Apple OS X upgrade ?
 

Luddite that I am, my 2008 dual-core 2.4ghz MacBook Pro runs 10.6.8 and all in all for my needs, I'm happy enough. However as time goes by I do wonder if it would it be worth upgrading my OS, as in to Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks (which Apple are prompting me to upgrade all the time) or would that make my faithful steed more bloated and slow ?



SHJ

I would certainly upgrade to Lion. The difference between Lion and Mountain Lion is not exceptional and may not give you too much improvement in performance. A large proportion of improvements in Mavericks are aimed at synchronising your Mac with mobile devices; if you do not use any of these, you may not notice much improvement. However, as time goes by, new apps are often designed only for the latest version of OSX and you may find incompatibilities with an app you have seen and would like to use.

OS X actually slimmed down with Snow Leopard as the "Rosetta" support for PowerPC Macs was removed!

You may not even be able to upgrade - I have a dual-core Black MacBook of about the same vintage that seemingly won't go higher than Snow Leopard... :sad:

Yes, there are incompatibilities with some older old apps (Apple don't make a fetish of backwards compatibility) but if you can, do - there are lots of speedups and enhancements (and security tweaks).

Interesting that Mavericks was, (for the first time) offered as a free upgrade.

Mac

:ok:

Absolutely....

Everything from 10.0 to 10.7 was a work in progress..... perfectly good, but with improvements being made all the time.

10.8 and 10.9 are however a different kettle of fish. Much more refined, more optimised .... great iterations of OS X indeed.

Up until recently, I was running 10.8 on a 3.06 Ghz 2009 vintage MacBook Pro and it worked perfectly well (well, as well as you could expect on a vintage machine..... but it was not particularly slow .. intact, if anything, upgrading to 10.8 actually made a positive difference). But do check the tech requirements against your particular machine.

Actually they do ! Apple gradually phase out APIs rather than just suddenly removing them. Its either lazy developers failing to keep up or lazy users who can't be bothered to update who are the problem.

As there are 386`s out there running linux its hardly suprising it works. As long as they can be bothered putting legacy hardware drivers in you will be fine.

Thanks for all the replies. Obviously the stable updated OS's will be an improvement from 10.6.8, but sometimes reading the problems of others who have upgraded and wish they hadn't for various reasons, one's slow adaption to progress is tweaked.

My steed has a 2.4ghz Intel Core 2 Duo and 4GB 667Mhz DDR2 SDRAM. Would any of you experts think that would be enough reasonable capability to stand an upgrade of the OS ? I know that I could look on line, but rather prefer the experiences and tips of people I know :p



SHJ

That should be fine - I have 10.8 on a 2008 MacBook (vice MacBook Pro) of similar vintage. Anyway you appear to meet the spec here: OS X Mountain Lion - Apple Store (UK)

You don't need to worry that it won't cope - as has been said the OS has got better over time. There will be the usual frustrations which seem annoying at first but you soon realise that most changes are for the better. I think there was a reversal of screen scrolling direction in one of those updates, to match the way iOS devices scroll, which was one of those that you had to get used to. (Now I wonder how I coped without it).

The problem might be that you have to have Lion (10.7) installed to upgrade to Mountain Lion (10.8) which is a pain. I don't think you can go straight from Snow Leopard (10.6) to ML. Someone may correct that. They are not expensive, even if you have to buy both, it just takes twice as along. I recently started afresh on an old iMac and had to (re)purchase Snow Leopard just to get it back to Lion (because I'd lost my SL disc).

Other than time, the update process is simple. You lose nothing, settings and passwords etc remain, no starting again. Although it is obviously a good idea to have everything backed up just in case.

Correct. Also bear in mind that the outgoing OS X 10.7 needs to be fully patched up too... you can't just bung in a 10.7 disk and then update to 10.8. It needs to be patched up to the latest 10.7.(x) iteration.

May be less hassle to jut backup files and go for a clean install instead of an upgrade (well, you should have a backup routine in place already anyway !).

You can change this back to the old settings easily in System Preferences.

That was part of my question - can you do a clean install of Mountain Lion? Since it is app store only I thought you had to start with something already installed (and updated as you said).

If you've got access to another mac with App Store and the 10.8 / Mountain Lion installer downloaded, you can certainly create a DVD from that and do a clean install.

All very interesting, and like I say personal experience means a lot, or at least more than the company's info which although detailed is often slanted towards their favour.

So, bearing in mind one's spec, would it be better to stick with an upgrade to Lion OR should I jump again and go straight to Mountain Lion ? I just don't want to be suffering from the MBP not being able to keep up due to processor size and speed.


SHJ

Based on what Mixture says - that up to Lion was WIP, and Mountain Lion was the better system, and my experiences with Mountain Lion I think that's the one to aim for. As we say, you might have to do both so you can see what Lion is like as a first step.

SpringHeeledJack,

The honest answer is its hard to say.

From a technical point of view, since OS X is a BSD based platform, its quite efficient anyway. In terms of the OS X improvements 10.8, I think it was one of the best OS's yet in terms of optimisation and stability.

Perhaps the other important element to consider is software and security updates. 10.6 has almost certainly lapsed and OS X 10.7 probably heading that way although one or two updates were released for it in 2013.

I would probably go for it as I'm fairly confident there shouldn't be any performance issues. However I would say make sure you have good backups, and make sure you check with your third party software suppliers that their stuff is compatible with whatever you decide to (most stuff is and stuff that is not can generally be updated).

By your command sir :8 However, after purchasing said software, Apple informed me that it would be 'delivered' in 1-3 business days :hmm: Bearing in mind that I paid last wednesday and we've just had a weekend, it is now the best part of 5 days gone without any satisfaction. The Apple/customer relationship has always been very good, so why on earth would they need more than a few seconds after being paid to send a link to the download instead of days ?


SHJ

SpringHeeledJack,

1-3 days for something you've purchased via AppStore ? Never heard of or experienced that.

Suggest you get in touch with Customer Service.... they're normally very helpful

It could only be purchase on the Apple Store, rather than the App Store and as the software is only downloadable, rather than physically delivered they seem to have a standard 1-3 business days mantra....Maybe I've slipped through the system ? I'll get onto customer service later after I deal with solid things instead of virtual ;)


SHJ

I'd be surprised if they're shipping it from China !

To run 10.9 you need a 64-bit EFI in your Mac.
Here is the official list:

1st-gen plastic Macbooks are not compatible :sad: (shame, they are great machines)

Maybe it's just me, maybe Apple like to make the 'download deliveries' above and beyond most internet fraud efforts but.........So after 3 days exactly I have received 2 emails, one with a code, another with a PDF that only opens with the code. Once opened the PDF has in not so obvious text a code that must then be entered on the AppStore 'redeem' quicklink and only then does it start downloading! FFS! :ugh: It's downloading as I type, but apart from seeing that something is downloading there is no indication where on the computer that this might be. All very difficult for a luddite :hmm:



SHJ

So…many hours later, ML is installed and the system seems nippier than my previous, which is good. Two questions to the panel 1) How do I make a hard copy of the install disk for future disk utility uses etc ? 2) where has the access to 'library' gone ? That is the library that gave access to all things.


SHJ