Yosemite, is it worth it?

[dameatball]

I think this is absolutely the smartest way to go if you have concerns about something specific not working correctly. I always tell myself to follow this advice and it usually lasts a week or two max unfortunately (I only waited 3 days after Yosemite's release because of continuity with ios 8).

Luckily I didn't have any issues with Yosemite but I did have a couple minor annoyances with Mavericks.

Unfortunately release dates have become a higher priority than QA it seems. I wish they would slow it down and focus more on the current OS. Such great hardware, make the OS just as solid.

my $.02

That said, the question/title don't really jive. Yosemite is the best release they've had in years. *Generally speaking, this release has had a lot less issues out of the gate than Mavericks.

Also this is really dependent on the hardware. The older the hardware, the more you want to consider how your Mac will operate with the current OS.

*No release on any OS ever works for 100% of the population.

 

[asinrutee]

I always wait 6 to 8 months to upgrade a new operating system.Clear the bugs, make some necessary patches. Hear what other users say. wait for the dust to settle. Am I right?

No very boring, live a little take a chance, use the beta program, much more fun

 

[pigoo3]

I've been happily running Adobe Creative Suite 2 under Snow Leopard, does everything I need. Almost every day, I receive a pop-up inviting me to upgrade to Yosemiti - FREE! I stupidly capitulated, did the upgrade, and to my horror, CS2 no longer works, no longer supported. DAMMMMMMMM I have no need to upgrade CS2, for significant $$$$, as CS2 does everything I need. So I bit the bullet, wiped my drive and reinstalled Snow Leopard and over a couple days eventually got everything working again. Not a nice experience.

Great to hear that you got everything sorted. Upgrading the OS is easy...downgrading is definitely a pain in the butt.

We always warn folks. When you upgrade the OS...always always always...check your apps for compatibility. BELIEVE ME...jumping 4 OS versions (10.6 to 10.10)...and running CS2 (when the current version is CS6 or Creative Cloud)...is/was just asking for trouble!

- Nick

 

[stellman]

My concern with upgrading a 4 year old computer to a new operating system is whether the new system will routinely demand to consume physical resources that will tax the older system. Sure, Yosemite is now running on my MacBook that I bought in 2009 with a 2.26 GHz processor and 4 GB of memory, and updated the OS whenever it asked, but I also noticed that it takes over a minute to come out of sleep. It takes nearly two minutes to get XP running under Parallels, more than twice the time on my iMac that I bought in 2012.

 

[JimP]

Is Yosemite Worth It?

I certainly wish I'd never upgraded my MacBook Pro to Yosemite. Unfortunately I also upgraded my wife's MacBook Pro to Yosemite at the same time. IT'S BEEN TERRIBLE. Several trips to the Genius Bar with no solution, other than turning off Bluetooth in an attempt to stop Safari from dropping off every 10-30 seconds. I hate what they did to Mail (regarding addressing) and both our MacBook Pros are running slower (applications loading, executing). I am beginning to believe Yosemite is the Apple equivalent of Vista. 10.10.1 helped some but addressing Mail stinks enough that I'm going to install Outlook for Mac (as soon as the version that runs on Yosemite becomes available). In the meantime, I will keep doing Mail on my Kindle tablet.

 

[NateS]

I certainly wish I'd never upgraded my MacBook Pro to Yosemite. Unfortunately I also upgraded my wife's MacBook Pro to Yosemite at the same time. IT'S BEEN TERRIBLE. Several trips to the Genius Bar with no solution, other than turning off Bluetooth in an attempt to stop Safari from dropping off every 10-30 seconds. I hate what they did to Mail (regarding addressing) and both our MacBook Pros are running slower (applications loading, executing). I am beginning to believe Yosemite is the Apple equivalent of Vista. 10.10.1 helped some but addressing Mail stinks enough that I'm going to install Outlook for Mac (as soon as the version that runs on Yosemite becomes available). In the meantime, I will keep doing Mail on my Kindle tablet.

Jim, what is your problem with addressing Mail? That's one thing I have not had any noticeable complaints about but maybe I am missing something?

Best wishes, Nate

 

[techiesteve]

Snip - I am beginning to believe Yosemite is the Apple equivalent of Vista. 10.10.1 helped some but addressing Mail stinks enough that I'm going to install Outlook for Mac (as soon as the version that runs on Yosemite becomes available). In the meantime, I will keep doing Mail on my Kindle tablet.

No issues here with Yosemite running on my MacBook Pro 15" (Mid 2009) 8GB 512GB SSD and my wife older MacBook Pro 15" (Late 2008) 8GB 256GB SSD. Fast and snappy for older Mac's, and Mail runs fine too. Strange comments re Outlook, I have my backup Gmail accounts in Outlook (Office 2011 Home and Business), and they run fine. It also previously ran OK in Yosemite beta.

 

[Kilbrachen]

Cant do screen shot with Yosemite

Hi, One of the best features of my iMac seems to have disappeared since I upgraded to Yosemite - the ability for screen shots. All I get now when I press Command,Shift 4 are some dings from the keyboard and no crosshairs. Does anyone have the same problem? There seem to be a few glitches in the OS but mostly it has all been fine - until now.

Thanks

 

[tanthony]

I put Yosemite on my 2009 Mackbook Pro in November hoping it would speed up the program loads, etc. It does have nice desktop photos, etc, and a few new programs, but if anything the speed of opening (loading) programs has slowed and especially the bootup of the machine. Also I still have just as many, if not more crashes of my browser (Mozilla) and the two programs I use most also (pages) and (numbers) I have not been able to use I-Photos since the install so am accessing my photos directly. Overall it has not improved the functionality of my laptop, and has actually slowed it down. Also now since updating the Java to this new operating system it does not recognize it and I keep getting a popup saying the Java needs updating...

 

[bcarteruk]

If startup or load times are your big problem then treat yourself to an SSD - that has made tremendous improvement to my 2011 MacBook Pro...and at the same time give it a fresh load of Maverick!

 

[chas_m]

Hi, One of the best features of my iMac seems to have disappeared since I upgraded to Yosemite - the ability for screen shots.

Nope, works perfectly. I do screenshots a lot for my job, and use shift-command-4 all the time. Behaves exactly like it should.

I don't know what is going on but that's just on your end.

 

[chas_m]

Also I still have just as many, if not more crashes of my browser (Mozilla) and the two programs I use most also (pages) and (numbers)

Mozilla? On Yosemite?

Do you mean Firefox?

Are you running the latest versions of said programs?

I have not been able to use I-Photos since the install so am accessing my photos directly.

Seems like this is a severe case of "I didn't keep my software up-to-date," or maybe a corrupt install. Firefox, Pages, Numbers and iPhoto (<-correct spelling) work perfectly here.

The version of Java you should be seeing in your Java System Preference Panel is Java 8, Update 25. If you're not running that version of Java, you're not up-to-date.There are some witheringly old Java-based programs that will not recognize Java 8 due to bad programming, but they're either obsolete or superseded by more recent updates of the program that's having the issue.

 

[vansmith]

No very boring, live a little take a chance, use the beta program, much more fun

No offence, but that's terrible advice. Most people use their devices to get things done and using beta quality software as your only platform is a recipe for disaster.

 

[NateS]

Hi, One of the best features of my iMac seems to have disappeared since I upgraded to Yosemite - the ability for screen shots. All I get now when I press Command,Shift 4 are some dings from the keyboard and no crosshairs. Does anyone have the same problem? There seem to be a few glitches in the OS but mostly it has all been fine - until now.

Thanks

I use Command-Shift-4 nearly every day with Yosemite.

See: OS X Yosemite: Take pictures of the screen

Nate

 

[sailor#1]

Do fresh installs of Yosemite fare better than upgrades?

Hi, One of the best features of my iMac seems to have disappeared since I upgraded to Yosemite - the ability for screen shots. All I get now when I press Command,Shift 4 are some dings from the keyboard and no crosshairs. Does anyone have the same problem? There seem to be a few glitches in the OS but mostly it has all been fine - until now.

Thanks

Mine screen capture works fine. It's the other problems with Yosemite I have difficulties with.

I upgraded Lion 10.7.5 to Yosemite on my 2011 MBP-17 in early December. I synched it with my 2006 MP running Lion (which Apple won't let me upgrade) and ensured all my files were there (spot checked). Started a new backup using Time Machine on an empty WD 1TB external USB HDD and off I went to New York to visit kids and grandkids for the holidays. While there, I installed Parallels 10 and Windows 8.1 running within Yosemite. It slowed things down slightly when running Parallels but otherwise ran okay.

Now on my previous 1TB external, I had used the drive for about a year and a half before I needed to go to another, and that was all with Lion 10.7, I think, although the early use might have been snow leopard. In this case, however, near the end of our three week stay I noticed that Time Machine started complaining that the backup disk was full and old backups were being deleted. This occurred with about 820 GB utilized and 180 free. I then noticed that a lot of recent files in my various directories (folders) were missing back to about March. These seemed to be nowhere on the backup drive although I still have some sleuthing to do.

On my return home to Austin early this week, I switched to a 4 TB WD Elements HDD and restarted a new backup series with Time Machine. Initial take was about 315 GB, equivalent to what is on my 0.75TB internal HDD. That was the 7th of January. Now on the 10th, the use is only very slightly more in use. Now I am trying to use DeltaWalker Oro to try to synch all the various new files I generated during our time on Long Island back onto my MP. (Anyone have another suggestion for machine-to-machine synchronization over a network?)

So, for what it's worth, there does seem to be problems with Yosemite and files, and it's not appearing to be consistent. The only clue I have so far is from reading the many pages of this thread that perhaps those who blank their hard drive and install a fresh copy of 10.10 do not seem to have file loss problems (is this correct...has anyone who blanked before installing had difficulties with files disappearing?) and those who upgraded did lose files randomly by installation. It would be interesting to hear from others on this question.

 

[tanthony]

If startup or load times are your big problem then treat yourself to an SSD - that has made tremendous improvement to my 2011 MacBook Pro...and at the same time give it a fresh load of Maverick!

Thank you but what is an SSD?

 

[vansmith]

Solid state drive. They're hard drives with no moving parts which makes them considerably faster but they are more expensive and generally smaller in capacity.

 

[bluecheer]

I don't think there's anything wrong with that approach especially since the previous version of OS X often has a usable shelf life beyond a year. If Mavericks still works for you, I don't think you need to rush and can easily wait until the new year.

I wish Apple would have said that to me instead they said my system was capable of accepting Yosemite and now I'm computing through a bath of MUD.
I'm sure the fixes that come out ( I hope bloody soon ) will make this system work better than it does now. I'm a big Apple fan and I will stick with them. It's just a pain in the **** when these sought of things happen.

 

[vansmith]

I was reading something yesterday that sums up what happened to you in a nutshell - Apple has to support older machines for as long as possible so as to ensure that people retain the idea that Apple products have long term value but that also means that compromises have to be made.

A short release cycle could be an answer here if the updates were more minor than major but given that Apple is in this to make money, updates have to be "big" and consequently, you end up with users such as yourself who are encouraged to update and accept significant changes to the OS.

 

[sailor#1]

2006 Core Duo should upgrade at least to Lion

So, the question I have is.. why can newer operating systems not be able to be installed onto older Macs? Yes, it would be slower and certain features that require particular hardware may not work; but it seems that over the last few years that the conversation has turned to can't. My Mom has a 2006 Core Duo and cannot go past Snow Leopard. Yosemite requires iMacs mid-2007 or later. I would like to understand what the link is between an older processor and the requirements of a newer operating system that cannot use it.

Just wondering.

Thanks,
Paras.

I have a 2006 v1.1 MP with dual core duos Xeon processors that started with Leopard, or maybe Snow Leopard. Apple would allow it to upgrade to Lion but not further. I don't know what limits the MBPs, however. The limits to upgrading my MP are twofold as I understand it: new boot processing (may also be the problem with the earlier MBPs); noncompatible video card. See the stream on upgrading older MPs to get a detailed description of this issue and its solution.