We're on the cusp of Apple releasing their new OS, Lion. And as usual there are already those panting with baited breath who just can't wait to try out newest stuff.

As I've always advised with every new OS update, you need to BACKUP your current OS immediately and, DO NOT attempt an OS update in the middle of a not-yet-finalized FCP project. Period.

Before you make the update I want you to be aware of a very different caveat this time around:

All the white-papers about Lion indicate that during the install process the OS will create for itself a "backup partition". This is drastically new behavior for OS X and is done because it's being distributed only as a download, not on a physical disc. (First they take away printed manuals, now physical discs are disappearing.)

If your main OS disc is full or nearly full you may not have enough room for the OS to make it's new partition, and as of yet there's been no actual specs given as to how large the partition needs to be as figures vary wildly from 40GB all the way up to nearly 90GB.

And the worst part is that this recovery partition is HIDDEN and will not show up in Disk Utility, not without some heavy-duty tweaking.

So, if you're dead-set on being one of the first people on your block to try out Lion then I'd highly suggest you do your due-diligence and read all the data from bloggers who are posting pre-relase information and read up on this new environment.

My advice to anyone who's not an expert at OS environments is to wait at least 2-3 weeks after Lion is released and let all the tweakers, hackers and experts suss out exactly what happens post-install and see how things shake out. It's not like Lion is offering anything you can't live without so be patient and save yourself the stress of a potentially snafu-ridden situation.

40-90GB for the partition! Seriously?

I have the latest MBP but with a SSD of 128GB for video speed which I also use with FW800 externals.
Those numbers you mention would really eat up my system drive space.

Can you link us to where you are getting those numbers?

There are several Mac OS X code-monkeys with blog posts about the Lion install routine, just do a Google search and you'll find plenty of data - but until Lion officially releases you won't get real-world data about the partition size.

Part of the problem with pre-release information is that the software itself has not gone "gold" yet, meaning it's not been put into it's final form for public release. So it could be that the beta-testers and other Apple developers who've been given seeds of Lion are working on images that don't conform to final standards. That recovery partition might shrink to less than 15GB of size when Lion goes public - until now it's all speculation.

This thread was mostly to get people aware of the major differences in the underpinnings of this release and to be prepared for it so that you're not given another Apple-branded hoodwink after the fact.

As I say, wait until Lion actually launches then all the big questions will be immediately answered.

And one more detail: Even if Lion's install ends up being a non-event you can't consider it to be bug-free when it comes to interfacing with your NLE, whether it's FCP, PP or other. I'd definitely give Lion time to roam the wild before assuming you won't have any major hiccups with your edit suite.

There are *no* significant changes to the OS that will directly affect the usability of your NLE package; Lion is simply introducing features that turn your OS into a more iPad-like interface and adding some "updates" to things like Mac Mail. Other than that, it's no big deal. Really.

I agree with your advice Robert.

However, I do believe that Lion will bring major improvements to Final Cut Pro X. Like versioning, full-screen view and other small things that are not there. I have read a lot of complaints about people losing working in Final Cut Pro X which they can't fix because the auto-save feature.

But Final Cut Pro X itself should also be labeled beta software.

The best practice is to wait for the .1 OS X Lion release and updates for your favorite plug-ins and software. Generally speaking, it takes around 3 months for things to settle down.

The Gold Master was released to developers over a week ago. I myself never do major "upgrades" and instead create my own new partition or just use another volume to do a fresh install. That was you can start testing your old software in the new OS and be able to boot your old OS at a moment's notice.

I can confirm that Final Cut Studio 3 seems to work fine in Lion. Everything in Lion is fast too, even just opening a website.

The first thing you will want to do though is turn off the inverted scrolling. The default works like iPhone/iPad (scroll reveals more of the page in the opposite direction), which the opposite to how we have scrolled windows on a computer for decades. The only conclusion I've come to for this decision is that touch screen monitors are around the corner.

The Gold Master was released to developers over a week ago.

I hope you realize you just made yourself the default "go to" guy when Lion releases in the wild and everybody and their brother has questions. (laughs)

Lion will be an interesting experiment, especially since I'm currently working on "switching" solutions for my workshop attendees with PP CS5.5 and MC 5 - we'll see how Lion talks to those packages.