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Any Caveats Before Upgrading?

K

krawfo

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 4, 2011
193
11
I'm a relatively new Mac convert and am ready to do my first OS upgrade from Snow Leopard to Mavericks. I'm a little nervous and hesitant since everything has been working so well for the past 2 1/2 yrs (are you listening Microsoft?).
I've been using Time Machine religously and just made a drive image copy as well.
Are there any other words of wisdom or potential pitfalls I need to be aware of before proceeding?
Thanks for your help.
 
Any Caveats Before Upgrading?

Make sure Snow Leopard is up to date with latest available updates, same goes for your installed applications.

When all is up to date, make a new time machine backup, that way if you run to any issues with Mavericks (installation) you can reboot into recovery and restore everything back to Snow Leopard.

And same backup can be used to migrate everything (settings/documents etc) into Mavericks during initial boot/login... Although when i uppgraded from ML to Mavericks migration was not needed. Not sure if the same goes for SL. (Surely someone more wise will confirm this) ;)

When upgrade is complete, make sure you update all installed apps to latest versions and download all updates (if any) to Mavericks.

Note: I always copy my photos/documents to a separate drive (usb or ext. Hdd) before any uppgrades.. Don't want to rely solely on 1 backup (time machine) for the most important stuff.. But thats just me :D


krawfo said:
I'm a little nervous and hesitant since everything has been working so well for the past 2 1/2 yrs (are you listening Microsoft?).
Click to expand...

With that in mind, i do suggest maybe doing a forum/google search and see if others have done the update from SL with the same hardware as you and see if they have run into any issues with performance etc on Mavericks. Or you just give it a whirl and if Mavericks is not to your liking at this time just Restore back to SL and wait for it to "mature" a bit more. Thats what i did, so running ML again and waiting for Mavericks to get some more updates. But that is pure personal preference, most people don't have any issues.
And these are just my humble opinions. :)


Best of luck!
 
Last edited:
Iterva, many thanks for the advice. FWIW I'm running an iMac purchased ~ May 2011. That's reassuring to know that there is a "way back" in case I run into problems.
Cheers.
 
I would add that before you upgrade would be a good time for some spring cleaning. Get rid of any apps or files that you don't need. No sense in transferring them over.
 
Also take a careful look at the apps that you currently use. Some are no longer available/supported in versions of OSX past Snow Leopard.

Here's a link to an Apple Insider article.

Snow Leopard was the first version of OSX that I started to use. In hindsight, it is the best IMO. subsequent versions of OSX: Lion, ML, and Mavericks seemed to have progressively worsened in terms of quality. I'm seriously considering going back to ML after Mavericks made my MBP significantly less responsive than it was under ML.

If Snow Leopard is analogous to Windows XP, then Mavericks is Vista.
 
I was on Leopard on my 2008 iMac--only 2GB of RAM. I decided to take the plunge to Mavericks--bought Snow Leopard. Updated with no issues. Then took the next step to Mavericks--again no issues. Runs a bit slow since it is somewhat memory starved but the iMac is not my primary computer--use it mostly for iTunes streaming. But all works fine--no issues--not a clean install--recommend trying updating first and only clean install if you have issues.
 
Thanks all for your feedback and good advice. Why do I keep hearing this voice saying "If it ain't broke, don't try and fix it".
I just bought Lightroom 5 and it requires Mavericks or I probably wouldn't even consider "upgrading".
 
krawfo said:
I'm a relatively new Mac convert and am ready to do my first OS upgrade from Snow Leopard to Mavericks. I'm a little nervous and hesitant since everything has been working so well for the past 2 1/2 yrs (are you listening Microsoft?).
I've been using Time Machine religously and just made a drive image copy as well.
Are there any other words of wisdom or potential pitfalls I need to be aware of before proceeding?
Thanks for your help.
Click to expand...

Gosh, that is such a loaded question...and perhaps not one some single person could answer here... There are a lot of MS trolls here designed to make us all think Mac updates are crap and we should all revert to MS! But that's ******** and everyone knows it. If all your apps are running fine on SL and battery usage is not an issue, then I suggest you stay on SL. However that's just my humble opinion and no other. If for some reason you did not even upgrade to ML (cost?), then I see no other advantage to upgrade. But, that is just my lowly opinion (after one year of using Mac) and I only know ML and have no experience with SL. But, from what I've read SL appears to support more customization with less 3rd party apps. I for one would be satisfied with that, and if someone could link a download to SL I would gladly try it out and revert to SL. ;)
 
Actually the main reason I'm about to upgrade is that I just purchased Lightroom 5 and it requires 10.7 or better. Battery usage is not an issue on my iMac:). After paying $$$ to MS for so many years, the tiny cost of an OSX upgrade never entered into the picture.
 
Personally, if I were you I would wait for the Mavericks update, back up the computer's data, and then do a clean install.

I tried Mavericks, but had too many problems, and reverted back to Snow Leopard.

Optionally, you could partition your harddrive to test Mavericks (clean install) and then add Lightroom here too.
 
krawfo said:
Thanks all for your feedback and good advice. Why do I keep hearing this voice saying "If it ain't broke, don't try and fix it".
I just bought Lightroom 5 and it requires Mavericks or I probably wouldn't even consider "upgrading".
Click to expand...

You actually said the exact reason why you should upgrade, because you won't be able to take use of the latest applications if you decide to stay in the dark hole and never come out. And just believe this, Lightroom won't be the only applications that you will miss staying on SL. I would understand your feelings if SL was last year's OS, but come on, it's 3 OS's old. ;)
 
82asmdf203 said:
Gosh, that is such a loaded question...and perhaps not one some single person could answer here... There are a lot of MS trolls here designed to make us all think Mac updates are crap and we should all revert to MS! But that's ******** and everyone knows it. If all your apps are running fine on SL and battery usage is not an issue, then I suggest you stay on SL. However that's just my humble opinion and no other. If for some reason you did not even upgrade to ML (cost?), then I see no other advantage to upgrade. But, that is just my lowly opinion (after one year of using Mac) and I only know ML and have no experience with SL. But, from what I've read SL appears to support more customization with less 3rd party apps. I for one would be satisfied with that, and if someone could link a download to SL I would gladly try it out and revert to SL. ;)
Click to expand...
If all you know is ML, then your opinion is not based on any first hand experience on the topic of this thread. So why you posted in this thread, other than make an accusation regarding MS trolls, is a mystery to me.
 
Before upgrading, make sure there are no WD drivers or apps in your system. WD has an uninstaller app you can run if you don't want to dig through your library folders. WD has been linked to all sorts of horrid external drive problems. Make sure all your externals are formatted with the Apple Disk Utility.
 
krawfo said:
Actually the main reason I'm about to upgrade is that I just purchased Lightroom 5 and it requires 10.7 or better. Battery usage is not an issue on my iMac:). After paying $$$ to MS for so many years, the tiny cost of an OSX upgrade never entered into the picture.
Click to expand...

Let us know how it goes! It's good to be concerned -- I was in the same boat with a 2010 MBP that I use for work. It ran Snow Leopard since I bought it and it ran just fine.

I was very nervous about upgrading - why I didn't go to Lion or Mtn. Lion, but hey Mavericks is free so I gave it a try.

<knock on wood> it works great. Although my laptop isn't stock, I upgraded last year to 8gb ram/500gb ssd from 4gb ram/250gb hd.
 
Just wanted to update this thread. I just finished my Mavericks upgrade and everything went very well. I also installed Lightroom 5.3 and Parallels 8. LR 5.3 seems much faster than LR4. I only run Quicken in Windows but it booted and ran fine. I was using Magic Prefs to customize my mouse and it didn't work. Instead I installed Better Touch Tool and it works fine.
Thanks again for your help and feedback.
 
sracer said:
If Snow Leopard is analogous to Windows XP, then Mavericks is Vista.
Click to expand...

Not to hijack the thread, but no way is Mavericks analogous to Vista. Lion is Apple's Vista. Lion was the single worst version of Mac OS X I have ever used. And I've been using it since the OS X Public Beta in '99.

OP, sounds like you've done all the legwork. You're probably good to go. I've done the upgrade on a handful of Macs so far, no major issues. Oldest I've installed it on is a couple 2009 iMacs, which are handling it beautifully.
 
DJLC said:
Not to hijack the thread, but no way is Mavericks analogous to Vista. Lion is Apple's Vista. Lion was the single worst version of Mac OS X I have ever used. And I've been using it since the OS X Public Beta in '99.

OP, sounds like you've done all the legwork. You're probably good to go. I've done the upgrade on a handful of Macs so far, no major issues. Oldest I've installed it on is a couple 2009 iMacs, which are handling it beautifully.
Click to expand...
You are of course entitled to your opinion. (besides, no where did I claim that Lion was anything to boast about... :) ) Mavericks is absolutely horrendous on my MBP. :( I wish it weren't so.
 
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