Narcoleptic Lion

Lion’s days may still be numbered, even if it is unclear when it will be succeeded by Mountain Lion; but it looks like we shall have some time living with its current foibles. I find it interesting that, while Microsoft basically tries to keep its operating system up to date with patches, upgrading Lion has always involved downloading the whole ball of wax. This does not bother me in theory. I have no trouble with setting up a download and the end of the day, turning in for the night, and then checking on things when I wake up the next morning.

What does bother me is when I discover that the download has gone to sleep at some time during the course of the night (perhaps around the same time I did). (This does not involved the computer going to sleep. I have set the Energy Saver to keep it running at all times when under AC power.) This problem has been around for some time, and it only occurs with downloads from Apple. (Most of the recordings I review for Examiner.com are now downloads. I often run those overnight with no problems from any of the several servers to which I now connect. Even the upgrades for Microsoft Office can be downloaded overnight.) My guess is that the Apple download servers are also running Lion, meaning that Apple has to live with eating its own spoiled dog food.

Since I run the download through Software Update, I discovered an interesting solution. If I just stop the download and then start it again in Software Update, it picks up where it had previously stopped in its tracks. Over the last several Lion upgrades, I would guess that, on average, it takes me three or four of these iterations to complete a Lion upgrade download in its entirety.

Will this flawed behavior be addressed in Mountain Lion? Have I any good reason to believe it will be? It seems as if every day brings new persuasions to move over to Linux. Unfortunately, where my music downloads are concerned, at least one of my clients still does not have a Linux version. What a surprise.