Should I upgrade from Mac OS 10.7.5 to OS 8 or further up: 9 or 10.10.3?
June 29, 2015 2:56 PM   Subscribe

I need to upgrade from Mac OS 10.7.5 to OS 8 to use a tool for work. Should I just go ahead and upgrade to OS 10.10.3? I ask because the 10.7.5 works just fine and I'm inclined to leave well enough alone unless as now when I need a later version for work. Is the upgrade (to whatever version) buggy, complicated, worth it? Thanks.

I have an iMac (5, 6 years old, maybe) with a 3.06 GHZ Intel Core i3 processor and I've got 414.25 (of 5) GB left on the hard drive.
posted by holdenjordahl to Computers & Internet (15 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
The first thing that comes to my mind is, upgrading past certain versions may mean your MIDI USB peripherals will no longer work, because later versions require signed drivers, and many vendors won't develop new signed drivers for old peripherals. I believe some 32-bit-only system preference panels may break as well (I'm looking at you, Qmaster). And I think some older apps from the Final Cut Studio suite and older version of Adobe's Creative Suite stopped working as well somewhere between 10.7 and 10.9. The latest version of Yosemite has some DNS problems as well (at least on my box).

tl;dr depends on your use case and previously-installed applications and peripherals.
posted by infinitewindow at 3:05 PM on June 29, 2015 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Thanks infinitewindow.
I'm not even remotely a power user. No Adobe Creative Suite, no Final Cut Studio Suite, no gaming. Just basic Office and Quicken; a printer; an external hard drive.
In your opinion, then, to gauge from my basic use of the OS, should I just go all the way up to 10.10.3?
(And I'm afraid to ask what DNS means...)
posted by holdenjordahl at 3:12 PM on June 29, 2015


As I understand it, it's pretty involved to get anything but the current version of OS X, i.e. Yosemite (maybe you can talk them into it at a genius bar, otherwise you're going to be torrenting it as far as I know). So, the choice might be made for you. But from your description I don't see any obvious reason not to upgrade to Yosemite.
posted by advil at 3:25 PM on June 29, 2015


Response by poster: Thanks, advil!
posted by holdenjordahl at 3:29 PM on June 29, 2015


I concur with advil.
posted by infinitewindow at 3:38 PM on June 29, 2015


On the off chance that something might go wrong or you decide that you don't like the upgrade, you should backup your entire current system using SuperDuper or a similar app. There are others out there like Carbon Copy Cloner, but I prefer SuperDuper for ease of use and reliability.
posted by LuckySeven~ at 3:40 PM on June 29, 2015 [3 favorites]


Response by poster: Thanks LuckySeven and thanks again infinitewindow.
posted by holdenjordahl at 3:50 PM on June 29, 2015


As I understand it, it's pretty involved to get anything but the current version of OS X, i.e. Yosemite (maybe you can talk them into it at a genius bar)

I was able to talk them into installing Mavericks at a genius bar. They will probably charge you for it, but they'll (probably) do it.

There's one downside: if you take this route, you still won't have the ability to reinstall the OS yourself (yes, there will be the "recovery partition", but that naming is a complete lie: it isn't anything of the sort, it's an emergency app store which you still won't be able to buy a version of OS X of your choice from should some emergency arise). If you want backups, you'll need to create your own bootable images.

Despite the trouble involved here, I'd still give a "no" to this question:

Should I just go ahead and upgrade to OS 10.10.3?

You shouldn't. Yosemite has caused stability issues for every single acquaintance I know that's installed it, and I've heard worse stories around the net. I've also heard of people who have not have problems, though, so maybe you'll get lucky and merely find that you're getting less out of your computer because Apple has decided to spend computing resources older machines have less of on essentially pointless "features."

There are some noises indicating that 10.11 might be the stability/performance focused update people have been talking about. I'm a bit skeptical that Apple is constitutionally capable of that kind of focus at this point, but if you can wait, and if your machine seems like it will meet system requirements, that might be a good choice.

On the off chance that something might go wrong or you decide that you don't like the upgrade, you should backup your entire current system using SuperDuper or a similar app.

Yes. Triple yes.
posted by weston at 4:26 PM on June 29, 2015


If you can wait until 10.11, it works well with older Macs.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 4:27 PM on June 29, 2015 [1 favorite]


If i were running 10.7 (one of my least-favorite OS X releases everrr) i’d not only want to upgrade, i’d go to 10.9 if i didn’t want to risk 10.10 not working well on my computer. 10.9 fixed some of the obnoxious stuff in 10.7 & 10.8 and has improved memory management.

No one should be running 10.7 or earlier because of lack of security updates (unless they really know what they are doing). Going to 10.9 instead of 10.8 will give you more future life with security updates available.
posted by D.C. at 5:25 PM on June 29, 2015


I upgraded from 10.7 to 10.10 and the process itself was slow (2 hours), but straightforward and easy. The results were good enough and seem no worse than 10.7.
posted by gregglind at 5:30 PM on June 29, 2015


First create some more space on your hard drive. For any version of Mac OS X you need at least 10% free space.

Further you need at least 4GB of memory (ram) The more the better.
Before you upgrade alway's have a back-up using Time Machine. Better yet a 2nd back-up in the form of a bootable image on a external drive using Super Duper or a similar app.

Once you have taken care of the basics, upgrade to the latest version via the App store.

Don't believe the fear mongers about OSX 10.7 - 8 - 9 or 10 that it is causing trouble. This only happens if you already start with a messed up system.

If your Mac needs maintenance I highly recommend to do a good Mac Tune-Up before you upgrade.
posted by Mac-Expert at 5:56 PM on June 29, 2015 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Well, this is vexing.
I just upgraded to the latest version of the Mac OS.
Nothing disastrous so far, on a cursory peek.
One thing, though: iTunes works but iPhoto says I need to upgrade to the latest version. Fine. But at the Apple Store, it says the version I need is not available in the US.
Any idea what this could mean?
thank you.
posted by holdenjordahl at 6:06 PM on June 29, 2015


Response by poster: Sorry, disregard the last follow up.
It's now called Photos, not iPhotos.
posted by holdenjordahl at 6:13 PM on June 29, 2015


They just removed discoveryd in 10.10.4 today, which in my limited testing has completely resolved the DNS issues. If you've got at least 8Gb of RAM, go with 10.10.4.

If not, the last version that performs well with 4 is 10.8
posted by Oktober at 11:19 AM on June 30, 2015


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