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| The faded circle slash says a Lion app won't run... |
First off you have to spend an hour or so installing the automatic updates. These include some firmware changes that get downloaded each time your run "Software Update." The problem is that they don't take so after each successful "Software Update" you have run it again. It took me about six (count'm six) tries before it would succeed and report that no more update are available.
These firmware updates cause the machine to make weird beeps and the "sleep" light to flash in a funny way. A special "progress bar" (all gray) also appears during the process.
So after an hour or so at least I had the baseline of 10.7.2 (Lion) installed on this new mac.
During the install I had Lion transfer the contents of an older mac to the new one.
When I open the new mac I can see many of my apps in the task bar have a circle with a bar hash over them meaning that they are not compatible with Lion: most of my Adobe products, various plug-ins, tools for Roland VX systems, older Office apps, Native Instruments apps, Enfocus browser, most of what I want to use.
So first off I have to re-install Logic 9 - the old machine did not have all the parts installed so I have to redo it... Hopefully Lion won't break the installation. This will be a several hour project.
In the mean time I have to get access to my other work laptop via screen sharing. Fortunately this works pretty well and I am able to use the other laptop from this one almost seamlessly (the only thing that doesn't work is the sticky-note widget stuff...). Sharing is easy to set up and it works.
Up until this point I have been able to get everything I need on a single mac - but today no more.
The new mac requires me to use the new, backwards iOS-style scrolling where the screen follows the direction of your finger moves instead of the opposite. This is annoying though I may as well get used to it because the ghost of Steve Jobs will not let Apple go back to rational scrolling. (This would be rational if the keyboard was also a display as with iOS.)
So I have been going through the task bar cleaning things up or removing things that won't work. For some things they probably will never work again which means that what I use them for will eventually fail as well (for example the Roland XV-5050 stuff). (I'll be stuck using the 1" x 4" B/W display panel after that... thanks Steve...)
Native Instruments software also fails. I was able to get some working by checking the "run in 32-bit mode" box in the file Info dialog associated with the file. This is what's really annoying. Lion is supposedly 64-bit and wonderful. Most of what I use is 32-bit I guess. But there is no overt way to tell.
After installing CS 5.5 I tried to fire up Photoshop - after a completely clean and error free install.
First thing off it complains in needs a "Java Runtime." Why and whatever for - who knows - but it does. Mysteriously "Software Update" is invoked to find one. The new PhotoShop appears to be a 64-bit one - oh oh - it will be slooooowwww... (actually its okay so far... not blazing but okay).
Native Instruments uses a "Service Center" software package that manages the rest of any Native Instruments packages you buy. However, initially it seemed not to be working. You have to go on their web site, download the latest version, go on your Mac and remove some .plist files (there is info at NE in the support area) and reinstall the Service Center. Then when you run it you have to ask it to not try again when it fails with "Error 6." The rest of Komplete 7 seems to work without a problem - but I have not tested it extensively (I did have to tell Kontatk 4 to run in 32-bit mode).
In the root directory ("/" or "Macintosh HD") Lion creates a folder for incompatible software (.kexts and other stuff like Parallels found its way there on my install). So if things stop working magically I'd take a look in there to see if I could find the problem first. Since Lion doesn't tell you this and just does it you're on your own...
I had to go to the app store for Mac to get the latest development environment (XCode).
You end up going through the BS Mac app store stuff and then it sits there. You have no idea when its done or what it did. After a while I had to go looking for XCode by doing a disk search. Finally I found what I guess the latest version is in my Applications folder. But its not an installed XCode - its an install XCode app!
I will report the adventures of my XCode xploits (no pun intended) over on the Synthodeon blog.
(More to come...)
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