Should I upgrade to Yosemite?

[swishyfresh]

Hi all,

I'm just canvasing opinions on wether my spec would handle Yosemite nicely when it's released. I'd certainly like it to! but I'm concerned as my wife upgraded her iPhone 4s to iOS8 and it's much more sluggish than iOS7, dispelling my idea that Apple would only release updates for hardware that could handle it without impact on user experience.

I have a mid-2011 Macbook Air, when I bought it was the highest spec possible.

1.8ghz Intel Core i7, 4GB 1333Mhz DDR3, Intel HD Graphics 3000 384mb, 250GB SSD. Running Mavericks perfectly.

Any opinions or thoughts greatly appreciated! Thanks.

Nick

 

[Alimar]

Hi all,

I'm just canvasing opinions on wether my spec would handle Yosemite nicely when it's released. I'd certainly like it to! but I'm concerned as my wife upgraded her iPhone 4s to iOS8 and it's much more sluggish than iOS7, dispelling my idea that Apple would only release updates for hardware that could handle it without impact on user experience.

I have a mid-2011 Macbook Air, when I bought it was the highest spec possible.

1.8ghz Intel Core i7, 4GB 1333Mhz DDR3, Intel HD Graphics 3000 384mb, 250GB SSD. Running Mavericks perfectly.

Any opinions or thoughts greatly appreciated! Thanks.

Nick

I have been using the Yosemite Beta 5 this past week. It is more stable than Mavericks 10.9.5 has ever been. I've tried Mavericks on my 27" i7 since I got it in February. Nothing but problems. It's like the computer was confused all of the time. It wouldn't remember any settings; wouldn't sleep at the designated times; Time Machine worked when it wanted to; and too many other problems too numerous to mention.

So I made a new partition and installed 10.10. So far it has worked wonderfully for me. Restarting back-and-forth between OS's works without a hitch. Yosemite is much faster, and simoly works with every app I've added so far. Time will tell.

Whether your computer will run Yosemite properly... you'll have to decide to take the plunge... or not.

 

[awair]

First off, I'm really glad we haven't seen the "it's not even released yet" comment. Good question, which could help many if discussed openly.

Feel free to try: with OS X you can upgrade/downgrade* freely - no restrictions, like blocking downgrades on iOS.

If you do trial it first:
Consider CCC to clone your drive, (for ease of reverting to 10.9).
Consider not using certain apps, to avoid problems downgrading (hazy memory; believe the Mail folder structure changed from 10.8 > 10.9?).
If you are dual booting, consider turning off sync services on one system (e.g. DropBox).
Anyone - please add to this list of precautions...

I'm still running 10.8 on one machine and 10.9 on the rest of the family. My rationale:
If you have to have one of the new features (Mac App Store, iCloud, iBooks, Maps; are all features that previously prompted an OS X upgrade for me), then consider upgrading.
If you have keep a previous feature (Rosetta, VPN Server, iTunes 'Account' sync; are features that delayed or prevented upgrades), then wait.

In the end, you will almost certainly be giving up one feature/function that you like, in order to add something new that you think you want: only you can answer whether it is worth the trade.

In my case, I've not yet tried the Beta, but I'm not looking forward to the 'Flatter' interface: I've held off on iOS 7/8 because of this.

As for your spec: not an expert, but I'm inclined to trust that performance will not be an issue, or even noticeable.

The only OS X upgrade I've regretted was 10.7 (Server) on an (old) Mac Mini - either 10.6 or 10.8 would be preferable. [That story went: $$$ for Snow Leopard Server, $ for Lion; 10.7 seems Ok, let's give it a try; whoops!; Now SLS is still available, I'm testing reversion to 10.6.]

Good luck!

 

[motrek]

Hi all,

I'm just canvasing opinions on wether my spec would handle Yosemite nicely when it's released. I'd certainly like it to! but I'm concerned as my wife upgraded her iPhone 4s to iOS8 and it's much more sluggish than iOS7, dispelling my idea that Apple would only release updates for hardware that could handle it without impact on user experience.
...

I didn't think iOS 8 was much slower than 7 (if at all). Your wife's phone might have gotten itself into a bad state. This may be fixable. Have you googled the problem?

 

[The Man]

I'm running Yosemite public beta on MacBook air 11" 2012 1.3 GHz 8GB RAM Intel HD Graphics 5000 1536 MB. It runs very good. There are still a few glitches here and there -- like dialog boxes that can't be resized smaller and run under my Dock, so that the Save As... and Cancel buttons are obscured -- but at least I'm seeing no more WiFi issues. I like the new system. Note that in Yosemite, you have to use iCloud Documents for syncing with iOS, which is only available on iOS8 devices.

Also on iPad mini (same A5 chip as iPhone 4S) iOS 8 is a little bit more sluggish. I like the added functionality, but it's getting harder to use because apps can't be held in memory and load times are slow. I need to upgrade to the new iPad with 2GB RAM, if they arrive.

Because the MacBook has a very fast processor and ample of RAM (if you choose 8GB) the MacBook will survive upgrades much better than iPads and iPhones. My brother has have a 2010 MacBook Pro and it runs Mavericks extremely well. That's almost 5 years old. My iPad mini with A5 isn't that old, but it simply doesn't have enough specs to run new systems adequately. But I'm sure the A8 with 2GB will run for a very long time; at least 3-4 years.

 

[grahamperrin]

No downgrade from OS X 10.10 Yosemite to OS X 10.9.x Mavericks

… with OS X you can … downgrade …

Often discussed, often misunderstood. Care with wording …

You can perform a clean installation of Mavericks, or restore from a Time Machine backup of Mavericks, and so on, but no downgrade; Apple does not provide an option to downgrade from Yosemite to Mavericks.

A caution … and an answer in Stack Exchange (emphasis) draws attention to advice from Apple.