Join Chris in this first installment of this video series as he provides sage advice to those upgrading their computers for the first time.
Check out Part 2 in the series at: eshop.macsales.com/blog/43458-mac-upgrade-tips-vol-2-back-up-your-data
To find out which upgrades are available for your Mac, check out our My Upgrades Tool.
I have read all of the posts on Rocket yard about upgrading to high sierra and have been reluctant to upgrade. I am running OS 10.12.6. Comments by other readers make me even more reluctant. I did speak with apple today and they said that the problems people were having were with earlier versions, i.e. 10.8 or earlier. However they could not guarantee that I would not have any problems, but if I did they could help. I am confused as to what to do. Would mac world encourage me to upgrade or wait?
Sorry that Ed’s had such a tough time. I won’t touch HS with a 10-ft. pole, even though Apple claims it’s been cleaned up. I’ve begun keeping TWO full clones of my internal drive in addition to a TimeMachine backup. I recently became unable to send any email unless I logged onto my att.net account. I booted from one of my older clones (a day or so old) and was able to send mail again. I agree that 10.4 was rock solid and was reluctant to move on to the Intel-Macs because I didn’t want to lose all my Adobe software but did so anyway and managed to locate CS4. Personally, I think 10.12 Sierra has been awfully good, other than the email glitch. Since Apple treats so many of its customers so shabbily, I’d heartily recommend you speak with OWC’s tech support people. They’ll bend over backwards to help you out. I know they’ve always been ready and able to help me when I’ve needed it!
I was semi-willing to upgrade to HS until I found out that it is difficult to go back. First, off I formally was a techy but no longer due to a stroke. I am no longer able to handle complex tasks in order to back out HS. I also do not have scads of empty disk drives to handle the upgrade., also, I cannot be down for several days because I can’t get back and I can’t stay on HS as I quite a few hours invested in a working computer. I am afraid of losing a LOT of work. I had a friend that could have helped me but he is no longer available. I have also found the APPLE code isn’t up to grade like it used to be. 10.4.11 was a solid release and since then APPLE’s QA has gone downhill and I am reluctant to trust them. It seems like after upgrade I end up with more bugs in the upgrade than I did before the upgrade. Right now I am fighting a bug in mail.app that costs me 4-5 hours extra work a day. Apple won’t talk to me about it unless I upgrade (hint they don’t know if its fixed or not but threw it back in my face saying TS. I am thinking about waiting 6-12 months as I do not Trust Apple anymore.
I could not agree more. 10.4 was a solid release. 10.5 not so much. 10.6 was probably the High Water Mark for OSX. Everything since then has been all downhill. The Mac simply doesn’t work like it once did. Sloppy code. Buggy. I once let my Mac run for MONTHS without re-booting. When’s the last time that happened? No one has ever been explain to me – why a Mac running OS 10.6 can find a file on a network server about as quickly as you can type the file name. Ever since 10.7 the Mac looking on a server is like a bling hog looking for a nut.