[Trygve Roos]

You’re right. I did, and bought an iMac with Snow Leopard. When I got all my temporary problems fixed, I decided to install Lion on the iMac, too. I don’t know whether it is an upgrade or a downgrade, but I kept Snow Leopard intact on my wife’s MacBook, so I can use all old PowerPc programs. B y the way, I still use an iBook G4 to run Classic programs, like BarCode Pro and other programs that are too expensive to upgrade for an occasional user.
I must admit, there are some very nice features in Lion that I started to miss using Snow Leopard on my iMac. I even bought a trackpad to be able to fully suffer, excuse me, fully enjoy the new features.

[Trygve Roos]

Yes, ‘new from clipboard’ in Preview seemed not to work, but now when I tried, it did. Thanks for the advice on substituting Photoshop with Pixelmator – I actually have a demo version somewhere (on a disc from MacFormat).
I took a look at Pages, and it seems it can very well do what I used to do with InDesign, books and brochures. I used to print on my CD’s using Photoshop and an inkjet, fortunately I found that I have a program (budged with Toast) that will do just that.
An irritating feature of Lion is that it opens windows and applications from the past when you start up the Mac. Even if the “Reopen windows when logging in” box isn’t ticked, it still opens all the old stuff. And in Safari, unless you remember to close all windows, you get the whole bunch of old windows opened. I think there should be an option in the Finder preferences (if there is one, I haven’t found it)

As far as reverting to Snow Leopard is concerned, I get an error message telling me that it isn’t possible “with this OS X version”, even if I have installed an empty hard drive. Perhaps something wrong with the MacBook Pro hardware, since the computer doesn’t allow large file transfers, anything in excess of about 30 GB just freezes the transfer. SuperDuper doesn’t work because of that problem.

[Trygve Roos]

I see the point and decided to bite the bullet. Perhaps I can get used to Apple trying to steel my brains, i.e. depraving me from independent thinking by thinking on my behalf and automatically forcing me back to anything I didn’t plan to do ever again and all the other new brain-stealing stupidities.
I’m sure there must be some good stuff, too. Since my Adobe Creative Suite doesn’t work anymore (version 1) I decided to look at Pages. For simple projects is seems to be fine. Perhaps it will do the job (books, brochures and CD envelopes, etc).
The new Preview is pretty useless, and since my Photoshop doesn’t work anymore, I’ll have to find another program where I can edit photos and make web proof pics. Photoshop Elements, perhaps?? I don’t know that one.
It is a petty Apple abandoned my most important program, Soundtrack Pro. I so much waited for a 64bit version, and then instead Apple announced the Tourist Version of Final Cut with audio editing hidden somewhere deep in the video editing stuff I don’t need.

[Trygve Roos]

SuperDuper does not work, it stops after copying 19GB. Any copying larger than 20GB is freezing. HW test=no problems found. The original restore DVD does not work “You can’t use this version of the application Install Mac OS X with this version of Mac OS X. You have install Mac OS X 23.1.1.” (The grammatical error isn’t mine) The OS X Snow Leopard, the same problem. Probably OS X Lion destroys the firmware.

My MacBook Pro is my 41st Apple computer, but it really begins to seem that it might be my last one. If I have to throw away my less than a year old MacBook Pro, because Apple prevented all restoring options, I think I have to buy a PC in order to get my work done. Obviously serious professional producers (I do audio production) do not belong to Apple’s target audience. I bet they discontinue the Mac Pro before X-mas and the rest of the computer line within two years.

Very, very sad (and expensive for me, at least)

Trygve Roos, DPhil, Dist.Prof.

[Trygve Roos]

Well, one outstanding feature of the venerable Soundtrack Pro is the view where it displays the frequency spectrum. Editing soundscapes (very, very large files) it takes for ever if you have to listen through the whole recording and fix temporary noises, like pops, cars driving by, aircrafts passing over you etc. Having done this work for years, I have developed the skill of an X-ray doctor to quickly see from the ‘X-ray’ (frequency spectrum) picture what is wrong without having to listen to the recording until I find the problem. Deleting the problem section or filtering noise is much easier when you see the frequency, not only the amplitude. I don’t know of any reasonably priced software that would contain that kind of a feature.
If anybody knows of such software, I’d be very happy to get advice. Meanwhile I try to manage with the slow and unstable Soundtrack Pro.