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Worst overall version of Mac OS X?

  • 10.0 (Cheetah)

    Votes: 35 14.6%
  • 10.1 (Puma)

    Votes: 5 2.1%
  • 10.2 (Jaguar)

    Votes: 3 1.3%
  • 10.3 (Panther)

    Votes: 1 0.4%
  • 10.4 (Tiger)

    Votes: 6 2.5%
  • 10.5 (Leopard)

    Votes: 21 8.8%
  • 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

    Votes: 2 0.8%
  • 10.7 (Lion)

    Votes: 86 36.0%
  • 10.8 (Mountain Lion)

    Votes: 7 2.9%
  • 10.9 (Mavericks)

    Votes: 24 10.0%
  • 10.10 (Yosemite)

    Votes: 72 30.1%

  • Total voters
    239

loby

macrumors 68000
Jul 1, 2010
1,815
1,428
With every OS that comes out, their will always be people who like or dislike it. As far as OS X, I was not a fan of OS X Yosemite, but it is now finally a sum-what stable OS X. I think people rate OS X by what they prefer and not by how it should be rated and that is how the OS X functions with comparison to needs etc.

1. People have ranted that OS X Lion is the worse overall. I for one had no issues with it and still use it today due to drivers for my musical equipment not being updated by the manufacturer, plus being able to still boot to 32-bit as an option keeps me using it with older programs. No issues.

2. Kind of funny, in the Microsoft world, I actually liked Windows 8.1, Vista (design, not function-clunky) and WindowsME when it came out. All of the OS that no one generally liked. Strange.

Again it is taste I believe over actual function. I could not say honestly the worse OS X, but I can definitely say what is the best OS X so far, and that would be Snow Leopard.

Having to choice the worst...I would say when it first came out...OS X Yosemite, but now I am warming up to it...
 

bunnspecial

macrumors G3
May 3, 2014
8,308
6,307
Kentucky
I started with Lion and never had issues with it, although Mavericks is still my preferred OS. I really don't like Yosemite and even though I currently have it installed on a computer.

I've since "regressed" a bit and do currently have every version of OS X installed on a computer somewhere(although PB-10.3 are all on the same computer). By far and away, the worst one was 10.0-it took me four attempts to even get it to install without crashing. Half the time, I can't even get it to boot anymore. Hardware support is very limited and "picky" and I pretty much have to pull RAM(often down to a single 128mb stick) and switch GPUs to even have a prayer of it booting.

10.2 was, IMO, the first actually usable version and 10.4 was where OS X really hit its stride.

Despite a lot of people mentioning it here, I actually really like Leopard, although will admit that SL is better in pretty much every quantifiable way. That a moot point, however, since I have a lot of hardware that won't run anything newer than Leopard. For PPC Macs, my OS choices anymore are pretty much 10.4, 10.5, and OS 9. These are the only Apple PPC operating systems that still have(relatively) current software support.
 

throAU

macrumors G3
Feb 13, 2012
8,762
6,923
Perth, Western Australia
The only "issues" i saw with Lion were performance related and the poor implementation of "Full screen" (no big deal, just don't use it).

Performance at least on the earlier lion releases was pretty bad if you had say 4GB of RAM or less and (this is the big one) - a spinning hard drive.

i think the earlier versions of Lion were tuned for SSD a little too much and the hard drive performance on earlier versions of 10.7 just sucked really hard compared to Snow Leopard.
 

bunnspecial

macrumors G3
May 3, 2014
8,308
6,307
Kentucky
i think the earlier versions of Lion were tuned for SSD a little too much and the hard drive performance on earlier versions of 10.7 just sucked really hard compared to Snow Leopard.

This is somewhat surprising since-in 2011-the majority of Apple's computer line still had spinning HDDs. The only that had gone full scale SSD at that point was the Air.

Of course, Apple would put an SSD in anything else they made, but you paid a pretty healthy mark-up for it. At the time, the "market price" for SSDs was hovering around $1/gb, and Apple charged you about $2/gb for BTO SSDs.

At the same time, on a Macbook Pro or Mac Pro of the era, it was a simple operation to install your own SSD.

I think by the time I bought my late '2011(April of '12), Lion was up to about 10.7.3 and it ran fine.
 

AFEPPL

macrumors 68030
Sep 30, 2014
2,644
1,571
England
I doubt 95% of people can actually vote - not that may people have had experience of the OS going back that far..
 
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colourfastt

macrumors 65816
Apr 7, 2009
1,047
964
This is somewhat surprising since-in 2011-the majority of Apple's computer line still had spinning HDDs. The only that had gone full scale SSD at that point was the Air.

Of course, Apple would put an SSD in anything else they made, but you paid a pretty healthy mark-up for it. At the time, the "market price" for SSDs was hovering around $1/gb, and Apple charged you about $2/gb for BTO SSDs.

At the same time, on a Macbook Pro or Mac Pro of the era, it was a simple operation to install your own SSD.

I think by the time I bought my late '2011(April of '12), Lion was up to about 10.7.3 and it ran fine.

I have a "late-2013" iMac that I bought new last summer. Of course since it was "off the shelf" rather than a BTO it has a standard HDD. All I can say is for a recent model iMac its performance is absolutely atrocious. Sixty to 120 second boot up and shut downs on 10.9,10.10, & 10.11, whereas my first iMac (Core 2 Duo & 5400rpm HDD) running 10.5 & 10.6 was quite fast booting and had about a 4-5 second shut down time.
 

Micky Do

macrumors 68020
Aug 31, 2012
2,203
3,145
a South Pacific island
Based on my limited experience, Leopard is the worst, and Mountain Lion is the best.

Tiger had just been released when I bought my first computer, the original 2005 Mac Mini, so the shop did the upgrade from Panther for me, free of charge. It was fine from my point of view; certainly caused me no problems.

Leopard came with my second computer, an early 2009 Mac Mini (seemed more cost effective than replacing the failed HDD and dicky power supply of the 2005 Mini). Leopard did have some worthwhile advances over Tiger, but it was buggy for some apps, so I didn't like it much. Fortunately I didn't have to endure it for long.

Snow Leopard came out within a few months. I wasted no time in doing the upgrade, liked it, and didn't bother with Lion.

Mountain Lion was the next, and last update I did, along with upgrading the computer from 1 GB RAM to 5 GB, and have been well pleased with it. More recent iterations of OS X would run, but I doubt that I will bother. Quite a few of the benefits of the most recent versions are not available to the 2009 Mini.
 

throAU

macrumors G3
Feb 13, 2012
8,762
6,923
Perth, Western Australia
This is somewhat surprising since-in 2011-the majority of Apple's computer line still had spinning HDDs. The only that had gone full scale SSD at that point was the Air.


Yup, and that's why Lion sucked initially.

i bought my 2011 MBP with Lion (when Lion was brand new) and 4 GB and spinning disk planning to upgrade it and let me tell you, in that spec, it SUCKED.


I since installed Lion on my 2007 spec Mac mini (10.7.4 i think) with 2 GB and spinning disk and it didn't seem quite so bad.
 

bunnspecial

macrumors G3
May 3, 2014
8,308
6,307
Kentucky
I doubt 95% of people can actually vote - not that may people have had experience of the OS going back that far..

I've only been using Macs since 2011, but have since taken an interest in older systems.

My primary version of OS X for G3 and G4 PPC systems is either Tiger or Leopard depending on what the computer will support. I should also add that all G4 systems with AGP graphics will run Leopard with minimal trouble. G3s will run Tiger, although in some cases(those without built in FW or USB) it's a bit more complicated. Xpostfacto makes it possible without much trouble on unsupported systems, although their ability to do so well varies. A late iBook or a B&W G3 runs Tiger fairly well. A guy on the PPC forum recently recompiled the Tiger kernel to run on 60x series PPC CPUs, and I can report that it works(albeit slowly). I have it running now on my 9600. In general, though, I run OS 9 on G3s and even some lower spec G4s.

In any case, I have a PowerMac G4(Giagbit Ethernet dual 500mhz) running every public release of OS X that it will support-Public Beta through 10.5.8. Unfortunately, I tend to have to swap RAM and video cards to get earlier versions to work, while Leopard runs quite well with the RAM maxed(2gb) and a decent video card.

Aside from that, most computers I have capable of running Snow Leopard has it installed, although the only computer running it as its primary OS is my 2006 Mini running SL Server. I have Lion on my Blackbook, Mountain Lion on my 2006 iMac, and 10.9 on just about everything else. My mid-2009 Macbook is running Yosemite, and my main Macbook Pro(mid-2012 15" classic) dual boots Mavericks and El Capitan.

I also have a B&W G3 running all the DP versions of OS X along with OS X Server 1.2(a very weird OS). DP 1 and DP2(along with OS X Server) actually have the OS 9 "Platinum" interface, while DP3 introduces Aqua.

Of those OSs, I've used 10.4, 10.5, 10.7, and 10.9 most extensively. At least, though, I am in a position to sit down and directly compare OSs, and in many cases on the same hardware.
 

ivoruest

macrumors 6502
Jul 12, 2010
398
28
Guatemala
Who voted against Snow Leopard? I believe it was a huge step forward and a pretty good OS in general. I think Lion was one of the worst, but since Apple has been trying to mix iOS and OSX this was necessary and obviously was going to be difficult to achieve.
 

th0masp

macrumors 6502a
Mar 16, 2015
813
477
voted tiger as the worst. my first version of OSX and first proper mac experience outside of some horrible umax clones running the old mac os at uni. tiger put me off for a few more years. ;) toy-ish look, useless finder as i recall and the PPC machine was just dreadfully, painfully slow.

i came back for the intel macs with leopard and that rocked pretty much. loved quicklook, coverflow and dashboard (and use them all three extensively to this day). sadly made the mistake to install snow leopard soon after release which had some nasty problems with external USB drives and regularly forced a machine restart when the photoshop process had zombified itself.
only the very last versions of snow leopard were usable for me. the machine i put it on runs to this day at my parents' on 10.6.8 so now i'm okay with it.

got a fresh MBP soon after lion came out and had a hard time with it initially. same USB drive troubles plus multimonitor issues. patches and extensive fiddling with power management solved both and lion still runs on the machine i'm typing this on. at the time i saw no reason to upgrade to mountain lion and intend to keep it running till the machine dies. it's very smooth now.
so now it's actually my favourite. :) application support slowly becomes a problem though with several apps i'm interested in only available for 10.8 or 10.9.

i considered mavericks as an upgrade option but now that i also have a mini that came with 10.9 i must say i'm not that smitten. i am experiencing some finder troubles on this machine on 10.9.5. also sleep issues thanks to darkwake/powernap, may it die in a fire! very reluctant to ruin my daily-driver MBP install with those problems.

yosemite just sounds like too much trouble to waste the time with. also the look. i'm not an iOS user and it does nothing for me. perhaps el capitan will provide an upgrade path though. i may give it a look around 10.11.3.
 
Last edited:

JoEw

macrumors 68000
Nov 29, 2009
1,583
1,291
Lion actually had a bug that made my iMac completely freeze and require a restart, I have never had an mac release do that since.

I very much liked Mavericks and I think El Capitan is what Yosemite should of been when it first released.
 

th0masp

macrumors 6502a
Mar 16, 2015
813
477
JoEw: if you have a second machine (or smartphone) available and generally know your way around terminal it's worth to enable remote ssh access on your devices. i recently had a weird case where an application on mavericks running in fullscreen was seemingly freezing the entire system.
no real clue in the logfiles beyond a crash report for the app. turns out the OS was still running smoothly in the background. logging in via ssh and killing the offending task was all that was required. no keyboard or mouse reaction on the machine itself though (not even status lights like caps lock would come on anymore).
 

b0fh666

macrumors 6502a
Oct 12, 2012
954
785
south
I just signed up to vote Yosemite. Worst buggiest OS ever. Snow Leo was like the best OS I've ever used.

I run yosumfinky on 'the metal' but run snow leopard in a VM side by side... this on non-retina macbook pros... man those were the days, the UI on SL is simply gorgeous compared to the new thing. those flat traffic lights on yosemite are disgusting. I kinda like the new dock/icons/transparency thing tough, but the flat UI elements... meh
 
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patternjake

macrumors member
Sep 17, 2015
87
14
Leopard even at version 10.5.8 was so memory and performance ineffiecient, and even safari used to lag and display the BBOD all the time. And don't get me started on using multiple monitors, it sucked for that. Mavericks and Yosemite however blew it out of the water, and I'm running the El Capitan GM Candidate right now and I must say its a much more refined Yosemite which is awesome!

I did use the Mac OS X Public Beta which was...well, dreadful but it did lay the foundations down for what I consider the best OS in the world, that is OS X. Windows 10 and Microsoft can take a hike (Except for my XBOX ONE, which I love)
 

quackers82

macrumors 6502
Mar 13, 2014
340
168
10.7 was what my first ever Mac came with, and coming from being in the Windows world my whole life at that point its very difficult to vote as OS X is so pleasant in comparison even the bad ones are good! I find it easier to say which one i liked most compared to which one i liked least.
 

KoolAid-Drink

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Sep 18, 2013
1,811
843
USA
Now that 10.11 (El Cap) is in the picture, I'm updating my list to reflect the best/worst versions of Mac OS X.

Worst (from top) to best (bottom)
-Mavericks
-Lion
-El Capitan
-10.0
-Leopard
-Jaguer
-Panther
-Snow Leopard
-Tiger
-Mountain Lion
-Yosemite

Yes, Yosemite was my favorite. It was absolutely rock solid, worked very well, and didn't have many odd glitches at all. This being on a cMBP from 2011. El Cap hasn't really impressed me; in fact, it reintroduced a few odd bugs from Mavericks (Time Machine being one example), and feels slower/more sluggish than Yosemite did.

Notice that most versions of OS X on the top are odd-numbered releases, while the bottom versions (best) are even-numbered releases? For some reason, it seems like odd-numbered releases of OS X isn't as solid or as good as even-numbered releases. This is evident with El Cap, which definitely isn't an exception at all to this pattern. The only even-numbered releases of OS X that weren't good would be 10.0 and 10.2 (Jaguer), but that's because it was the very beginning of OS X.
 

bunnspecial

macrumors G3
May 3, 2014
8,308
6,307
Kentucky
The only even-numbered releases of OS X that weren't good would be 10.0 and 10.2 (Jaguer), but that's because it was the very beginning of OS X.

I don't know that I'd necessarily agree with this. 10.0 is pretty much terrible, as is 10.1. Jaguar(10.2) was really the first usable version of OS X. The PB-10.2 release cycle was roughly 6 months between releases, while 10.2 stuck around for a bit longer.

With that said, I think OS X consistently improved in the early years, with Panther being a big step up from Jaguar and Tiger(the longest lived version of OS X, and the only one to go through a processor transition) an even better step up.

When talking about "best" OSs, though, the platform definitely makes a difference. On a high spec G4 and any G5, Leopard is basically the only version I would consider running. On the right hardware, it's at least as fast as Tiger and has much better PPC software support. Intel is a different story, and I can't think of anything Leopard can do that Snow Leopard can't do better. The software support for Intel programs is much better in SL than in Leopard, and any Intel Mac that can run Leopard can also run Snow Leopard.
 
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Ebenezum

macrumors 6502a
Mar 31, 2015
782
260
Yes, Yosemite was my favorite. It was absolutely rock solid, worked very well, and didn't have many odd glitches at all. This being on a cMBP from 2011. El Cap hasn't really impressed me; in fact, it reintroduced a few odd bugs from Mavericks (Time Machine being one example), and feels slower/more sluggish than Yosemite did.

"Rock solid" isn't how I would describe Yosemite. "Barely usable" is closer to truth. While current .5 version is finally reliable (while being slow especially on older hardware) there are too many bugs that are only fixed in El Capitan for my taste. Foremost among them Finder, Spotlight and OpenCL. To add insult into injury while El Capitan fixes these bugs it ads others (Disk Utility, Mail, Spotlight, Time Machine, etc.) and end result is one step forward and two steps backwards.

Since El Capitan is just been released its possible that Apple manages to fix most of the bugs in the final version. Until that happens I keep using Mavericks which works much better.
 

navaira

macrumors 68040
May 28, 2015
3,914
5,138
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Bummer, I can't change my vote. Voted Leopard, should have voted Tiger, checked the timeline.

I started working at this really cool company end of 2006, and I got an iMac with Tiger on it. The thing crashed, it was dreadfully slow at times, beachball of doom was my constant companion. And that was the fastest iMac available at the time. After I completed my trial period, among other benefits I got €1,250 to buy a computer. I built an extremely fast Windows machine.

Over three years later I was running Snow Leopard and oh my God I loved this one so much. When my company again gave me €1,250, I added some money of my own and got an iMac. After the "pleasure" of running Windows for three years I was incredibly happy with the iMac. It was GORGEOUS, fast, everything Just Worked (TM).

As time passed, I updated my Mac OS and got to Yosemite, which I actually didn't mind. (Not on the 2006 machine anymore ;) ) I had some of the infamous wifi problems, but 10.10.5 resolved them. Then I moved to El Capitan. I am not happy. I still can't run Cubase, as Steinberg can't figure out how to make it work. I can't get folders on top, because for some reason XtraFinder can't make it work. (I have SIP disabled.) I needed to customise the dock (thanks @Darkcrow25!) – same as Yosemite obviously – for it to look... less crap, let's say. Spotlight seems to constantly be busy with indexing, what took 0.1 second on Yosemite goes for 15 seconds now, and I use that thing to launch applications. The less said about Disk Utility the better, fortunately I managed to get the Yosemite version to work. Let's say that Apple Music is not a part of El Capitan, but I wasn't a big fan of that either, and I detest Photos – I hope iPhoto continues working for a while and Apple don't "forget to update certificates" for it.

In 2009, I bought an iMac, because I suffered from Windows User Syndrome and I wanted a machine that would be a pleasure to use. I am worried that in a year or two I will be installing Windows, because I really don't like the direction Mac OS X is going. I wouldn't say El Capitan is my least favourite, because it mostly works, but it's in top three, and possibly right after Tiger. I'm waiting for some ca$h to flow my way and I intend to spend it on a Macbook Air, but I think I will try to put Yosemite on it.
 

KoolAid-Drink

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Sep 18, 2013
1,811
843
USA
Bummer, I can't change my vote. Voted Leopard, should have voted Tiger, checked the timeline.

I started working at this really cool company end of 2006, and I got an iMac with Tiger on it. The thing crashed, it was dreadfully slow at times, beachball of doom was my constant companion. And that was the fastest iMac available at the time. After I completed my trial period, among other benefits I got €1,250 to buy a computer. I built an extremely fast Windows machine.

Over three years later I was running Snow Leopard and oh my God I loved this one so much. When my company again gave me €1,250, I added some money of my own and got an iMac. After the "pleasure" of running Windows for three years I was incredibly happy with the iMac. It was GORGEOUS, fast, everything Just Worked (TM).

As time passed, I updated my Mac OS and got to Yosemite, which I actually didn't mind. (Not on the 2006 machine anymore ;) ) I had some of the infamous wifi problems, but 10.10.5 resolved them. Then I moved to El Capitan. I am not happy. I still can't run Cubase, as Steinberg can't figure out how to make it work. I can't get folders on top, because for some reason XtraFinder can't make it work. (I have SIP disabled.) I needed to customise the dock (thanks @Darkcrow25!) – same as Yosemite obviously – for it to look... less crap, let's say. Spotlight seems to constantly be busy with indexing, what took 0.1 second on Yosemite goes for 15 seconds now, and I use that thing to launch applications. The less said about Disk Utility the better, fortunately I managed to get the Yosemite version to work. Let's say that Apple Music is not a part of El Capitan, but I wasn't a big fan of that either, and I detest Photos – I hope iPhoto continues working for a while and Apple don't "forget to update certificates" for it.

In 2009, I bought an iMac, because I suffered from Windows User Syndrome and I wanted a machine that would be a pleasure to use. I am worried that in a year or two I will be installing Windows, because I really don't like the direction Mac OS X is going. I wouldn't say El Capitan is my least favourite, because it mostly works, but it's in top three, and possibly right after Tiger. I'm waiting for some ca$h to flow my way and I intend to spend it on a Macbook Air, but I think I will try to put Yosemite on it.

Glad I'm not the only Yosemite loyalist out there. Seems like many people hated Yosemite and love El Cap; it's the opposite for me. El Cap isn't HORRIBLE, like you said - it mostly works - but it does have a lot of rough edges and definitely does not feel smooth or "SL-like."

What would your top 3 worst OS X versions be? Mine would be Mavericks as the top, El Cap, and Lion.
 

kapp2

macrumors 6502
Oct 22, 2015
321
68
Denmark
Yosemite, diffently my favorite. El Capitan ? Hard to say right now, dont run great on our Air 13 from 2014 right now :/
 
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