This is a very nice document preparation tool. My main usage case was to typeset notes with lots of math and also prototype journal articles. The disadvantages is that not everyone uses it so if you collaborate with anyone who doesn't use it (usually your boss) you have to switch to latex and also sometimes in order to publish you need to make micro-adjustments, which are usually one command in latex but require a lot of drilling in lyx. But this is understandable as there can be no perfect GUI. For the mac there is also the problem is that it is not retina ready and this does not seem to be a priority for the developers (also understandable since it requires an update of the toolkit and all the bindings and probably that is too complicated). It is still perfectly usable of course, but add this all up and a modern latex editor with live preview seems to be more practical these days. And I say this after using lyx for 10 years. I still recommend it as an educational tool for latex or for the people who are not very demanding with their documents (i.e. they don't need to publish). For whoever wants to use latex for publishing (or for collaboration), there is no way to escape learning it in the end and using lyx will simply delay the inevitable.