El Capitain and software compatibility

[Dave2002]

For a few minutes today I seriously thought about upgrading my Snow Leopard iMac machine to El Capitain. At least the machine has a modest amount of spare space (around 70 Gbytes) so the upgrade might work. I read some of the reviews - some very positive, others hinting at some major problems which some (one was a photographer using image software) got hit by.

The main reason I keep SL is for Appleworks, which is a program which hardly anyone else seems to use. Another factor in my brief consideration of moving to EC was that I discovered that it's possible to generate some diagrams in Pages - in a similar way to Appleworks. Then I thought I'd check further to see if, by any chance, Apple had made any form of compatiblity between Pages and Appleworks, but on the machine I tested there wasn't any. I could import whole diagrams into Pages by copy and paste, but not with any hope of editing them.

OK - given that I can do similar things with Pages, would that work for me? Probably not. Even just a few minutes with the older software more or less convinced me to stick with that. I probably only use it a few times a year, but when I do use it it's so much easier and faster for me to use that I just can't be bothered with most of the so called alternatives (some supposedly compatible with Appleworks), and I do have applications which crop up from time to time where I really appreciate using something which does the job for me.

Perhaps one solution to this "problem" is to make a bootable backup disc of the current SL system. There are then two strategies, as I see it:

1. Convert my machine to EC, but use the bootable backup disc if I want to use SL.

2. A variant of the above - install EC, but rather than putting it on the main drive of the machine, put it on an external drive, so that SL is still the default OS.

As I have other machines which work though, I'm not rushing to do this particular "upgrade".

[Ferretfancy]

For a few minutes today I seriously thought about upgrading my Snow Leopard iMac machine to El Capitain. At least the machine has a modest amount of spare space (around 70 Gbytes) so the upgrade might work. I read some of the reviews - some very positive, others hinting at some major problems which some (one was a photographer using image software) got hit by.

The main reason I keep SL is for Appleworks, which is a program which hardly anyone else seems to use. Another factor in my brief consideration of moving to EC was that I discovered that it's possible to generate some diagrams in Pages - in a similar way to Appleworks. Then I thought I'd check further to see if, by any chance, Apple had made any form of compatiblity between Pages and Appleworks, but on the machine I tested there wasn't any. I could import whole diagrams into Pages by copy and paste, but not with any hope of editing them.

OK - given that I can do similar things with Pages, would that work for me? Probably not. Even just a few minutes with the older software more or less convinced me to stick with that. I probably only use it a few times a year, but when I do use it it's so much easier and faster for me to use that I just can't be bothered with most of the so called alternatives (some supposedly compatible with Appleworks), and I do have applications which crop up from time to time where I really appreciate using something which does the job for me.

Perhaps one solution to this "problem" is to make a bootable backup disc of the current SL system. There are then two strategies, as I see it:

1. Convert my machine to EC, but use the bootable backup disc if I want to use SL.

2. A variant of the above - install EC, but rather than putting it on the main drive of the machine, put it on an external drive, so that SL is still the default OS.

As I have other machines which work though, I'm not rushing to do this particular "upgrade".

Dave, you are obviously much more savvy than I am when it comes to upgrades. I have Snow Leopard on my one iMac, but if I wish to upgrade, any new Mac will not recognise the old Appleworks 6 database. Sadly, this contains a complete cross referenced catalogue of thousands of CDs and videos. I'm told that there are probably fixes to download from somewhere on line, but as a bear of little brain I can't face the hassle.

In the end I will probably buy a new laptop or whatever, and move my old iMac into another room to be used just for consulting and adding to my catalogue.

Life's a bitch, but we can always read a good book.

[Anastasius]

Ferretfancy, this thread might be worth bookmarking should you ever decide to bite the bullet and migrate away from the AW database

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2142153?tstart=0

Dave2002...could you not partition your machine and keep a small partition for SL and a larger one for El C ?

[Dave2002]

Ferretfancy, this thread might be worth bookmarking should you ever decide to bite the bullet and migrate away from the AW database

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2142153?tstart=0

Dave2002...could you not partition your machine and keep a small partition for SL and a larger one for El C ?

ferret

I'd almost forgotten about the database, and that you'd mentioned that before. Doesn't Filemaker Pro have similar functionality, if that still exists, that is? Seems now it's called Filemaker 14.

It's also possible that, apart from the deterrent of price, that Filemaker 14 will have drifted too far away from your file formats to be useful - http://www.macworld.com/article/2921...-database.html

Maybe it really is worth keeping SL going for as long as possible. If you have the discs for Appleworks and for Snow Leopard you could try running a virtual machine - such as Parallels, or even the free VirtualBox - though I tried the last one, which works, but has some limitations which are a pain.

PS there was also a Windows version of Appleworks - I have a copy. It had bugs not present in the Mac versions, but would that work in the latest versions of Windows? I can't remember if that had the database section though, so it might not help anyway.

Anastasius

How much space would be required for the boot partitions? i'm not sure I've got enough space, but it's an intersting idea. Presumably data could be kept, if necessary, in a separate partition.

[Anastasius]

http://osxdaily.com/2015/06/15/dual-boot-os-x-el-capitan-partition-mac/

The answer re data is 'Yes' providing the user is you. For example, I just ran TextEdit and went to Open some documents in my Snow Leopard partition. I can open the ones that 'belong' to my user account that I set up there....same login details on both partitions...but not a Test account that I have set up there.

Looking at the performance improvement for El Capitan I think I may very well upgrade myself. Some of the performance increases are pretty damn good. Suck on that, Microsoft.

[Anastasius]

I bit the bullet, Dave and migrated from Mavericks to El Capitan.

Downloading EC was a bit troublesome (as others appear to have found according to Google). But after trying various nudges and prods, finally downloaded the 6GB.
Prior to the upgrade, I Repaired Disk Permissions on my system and made a complete backup to an external drive and checked I could boot up from it.

The actual migration was as painless as one comes to expect from Apple. I started it off, went and made a coffee, came back and logged in. Simple as that.

First impressions... juries out, to be honest, as it's early days. They've changed the screen fonts and so one has to get over that initial 'Oooh, I don't like that' reaction.

I like that they have gone back to a properly differentiated back/forward arrow in Safari. To these old eyes, in Mavericks, the arrows in Safari looked the same whether or not there was a back page to go back to - if you get my drift.

Lot more spacing between things that I don't like. For example, in Mail I have a lot of smart mailboxes but they have changed the font and increased the spacing between line items. All a bit 'Janet and John' IMO. Means you end up having to scroll a lot more which is a PITA. Haven't found a way to change that but not looked that hard as yet. Nothing jumps out at you in Mail Preferences. Maybe Google might offer something but hard to know exactly what to search for.

Spotlight is retrograde. Horrible. Clunky. It's supposed to offer suggestions from the internet and be all singing and dancing. Not here, it isn't. A fair few things it's supposed to do, don't. Same goes for Safari. But could be early tweaks needing to be set up.

I like the fact you can wiggle the mouse and the cursor enlarges...very handy but I guess that there might already be a third-party add-on for Mavericks that I'm not aware of.

I'm hoping that the performance improvements will be there. Haven't tried out Split View yet...that might be a bonus.

I have no iOS stuff worth syncing with. No iPhones etc and so having all those fancy bits and bobs has no relevance for me.

So would I do it again.

Current thoughts are ....No (at least not after the initial look-and-feel).

EDIT: Just opened up the Applications Folder....eeek...so much wasted space...looks like a Tinkertoy. That's it, enough. I think it's back to Mavericks for me.

EDIT EDIT: Just discovered Mail isn't working properly. Cannot send emails. Life is too short to fiddle around with this. Now restoring to Mavericks

EDIT EDIT EDIT : And we're back to Mavericks. Having said all of that, running Mavericks again, I do get the impression that El Capitan was somehow more spritely on use. Ho hum...now if I had another iMac I could play around with that !

[Dave2002]

Anastasius

Sorry to read about your problems with El C. I'm not always so sure that Apple hasn't lost its way a bit. I'm still using SL on one machine, and ML on others, while mrs d upgraded to Yosemite, which doesn't seem to have caused too many problems.

Currently I'm trying to figure out video editing, and Apple seem to have made some mistakes with some "upgrade" versions of iMovie. There are clearly some major flaws with iMovie, such as it doesn't import some fairly standard formats easily, and as far as I can see it has no sensible timelines for audio and video - no doubt in the interests of "simplicity" - dumbing down to make things easy for people who haven't a clue, and impossible for everyone else who has real work or projects to do. I am hoping that the copy of Adobe Premiere which I ordered will do much better. In fact there are a few Apple software packages which aren't really much good, such as Numbers, which I've never really got on with on either an iPad or a "proper" machine. The other packages, such as Pages and Keynote are OK, but don't seem to have major advantages over other software, such as OpenOffice.

[Anastasius]

Looking at the App Store for El Capitan, there are an awful lot more 1-star comments than 5-star!

[Globaltruth]

Looking at the App Store for El Capitan, there are an awful lot more 1-star comments than 5-star!

Doesn't that apply to most reviews of most things?
A sweeping generalisation I know, but people do prefer to chuck brickbats, not bouquets. (Tripadvisor anyone?)

Now for some selective reporting:

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/gates-spends-entire-first-day-back-in-office-trying-to-install-windows-8-1

upgrading to El Capitain non-event for me - went smoothly, so it must be ok!

[Anastasius]

Doesn't that apply to most reviews of most things?
A sweeping generalisation I know, but people do prefer to chuck brickbats, not bouquets. (Tripadvisor anyone?)

Now for some selective reporting:

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/gates-spends-entire-first-day-back-in-office-trying-to-install-windows-8-1

upgrading to El Capitain non-event for me - went smoothly, so it must be ok!

No, it certainly doesn't. Whenever I am thinking about buying anything, I'll make a beeline for the reviews and get a feel for the general consensus. Most times, there is a predominance towards people being happy with the product in question. I'll still take a long hard look at why people gave a negative as sometimes they will highlight some aspect that is critical to ones intended use.

But, hey, if El C works for you then great!

[MrGongGong]

I find the CEC (Canadian Electroacoustic Community) newsgroup invaluable for these things.
Lots of posts from folks who really understand computers and spend all their time in studios so up to speed on what will work or not.

[Dave2002]

Maybe yet snother gotcha is/was inevitable. I ordered Adobe Premiere 14 recently in order to process a project video. Looks as though that may not run on Mountain Lion, so I may be forced to install El Capitain over Mountain Lion and hope that the package will run on that More work ahead!

[Stunsworth]

No, it certainly doesn't. Whenever I am thinking about buying anything, I'll make a beeline for the reviews and get a feel for the general consensus

The problem is that it's a self selecting sample, which I suspect may be geared towards the disaffected. To put it another way, there have been around 1.300 one star reviews for El Capitan compared to several million installations.

[Anastasius]

The problem is that it's a self selecting sample, which I suspect may be geared towards the disaffected. To put it another way, there have been around 1.300 one star reviews for El Capitan compared to several million installations.

No, I find that most reviews are generally skewed positively...unless it really is something bad. And just because there have been a million downloads, doesn't validate El Capo. Just means that there were suckers like me!

Dave2002, could you not load Mavericks?

[Dave2002]

Dave2002, could you not load Mavericks?

Only if I can get the distribution files.