This is the question that I keep getting from friends and family that primarily use Macs and have heard about the upcoming upgrade to Lion.
It is a great question whose answer depends entirely on your situation and your Mac’s specifications.
Before you delve into reasons why you should upgrade or not you first need to determine whether or not your Mac meets the minimum requirements for Lion.
Can Your Mac Actually Handle Lion?
In order for you to be able to upgrade to Lion your Mac must meet the following basic requirements:
- x86-64 Processor (Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processors)
- At least 2GB of RAM
- The latest version of Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6.8)
- At lease 4GB of hard drive space for Lion upgrade download.
If your processor does not match any of those processors, Lion is not supported or recommended for your computer.
So if your Mac can handle the upgrade to Lion then we need to look at reasons why you should upgrade to Lion.
Should You Upgrade to Lion?
It depends. If you rely on your Mac for work and have a specific set of applications that you require to do that work then I would recommend putting off the upgrade until all of the apps you use have been updated and tested to work with Lion.
Upgrade When Essential Software Has Been Tested
The last thing you want to do is upgrade to Lion and find out that one of the essential apps you use to get work done doesn’t work or has serious issues with Lion.
Aesthetics & New Features
A lot of the changes in OS X are related to the Finder, specifically how it looks and reacts when you interact with it.
Apple has brought a lot of elements from their mobile device operating system iOS to Lion. This includes no scroll bars, full-screen apps, new gestures, and a slew of other updates that make the operating system easier to use.
Lion sports 250 new features so we wont delve into that right now, but there’s one thing you are sure to find annoying when you first launch Lion and that is, scrolling now mimics the iPad’s scrolling.
Scrolling Takes Some Getting Used To
So if you scroll up you actually swipe down and vice versa. Think of it is swiping your finger up or down as you would on a touchscreen device.
At the end of the day it boils down to having the time to learn how to use new features and becoming familiar with the changes made in apps like iCal, Mail, and Contacts.
I do believe that the Resume and Versions, two features new to Lion are worth the upgrade, which by the way will set you back $29.
I’ll Wait a Couple of Weeks
Personally, I will wait a couple of weeks to make sure that the essential apps I use are fully compatible with Lion before upgrading.
Are you upgrading to Lion? Or are you taking the precautionary route to wait for the bugs to be resolved/software to be compatible? Share your thoughts below.
