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Scary Spice

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 31, 2015
271
364
British Columbia
I am proclaiming a reliability level for El Cap as "Useable".

This has been granted when the most active threads here discuss items such as scroll direction and the default system font. (this rating is backed up by my production machines being very stable)

Thank goodness as it has been pretty rocky getting here.

In the next few months the cycle will start over again with 10.12. I hope the folks involved in Apple have learned something from the 10.10 and 10.11 development cycles.
 

Ebenezum

macrumors 6502a
Mar 31, 2015
782
260
this rating is backed up by my production machines being very stable

At the moment I don't consider El Capitan stable enough for production machines, Spotlight, Finder, Time Machine, Disk Utility, Preview etc. are too buggy. Mail is somewhat stable compared to 10.11.0-10.11.2 but it loses my emails and I can't trust it.

Furthermore I had too many kernel panics with Mac Mini 2014 and iMac 2007 that I got fed up with 10.11 and sold the Mini and restored iMac to Mavericks. Everything works again and I will stay in Mavericks at least a couple of years because I am not impressed with Apples quality assurance.

Previously I could say "It just works" with confidence but Yosemite and El Capitan are clearly "it won't work" category. El Capitan might be improved enough to be usable provided that Apple spends a lot of time fixing it but am not holding my breath because there has been no sign that Apple intends to do so.
 
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Alrescha

macrumors 68020
Jan 1, 2008
2,156
317
Furthermore I had too many kernel panics with Mac Mini 2014 and iMac 2007...

Interesting, as I have yet to see a kernel panic with any version of El Capitan on any of my machines (from 2009, 2012, and 2013).

A.
 
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simonsi

Contributor
Jan 3, 2014
4,851
735
Auckland
I have it on a 2011 iMac and MBP and a 2015 MBA - no issues with any of them and certainly not unuseable...
 

cynics

macrumors G4
Jan 8, 2012
11,959
2,156
I don't run into any issues with my workflow using El Cap. Admittedly it was rocky at first especially with SIP issues. Also I have had 1 kernel panic crash in El Cap for the first time in OS X.

I'd refer to El Cap as good, not great.
 

OldGreyGuy

macrumors regular
Jan 14, 2014
117
26
Near Brisbane, Australia
Has been fairly stable for me, the first couple of days seemed problematic with random restarts and problems with SIP for some applications but that seems to top when I removed XtraFinder (I miss it).

Now I would be happy if we just had a year of bug fixes and improvement with only some minor feature improvements (like folders sorted before files in Finder).
 

simon lefisch

macrumors 65816
Sep 29, 2014
1,006
253
When I first updated to El Capitan from Yosemite I had all kinds of probs. After a clean install (which is what I typically do after a major release), no probs.
 

koyeung

macrumors newbie
Nov 5, 2012
17
2
Agree.

In addition, Finder's memory leakage on every Icon Preview and Column Preview invocation is quite problematic. Apple should consider disable the feature by default.
 

pika2000

Suspended
Jun 22, 2007
5,587
4,903
El Capitan 10.11.3 has been okay for me. Definitely a much needed improvement after the POS called Yosemite. Not sure if it's as stable as Mavericks or older OS X, but after Yosemite, El Capitan is a huge relief for me.
 

Gochugogi

macrumors regular
Oct 27, 2013
223
27
Sandwich Isles
No issues after 10.11.2 so all is well. Stable as the Rock of Gibraltar. 10.11 was really crash prone--daily, sometimes hourly--and I found myself using Mavericks for big audio projects. Nowadays I rarely restart under Mavericks.
 

psik

macrumors 6502
Aug 21, 2007
422
33
No issues after 10.11.2 so all is well. Stable as the Rock of Gibraltar. 10.11 was really crash prone--daily, sometimes hourly--and I found myself using Mavericks for big audio projects. Nowadays I rarely restart under Mavericks.

I guess I'd say that Safari does have problems - but that's Safari not El Capitan -
 

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,521
19,679
At the moment I don't consider El Capitan stable enough for production machines, Spotlight, Finder, Time Machine, Disk Utility, Preview etc. are too buggy. Mail is somewhat stable compared to 10.11.0-10.11.2 but it loses my emails and I can't trust it.

Interesting, I've been using 10.11 since early DP3 without any major issues. Our server runs on 10.11 since 10.11.2, again, without any issues.
 

AppleDroid

macrumors 6502a
Apr 10, 2011
631
84
Illinois
I have issues on my 2013 MP specifically with Display not waking from sleep (have to power cycle) and the very annoying "error -43" trying to delete items from my desktop that requires a log out/login in order to resolve it.
 

Primejimbo

macrumors 68040
Aug 10, 2008
3,295
131
Around
No issues for me and I'm using a late 2008 aluminum MacBook. I used it daily, have office 2016 on it, and work on it.
 

MacGizmo

macrumors 68040
Apr 27, 2003
3,214
2,514
Arizona
I haven't seen a kernel panic in years. Overall, I've not had any major issues with any of the betas of OS X, including the dev betas from year's-past. That being said, I HAVE noticed a LOT more little niggling issues popping up the last few years worth of updates. Nothing major, many barely worth mentioning, but just little things that I've never noticed before.

The problem, of course, is that the list of little things is getting longer instead of shorter.
 
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