Installing OS X Yosemite on a MacBookPro 8,1

[guilhermemaranhao]

Hi,

I want install OS X Yosemite on my MacBookPro 8,1 running OS X 10.7.5 (Lion), 2011: 2,3 GHz Intel Core i5, 4 GB RAM.
I have read the thread OS X Yosemite (10.10), and it seems my macbook is not an unsupported one.
However, I have read many complaints related to performance issues from users who updated their systems from newer versions, like Lion or Mountain Lion.

Based on that, do you recommend to install Yosemite on my macBook? If so, which type of installation is the best: just update it or the "clean install"?

Thanks,

Guilherme

 

[prisstratton]

Whether you upgrade or not is entirely up to you, but if other versions of OS X are satisfying your needs, then I would stick with them as you cannot take advantage of any of the new features in Yosemite (at least the ones that seem to mean the most to people, i.e. continuity, hand-off, airdrop [ios to mac] etc.).

I recently decided to upgrade my MBP to 10.10.4 (see my sig. - same year as yours) and I was not very happy with the experience. The interface as a whole was laggy (please note: this is MY experience, yours maybe different), WiFi + Safari was just awful. Selecting a link from top sites would sometimes result in me waiting 45 seconds for the page to load.

After 4 days I switched back to Mavericks and it was like night and day, everything was fast and snappy again and links would open instantly.

One thing for sure, people’s experience seems to vary with this version of OS X. Some people have no problem whatsoever, while others are still plagued with WiFi issues. You will find numerous threads in the forums discussing this.

Personally I would suggest you think about a move to Mountain Lion or Mavericks, but I would hold off on the switch to Yosemite. The latest version (currently in pre-release - El Capitan 10.11) is looking like it might be an improvement and there are many positive comments in that forum.

Whatever you decide to do, please ensure that your system is properly backed up before starting; make sure that you have more than one backup and try to use 2 different methods, e.g. Time Machine + Bootable Clone.

Hope it helps.

 

[guilhermemaranhao]

Hello prisstratton,

Thank you very much for your hints! The main reason I want to update it to Yosemite is to have support to the Swift language, which I suppose is only available in the last XCode version.

Thanks,

Guilherme

 

[prisstratton]

Swift is available with the Xcode that comes with Mavericks. Please read this thread:

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/132652/can-i-code-using-swift-on-mavericks

Some more info:

https://developer.apple.com/swift/resources/

 

[guilhermemaranhao]

Cool!

But what about the performance issues on Mavericks?

And if I get El Captain beta version?

 

[prisstratton]

I have no performance issue with Mavericks.

I would hold off on the El Cap beta for the moment. It is not a stable platform and should not be used on a production machine. Some people are just making the plunge, but it is not without risk.

I was testing El Cap on a separate partition up until a week ago. It corrupted my main Mavs partition (similar things happened with Yosemite beta), so I deleted it and restored my system.

 

[guilhermemaranhao]

Ok, thanks a lot again.

Maybe I'll try Yosemite first and if it doesn't work properly, I'll downgrade it to Mavericks.

 

[prisstratton]

If you decide to go straight to Yosemite then you should download Mavericks from the App Store first. If you do not, then it will not be available to you afterwards.

....and if you have it downloaded you may as well make a bootable USB installer. When Mavs stops downloading it will start the installer, just Command-Q to stop it and then run Diskmaker X, here:

http://diskmakerx.com

You will need an 8 GB USB stick.

Likewise, if you think you might need Mountain Lion, then download that before you download Mavericks.

EDIT: Okay, after reading another post, here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/from-ml-to-mav-how-to-upgrade.1902888/

It would seem that Mavericks is not available anymore. I would check and see if any of your friends or co-workers have saved a copy. Or, if they previously ran a Mavericks installation it will still be available for them to download.