I was over the moon with Apple from 2008 to 2011.   Then Lion, their new Operating System came out in July 2011, with mega-problems, slow productivity and hassle since!   I think they have tried to make it more like a tablet system when we are running a 23" iMac and an Apple MacBook Pro 15" Laptop.  

We came to China in August 2011 and brought the Laptop. Eventually it ceased to work and even the Time Machine Backups wouldn't restore the system.  Contrast that to 2008 when we had a giant thunder and lightening storm that burnt out the iMac.  Apple gave me a new one as it was under warranty and it took 1.5 hours to restore the system, apps and data completely.  That was with Leopard OS.  With Lion Time Machine has never worked.  With Lion the OS gradually fills up the hard disk till it suddenly comes to a grinding halt and always, the last Time Machine Backup is corrupt.   If it's corrupt you cannot reformat and restore.  It has to be done the old fashioned way!  It obviously takes days.

So, this time, at the end of April, I decided to split the  HDD in two and have Mac on one drive and "Bootcamp" with MS Windows 7 Ultimate in the other.   It's taken a month to rebuild the OSX side, but it contains no contacts as I haven't dared to go to Lion yet. iCloud works with Outlook, but I couldn't figure out how to make the Group Contacts work until the other day!   I now know!   So, jokes and newsletters from China can flow once more!

The interesting thing is that I have rebuilt both systems with the same amount of data, each on a 100 GB HDD partition.  In one month, the Apple is almost full with only 3.5 GB spare.   With MS Windows, there is a full 19 GB free.   One wonders why the huge difference!  The Apple partition is about to collapse after one month!

I need the Apple side for Adobe Creative Suite 4 (CS4) and really that's all now.  I may free up 30 GB by taking DropBox off that partition.  That should keep it going for another 6 months.  If I need a file, I can download from my DropBox Internet site.  Any documents to go back there could be put in Bootcamp or uploaded to Dropbox.   I have no data now solely on the HDD, only the data in DropBox and more data on a networked 3 TB external WD drive.

This is the 4th time I have rebuilt the system in under two years!  Contrast that to our Sony Vaio, with only one problem in nearly the same time and it fixed itself.  The VPN also seems to work better with MS and we have no problem viewing YouTube and FaceBook.  With the Apple we cannot get them and other sites sometimes, even with the VPN on.  All very time consuming.

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I think the problem is that Lion doesn't work with this older Laptop!  I have a friend who has a Graphic design business and as he continually upgrades the equipment, he hasn't had this problem.   Interestingly, I have a Chinese friend here in Shenzhen and my cousin in Leeds who both got fed up of Mac OS Lion and both put windows on their Laptops!  I think that was more to do with the fact that they didn't like the user experience of an Apple.   I didn't at first, but got to love it, now I just hate Apple.  

With Lion it takes 10 times longer to do many tasks! That is NOT progress!   I hated Apple so much by now, that I upgraded from iPhone 4 to an HTC running Android a few weeks ago.  My Chinese friend bought a Chinese model that looks like an Apple 5, but he thinks it has better functionality!   It may not be long before that company bring out an English version with a Western apps store!   I think it cost him a lot less than an Apple 5.   The Chinese used to buy Apple, even though more expensive, to swank off, but that is no longer the case.

When we get home, it will be interesting to see if the same happens to my iMac!   Meanwhile, we saw that the Senior Vice President responsible for Lion was fired!  Serves him right for producing such rubbish.  I prepared a paper for Apple of all the shortcomings, but they didn't get back to me!   See these links for more details!    November 2011    December 2011    April 2012    June 2012   This was a posting on the Apple site.

Conclusion

4 rebuilds since Lion was introduced in July 2011, is ridiculous! The time spent on all the rebuilds and the lost productivity due to everything in Lion taking longer, has been a disaster for me. Lion has lost a loyal fan for Apple.

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