To upgrade or To Not upgrade?

[Fiendishone]

I have a late 2013 MBPr factory loaded with Mavericks, it works just fine, no problems. Is it worth upgrading to El Capitan or am I best leaving well alone? It would be nice to have Air drop but...

Any advice I would be very grateful.

 

[simon lefisch]

Either create a separate partition and load El Cap on it, or install to an external HD and try it out. If you like it, upgrade your main HD. If not, all you'll have to do delete the partition/ext drive. Best way is to try it out yourself. You might like some features others don't and vice versa. I can say that on my late 2011 MBP I'm loving it. Main reason I updated was Airdrop, however Handoff is pretty handy sometimes.

 

[AFEPPL]

AirDrop works less than half the time so it's not perfect by any measure.
I'd say you don't really gain anything but bloat from El Capt and would be tempted to say leave as is.

 

[simon lefisch]

Airdrop works perfect for me. It was horrible on Yosemite but El Cap is solid. YMMV.

 

[zhenya]

I wouldn't bother with partitioning. Make a Time Machine backup on an external disk. Upgrade and see what you think. If you don't like it after whatever period of time, simply restore to Mavericks as if nothing ever happened. (Note, this will be easier if you do not backup again to the disk after you upgrade).

 

[jasnw]

I wouldn't bother with partitioning. Make a Time Machine backup on an external disk. Upgrade and see what you think. If you don't like it after whatever period of time, simply restore to Mavericks as if nothing ever happened. (Note, this will be easier if you do not backup again to the disk after you upgrade).

If you're going to take this approach: (1) make sure that the TM backup is OK before you install El Cap, (2) turn off TM and physically remove the drive before you install El Cap, and (3) if you have backup software like CCC and a spare USB drive I'd even consider making a full bootable clone in addition to the TM backup. I've had TM backups go bad on me far too often. Then, good luck.

 

[zhenya]

I have restored from Time Machine backups many times over the years, including full system restores. Given that you can either restore the entire system very similarly from restoring an image, or just manually install the OS and then restore your files and settings from there, unless you have a very complicated custom install, Time Machine should be more than adequate without the hassles of partitioning - which has plenty of risk of its own. There is no way I would partition without having the same redundancy in backups as if I were doing a clean install.

Either way though, yes, verifying your backups is a good idea!

 

[jasnw]

I'm just very gun-shy RE TM. Every time I've REALLY needed it, it failed me badly. Then this go-around with El Capitan where it wasn't updating hourly, which I'm told has been fixed but I'm still seeing complaints about it on 10.11.3. YMMV, but I feel safer with automated CCC backups.

 

[LittleDavid]

It's either going to be great or awful, and there's no way to tell ahead of time. It will probably be great. As has been said, backups backups backups.

FWIW, it's working great for me on a 2010 dual i7 and a 2012 quad i7 cMBP.

 

[DUCKofD3ATH]

I have a late 2013 MBPr factory loaded with Mavericks, it works just fine, no problems. Is it worth upgrading to El Capitan or am I best leaving well alone? It would be nice to have Air drop but...

Any advice I would be very grateful.

What apps do you use? Will you have to upgrade them to work with El Cap? Factor that cost into your decision.

 

[80zchild]

I have a late 2013 MBPr factory loaded with Mavericks, it works just fine, no problems. Is it worth upgrading to El Capitan or am I best leaving well alone? It would be nice to have Air drop but...

Any advice I would be very grateful.

El Cap ruined my 2015 iMac don't do it ! If it runs fine don't fix it if it ain't broke !! El Cap made my iMac start cutting off without warning in the middle of working. It will restart automatically but I use to have 2 to 3 hours before it would cut off, now it is cutting off in 15 min or 5 min depends. This is my experience and apple doesn't have a solution .

 

[bobr1952]

As you can see--do it or don't do it--up to you. Best to back up, use Super Duper or another clone software--and update your Mac. If you don't like it, the clone will easily take you back to Mavericks. EC runs fine on my 2012 MBP--and even on my 2008 iMac--although very memory starved. Really, no reason not to at least try it.

 

[Ebenezum]

I agree with previous posters, if you decide do try El Capitan first make at least one backup! Preferably clone the drive with Disk Utility, SuperDuper! or other such software because Time Machine isn't always reliable when restoring previous OS.

In my opinion its much easier to install El Capitan on external drive for testing purposes, that way if it doesn't work you can just boot from the internal drive and you don't have to waste time restoring backup (which can take a very long time if you have lot of data).

Furthermore you want to check potential software and hardware incompatibility before install because doing it afterwards is a real pain...

I got fed up with El Capitan because of too many bugs and I'm back to Mavericks, some of the bugs were corrected in 10.11.3 but not all of them. One example is Spotlight which never worked as well as in Mavericks. You might want to take a look at the El Capitan bugs thread...

 

[KALLT]

The Time Machine/backup option is preferable for another reason: you will get a better idea of the system performance on your main disk. If you boot from an external disk, the performance just won’t be as good.

 

[kschendel]

I did the upgrade with some trepidation, but it's been problem free except for one hassle with Word (ugh) and mail merge (ugh ugh) that could be worked around and probably isn't el cap's fault anyway.

Don't do it without a backup. I used Super Duper but use what you want, just make sure you know how to do the restore BEFORE you need to do it.

 

[Fiendishone]

Thanks everyone for your input. Sorry been so long getting back to you but time has just flown by the last couple of days, you know what it's like!!!

I have a 'My Passport' external hard drive that I use for TM and back up regularly but I connect it when I want to so no problem disconnecting if/when I move to El C. I sort of lean to the camp of, if it's not broke don't fix but I am curious!!! I assume that for backup of everything all I need to do is a normal back up with TM and then disconnect and that will be ok? I don't really use many extra apps, certainly none that if I had to I couldn't live without, or replace. You have all given me much to think about and I think I shall do a little more research before taking the plunge. Maybe sit with a coffee and read the bugs page!! If I do it, I'll let you know how it goes.

Thank you. I always find this bunch of forums such a help when I have questions or problems. Some kind soul is always willing to help!!!

 

[TonyK]

Just installed 10.11 on a MBP today. It had 10.10.5 and had recently been upgraded with a SSD and more memory. Given the system is a late 2007 with 6GB of RAM and now 480GB of SSD I wasn't expecting the lively performance I witnessed. Boot time has improved considerably and the system is highly usable.

So if 10.11 is this good on this old of system I could speculate that on your much newer system it will be just fine.

However, if there is not a need or requirement to upgrade, why do it?

Take care,

 

[Fiendishone]

Thanks TonyK, I am still thinking about it, like you say, I don't really need to do it, and I am normally on the side of if it aint broke, don't fix but... You know what it is like, you hate to think you are missing something. It seems that it either goes really well or really badly!!!

 

[Racineur]

FWIW, I have a 2013 iMac 27 than came with Mountain Lion 10.8.5. So stable, it's frightening. But I couldn't resist the new OS call so I tortured myself until I bought an external SSD and installed Yosemite then El Capitan on it. Now I have a dual boot iMac and it runs fine, very fine. Yosemite was without a fault and so is El Capitan. I first wanted to partition the 1T Fusion Drive but I was told not to do so. And as I say, El Capitan is flawless at least on my iMac. I can also start apps from the internal HD of the iMac and those who are incompatible are very rare. Guess I jute had to find last version of Aperture and iPhoto.

 

[Riwam]

Thanks TonyK, I am still thinking about it, like you say, I don't really need to do it, and I am normally on the side of if it aint broke, don't fix but... You know what it is like, you hate to think you are missing something. It seems that it either goes really well or really badly!!!

******
After going from Mavericks to Yosemite in an upgrade without problems I was forced to clean install El Capitan since the upgrade resulted in a system not shutting down in the normal way but only by removing power supply.

I entirely agree with those suggesting to clone your existing drive in a bootable external hard drive and upgrade THAT.
Even if it will be slower than an inner drive, it will show you what works and how well it does...or doesn't.

I however do not agree with the opinions that OSX 10.11 will either be a great or awful experience
For a normal non/pro user like myself I could use Mavericks or Yosemite not remarking significative differences besides that the design is a bit different and the Mavericks icons and dock were IMHO much nicer.

As to TM I would suggest it only additionnally to a bootable clone drive.
After one (in my case unnoticed) backup in El Capitan, it was no more usable with all the previous backups covering a very long time.
So removing it is a must.
Ed

 

[Fiendishone]

Having now read quite a few of the glitches and problems people seem to have encountered I think I shall stay with Mavericks for a while yet. My MBPr runs nicely she is quick and does what I want, when I want so, I think, for me, it would be best to leave well alone!!! Thanks for all the input, it has been a great help. I will certainly make a decent backup on an external hard drive when I make the move in the future.