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vega07

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 7, 2006
1,269
18
I am very excited for El Capitan and having a hard time waiting. Is the public beta good enough to install over my current 10.10 to serve as my main (and only) drive/OS?

Thanks for your opinion!
 

Phil A.

Moderator emeritus
Apr 2, 2006
5,800
3,100
Shropshire, UK
I would never recommend using a beta as your primary / only OS (and neither do Apple). It's been pretty stable, but the latest one actually had more issues than earlier ones for me (particularly around Java apps) and I booted into Yosemite today for the first time since the beta was released during WWDC.

If you do decide to use it as your only OS, make sure you have a good backup before you start (and keep it separate) and be prepared to wipe your machine and start again if you have to
 

0000757

macrumors 68040
Dec 16, 2011
3,893
850
I've only had very small minor bugs; my system is actually running better than when it was on Yosemite.
 
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Prof.

macrumors 603
Aug 17, 2007
5,346
2,106
Chicagoland
I've only had very small minor bugs; my system is actually running better than when it was on Yosemite.
This. I've been rockin' El Cap for a day now and I haven't run into any major problems. The biggest thing is a jumpy cursor when I'm in iMessage.
 

Lowe Lilliehorn

macrumors regular
Apr 30, 2015
211
21
Okey, you want my opinion, and I'll anser it...
So far it was the greatest upgrade I ever did on OS X.... I remember that I have every single OS X in the history..... People said OS X Snow Leopard was the best.. Well, I agree, but not now! THIS IS THE BEST! I don't even know why they called it Beta.. It's boring so stable is it! Well, a little bug in finder sidebar.... 1 bug! I don't find any more bugs! Awesome! I running OS X El Cap on my only partition as my main mac! This is great! You gotta upgrade it! :)
One thing... El Cap looks best on Retina and good displays... (Not benq :p)


/ Lowe
 
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dBeats

macrumors 6502a
Jun 21, 2011
637
214
It's the most stable Beta I've used. I have one strange issue where I mirror my display to an Apple TV and the screen on the Apple TV froze, then about 2 minutes later "caught up" with my internal display. It was like watching what I did for two minutes in about 20 seconds in fast forward. That was pretty strange and trippy.

Otherwise it's pretty good. Even Parallels works without complaining, and that's usually my sticking point for moving to the Beta. I did try it on an external SSD first though. Always best to be safe rather than sorry.
 

serrharry

macrumors member
Apr 21, 2015
35
50
El capitan has been very stable and faster in my opinion than Yosemite.. im quite suprised how snappier everything is now on my mbpr 2014
 

freeskier93

macrumors 6502
Jul 13, 2008
321
68
I've only had El Cap for a day but so far compatibility is WAY better than Yosemite beta and no stability issues so far. At the end of the day the public beta is aimed at a brand range of people, and unlike developers very few have multiple devices to test on. Sure, you can dual boot or use it in a VM, but if your not using it all the time everyday you're just not going to be helpful in the beta process.

Make a bootable backup with something like Carbon Copy Cloner before upgrading and you'll be fine.
 

campyguy

macrumors 68040
Mar 21, 2014
3,413
957
IMO, no.

The DP3/PB versions are pretty stable. Apple's completely reworked the USB stack, it's in their documentation, and it's as massive a change as the transition from Leopard to Snow Leopard - many of the peripherals were not working until DP3 came out, and support for USB peripherals is still not complete.

Also, the first beta for Apple's JRE 6 just came out, JIT for DP3/DP1 - if you have any legacy apps that require Apple's JRE6, I'd definitely hold off for critical work.
 
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macgeek88

Suspended
Jan 16, 2013
141
142
Illinois
Depends on how tolerant you are of bugs.

Stability is fine, but bugs like black Finder windows when opening your Application Folder, or having to constantly reenter your iCloud PW, is slightly annoying.

It's more stable than iOS 9 is IMO, but I went back to Yosemite and iOS 8 for the time being.

That said, it's not a knock on Apple, it's an early beta and this is to be expected, I'm just suggesting that I'm not sure if it's quite ready for use on an "important" computer that needs to run flawlessly.

That said, El Cap is beautiful and I can't wait for release day.
 

hovscorpion12

macrumors 68040
Sep 12, 2011
3,044
3,123
USA
El Capitan is great. The only issue I have experienced is the spin wheel of death freezing my system causing for a restart. Other then that, OS X 10.11 is amazing.
 

roland.g

macrumors 604
Apr 11, 2005
7,472
3,257
I echo others' sentiments that it is isn't a good idea on your primary drive/machine. I have an iMac and a MacBook Air, so last night I installed it on my Air. Just to get a taste. I use my iMac 90% of the time so I am looking forward to getting split view on that 27" screen. But if I do install it on there, it will be in September or so when we are close to the final build. Truth is since this is a fairly minor OS X update compares to all the handoff and continuity features last year, the beta should be fairly stable.

I know they've pegged this as more of a performance update, but the lack of new features makes El Cap quite underwhelming, which I think is obvious given how much work and emphasis they are putting on an app like Notes!

I won't be installing iOS 9 on my 6 Plus as I rely on my phone too much to subject myself to the pitfalls of running that beta on my iPhone.
 

S.B.G

Moderator
Staff member
Sep 8, 2010
26,673
10,457
Detroit
I am very excited for El Capitan and having a hard time waiting. Is the public beta good enough to install over my current 10.10 to serve as my main (and only) drive/OS?

Thanks for your opinion!
Just as the others are saying, I also don't think its wise to install a beta over your current, assuming stable, OS.

What I do is install the beta on an external SSD and connect it to my Mac via USB 3. That way if something in the beta gets hosed, I don't lose anything and a simple reboot can bring me back to my Yosemite install where everything is good. Plus I don't lose any time having to do a restore from Time Machine or CCC.

But, if you do decide to overwrite your good installation with a beta, please be sure to have a current and good backup in place.
 

jtg0511

macrumors newbie
Nov 14, 2011
12
0
I installed it over my primary drive. Wasn't a smart idea. Black finder windows, safari took close to 7 seconds to open, multi window support not for all apps.

On the other hand, safari used to be very choppy on some sites in yosemite, but it worked flawlessly on the beta. I didn't see much of a speed increase with PDFs in preview. Also my mac ran a little hotter which wasn't fun.

I had to reinstall yosemite from clean install but it wasn't a hassle since I had nothing on my laptop
 

Fzang

macrumors 65816
Jun 15, 2013
1,315
1,081
Animations are a bit jerky sometimes, but everything else works fine.

Contrary to above poster, I can absolutely feel a difference in reading PDFs. Everything is rendered much faster, and vector heavy PDFs don't lock the entire system. Perhaps it depends on the computer. I have a 2013 rMBP, and rendering a ton of vectors in PDFs used to kill my computer.
 
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RichardC300

macrumors 65816
Sep 27, 2012
1,243
116
Everything is fine for me, and I run it as my primary OS at the moment, but I have very minimal needs: safari, ms office, and a few productivity apps. The only issue in having is with the BetterSnapTool. I have it to maximize if I drag the window to the top, but when I do that for half a second too long, it opens mission control. Pretty annoying, but other than that, it's nice.
 

frankdogg

macrumors 6502
Mar 24, 2011
364
199
253, WA
it's been pretty stable for him. Just some UI glitches here and there. Things I use my mac for are: safari, itunes, mail, ms word, propresenter 5 and League of Legends (hehe). All have worked great minus LOL crashing on me during loading.
 

vega07

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 7, 2006
1,269
18
I've decided to do a fresh install after backing up my files. I realized my needs are pretty minimal, except for some work programs.

I'm a newbie at betas so forgive me...but once the final release comes out, is it a simple matter of installing the final over the beta like an update in the AppStore? Or do betas expire and require a fresh install of the final release?
 

jruschme

macrumors 6502
Dec 20, 2011
265
30
Brick, NJ
I've decided to do a fresh install after backing up my files. I realized my needs are pretty minimal, except for some work programs.

I'm a newbie at betas so forgive me...but once the final release comes out, is it a simple matter of installing the final over the beta like an update in the AppStore? Or do betas expire and require a fresh install of the final release?
I would assume that it's like running the betas of OS updates. Basically, when El Cap is released, you'll get prompted for one final update to 10.11.0.
 
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leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,520
19,670
I have been using the DP as my primary system for weeks. There is plenty of more or less severe bugs (most annoying of them the inability to connect to certain enterprise WiFi networks), but I can live with that. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who expects a very stable system though. Apps crash, and they do it a lot. I don't really care, because the way I work I can't really loose any data anyway.
 
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