MacOS Sierra: Please Tell me Why You Are Not Upgrading

[grahamperrin]

@bpran please see the answers to Who will upgrade to Sierra on day 1?

 

[Lodesman]

I'm waiting until at least 10.12.2.0 for a number of reasons. The main one is that on each of the previous upgrades, Mavericks, Yosemite and El Capitan, I have encountered many minor and very irritating glitches. Each of which has taken several weeks to resolve.

I have to admit that I am essentially a 'user' and have little interest in why it works. Most of my work is around word processing, spreadsheets, mail and general browsing. That's all I want the computer to do - after an upgrade, just work as it did before.

After a OS update it rarely does (without all sorts of fiddling with settings).

 

[panzer06]

Just waiting for other folks to deals with any bugs, issues or changes. I really don't want to be part of the "Late BETA" process. If there's a pretty stable version available by US Thanksgiving I'll probably upgrade.

 

[iMacUnsure]

As somebody who jumped into the 10.12.0 release with no prior beta testing and kind of regretted it, here are a few key reasons to wait:

• Remember that despite Apple's earnest attempts to find bugs during beta testing, the number of people who installed pre-release software is a very small fraction compared to those installing the final build. Now we have many more guinea pigs to report uncaught bugs.
• From a 3rd party app standpoint, there's no compelling reason to switch over just yet.
  • A lot of developers are acting blind-sided by the release of Sierra and are warning people at the last second not to upgrade due to compatibility issues. Apparently they did not take advantage of the development program for w/e reason. Compare this to the iOS 10 release where it felt like every dev had an update ready to go on day 1.
  • I don't believe there's a single app out there right now that leverages Sierra-specific APIs that actually requires this new OS to function.
• Despite people saying that this is one of the most stable initial releases of MacOS, of the few issues that do exist, some of these are actually pretty crippling. There are reported issues with USB devices due to some major changes made to Apple's USB drivers.
• Apple also tightened up their requirements on Bluetooth so devices need to communicate more strictly to the intended design spec, breaking compatibility with some devices that may have not used such a great implementation. This is particularly a pain in the butt because Apple obviously won't undo this change (and technically shouldn't), so its up to the manufacturers to somehow roll out firmware updates if possible and remedy this. Inevitably, some devices will simply never be compatible moving forward and will essentially be useless and will need to be replaced with a different model.

I'd really strongly encourage you to wait for 10.12.1 at least. The 10.12.1 beta seems to have fixed a USB-related kernel panic that had previously made my Mac unusable whenever I had a USB auto DAC connected. There are also some minor behavioral issues that seemed to be fixed, like some random moments where Siri would not immediately activate after I pressed my keyboard shortcut and after a long pause would almost immediately stop listening to a request before saying "sorry, I didn't hear what you said' or something of that general phrasing.

There's no harm in running El Capitan. You guys still running it have a very very long time before you'll begin seeing developers pull support for this. There's no reason to jump ship yet unless you really badly want Siri on the Mac or universal clipboard, which aren't that big of a deal.

There's no harm in running El Capitan. You guys still running it have a very very long time before you'll begin seeing developers pull support for this. There's no reason to jump ship yet unless you really badly want Siri on the Mac or universal clipboard, which aren't that big of a deal.

Considered upgrading till I read this...El Cap has been working great on my late 2012 iMac that I bought in August of 2013 so I think I will stick with as I don't care anything about Siri.

 

[NativeTxn]

I'm regretting upgrading to Sierra already (did it last night). The fans on my late 2013 Retina MacBook Pro are spinning almost non-stop. On start up, they spin very fast, and after a minute or two they calm down some but have pretty much been continuously spinning loud enough for me to hear them and loud enough to be annoying since I updated.

Fans are running right now and my activity monitor says:

CPU System 1.64 User 2.96 Idle 95.40

Obviously that is fluctuating some, but the idle is generally staying at 85% or higher.

Memory Physical Memory 16.00 GB Memory Used 8.10 GB Cached Files 4.14 GB

kernal_task is using about 1.07 GB with this webpage using 1.29 GB, while everything else in 631.7 MB or less.


So, while I'm not an expert in any sense whatsoever, it doesn't seem like the resources are being so heavily tapped that the fans should be spinning.

This was not an issue on El Cap so if I could go back, I'd stay on it for a while as it was working fine.

 

[ragnu]

[doublepost=1475062062][/doublepost]From what I've read, I take it that, if I upgrade to Sierra, items that I put on my iCloud Drive using another device will no longer be automatically downloaded to my iCloud Drive folder for offline use. I'll have to download each item individually. This is a deal-breaker for me. My workload requires that my iCloud Drive folder be in sync on both my Macs. If Apple decides to add an option to make iCloud Drive behave to way it does with El Captian, I'll consider upgrading.

 

[Ritsuka]

[doublepost=1475062062][/doublepost]From what I've read, I take it that, if I upgrade to Sierra, items that I put on my iCloud Drive using another device will no longer be automatically downloaded to my iCloud Drive folder for offline use. I'll have to download each item individually. This is a deal-breaker for me. My workload requires that my iCloud Drive folder be in sync on both my Macs. If Apple decides to add an option to make iCloud Drive behave to way it does with El Captian, I'll consider upgrading.

That's false, you can make it work exactly ask before, just uncheck "Optimize storage" (and probably is not even checked by default.

 

[ragnu]

OK, I didn't know that. I had read this review:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/09/macos-10-12-sierra-the-ars-technica-review/4/#h1

Thanks for letting me know. Maybe I'll give it a try now.

 

[Ebenezum]

I'm regretting upgrading to Sierra already (did it last night). The fans on my late 2013 Retina MacBook Pro are spinning almost non-stop. On start up, they spin very fast, and after a minute or two they calm down some but have pretty much been continuously spinning loud enough for me to hear them and loud enough to be annoying since I updated.

Fans are running right now and my activity monitor says:

CPU System 1.64 User 2.96 Idle 95.40

Obviously that is fluctuating some, but the idle is generally staying at 85% or higher.

Memory Physical Memory 16.00 GB Memory Used 8.10 GB Cached Files 4.14 GB

kernal_task is using about 1.07 GB with this webpage using 1.29 GB, while everything else in 631.7 MB or less.


So, while I'm not an expert in any sense whatsoever, it doesn't seem like the resources are being so heavily tapped that the fans should be spinning.

This was not an issue on El Cap so if I could go back, I'd stay on it for a while as it was working fine.

Might be Spotlight indexing or Photos is updating faces in the background.
Another possibility is that Sierra may be buggy compared to El Capitan and if you wait 3-4 updates before updating most of bugs probably have been fixed.

 

[Lichqueen]

I am not going to upgrade becoz my monitor(LG 31MU97)cannot sleep, will wakeup at once when sleep, but if I unplug the monitor cable or turn off the monitor, then it will sleep well.

 

[NativeTxn]

Might be Spotlight indexing or Photos is updating faces in the background.
Another possibility is that Sierra may be buggy compared to El Capitan and if you wait 3-4 updates before updating most of bugs probably have been fixed.

I'm hoping it is indexing or photos updating, but it just seems like it's taking a really long time if it is. Here's to hoping it resolves itself one way or the other, sooner rather than later.

 

[poorcody]

I'm hoping it is indexing or photos updating, but it just seems like it's taking a really long time if it is. Here's to hoping it resolves itself one way or the other, sooner rather than later.

It's still doing it three days later? Have you left the machine running overnight at all to let it run freely?

 

[The Mercurian]

mistake please delete

 

[vexorg]

Anyone else have the same habit and can you tell me your reasons?

Because the last few versions of OS X have been shockingly bad when released. Gone are the old days that you looked forward to a well written fully tested new shiny OS.

Usually I tend to upgrade when something doesn't work and an upgrade is like a last resort to fixing it. Still on yosemite, and the only reason was getting endless pinwheel lockups on mavericks with safari, and mac mail deciding that it needed to resent every email now and then..

 

[stooovie]

It's still doing it three days later? Have you left the machine running overnight at all to let it run freely?

I've run it nonstop since Sierra launched and it STILL hasn't finished. Restarted several times and yes, photoanalysisd is running. 2015 retina iMac. 36k photos.

 

[poorcody]

I've run it nonstop since Sierra launched and it STILL hasn't finished. Restarted several times and yes, photoanalysisd is running. 2015 retina iMac. 36k photos.

Wow, thanks... that's good to know it can take that long when I eventually upgrade.

Looks like you can check the progress of photoanalysisd according to this article:
http://blog.yimingliu.com/2016/09/20/check-progress-of-photoanalysisd/

 

[NativeTxn]

It's still doing it three days later? Have you left the machine running overnight at all to let it run freely?

I've left it untouched for several hours at a time, but not fully overnight. I'll try it, but in all honesty, when I check the activity monitor, the CPU usage is usually very low (like, below 10-15% low) and it usually only moves higher than that on restart while it's rebooting.

So, I honestly can't pinpoint a specific issue that would be causing the fans to spin, at various levels, constantly. Sometimes it is extremely low (though not silent like it used to be) to where I have to put my ear closet to the laptop to hear them. Other times like right now, they aren't running at their highest by any stretch, but I can hear them over my typing.

 

[0007776]

My work computer was being updated to it, but unless I see something very compelling on there I won't upgrade my personal computer anytime soon. Sierra doesn't look bad but there is nothing in it that personally appeals to me.

 

[baryon]

I'd only wait if my current system was running fine — if it ain't broke, don't fix it — you're very lucky and you shouldn't tempt fate. El Capitan had lots of bugs for me — namely Mail didn't work at all and watching YouTube would cause the whole system to completely freeze — and after some research it seemed that Sierra fixed those bugs, so I was more than happy to upgrade instantly and behold, both bugs are indeed fixed.

The YouTube freezing issue I had with El Capitan only got fixed with the latest update (10.11.6) so waiting 3 months would not have helped — it was more like 10 months. Other bugs, such as Mail not working, were never fixed and are still present in the current version of El Capitan.

It seems to me that if an OS has major issues, Apple will either not fix them or they will take so long to fix them that you're better off skipping the whole OS entirely. Updates generally either do nothing noticeable or they only fix minor issues. Major issues are only fixed with major releases.

So that said, either upgrade now or skip the version entirely, but waiting has no real benefit. If you have big problems, upgrade in hopes of getting them fixed. If you have no problems, then by all means stick with the version that works for you. Screw new features, they won't compensate for your computer being unusable.

 

[grahamperrin]

Avoiding repetition: https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/23695356

 

[Lodesman]

After my previous post saying I was going to wait until .1 or .2 and reading subsequent posts I doubt now whether I will bother upgrading at all to Sierra. There is nothing there that I want.

Each previous upgrade resulted in me spending hours disabling stuff. I don't want Apple deciding what is good for me. After iPhoto I developed a deep loathing of all apple photo software so now I have no use for it. I have my photos sorted the way I want them to be, not indexed in some bizarre fashion decided by apple.

I've tried Siri on IOS and, for the life of me, I can't find a use for it. The rest of the stuff Sierra brings is of little use to me probably because I either don't understand what it does or why I would suddenly need it.

I love Apple hardware but the annual OS upgrade is a total pain. As I have said I am a user and have little interest in why things work so having to sort out problems after an upgrade does not appeal to me.

 

[The Mercurian]

Have updated over the weekend cause my work now supports it.
Don't notice much difference. Not using Siri because IMHO, it sends to much personal data to Apple. I'm loving the picture in picture function I must say. Have wanted this for a while

 

[Smellmet]

I just can't see any compelling reason to do it. If any of the below questions are answered by doing so I'd consider it.

Will it make my machine perform any faster?
Does it bring any new UI elements to the table?
Are any 'must have' features that will boost workflow included?

Unless any of these can be answered I'm sticking with el cap for the foreseeable future. And I've been an early adopter since Snow Leopard.

 

[Felmack]

Never good idea to move too fast. I did with Sierra. Messed up connection to monitor. El Capitan is one true comrade.

 

[samcraig]

Never good idea to move too fast. I did with Sierra. Messed up connection to monitor. El Capitan is one true comrade.

My new system shipped with El C... it's an iMac 27" 5K... thoughts on upgrading before I start installing my software? Staying on El C?