What has apple done? Why is my computer more painful to use instead of easier?

Question

Ever since the last update of snow leopard and the upgrade to lion my computer hangs, stalls, is generally "pc" like.  It seems that a day doesn't go by without the "rainbow wheel" being a significant part of my day and various programs closing and needing to be re-opened. 
I know it's difficult to deal with an issue when there aren't specific examples, however, I think the many different combinations of issues I'm experiencing strongly suggests that there is a few back end issues that need to be sorted.  I noticed the "slow down" first on the last versions of snow leapord and, sadly, things haven't got better with lion.  This is even taking into consideration that I completely blasted the computer when I installed lion such that I just brought my data accross after I'd installed it to try and avoid bringing in bugs that may have had something to do with my settings.    
From my perspective, Apple's built it's current market share on user friendliness.  There's a whole bunch of people out there that really want stuff to "just work".  From the last 12 month decline in performance of my Macbook Pro however, I'm worried that the pressure of bringing out something new each year is causing Apple to compromise this fundamental principal.
If anyone else has noticed a decline in general user friendliness and performance in the past 12 months I'd like to hear about it.  I'm really wanting to know if it's just me or not (ps - I have been through a complete reformat processess with the guys from Apple Care and they have check my diagnositics and say "it should all be fine".  The trouble is it's not fine).
Rob

Answer 1

robscomments wrote:
Thanks... although perhaps you missed the bit about me taking the machine back to square one with the help of Applecare before installing Lion? 
I saw that, I just didn't really belive it . There are too many variables to assume we are both talking about the same thing. I don't know what data you did copy over and how you performed that copy. You can still have some incompatible software. You could have installed some nasty anti-virus software. No way for me to tell.
I will try your suggestion though and find out what that stuff means / can do for me.  The trouble I guess is that it's now up to me to lose productivity time to find out the issues rather than being able to simply ring up the service I paid for to make sure everything is running how it should.
There is something specific about your machine that is misbehaving. You are the only one who can really track it down. The "paid" tech support people really don't do that level of diagnostics. You aren't paying them that much and they don't have that level of skill anyway. A real consultant for these issues would charge from $120-$300 an hour - with a one hour minimum.
Instead of paying that, you can post a screen capture of Activity Monitor and look for any log messages in Console.app that are repeated about 4000 times. That usually narrows down the problem real quick.