Most secure/Reliable OS X

[jdnflu23]

Still running mountain lion here, but am afraid updates will soon be non-existent when Yosemite is released...tried Yosemite Beta but was not comfortable with the lack of command line developer tools, as well as the integrated ICLOUD features that just chewed up my 16GB's of Ram -- Also tried Mavericks when it was released but it took a beating on my Macbook's CPU. Mavericks/Yosemite Beta locked up frequently with VirtualBox, while ML handles every Virtual Machine with ease...


I cant stand the ICLOUD integration and for super users it is just an annoyance...I am scared of Mountain Lion becoming the next Windows XP.

In your opinion what is the most secure/ easiest to secure, as well as most reliable and ability to perform cross-platform network hardware sharing, etc OS X release?

 

[MisterMe]

As a Mac owner since 1989, I cannot reconcile the concept of fear with OS X. I have wasted money preparing for possible catastrophic data losses which turned out to be alarmist nonsense.

This is not to say that I am careless. Apple is notorious for moving on after having given sufficient notice that it was dropping support for certain technologies. If your workflow has no immediate substitute for technology that is not supported by a new OS, then you may need to hang onto an old OS that. However, this is not a security concern.

Where security is a concern, I find that the best strategy is to keep my OS up-to-date.

 

[Weaselboy]

In your opinion what is the most secure/ easiest to secure, as well as most reliable and ability to perform cross-platform network hardware sharing, etc OS X release?

With each new version of OS X there have been security enhancements. For example, Yosemite has added kext signing to prevent anybody from changing system kext files without the OS noticing the change. Mountain Lion rolled out app Sandboxing. Mavericks introduced App Permissions. You get the idea.

The issue is will the new OS version work with all your third party hardware/software. You will need to research that on your own to find out.

I know Mavericks changed the way some of the networking protocols worked and that caused compatibility issues with some NAS devices until the NAS vendors updated software/firmware. So with any OS update there is the potential for compatibility problems.

Of course you can just make a full Time Machine backup and set it aside then try out the new OS. If you have issues you can easily roll back to where you were with the TM backup.