Yosemite is an upgrade to the Mavericks?

[tomcorbett28]

Am trying to find out if Yosemite is upgrade to the Mavericks or other operations system. I'm still new to the Mac and I don't understands the different names. My brother-in-law has the Lion on is MacBook Pro and he got it back in 2012. So I don't understand how it works with the Apple computers.
Hope someone can explain this to me.
Thanks,
Tom

 

[Apple_Robert]

Yosemite is a separate OS from Mavericks, which was the current OS before Yosemite was released.

You can download Yosemite from the Mac App Store for free. It will put the downloaded file in your Applications folder. Once it gets done downloading, you double click the file and it will start the install process. It will install Yosemite over Mavericks.

Before installing any new OS or updates, it is always advisable to backup your Mac using Time Machine, Clear Copy Cloner, or some other backup program. That way, if you run into a problem, you can revert back to a time before you installed Yosemite and be up and running very quickly.

 

[LivEEviL80]

Yosemite is the newest Mac operating system, just released a few days ago. Before Yosemite's release, Mavericks was the most recent OS. Lion is several generations old, which is why your brother-in-law has had it since 2012. You can upgrade to Yosemite for free from Lion, just make sure you have the required hardware. https://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/

 

[tomcorbett28]

Thank you very much

Thank you all for helping me.
IS there much difference and also should I wait a while?
Tanks,
Tom

 

[cynics]

So the order is Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks, Yosemite. Each one offers new and different features giving incentive to upgrade. As far as which is better that is subjective, just like with Windows just because 8 is newer doesn't mean everyone likes it more then 7.

Personally I like to run the latest version of OS X. I prefer Yosemite to Mavericks for 2 reasons, Safaris HTML5 support is a bit better and the message app works much better especially if you have an iOS device on iOS 8.