Mac OSX El Capitan

[johngalt]

I just upgraded my Mac to El Capitan (10.11). Ok, I'm a bit behind... I know that 10.12 is the most recent version, but some of the software I use hasn't been updated to support it yet. I've gotten over my need to be on the bleeding edge all the time.

I upgraded direct from Mountain Lion (10.8), so I skipped 10.9 and 10.10. The upgrade was mostly successful. For some reason I had to re-enter my wifi password. It also lost my Finder favorites. Minor issues. The most important issue was that it import all my mail, which it did.

The biggest thing I noticed is how ugly the GUI is now. Everything is grey and white. No more color in the toolbar icons of the Apple apps. There is very little color variation between the foreground window and background windows. Everything looks flat, no more 3D shading on buttons, icons, etc. The translucent menus are also annoying. Johnny Ives needs to go back and read Apple's human interface guidelines.

The other thing I noticed is El Capitan is significantly slower than Mountain Lion. I found that if you go to System Preferences -> Accessibility and check 'Reduce transparency', that turns off all the translucent effects. It seems to have greatly improved the performance, now that it doesn't have to waste cpu cycles on pointless eye candy. I'm also experimenting with 'Increase contrast'. I'm not sure yet if it improves anything.

I would still be running Snow Leopard (10.6) if it was still supported by my more important apps. IMHO Apple's best OS. So it goes...

 

[JK-linux]

I'm with you. I regret leaving ML and am running Capitan. Even the name makes me cringe. I have a Mini I use as a media server running ML and plan to never upgrade it. How can you screw up Unix so badly?

The worst is, their development path strongly indicates they are going for essentially iPhone OS on Mac's at some point, slowly converging everything, release by release. At some point, I'll go back to Linux I guess.

 

[joebiker]

I just wish they would leave things alone. They want you to have to buy a new machine every couple of years. The next new machine for me, may not be an apple.

 

[BC38]

I just wish they would leave things alone. They want you to have to buy a new machine every couple of years. The next new machine for me, may not be an apple.

LOL, like Win-Doze machines are any better!

I don't do Mac, only because EVERYTHING for them costs twice as much, but the folks in Redmond are constantly pushing upgrade, upgrade, upgrade too.

And to add insult to injury they also release products that are only 95% ready and let us end users pay to be their beta-testers...

 

[DavidWJ]

I worked for Apple and will never purchase an Apple device or product. Their marketing is brilliant but their products leave much to be desired.

 

[ChattanoogaPhil]

Sorry to hear about computers and operating systems that don't serve folks well.

I've got a late 2009 27'' iMac. I used El Capitan and was quite happy with it. I'm now using macOS Sierra. Very much enjoy Siri. A few years ago I installed an additional 8gig ram (total 12) and recently installed a 4TB hard drive. iMac works great for what I use it for.

Typically.... Fox Business is constantly on during the day using EyeTV as well as Scottrade's trading platform with streaming quotes is always operating during the day on a second monitor connected to the iMac. While those are working, I answer and make phone calls with the iMac and sometimes FaceTime video call too. While that's going on, it's not uncommon for my wife to watch a movie via Apple TV in the living room which streams our movies from my iMac. I've got an external 4TB drive for Time Machine that automatically backs up everything. All my photos and personal vids are sent to iCloud for backup too. My nearly 8 y/o iMac does all this along with surfing the Net, email, texting, photos, vids... on and on... as well as syncs with all my IOS devices. Everything works smoothly and seamlessly. Love it.

My only gripe is that in the rare event I turn it off or restart it takes a lot longer to startup. I think the longer startup times began when I updated to El Capitan or maybe it was previous version... I forget. The iMac typically stays on 24/7 so it's pretty much a non issue.

 

[joebiker]

LOL, like Win-Doze machines are any better!

I don't do Mac, only because EVERYTHING for them costs twice as much, but the folks in Redmond are constantly pushing upgrade, upgrade, upgrade too.

And to add insult to injury they also release products that are only 95% ready and let us end users pay to be their beta-testers...

Ya well I would not ever go back to Windows. Will be a Linux or chrome operating system.

 

[dougb1946]

One of the best things about my upgrade to Sierra is that all the Microsoft programs failed to make the move. The system came with everything I needed, and just for giggles, I added the free Open Office, but don't need to use it. Note: the OS upgrades are free and are not monthly rentals. Also, while I run antivirus, I never have found any problems.

 

[chaparrito]

I have a 2008 15in. MacBook Pro and a 2015 MacBook Air. I like them both, but at home I prefer the larger old one. It's running 10.11 and has 4g of ram. The battery is only good for about an hour anymore so it stays plugged in most of the time. About six months ago I got a good price on a 250g solid state (flash) hard drive and so took an hour and swapped out the original drive. It's markedly faster now and runs much cooler. The MB Air is a great machine but doesn't have a built in optical drive. I did buy an Apple plug in accessory Superdrive for burning and DVD play. The battery in the thing is silly good. I only charge it up about twice a month and don't ever shut it down.
I've been an Apple shareholder since the mid 80's. Linux is fun to play with but too geeky for me to get any work done, and I despise Win-doze for a variety of reasons. FanBoy? Guilty. This is a forum for FanBoys of another well known brand after all, isn't it?

 

[Ben_hutcherson]

I've been running with the "new" GUI since the the days of Public Beta 1 10.10, but honestly hated it for a while and stuck with Mavericks as long as I possibly could.

I finally bit the bullet when Mavericks(10.9) stopped receiving security updates and went all the way to Sierra on my main Macbook Pro.

For one thing, enabling Dark Mode (system preferences-->general-->"use dark menu bar and dock) makes it a lot more palatable to me.

Overall, I'm happy with it.

Running Mountain Lion or earlier is very soon not going to be a viable option. The latest version of Xcode(Apple's compiler) will only compile for 10.9 and later. I'm running Snow Leopard on a couple of computers(like my first gneration MacBook Air). Fortunately, at least for a secure web browser we're going to have FireFox 45 ESR for a while, and after that we can go to TenFourFox(current maintained Mozilla-based web browser for PowerPC Macs) under Rosetta. If you rely on Office(I have to for work) 2016 requires 10.10 or newer. Granted, I often get laughs because I'm running three versions of Office('08, '11, and '16) and actually prefer the UI of '08, but still sometimes have to have a newer version.

All of that said, here are a few thoughts.

First of all, upgrade your RAM. I installed Sierra on a DP1 on a 2010 Macbook with 2gb of RAM and it was so slow as to be unuseable. Upgrading to 8gb made a huge difference, and installing a solid state drive gave even more improvement.

Second, it's entirely possible that Spotlight is still indexing, which is a huge resource drain while it's going on. Give it a day or two and you may find things improve substantially.

I find Sierra quite fast on my 2012 MBP(non-Retina). I have 16gb of RAM and a 1TB Samsung EVO 850 SSD.

One last thing-I did something I've never done on a Mac and changed the default wallpaper to an image of my own choosing. I'm using an image from my favorite photographer-"Hotshot Eastbound" by O.Winston Link." I find that it works well in combination with dark mode and actually makes the dock tolerable.

BTW, yes I am an Apple fanboy. I collect antique Macs in addition to several other things. I honestly haven't done a recent count, but I have a lot. The last count I did was right at 100, and I've added several since then. I don't have any "new" Macs(anything made in the last four years) but my collection runs from 1986(512Ke) to the 2012 MBP I use daily with a heavy bias toward the early 2000s(wacky designs of the second Steve Jobs era).

 

[johngalt]

I've been running with the "new" GUI since the the days of Public Beta 1 10.10, but honestly hated it for a while and stuck with Mavericks as long as I possibly could.

I finally bit the bullet when Mavericks(10.9) stopped receiving security updates and went all the way to Sierra on my main Macbook Pro.

For one thing, enabling Dark Mode (system preferences-->general-->"use dark menu bar and dock) makes it a lot more palatable to me.

Overall, I'm happy with it.

Running Mountain Lion or earlier is very soon not going to be a viable option. The latest version of Xcode(Apple's compiler) will only compile for 10.9 and later. I'm running Snow Leopard on a couple of computers(like my first gneration MacBook Air). Fortunately, at least for a secure web browser we're going to have FireFox 45 ESR for a while, and after that we can go to TenFourFox(current maintained Mozilla-based web browser for PowerPC Macs) under Rosetta. If you rely on Office(I have to for work) 2016 requires 10.10 or newer. Granted, I often get laughs because I'm running three versions of Office('08, '11, and '16) and actually prefer the UI of '08, but still sometimes have to have a newer version.

All of that said, here are a few thoughts.

First of all, upgrade your RAM. I installed Sierra on a DP1 on a 2010 Macbook with 2gb of RAM and it was so slow as to be unuseable. Upgrading to 8gb made a huge difference, and installing a solid state drive gave even more improvement.

Second, it's entirely possible that Spotlight is still indexing, which is a huge resource drain while it's going on. Give it a day or two and you may find things improve substantially.

I find Sierra quite fast on my 2012 MBP(non-Retina). I have 16gb of RAM and a 1TB Samsung EVO 850 SSD.

One last thing-I did something I've never done on a Mac and changed the default wallpaper to an image of my own choosing. I'm using an image from my favorite photographer-"Hotshot Eastbound" by O.Winston Link." I find that it works well in combination with dark mode and actually makes the dock tolerable.

BTW, yes I am an Apple fanboy. I collect antique Macs in addition to several other things. I honestly haven't done a recent count, but I have a lot. The last count I did was right at 100, and I've added several since then. I don't have any "new" Macs(anything made in the last four years) but my collection runs from 1986(512Ke) to the 2012 MBP I use daily with a heavy bias toward the early 2000s(wacky designs of the second Steve Jobs era).

My primary mac is an early 2011 17" Macbook Pro. 16 GB RAM and a 480 GB Mercury elite SSD. I plan on holding on to it as long as I can since there are no more 17" models, has all the ports and built in super drive. I don't think the newest machines are much faster than what I have.

Also bought a used 2011 15" Macbook Pro for testing. I am keeping it at 10.6. it has the 8 GB and 256 GB SSD that was originally in my 17" before I upgraded it.

Since turning off the transparency effects, the speed is pretty good. I have noticed the network speed is faster than 10.6/10.8. Not so much with throughput, but the initial connection seems to be faster - it feels like it responds quicker to page loads and refreshes. The notes say that 10.11 was supposed to improve internet speeds, so that seems to be true.

Compatibility with my old software has been good, I only had to update GPGTool (an encryption program that I use with Mail). Office 2011 still works.

I tried briefly reversing the colors, but it was too different for me. I suppose I will get used to it, but I still think this GUI is ugly.

A small correction to Xcode - Xcode 8.1 will still let you target 10.6, but it only comes packaged with the 10.12 sdk. It makes it dangerous to target earlier OSes, because even if you target a pre-10.12 OS, it will let you use 10.12 APIs.If you use them, the app will crash if run on an old OS. I wish apple would support the old SDKs so those problems can be avoided.

I had problems with the new 10.12 APIs in Xcode 8.1 causing build problems, so I went back to 7.3, which is the newest version that has the 10.11 sdk.

 

[johngalt]

Well, after a couple months of trying to like El Capitan, I'm reverting back to Mountain Lion. The flat grey GUI actually started to grow on me, but I had several problems I couldn't get past.

Mail: it marks a few of mail folders as having unread mail, but they don't. Can't find any way to clear it.

Disk utility: it is now a stripped down steaming pile. The gui for making disk partitions was designed by idiots. I discovered this after getting my repaired 17" MBPro back and was trying to partition a new 1 TB SSD.

Spotlight can't find anything. It consistently comes up with suggestions unrelated to my search, usually in one of my virtual machines. But it doesn't tell you that. The first clue that it is in the VM is it launches when you open the item. Usually the Windows VM.

iTunes can't sync my old 2G iPod without freezing part way through.

Time Machine gets stuck in the 'preparing for backup' stage for approx 8 hours. The genius claims it is trying to be 'more efficient' about finding what needs to be backed up, and will get faster. Eh, ML takes about 30 sec to do the same backup. They apparently have a different definition of 'efficient' than me.

I'll leave el captan on my backup Mac for those things that require it, primarily turbo tax. I have most of my work moved back to ML, the only thing I'm missing is a couple months of email. I tried going into gmail and marking it unread, but Mail still won't download it.