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Should I upgrade to El Capitan?

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popsmisdeal

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 20, 2015
3
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I don't know whether I should upgrade my iMac to El Capitan or not. I'm planning to use it daily as my primary computer for the next 5 to 7 years (yes, seriously) and too afraid to update to the next OS because I think it will not be as fast as it is now. I value speed and efficiency much more than the cool new features. My question is: will updating my iMac to the new OS every year decrease its performance over time or not?

iMac is used mostly for web browsing and Adobe apps (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Lightroom; in that order). I have very few files on my iMac because I keep everything in the cloud (~150 GB/1 TB) and there are ~25 programs installed.

  • iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014)
  • OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 (latest)
  • 4 GHz Intel Core i7
  • 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 (will upgrade to 32 GB in the near future)
  • AMD Radeon R9 M290X 2048 MB
  • 1.12 TB Fusion Drive
Thanks.
 
Last edited:
Yes. El Capitan is mostly optimisations, less so new features.

I always upgrade anyway as I find the subsequent incompatibilities too annoying. [Just wait until the .1 release last least]
 
I have more of a concern with my 2012 mac mini. I upgraded it from Mavericks to Yosemite and it was utterly unusable. Now, I might give El Cap a try on the mini when the .0.1 comes out.
 
roadkill401 said:
I have more of a concern with my 2012 mac mini. I upgraded it from Mavericks to Yosemite and it was utterly unusable. Now, I might give El Cap a try on the mini when the .0.1 comes out.
Click to expand...

What spec is your 2012 as I find my 2009 mini fine with Yosemite, however is 8Gb and SSD upgraded.
 
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The golden master (of El Capitan) that I'm experimenting with seems stable, but you might "hold off" until the first "release version" before installing it onto a computer that is your "primary work computer".

Important suggestion:
For ANY new release or "moveup" from an older version of the OS, the best course of action is to use a drive cloning app such as CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to create a fully-bootable cloned backup of your existing OS -before- installing the new one.

This makes is trivially easy to "get back to where you once belonged" if you're not satisfied with the upgrade...
 
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popsmisdeal said:
I don't know whether I should update my iMac to El Capitan or not.
Click to expand...

Its not out yet and there's no need to update on day one! Give it a few months, let other people find the bugs (there's always a few that make it through beta testing), check that all the software you use gets updated if necessary.

Waiting for the first update to be released is always a good strategy for the conservative (the old saying "never buy version 1.0 of anything" needs updating to "never download version 10.x.0 of anything").

That said, El Cap sounds like it actually solves some of the performance issues of Yosemite.

Personally, I'm still on Mavericks and am planning to skip straight to El Cap once the dust has settled...
 
roadkill401 said:
I have more of a concern with my 2012 mac mini. I upgraded it from Mavericks to Yosemite and it was utterly unusable. Now, I might give El Cap a try on the mini when the .0.1 comes out.
Click to expand...

Yup that's me with my 2010 low end stock model 21.5" iMac. Mavericks and Yosemite nearly bricked this several times. I am hoping El Capitan might perk it up a bit and get it back to Mountain Lion's smooth sailing. If that happens, I'll hold off on replacing my desktop until next year when there will be more new Macs available (if the Intel chip release schedule = new Macs.)

But right now, Yosemite is basically making this machine a chore to use (painful to type.)

For the OP, I would say, yes upgrade to El Capitan. It sounds like it will a lot like Snow Leopard which was a joy to use.
 
Yes, do it. El Capitan will be faster too. You have a great iMac... don't worry about speed.
 
If you want to use your machine for several years, yes definitely upgrade if it's still possible. I always upgrade day one but if you're paranoid feel free to upgrade a month or so down the line.

El Cap is mostly about performance enhancements, as has been stated above. It should be a particularly handy upgrade.
 
My 2011 iMac is flying with Yosemite, so I also expect that to happen with El Capitan. So... I wouldn't really be scared about a 2014 machine now that it has a Fusion drive.
 
El capitan is all about improving performance and not new features so the answer is yes it'll be good for everyone.
 
popsmisdeal said:
I don't know whether I should update my iMac to El Capitan or not. I'm planning to use it daily as my primary computer for the next 5 to 7 years (yes, seriously) and too afraid to update to the next OS because I think it will not be as fast as it is now. I value speed and efficiency much more than the cool new features. My question is: will updating my iMac to the new OS every year decrease its performance over time or not?

iMac is used mostly for web browsing and Adobe apps (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Lightroom; in that order). I have very few files on my iMac because I keep everything in the cloud (~150 GB/1 TB) and there are ~25 programs installed.

  • iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014)
  • OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 (latest)
  • 4 GHz Intel Core i7
  • 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 (will upgrade to 32 GB in the near future)
  • AMD Radeon R9 M290X 2048 MB
  • 1.12 TB Fusion Drive
Thanks.
Click to expand...
I have the same iMac but with 32gb ram and the 4 gb graphics and El Capitan flies on it. I upgraded to the GM and have had no issues at all.

Although, disk utility is a bit weird now (functionality wise).
 
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