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what are the pros and/or cons of a clean install?
- Thread starter macswitcha2
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Con: wasting a lot of time.
Seriously, if everything works fine now, then in it will very likely continue to do so after the upgrade. Apple provides this easy upgrade path for a reason. Any perceived performance improvements are just noise. A clean installation is always an option anyway, if you think that your system requires it.
Seriously, if everything works fine now, then in it will very likely continue to do so after the upgrade. Apple provides this easy upgrade path for a reason. Any perceived performance improvements are just noise. A clean installation is always an option anyway, if you think that your system requires it.
I use to always do a clean install with a new Mac OS release, but it's definitely become a waste of time now in my opinion. Before releases were 18 months or further apart, and I think the upgrade process has vastly improved as well. I did a clean install earlier today for Sierra but boy I wish I didn't. Had no issues before, but I've been spending all afternoon and evening getting everything back installed, configured, etc for work tomorrow.
Slightly off topic, but what about "Combo" updates vs. incremental updates? Do you guys think there's any point in doing those anymore?
Only if you have nothing on your mac, otherwise do the normal upgrade process.
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What do you mean by both? Do you mean skipping and jumping oses or small combo updates/incremental. Either way they are more or less the same nowadays.
Nope. A combo update is just a cumulative update, an incremental update contains just the changes between two versions. I am confident that Apple knows very well which files have changed between two versions and has the proper tools for this. For the rest, the above reasoning applies.
(small) Pro : path randomization is not applied to existing apps in case of an upgrade
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/09/macos-10-12-sierra-the-ars-technica-review/6/
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/09/macos-10-12-sierra-the-ars-technica-review/6/
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I was forced to do a clean install after an issue I had. I was remarkably surprised at how quick and easy it was to get my MacBook almost completely back to how it was before.
With iCloud, after setting up as new and logging in, all my photo came back automatically due to iCloud photo library, all my music is on apple music now so that all appeared back.
All my other documents and files are synced with iCloud drive.
All I really had to do was tinker with a few settings/shortcuts etc and reinstall a few apps/programs.
Having said that, if you can avoid doing this its still easier to, I upgraded to Sierra and the only issue I have encountered is that the Apple Watch unlock thing won't turn on, it keeps saying it can't find my watch.
With iCloud, after setting up as new and logging in, all my photo came back automatically due to iCloud photo library, all my music is on apple music now so that all appeared back.
All my other documents and files are synced with iCloud drive.
All I really had to do was tinker with a few settings/shortcuts etc and reinstall a few apps/programs.
Having said that, if you can avoid doing this its still easier to, I upgraded to Sierra and the only issue I have encountered is that the Apple Watch unlock thing won't turn on, it keeps saying it can't find my watch.
Apple often provides OS updates in two forms: a regular update that updates you to the current version from the previous version (e.g., 10.11.5 -> 10.11.6), and a "combo" update, which updates you to the current version from any previous version (e.g., 10.11.0 -> 10.11.6 all in one step). For years, when someone's Mac was behaving erratically, the advice would be to reinstall the most recent update using the Combo updater. Perhaps the thinking was that if a file became corrupt, there was a good chance that it would get replaced with a clean copy from the combo updater. Or perhaps the thinking was that there was room for error doing so many file conversions as a computer was upgraded from one point release to the next, and so redoing it with the Combo updater would help set things straight.
I don't really know the reasoning behind it, but it has always been the suggested voodoo when problems occur after an OS update. I was curious if people think this is still relevant (if it ever truly was).
Ok now that I know this is what you are feeling. Right now there is only one download. Even w my lion discs I could install it on a fresh hard drive. Never seen those combo updates for .0 releases. Combo updates exist for small updates on the same OS version. Say you downloaded the combo update to Capitan you would get it installed w the latest capitan small update 10.11.6. A fresh install would only have it installed to 10.11.0. Combo updates don't jump from new OS to new OS. It's only the minor updates for that specific OS. Doesn't apply to this case. It's good to do combo updates when the OS already has minor updates and you want all the office computers to be running the latest version of that OS w all the stuff that should be working. Faster and more complete in those cases. With a fresh new OS the combo updates don't exist yet.
