Still on Mavericks, Yosemite stable now?

[padapada]

Disclaimer: I have no intention to troll.

I am perfectly happy with Mavericks, but would like to upgrade our main laptop (17" MBP 2010, 8GB RAM, 512 Apple SSD) to Yosemite.
I assume Wifi and Mail are not worse than Mavericks and the initial TimeMachine problems are fixed. Is that right?
Are there any notable problems left in Yosemite?

We are not doing anything special with this machine, just browsing/mail/Office/Aperture/TimeMachine. Will move away from Aperture if necessary.

Of course I'll make a copy with CCC before upgrading.

Patrick

 

[CoastalOR]

IMO no Apple OS is perfect for everybody. There is always someone that has problems.

I personally have had excellent performance with my 4 Macs (see sig) once the OS got to 10.10.3 and beyond. I have transitioned one of my Macs to El Capitan (10.11.2) and have had some USB drive dismount glitches that I never had with Yosemite.

 

[Ebenezum]

I'm curious why you want upgrade if Mavericks is working fine?

 

[padapada]

I'm curious why you want upgrade if Mavericks is working fine?

In general I like to upgrade to a new software version when it is considered stable. Improved security (browser/OSX) alone is a good reason IMHO. Just wondered whether this is a good moment, assuming it will not get much better. If not, I have to wait until El Capitan is stable enough.
The trigger right now is Office 2016 which only supports Yosemite and higher.

 

[The Clark]

Yes Yosemite has been extremely stable for a long time now. Waiting a year for an OS to be stable is completely unnecessary.

 

[Erdbeertorte]

Have you even "bought" Yosemite before El Capitan has been released? If not there will be no way to download and/or install it legally anymore.

 

[padapada]

Yes Yosemite has been extremely stable for a long time now. Waiting a year for an OS to be stable is completely unnecessary.

That's not my experience with OSX. Releasing a non-beta OS with extremely buggy wifi and TimeMachine is IMHO unforgivable. Therefore my stance towards OSX is to upgrade late in the cycle and even skip a version if necessary.

With the current feedback I'll probably give it a shot.

 

[flowrider]

For me it was so Stable that I updated and have been using El Cap for quit some time now. Why drive last years Cadillac when you can drive this years? And for absolutely No Cost or Obligation

Lou

 

[The Clark]

That's not my experience with OSX. Releasing a non-beta OS with extremely buggy wifi and TimeMachine is IMHO unforgivable. Therefore my stance towards OSX is to upgrade late in the cycle and even skip a version if necessary.

With the current feedback I'll probably give it a shot.

Give it a go, it should work perfectly fine for you. I'm running the latest version of El Capitan and I find it to be very stable, but I understand you have some compatibility issues.

 

[fhall1]

I waited until 10.10.4 to upgrade from Mavericks. By then all of my peripherals and third party software had been shaken out and working with Yosemite. I'm not having any issues with Mail or Time Machine. With some of the horror stories I'm reading in the El Capitan forum I'll probably be waiting until 10.11.4 before I update to it...and as you said, will have a good CCC clone just in case I need to revert back.

 

[Riwam]

Disclaimer: I have no intention to troll.

I am perfectly happy with Mavericks, but would like to upgrade our main laptop (17" MBP 2010, 8GB RAM, 512 Apple SSD) to Yosemite.
I assume Wifi and Mail are not worse than Mavericks and the initial TimeMachine problems are fixed. Is that right?
Are there any notable problems left in Yosemite?

We are not doing anything special with this machine, just browsing/mail/Office/Aperture/TimeMachine. Will move away from Aperture if necessary.

Of course I'll make a copy with CCC before upgrading.

Patrick

*****
My mac worked fine first with Mavericks and later with Yosemite.
Then I upgraded to El Capitan and experienced a lot of problems.
For instance:
An upgrade of my system made it impossible to shut normally down, so that I had to do a so called clean install and install again one by one most of the software which is in my opinion a PITA.
I found impossible to install Windows with the new Bootcamp and had to revert temporarily to Yosemite to do so.
Booting problems happen from time to time forcing me to reinstall El Capitan
And so on.

I am not convinced that my upgrade from 10.10 to 10.11 was a smart decision but by now after a month I don't want to reinstall Yosemite and look for ways to re-order mails and files of the whole last month.
Yosemite on the other hand caused me no worries and was perfectly stable during over a year without a single kernel panic or similar serious bug.

However if you go through different posts you will find very, very different opinions.
Some will tell you that a certain OSX was awful and others will find that OS (including the present El Capitan!) working perfectly (for their machine, their peripherals and their applications... well understood )

You will have great difficulty to receive one comprehensive and convincing answer.
My suggestion is to clone your entire system with all your apps to an external drive and upgrade just that clone leaving your system in your mac as it is.
If you find more problems than satisfaction, you will have the best answer, given by yourself!
Ed

 

[Ebenezum]

In general I like to upgrade to a new software version when it is considered stable. Improved security (browser/OSX) alone is a good reason IMHO. Just wondered whether this is a good moment, assuming it will not get much better. If not, I have to wait until El Capitan is stable enough.
The trigger right now is Office 2016 which only supports Yosemite and higher.

It depends on the software you use. If your software uses OpenCL I don't recommend upgrading to Yosemite because it has bugs that didn't exist in Mavericks and which were only fixed in El Capitan... Needless to say I am not impressed with 10.10 and 10.11 isn't much better for my needs.

Personally I prefer stability over new features and I will never upgrade to new OS until 10.x.3. After Yosemite fiasco I'm fairly certain that is too optimistic and currently I have no intention to install El Capitan until 10.11.5 is released, depending if the bugs have been squashed by then. I don't want to sound pessimistic but Apples quality assurance isn't exactly impressive at the moment. Too many bugs to list here, take a look at the 10.11 bugs thread...

I install new OS first into external drive for testing purposes, if everything works right I then install it into internal drive. Needless to say I always make a clone of my internal drive before upgrading just in case.

 

[padapada]

... I don't want to sound pessimistic but Apples quality assurance isn't exactly impressive at the moment. Too many bugs to list here, take a look at the 10.11 bugs thread...

Agreed. Been developing software for 18 years now on Windows and honestly OSX is not all that. Apple hardware is nice, but Windows hardware has been catching up lately. Installing And using Windows 10 on my gaming PC was a nice experience. Also Windows 7 is super stable for me.
OSX looks like a toy in comparison...

Patrick

 

[Riwam]

Agreed. Been developing software for 18 years now on Windows and honestly OSX is not all that. Apple hardware is nice, but Windows hardware has been catching up lately. Installing And using Windows 10 on my gaming PC was a nice experience. Also Windows 7 is super stable for me.
OSX looks like a toy in comparison...

Patrick

***********
With all my respect to your knowledge, I do not believe you have a comprehensive way of seeing OS matters.

Less than a month ago I installed in my Mac through BootCamp first Windows 8.1 and then upgraded it to Windows 10.
I did it just for curiosity since I had never used BootCamp before.
I didn't do much with that Windows in the meantime besides installing Office and some Adobe software.
I just installed the free version of Avira antivirus, not a bad choice according to tests I found but certainly not the very best antivirus in the world.
Since I had no intention to use much Windows I was not motivated to buy a paying antivirus.

Now for pure curiosity I made a full scan of Avira and... it found ten (10) viruses, most of them Trojans!
Then Avira went on scanning the OSX partition and I stopped it after a while since there were no viruses at all over there, including anything which would have been active on the Windows side, which sometimes happens when downloading files in a mac.

In a system I hardly used and in less than a month somehow ten trojans found their way to my Windows 10.
If I had sensitive data or had made payments on the Windows side of my mac I would have run serious risks but I only do that in OSX.

I believe that one must see both sides of the coin before speaking so nicely about Windows and writing that OSX is just "a toy".
Ed

 

[padapada]

Did a clean install and things are looking good. Most importantly (according to my son) agar.io is running much smoother

So far so good

 

[vexorg]

Yes Yosemite has been extremely stable for a long time now. Waiting a year for an OS to be stable is completely unnecessary.

That's funny!, waiting for a stable version is exactly what any sensible person should do. But we are grateful for all the early "beta testers"

 

[vexorg]

***********
With all my respect to your knowledge, I do not believe you have a comprehensive way of seeing OS matters.

...

Now for pure curiosity I made a full scan of Avira and... it found ten (10) viruses, most of them Trojans!
Then Avira went on scanning the OSX partition and I stopped it after a while since there were no viruses at all over there, including anything which would have been active on the Windows side, which sometimes happens when downloading files in a mac.

In a system I hardly used and in less than a month somehow ten trojans found their way to my Windows 10.
If I had sensitive data or had made payments on the Windows side of my mac I would have run serious risks but I only do that in OSX.

...

I believe that one must see both sides of the coin before speaking so nicely about Windows and writing that OSX is just "a toy".

That's why any serious windows user has a proper paid for virus scanner. In saying that, the main reason for using the mac is the lack of viruses when travelling. It did have the edge back in leopard days, now in terms of stability, I have less issues with my windows PC (7 and 10). I find I need to reboot my mac now, never did with previous versions.

OS X has lost some credibility along the way, and I would also agree it's heading towards a toy OS. They should have split all the IOS nonsense away from the OS X and kept it a purely professional OS.

As said before, OS X hides much of the real linux core to the point they are almost separate entities from the outside now.

 

[The Clark]

That's funny!, waiting for a stable version is exactly what any sensible person should do.

Not if you're waiting a whole year.

 

[vexorg]

Not if you're waiting a whole year.

I'd rather have a happy year with less functionality than a year of pain screaming at apple.

 

[padapada]

I'd rather have a happy year with less functionality than a year of pain screaming at apple.

+1

Will probably upgrade to El Capitan in Q1 2017.

 

[CoastalOR]

+1
Will probably upgrade to El Capitan in Q1 2017.

padapada,
If Apple follows the same trend they have the past few years then a new OS will be out the latter part of 2016 and El Capitan will no longer be available at the App Store, unless you had previously downloaded it.

 

[padapada]

padapada,
If Apple follows the same trend they have the past few years then a new OS will be out the latter part of 2016 and El Capitan will no longer be available at the App Store, unless you had previously downloaded it.

Good point. Will definitely download it long before. Thanks!

 

[flowrider]

That's funny!, waiting for a stable version is exactly what any sensible person should do. But we are grateful for all the early "beta testers"

Well, I guess I'm just a Wild & Crazy Guy not a Sensible Person like yourself

And Your Gratitude is accepted

Lou

 

[Erdbeertorte]

Well, I guess I'm just a Wild & Crazy Guy not a Sensible Person like yourself

Seems I am wild and crazy too. El Capitan is running as my main OS since June 8, 2015.

 

[vexorg]

Some of us need dependable as our work life depends on the mac, especially if travelling around. Not got time to mess about with settings and nonsense.

That's the same reason I went for the iPhone: phone, SMS, email and camera, all reliably work when travelling around. Others with android were always tweaking and updating and playing with settings to get it run stably (might be better now, no idea as what I saw was enough to put me off).

So, yeah, if it was just home use then I'd be happy to update and live with it. In a modern world where most of your work (and livelihood) now depends on a mac or PC, then you play it safe.