For me it seems that way. I am curious if anyone else has problems on 2012 and older macs. I have a iMac '07 with 4 gigs of ram, and a Mac Mini from '11 that has 2 gigs of ram. Think they could run Yosemite okay or should I stick with OS X 10.9?
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OS X 10.9 the last "fast" version of OS X on old macs?
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I installed both Yosemite and El Cap on my MBP (see my sig). Yosemite was just awful and although El Cap was an improvement over that, it still could not compare to the snappy response that I get from my Mavericks installation.
I am now firmly and happily back with Mavericks and do not see myself moving from this anytime soon.
I think you should stick with Mavericks.
Hope it helps.
I am now firmly and happily back with Mavericks and do not see myself moving from this anytime soon.
I think you should stick with Mavericks.
Hope it helps.
I have similar iMac and I don't recommend updating if speed is your priority. Yosemite was much slower and while El Capitan was slightly faster Mavericks is faster than both of them.
I suspect the reason is more background processes and more demanding graphics.
I suspect the reason is more background processes and more demanding graphics.
El Capitan is actually a better experience on my low end late 2008 MacBook Air with 2 GB RAM. When I had 10.9.5 installed the RAM was already filled up on a clean login, RAM usage was worse than later versions of Yosemite in fact. 10.8.5 or even 10.6.8 are probably most ideal for that Mac, but both are really showing their age. However, lately I've been pushing that hardware to run the latest MacOS (Sierra) which is not even supported by Apple and its been running ok with a few issues.
My MacBook Air does however have an SSD, this is important to note. Best upgrade you can do to improve performance on any OS version after Snow Leopard.
My MacBook Air does however have an SSD, this is important to note. Best upgrade you can do to improve performance on any OS version after Snow Leopard.
OP what CPU is in your machine? I took a shot in the dark and followed the MacOS Sierra guide on my older machine. It was running Mavericks but using the net it was getting a bit slow. Even in Firefox.
I have a 2009 Macbook Pro 13". Has a Core 2 Duo P7550 2.26Ghz, 4Gb DDR3 RAM, and a 500GB Seagate 7200RPM Hard drive. (It did have a SSD from Kingston but i used it on a different machine)
Anyways, this machine has been running Sierra fully supported and its Very snappy and MUCH faster then el cap ever was on it. Very impressed. Although Mavericks on it was much faster then el cap, and Yosemite Sierra tops them, and my main machine is a 15" Macbook Pro i7 2012 with 16Gb ram and a 1tb SSD.
I have a 2009 Macbook Pro 13". Has a Core 2 Duo P7550 2.26Ghz, 4Gb DDR3 RAM, and a 500GB Seagate 7200RPM Hard drive. (It did have a SSD from Kingston but i used it on a different machine)
Anyways, this machine has been running Sierra fully supported and its Very snappy and MUCH faster then el cap ever was on it. Very impressed. Although Mavericks on it was much faster then el cap, and Yosemite Sierra tops them, and my main machine is a 15" Macbook Pro i7 2012 with 16Gb ram and a 1tb SSD.
Funny I always thought of Mavericks as the first slow version (for Intel Macs that is). Anyways while El Capitan is very slow. I was surprised to find that a 2009 iMac felt pretty fast on Sierra. They must have improved HD performance. As OS X was getting horrible on hard drives.
In fact the 2009 iMac with 4GB RAM and a hard drive felt faster on a clean install of Sierra than a new iMac Core 21.5" i5 with a hard drive felt on El Capitan I setup a while ago.
In fact the 2009 iMac with 4GB RAM and a hard drive felt faster on a clean install of Sierra than a new iMac Core 21.5" i5 with a hard drive felt on El Capitan I setup a while ago.
My wife has a 2011 17" Macbook Pro running Mavericks. I'm debating on upgrading her to El Capitan for the security support from Apple till 2018. She only has 4gb of memory so I'd likely upgrade that to 8GB. She has an SSD so that's good. Just wondering if its safe to keep her on Mavericks for another two years.
She doesn't want to get a new machine mainly for the fact Apple doesn't sell the 17" screen size anymore and her machine works fine.
Maverick performs quite well on my iMac 2009.
El Capitan does as well, at areas even better! But there are things like lets quickly check this in ChrooooooOoooOoo [makes coffee] annnd we're there, and finally it is all fast again.
Some actions just seem to slug along, while the normal operation is snappy fast. Maverick was either all sorta sluggish, or all snappy enough.
El Capitan does as well, at areas even better! But there are things like lets quickly check this in ChrooooooOoooOoo [makes coffee] annnd we're there, and finally it is all fast again.
Some actions just seem to slug along, while the normal operation is snappy fast. Maverick was either all sorta sluggish, or all snappy enough.
I've been wondering if Mavericks would run better than El Cap on my 2010 17" MacBook Pro i5/8GB with SSD.
El Cap is bearable for most of what I do with it. But the animations/scrolling are really chunky and 1080p YouTube playback in Safari gets really gummed up easily, even when it's the only thing running.
I know it's the OS because I can boot into Win 7/10 and play two 1080p videos simultaneously from YT in 2 tabs, and scrub back and forth through the videos no problem.
Would I notice an improvement in Mavericks? I can still download it in the App Store as I downloaded it in the past for the s/o's '13 MBA (on which she still runs Mavericks).
El Cap is bearable for most of what I do with it. But the animations/scrolling are really chunky and 1080p YouTube playback in Safari gets really gummed up easily, even when it's the only thing running.
I know it's the OS because I can boot into Win 7/10 and play two 1080p videos simultaneously from YT in 2 tabs, and scrub back and forth through the videos no problem.
Would I notice an improvement in Mavericks? I can still download it in the App Store as I downloaded it in the past for the s/o's '13 MBA (on which she still runs Mavericks).
Didn't know 2010 MBPs can run Windows 10... I seriously wanna try Windows 10 to live a secret double life...
It runs it like a champ. Beautiful performance.
However, having said that, the auto updates are brutal. I've found it downloading large updates while I'm tethered to my phone. It can eat up data, battery life, and CPU.
If you disable it (which can be tricky) along with the telemetry junk, then it does run really well.
It's nice to know that the machine can keep going until the end of Windows 7 at least, probably the end of Windows 8/10.
The 17" 1200p is glorious. I wish I had the '11 i7 quad with 16GB, but the logic board plague makes it too risky a buy.
I might have to try Mavericks to see if performance is better without losing too much app compatibility.