New (late 2015) iMac owners -- Did you update to 10.11.1? Any problems?

[sakumar]

I got my 27" maxed-out iMac yesterday and after 9 hours of transferring data from my old iMac, the first thing I did is to update to 10.11.1. That's when many weird things started to happen:

• The startup progress bar started several times. Eventually it got stuck at 2/3 of the way and the screen went blank.
• I called AppleCare and they suggested I reinstall El Capitan. I installed 10.11 and that seemed to go well, but when I updated to 10.11.1 things went to bizzarroland once again. After several progress bar attempts it actually booted up and gave me a login screen. But I noticed that the Application directory was empty. All it had was a Utilities folder and that too was empty.
• While on the 3rd call to AppleCare suddenly files began to appear in the Application folder. But when I clicked on Google Chrome it beach-balled for some time and then said there was something wrong with the executable.
• They said try booting in Safe Mode. It came up, but again the Applications folder was empty.

I was able bring up System Preferences (by clicking on the network icon on the title bar). But couldn't set anything:

They connected me to the next level support specialist and she said I could swap out the hardware or get a refund since the Mac is less than a day old.

But it doesn't look like a hardware issue. Perhaps some problem with the Fusion drive configuration?

Anyway, have you updated to 10.11.1 on your new iMac and is everything OK?

 

[MandiMac]

My iCloud account just gave up. Resetting as new, deleting the iCloud setting and login again - didn't help. Damn.

 

[sakumar]

My iCloud account just gave up. Resetting as new, deleting the iCloud setting and login again - didn't help. Damn.

OK -- but it doesn't sound as bad the problems I'm having. Looks like it's just me and I have a Genius Bar appointment this evening. So let's see.

 

[MandiMac]

OK -- but it doesn't sound as bad the problems I'm having. Looks like it's just me and I have a Genius Bar appointment this evening. So let's see.

Yeah, you're right - still I didn't expect putting 8+ hours in my machine before even using it. Hope I'm good in 40 minutes...all the best to you!

 

[Sirmausalot]

The upgrade solved some of the Premiere Pro CC issues I was having.

 

[Lankyman]

Any reason why you didn't simply use your TM backup from your old Mac to install on your new iMac instead of spending 13 hours transferring data?

 

[MandiMac]

Any reason why you didn't simply use your TM backup from your old Mac to install on your new iMac instead of spending 13 hours transferring data?

Because both Setup Assistant and Migration Assistant decided to freeze before the finish (around 3h when it said 2 minutes to go).
Right now I'm doing exactly that: Reinstalling El Cap (I didn't have a Recovery partition out of the box), and then using Time Machine from that...4 hours to go.

Edit: And the backup can't be the culprit, because it installed just fine on the old iMac. I had the time

 

[sakumar]

Any reason why you didn't simply use your TM backup from your old Mac to install on your new iMac instead of spending 13 hours transferring data?

My TM backup is on a NAS box (Synology) -- it is even slower than from a iMac with a wired connection.

 

[sakumar]

Well, I ended up returning the iMac for a full refund. AppleCare told me to take it to the store ("they'll take you as a walk-in, don't worry, I've talked to the manager" said the AppleCare rep). The "genius" guy looked at me pityingly and told me to come back when I had an appointment. I got 6:00PM appointment but a text at 2:40PM saying, "we'll see you now" and then, "sorry you missed your appointment". What?! When I went back to the store (lugging the iMac in for the second time) they said someone could see me next week. I just got the refund.

Story time: About 10 years ago Dell was flying high with the much vaunted inventory management system (yellow line and what not). I found out they were selling Canon 70-200 F2.8 Image Stabilization lenses for the price of non-IS. This went on for quite a while and a lot of people took advantage of it. I remember thinking, "Dell isn't what it is cracked up to be" and sure enough, events bore that out. Sadly, I felt the same way about Apple today.

 

[3587]

I'm sure the new 5K's are coming with 10.11... I'd like to completely erase the HD and install a fresh 10.11.1 (Not 10.11 then upgrade to 10.11.1, but directly to 10.11.1)... What would be the best way to do that?

 

[3587]

Well, I ended up returning the iMac for a full refund. AppleCare told me to take it to the store ("they'll take you as a walk-in, don't worry, I've talked to the manager" said the AppleCare rep). The "genius" guy looked at me pityingly and told me to come back when I had an appointment. I got 6:00PM appointment but a text at 2:40PM saying, "we'll see you now" and then, "sorry you missed your appointment". What?! When I went back to the store (lugging the iMac in for the second time) they said someone could see me next week. I just got the refund.

Story time: About 10 years ago Dell was flying high with the much vaunted inventory management system (yellow line and what not). I found out they were selling Canon 70-200 F2.8 Image Stabilization lenses for the price of non-IS. This went on for quite a while and a lot of people took advantage of it. I remember thinking, "Dell isn't what it is cracked up to be" and sure enough, events bore that out. Sadly, I felt the same way about Apple today.

Yup, those stores are goofy with appointments... I hate having to do that. Why can't you just walk in a get sh*t done!

 

[sakumar]

I'm sure the new 5K's are coming with 10.11... I'd like to completely erase the HD and install a fresh 10.11.1 (Not 10.11 then upgrade to 10.11.1, but directly to 10.11.1)... What would be the best way to do that?

Yes, the one that was shipped on 10/22 had 10.11 on it.

I'm not sure if you can do a clean 10.11.1 install. It would depend on whether the El Capitan installer App on the App store was upgraded to 10.11.1.

 

[bankshot]

I'm not sure if you can do a clean 10.11.1 install. It would depend on whether the El Capitan installer App on the App store was upgraded to 10.11.1.

It was. I used it to do a clean install of 10.11.1 on my Mac mini.

In order to do this on a new iMac, you'd need to download the latest installer from the App Store and then create a bootable install disk. I'm not sure if the installer can be downloaded to a machine already running El Capitan; if not, you'll need another machine running Yosemite or below. Apple has instructions for creating a bootable installer: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

 

[Gogol]

I'm sure the new 5K's are coming with 10.11... I'd like to completely erase the HD and install a fresh 10.11.1 (Not 10.11 then upgrade to 10.11.1, but directly to 10.11.1)... What would be the best way to do that?

I suppose that the rebooting with cmd-R (recovery console) will install the latest El Capitan.

 

[3587]

I suppose that the rebooting with cmd-R (recovery console) will install the latest El Capitan.

Yeah, it probably will... I created a bootable USB with 10.11.1 on it... I'll just go that route.

 

[Lankyman]

My TM backup is on a NAS box (Synology) -- it is even slower than from a iMac with a wired connection.

So is mine - well one is and one is on a TC. I tried doing a full restore from the Synology a couple of months back as if you don't try out your back up strategy from time to time how will you know if it works.

I found the Synology worked very well indeed and only took a couple of hours for something like 350 gig.

 

[sakumar]

So is mine - well one is and one is on a TC. I tried doing a full restore from the Synology a couple of months back as if you don't try out your back up strategy from time to time how will you know if it works.

I found the Synology worked very well indeed and only took a couple of hours for something like 350 gig.

My Synology NAS is a 2011 box and it works fine for Time Machine. I have used it several times to restore a Mac -- most recently after a hard drive replacement of my 2012 iMac.

But this time I tried to upgrade directly from my older Mac because I was trying to see if back-to-back Thunderbolt would work. It didn't, so I ended up using wired Ethernet.