Should I wait for Yosemite/new iMac?

[timetourist]

Sorry if this is a new iteration on a tired old thread but..

I have a 5.5yr old MacBookPro 19inch. Bought the max of the max at the time to future proof it.. and that served me very very well right up until the free launch of Mavericks. I'd never upgraded my OS once but since Mavericks was free I thought, why not? BAD MOVE. It KILLED my machine.

Since then it has been operating like a windows machine - unable to perform super basic tasks without freezing, takes literally 3-5 minutes to open applications - sometimes longer, cannot run more than 2 apps at once without freezing, everything is dead basically.

So I was desperate for the new iMac but thought maybe I should wait till it ships with Yosemite pre-installed? I can handle not having the latest 4k display and Broadwell chips (if they are indeed coming soon) but I don't want a repeat of the Mavericks fiasco where my perfectly OK machine suddenly dies with a new OS.

I guess the obvious answer is buy a new Mac and don't upgrade the OS when Yosemite comes out - but there are some functions in it that will be very important to how I work, not least being able to make phone calls from the computer. I'm also at the end of my contract cycle with the iPhone so likely to be getting the iP6.

Just wondered if anyone had thoughts. Was I just unlucky with Mavericks? Can one normally upgrade the OS and NOT affect the machine overly?

 

[vectordream]

I have a 24" 2008 iMac that was pretty much maxed out when I bought it brand new way back then. I bought it after my windows labtop kicked the bucket. I made sure I got the best video card at the time and then later added as much ram as it would take.

I have upgraded to different OS X versions in its lifetime like Snow Leopard, Lion, and now Mavericks. When Lion was released I did a clean install and I also just did one recently for when I put Mavericks on. I never had the issues with upgrades that you are describing with this machine but I am getting some decent slowdown when I want to run multiple current 2014 Adobe programs. More than 2 especially if one is Illustrator or Indesign. I need to run the lastest Adobe so I can work on files from other designers. My machine is showing its age now with some of the new software which I expected to happen eventually.

To answer your question there is always a risk when updating to the newest software but I have never had much of a problem so far with my Mac in doing so probably because I tend to do clean installs instead of just installing over whats already there. If I bought a current Mac now I would not be afraid to put Yosemite on it after it gets officially released.

I will say just about every windows machine I ever had was lucky to make it past 3 years before slowing to a crawl that even clean installs would not fix. Newer hardware was needed. Sounds like you got alot of years out of your machine and I noticed that labtops tend to give out sooner than desktops.

Lastly, I was going to wait for a refresh but I need my machine to perform for productivity reasons so I can get my work done. Unfortunately, nothing was announced today so I may just get a new iMac this month with as many upgrades as I can afford starting with an SSD.

Hope this helps!

 

[vectordream]

Here is another thread on the subject that was made not long ago:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1766583/

I like what lJoSquaredl said 4 posts from the top about iMacs of today being really stable.

In my opinion there is no good time to buy tech. You buy it when you absolutely need it. No matter when you buy there will be something better just months away.

 

[briloronmacrumo]

Was I just unlucky with Mavericks? Can one normally upgrade the OS and NOT affect the machine overly?

I'm writing this on my backup computer, a 2009 white MacBook 2 GHz Core 2 Duo with 6 GB ram and OS X Mavericks 10.9.3. It works just fine. It's possible your Mac needed some general software maintenance ( a la Onyx and other such utilities ) and Mavericks per se was not the issue. YMMV

 

[timetourist]

Thanks for your help

I appreciate you guys taking the time to help. I decided to buy a new one today. When Yosemite is released, I will be re-logging in to find out what 'clean install' requires and entails.

All the best...

 

[hologram]

I guess the obvious answer is buy a new Mac...

Actually, the obvious answer is to re-install Mavericks using the complete 5.6gb (?) 10.9.4 installer from the Apple Store. You didn't mention whether you've tried that or not, and it might help to the point where you don't need a new computer now.

If you have tried it, forget I said anything.