Lion is teething

Should you upgrade to Lion?

Not surprisingly, I have been getting this question since Mac OS X Lion 10.7 was released in July, and with the recent release of iOS 5, that has only increased the number of queries since iCloud is currently only supported on Lion, though I still hold out some hope for fuller support for Snow Leopard (10.6; iCal syncing seems to be working, but not Address Book).

My recommendation remains to wait.

Why?

At first, there was still a lot of software that hadn't yet been updated for Lion and the significant changes under the hood made this release a little less predictable (than, say, Snow Leopard, which I enthusiastically recommended almost out of the gate because of the obvious improvements in speed and polish). While a lot of third-party software has been updated since the summer, there still remain apps and drivers that are not updated, so my caution still stands. If you have a question about Lion compatibility, check out the vendor's site or the crowdsourced RoaringApps site.

But the other, bigger reason has to do with lingering speed and stability issues. Safari (5.1) has been especially unstable, leading me to recommend Google Chrome as an alternative until Safari regains the stability it enjoyed under Snow Leopard. And overall, while there are many refinements in Lion, they are, in my mind, still offset by steps backward in speed.

Until a future release of Lion (hopefully 10.7.3!) fixes a majority of the issues I currently experience, I will continue to recommend waiting.

If you do want or need to upgrade (say, because of iCloud), I recommend upgrading your RAM to the maximum (8GB for most MacBooks since 2009). Solid state drives (SSD) continue to drop in price and are a great complement to Lion's hunger for resources.

Badged to death

MacUpdate Promo Fall Bundle 2011

Ever since VersionTracker started adding obnoxious ads, my go-to site when looking for Mac software has been MacUpdate. Periodically, they will offer a bundle of about 10–12 software titles for about $50. Their current bundle is by far the most useful set I have ever seen from them—I have purchased separately versions of every title they're offering this time (except for FX Photo Studio Pro and Concealer), and I use almost all of them on a regular basis.

So whether you want to be able to burn data in style (Toast), print from your iOS devices to your existing printers (Printopia, *for a limited time*), have the ability to help yourself if you ever accidentally erase data (Data Rescue), want gorgeous and functional eye candy in your menu bar (Fantastical and iStat Menus) or your desktop (EarthDesk), access "hidden" data on your iOS devices (PhoneView), or write and publish multilingually (Mellel and Bookends), this bundle is for you!

Sale ends 9/21!

Find My (iPhone | iPad | iPod touch)

I keep hearing about people losing their iOS devices... so if you have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and you don't have Apple's free Find My iPhone app installed and configured, give yourself a fighting chance in case it gets lost or stolen by taking five minutes to install and configure.

Canon PowerShot ELPH 500 HS

I love the pictures from my Canon PowerShot S95, but the new ELPH 500 HS (stands for High Sensitivity) looks like an amazing point-and-shoot.

Highlights: the wide 24 mm lens (vs. the S95's 28 mm wide angle), very good low light performance (both have a bright f/2.0 aperture at the wide end), and a burst mode (the ELPH doubles the S95's with up to 8 fps and also adds an insane 240 fps video mode). See the Canon site's dynamic comparison chart for more details.

Now if only they could get this kind of image quality into a rugged everything-proof body. #neverSatisfied

Atoms vs. Bits

Like many, I wondered why Netflix was changing its streaming plus one-DVD-at-a-time plans from $10 to $16 a month... and while I've read some of the company's official statements and some credible analysis, I think that this is part of a larger strategy for Netflix to get out of the DVDs-by-mail business and thereby to force the hands of more content owners to license for digital distribution.

My thinking goes something like this:

1. Netflix raised the price of the combined plan drastically knowing full well that many customers will cancel the DVD part of their plan (I think they secretly hope that everyone cancels their physical DVD plans).

2. These cancellations will mean that all the holdouts who have not licensed their content for digital distribution will make even less money from Netflix. In fact, if everyone cancelled their DVD plans, it would give Netflix more leverage to say "if you'd license to stream, you'd start making money again."

Of course, when a critical mass of digital content is available, the whole disc thing will become moot, and the digital plan will become the only plan Netflix will offer. I think Netflix is just trying to force the question by its disjunctive price leap.

But what do I know?