Should i update El Capitan to Sierra?

[Benz63amg]

I have a 27 inch iMac Mid 2011 with El Capitan installed, should i update to Sierra? im also scared that something might go wrong during the install, my El capitain is working just fine now so i dont really "need" to update to Sierra but its always good to be on the latest release right?

 

[Partron22]

Make a backup first.
Most people do the update and experience at most minor problems.
10.12.1 came out today.
I've yet to notice any difference between it and 10.12.0

 

[Benz63amg]

Make a backup first.
Most people do the update and experience at most minor problems.
10.12.1 came out today.
I've yet to notice any difference between it and 10.12.0

i got crucial files such as photos etc backed up to an external harddrive but im just scared that something will go wrong and im going to need to take the imac into the apple store on something like that for repair, ive seen a few posts here with people saying the sierra update destroyed either their harddrive or lines appear on the screen after the update and before they updated their computers were just fine and that is why im hesitant and scared to update

 

[Howard2k]

For the vast, vast, vast majority it works fine and there is no need to post.

Having said that, I'm waiting until the end of the week before moving from El Cap to Sierra. Just in case...

 

[Partron22]

Worst that's likely to happen is your printer driver will end up needing an update.
If your Mac is rated for the update, and you don't have any crazy animated desktops or the like installed everything should go fine.
If you have hardware that's already going bad, that might show up during an update, but updates don't generally bust things that are not already broken. You may have to reset your wifi, SMC, or bluetooth, but none of those things are difficult to do.

 

[pentool]

...but its always good to be on the latest release right?

Says who? The "media"? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I'm on Yo Semite on 3 of my machines. Works fine. Just today Apple released security updates for Yo, and the latest release for Safari. So I AM on the latest updates for Yo.

If you are scared to install Sierra, grab an external USB drive (not flash, but plate drive - or SSD if you want) and install Sierra on that drive. Yes, it will be slower but gives you a chance to "experience" and test drive it.

Tips:

- Learn how to do a clean install. It's really NOT difficult at all. (http://osxdaily.com/2016/09/26/clean-install-macos-sierra/). Once you learn how to do it, you will NEVER want to go back to install the new OS on a top of the old one.

- Do manual backups. That is, don't rely on "Crime Machine" and other automatic backup stuff. You don't have control what it backs up. You may have a corrupt preferences file somewhere or an invisible folder with stuff you don't even know about. You back it up, do a clean install, then a restore from Crime Machine. Your corrupted preferences file is restored. Ta-Da! Back to square one. If you have an organized drive, doing manual backups is really not hard. Might take a little longer, but worth it.

- When doing a clean install, you start fresh. You really get a brand new machine with the latest OS on it. There's less chance for conflict or some other issue to happen.

 

[danielvanc]

I have a 27 inch iMac Mid 2011 with El Capitan installed, should i update to Sierra? im also scared that something might go wrong during the install, my El capitain is working just fine now so i dont really "need" to update to Sierra but its always good to be on the latest release right?

Do you have SSD or mechanical drive? I'll be interested to know if you do install it as I'm on the same Mac and OS and wondered what it will run like. Mostly if it will run faster than El Cap does.

 

[Sirious]

Do you have SSD or mechanical drive? I'll be interested to know if you do install it as I'm on the same Mac and OS and wondered what it will run like. Mostly if it will run faster than El Cap does.

I have mid 2011 iMac too and its running flawlessly. Slightly better experience than El Capitan in fact. I was especially pleased with the slightly improved boot time and the new features are also very welcome . YMMV.

 

[danielvanc]

I have mid 2011 iMac too and its running flawlessly. Slightly better experience than El Capitan in fact. I was especially pleased with the slightly improved boot time and the new features are also very welcome . YMMV.

What's the spec of your Mac Sirious? And did you install from clean or overwrite?

 

[Voenix Rising]

If I could easily roll back to El Capitan I would, but Apple makes that all but impossible since you can't overlay a Time Machine data restore done on Sierra onto El Capitan. This is the first OS update I've had problems with and quite frankly, after working with Sierra for a few weeks, there is nothing about this OS that makes it a "must have" update for me.

 

[danielvanc]

If I could easily roll back to El Capitan I would, but Apple makes that all but impossible since you can't overlay a Time Machine data restore done on Sierra onto El Capitan. This is the first OS update I've had problems with and quite frankly, after working with Sierra for a few weeks, there is nothing about this OS that makes it a "must have" update for me.

So why do you prefer El Capitan ? Have to remember El Capitan also had its issues for first month or so...

 

[sniffs]

I updated to 10.12.1:

2013 27" iMac - no issues
2013 13" Macbook air - no issues
2010 11" Macbook Air - no issues
2012 13" Macbook Pro - no issues
2015 15" Macbook Pro Retina - no issues

 

[rmpbklyn]

I have a 27 inch iMac Mid 2011 with El Capitan installed, should i update to Sierra? im also scared that something might go wrong during the install, my El capitain is working just fine now so i dont really "need" to update to Sierra but its always good to be on the latest release right?

I only updated because my finder had broken, it would not start. but if dont update sierra, try updates of elcaptian and most of all virus def. I had lion for a long time only updated to elcapitan so i can have my google calendar synch. most of all backup your files to external hard drive, and no not cloud

 

[Sirious]

What's the spec of your Mac Sirious? And did you install from clean or overwrite?

Mid 2011, 2.5ghz Intel Core i5. 8GB RAM.
I just upgraded, no clean installs.

 

[EwuDahela]

I have a 27 inch iMac Mid 2011 with El Capitan installed, should i update to Sierra? im also scared that something might go wrong during the install, my El capitain is working just fine now so i dont really "need" to update to Sierra but its always good to be on the latest release right?

Personally for me, it was bad idea. After Sierra, I was unable to get connection to my monitor. Tried everything, nothing worked. Had to downgrade to El Capitan back.

 

[Appleuser4life60077]

I have Sierra running on a mid 2009 white MacBook which is unsupported, and it runs absolutely perfect with one issue and it is only an issue if you think it is. the trackpad is seen as a basic mouse so there are no gestures available, which I never used and if I want to copy and paste images to my severe weather Facebook pages, I just use one of my Magic Mouse and have no issues. actually think Sierra made my 2009 white MacBook slightly faster but that may be just because it is a new OS....might all be in my head as far as it being faster.

 

[protoxx]

You could experiment non-destructively.

Do a time machine restore of current boot disk on an external disk. Then you could boot from in and update it. Disconnect TM drive or configure TM on the new instance to use a different disk for safety. Then you can play with it at will. Probably won't be as fast going through usb or thunderbolt as local disk but would work fine to evaluate for incompatibilities.

Work best if the new external drive was a ssd. Just be sure anything you edited or created on the test version you need to keep get copied where you can still get to it later.

 

[rweed]

I have a 27 inch iMac Mid 2011 with El Capitan installed, should i update to Sierra? im also scared that something might go wrong during the install, my El capitain is working just fine now so i dont really "need" to update to Sierra but its always good to be on the latest release right?

No. I regret upgrading my Macs. I can't log in to more than 6 accounts with fast user switching any more. I get a "keychain 'login' not found" error on the 7th login. The keychain is not corrupt, either. There are 'Too many files open' errors in the system log.

If everything is working fine under El Crapitan, then just stick with it. I'm about to dump macOS for Linux. This crap is unacceptable.

 

[dogslobber]

- Learn how to do a clean install. It's really NOT difficult at all. (http://osxdaily.com/2016/09/26/clean-install-macos-sierra/). Once you learn how to do it, you will NEVER want to go back to install the new OS on a top of the old one.

Im not sure of the validity of so called clean installs. Why do you think they're better?
[doublepost=1477750547][/doublepost]

If I could easily roll back to El Capitan I would, but Apple makes that all but impossible since you can't overlay a Time Machine data restore done on Sierra onto El Capitan. This is the first OS update I've had problems with and quite frankly, after working with Sierra for a few weeks, there is nothing about this OS that makes it a "must have" update for me.

I agree that it doesn't have any must haves in Sierra. There's just a bunch of apple device tweaks to give you extra value add and try to entice you to purchase more of their devices. Frankly, nothing could get me to waste money on an iwatch. It's a piece of junk.

Fwiw, el cap is just very stable in latest version so I wouldn't forego that for Sierra poker right now.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"i got crucial files such as photos etc backed up to an external harddrive"

That's NOT ENOUGH.

You want to do a FULLY CLONED BOOTABLE BACKUP to an external drive using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper. Either will do this for free during the trial period.

The idea is that -- if you have problems -- you can "get back to where you once belonged" and be EXACTLY as you were before.

Otherwise, you may upgrade, run into problems, and then ...... be...... stuck.

 

[Nick11Mac]

Ugraded my mid-2010 MBP to Sierra without a problem. This may be the last full upgrade since my MBP is so old now. Still Sierra works just fine on it.

 

[stooovie]

OP: depends on apps you run. For example audio plugins and Adobe apps (mostly After Effects) have all sorts of problems with Sierra as they haven't been updated to support it. I had to restore to ElCap because of that.

 

[zusing]

DON'T DO IT! I totally regret upgrading to Sierra. Adds zip in the way of functionality and sucks the battery life like nothing you've ever seen before.

 

[Benz63amg]

guys my iMac 27 inch with El Capitan has not been going to Sleep lately for some reason, the problem has been happening for 2 weeks now, my iMac is set to go to sleep after 1 hour of inactivity but it does not go to sleep, i tried restarting the computer to maybe clear some Proccess that was running in the background but the problem still persists even after restarting the computer

 

[Gregg2]

Try a different User Account. Make one if you don't have more than one.