Upgrading to Sierra?

[Dave2002]

I recently decided to upgrade my MBP from Mountain Lion to El Capitan, having decided that there wasn't any particularly good reason to keep a version of ML. There are some slight differences/gotchas regarding searching for files which for me made Spotlight search rather less useful - or at least it was confusing - but I gave up on that anyway, and do file searching directly in Finder.

I wasn't sure how long it would take, or how big the install file would be. As I recall it took about an hour to download - though that will depend on the links used. Some people with very fast broadband might get it quicker than that, others may find it takes longer.

I wanted to capture the install file during the process. This is not completely obvious. After the download has completed a splash scren appears, with the word Continue on. This is the (perhaps only) opportunity to save the installer file. It may not be obvious in the Applications folder, but it can be found using Finder and the file should be called Install OS X El Capitan. It may also (perhaps) be found by scrolling down through all the applications in the Applications folder window where it might be seen at the bottom of the screen. It can be copied and a version put onto an external drive. It can also be copied and moved to a folder on the main drive. The file is around 6.22 GBytes, so actually it will fit on an 8GBytes USB flash stick. If it's allowed to run at this stage it will eventually remove itself. It's not a great idea to click on that at this stage if a copy is required, as that will start the install process.



When finally one does decide to do the install, then activate that file, and it can take about 20-30 minutes in a first stage install, after which the machine will shut down and restart. It may do that several more times. The overall process to a working system might be as long as an hour, and even then some more work might be needed. For example, the new (now running) system will probably rebuild all the mail, which may take a long while.

Having done this upgrade I now wonder whether it's worth moving one or more of my machines up to Sierra. I tried Sierra out recently in an Apple store, and managed to get several videos working simultaneously, including one in PiP (Picture in Picture) which is a feature not available in El Capitan. Perhaps oddly, the install file for Sierra is (I'm told) slightly smaller than for EL C - at around 5.7 GBytes.

Another concern I had on my MBP was how much spare space was needed in order to carry out the upgrade. Someone suggested that 20 Gbytes spare would probably work - so I copied files off temporarily, and indeed it does seem that 20 Gbytes spare is probably enough.

[Dave2002]

... continued/continuing

Here's what the similar installation splashscreen for Sierra looks like.



Also, note that if you get this far, and want to copy the install file to the same (main) drive you will have to explicitly copy the file, and then paste it back in - say to a different folder. Otherwise you'll only get an alias, not the file itself. If you use an external drive you can get the copy just by drag and drop.

I've not clicked past this point myself - yet!

[french frank]

Is this something special about upgrading to Sierra? I upgraded two machines - a necessity when the for3.org email addresses failed to work and that was the solution offered. Not having such a superloaded HD as you did, there was no problem. Sierra has been bug-free for me.

[Dave2002]

Is this something special about upgrading to Sierra? I upgraded two machines - a necessity when the for3.org email addresses failed to work and that was the solution offered. Not having such a superloaded HD as you did, there was no problem. Sierra has been bug-free for me.

Not really - and I've heard that Sierra is reasonably good, and my own investigations suggests it's OK. It's not always a good idea to install new software without checking it out first, or taking precautions. Some of the earlier Mac OS X versions - Mavericks, Yosemite, even El C may have presented problems for some people when first released, and there may always be some people who run esoteric software which won't work under some of the OSs on offfer. Some people have software which works OK under their currently installed OS, but which won't work under newer versions, and if they want to keep the functionality they have to have ways of making things work - perhaps dual boot (or multi boot) systems, or use of virtual systems such as Virtual Box, Parallels, VMWare etc. Sometimes it's relatively hard to work back to a functional version of an earlier OS, so it's easier to take a working bootable copy before hitting the Continue button for a new install.

I do try to take a bootable backup now before moving on, though this usually means that one usually cheap portable HD is just stuck in a drawer for a year or two and not used, though I now know how to make a fairly minimal system which can be put onto (say) a 64Gbyte (fairly cheap?) USB stick.

[french frank]

[Richard Barrett]

I found Sierra to be fine once I'd fiddled around with it enough that it behaves as closely as possible to the late lamented OS10.8.6.

[Dave2002]

I found Sierra to be fine once I'd fiddled around with it enough that it behaves as closely as possible to the late lamented OS10.8.6.

I'm wondering what was so special about OS10.8.6 - Mountain Lion. Some things behaved a bit differently, but with a bit of effort it's not impossible to either learn some new tricks for Sierra or El Capitan, or get things to look pretty much the same.

For me the version I want to retain access to is 10.6.8 - Snow Leopard, as it's the last version capable of running some older software which I still find useful a few times a year.

I have now clicked pass the start point I mentioned earlier in msg 2 in order to set up a working version of Sierra (initially for testing???) on a partition of an external hard drive.
I decided to live just slightly dangerously and bought a new external drive. I formatted it as Mac OS extended (Journaled), then created two partitions using Disk Utility. I then produced a clone of my MBP (El C) using Carbon Copy Cloner. Then I moved the drive to an iMac (also running El C) and set the Sierra install on its way - selecting the empty partition as the target. It took quite a long while - far longer than the estimated time, and then the new system does require configuring - and some remembrance of passwords etc.

I still find setting up iCloud - or rather not setting it up - somewhat problematic. Apple's default is to assume that you're going to go for it, and there are warnings about files being "deleted" if the iCloud options are not set. I think they are perhaps too drastic - nothing should actually be deleted from the newly created system, but files which have been copied to iCloud from the particular machine/OS combination will not be accessible. According to the messages, iCloud tries to copy Desktop and Documents folders. The set up also is quite fussy about Find my Mac, and turning all the cloud features off requires the password at the Apple Store. With a bit of effort it's possible to turn everything off (seemingly) including Siri, though it still gets set up as an application, and can be reactivated if desired by supplying the Apple id and password again.

Once the Sierra system is running, it is treated as a completely new system, so needs to be set up with machine password, and the email accounts have to be set up again. There may be some faffing about reinstalling existing programs, or maybe the migration tool will make that simpler. Most people will perhaps not want to do this more than once, so will "simply" move on to the next version with no serious intention of reverting back to earlier versions. If there is enough space on the main drive some people will find that creating multiple start up partitions may help them, and that doesn't seem too difficult to manage.

For me the only feature of Sierra which I think I might "need" (not really - but might be nice to have ...) is PiP - Picture in Picture. Others may have other features which they want in that version, and users who want to use multiple compatible devices - iPhones, iPads etc. and use iCloud may want to have significantly different set up procedures.

The time to do all this for any one machine is probably about 2 hours - some may find it quicker, others slower. Someone asked recently if I do this often - and the answer is not really. I'm not really convinced that it's worth chasing every "upgrade" with each yearly release, though unless one really wants to run old software, running versions which are more than a few years behind the currently supported versions may cause other problems, so a catch up every few years does make sense.

Because of the effort involved, it may really be worthwhile adopting the multiple startup partition approach, if space permits when doing an upgrade.

[Richard Barrett]

I'm wondering what was so special about OS10.8.6 - Mountain Lion. Some things behaved a bit differently, but with a bit of effort it's not impossible to either learn some new tricks for Sierra or El Capitan, or get things to look pretty much the same.

For me the version I want to retain access to is 10.6.8

10.6.8 is what I meant - possibly confusing it with 8.6 which was another one I retained after everyone else had moved on.

[french frank]

I'm wondering what was so special about OS10.8.6 - Mountain Lion. Some things behaved a bit differently, but with a bit of effort it's not impossible to either learn some new tricks for Sierra or El Capitan, or get things to look pretty much the same.p partition approach, if space permits when doing an upgrade.

Dave2002 - do you only have one computer? With a MacBook and an iMac, I've always upgraded the MB first and checked how everything works. If you only use some of these programs 'a few times a year', is it really worth avoiding upgrades altogether?

[Dave2002]

10.6.8 is what I meant - possibly confusing it with 8.6 which was another one I retained after everyone else had moved on.

OK - I'm with you there.

Do you think you really need to keep that version now? I'm satisfied that I still want it, or at least access to it for the foreseeable future, but not everyone does.

I have found that the wheels are starting to drop off (metaphorically of course) with some software - including Chrome, Qobuz, Firefox etc. in systems up to Mavericks, which is why I've now migrated a few machines to El Capitan. The things which were "lost" from Mountain Lion didn't seem too important, and work arounds and user experience meant that useful features of earlier systems could be replicated or achieved by other means - though here some users have had big problems as they didn't figure out the differences, and have got stuck in a mindset which doesn't let them move on. The biggest problem for me, before I noticed the issue, was Spotlight, which appeared to be easier to use in earlier OS versions and could locate files quickly. Once I realised that it is actually possible to do this easily enough in Finder abandoning Spotlight was no big problem, but not everyone seems to have found that.

El Capitan has some useful features, such as being able to split windows on a large enough display. I'm not so bothered about the iPhone, iPad compatiblity features - I really don't want my data floating around in some "space" out there anyway - though obviously if I use email to move data around (I do ...) then the data is out there. The point is though, that I don't send email containing data or copies of files which I want to remain locked down on my machine. Sierra has the Siri voice activation system similar to that on the iPhones. This works with remote servers, so ostensibly others could work out what you are saying or "writing" - though Apple claim that the data is anonymised in such a way that data can't "escape" or be misused. As I mentioned earlier, Sierra has PiP which is quite neat.

Anyone who doesn't want/need Siri or PiP might, IMO, just as well stick with El Capitan - though if anyone thinks of anything else which is a reason to "upgrade", please feel free to post it.

I suppose Apple will be developing the next tweaks to their systems soon, so anyone who really wants to "keep up" will have to go through the whole process again soon enough.

Here's our expected release schedule for macOS 10.13:

5 June 2017: macOS 10.13 unveiled at WWDC 2017. Apple demonstrates new features and announces name of new OS. First developer beta released to devs.
July 2017: First public beta released. Developer beta continues to receive updates.
September 2017: Final version of macOS 10.13 is released to the public.

from http://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/ma...mours-3647580/

[Dave2002]

Dave2002 - do you only have one computer? With a MacBook and an iMac, I've always upgraded the MB first and checked how everything works. If you only use some of these programs 'a few times a year', is it really worth avoiding upgrades altogether?

Playing leapfrog here. I have more than two computers, and there are other family members who also have similar machines. Avoiding upgrades is fine until the wheels start to come off, or if there's software which cannot run on newer systems. I think that Mavericks, Yosemite and El Capitan are all roughly similar, and anyone who has an earlier version when they decide to upgrade might as well go straight to El Capitan or even Sierra - see my last post - unless they have strong reasons to cling on to an old release. It may also be worth doing an upgrade to an external drive each time there's a release - i.e. not actually carrying through with the upgrade - so at least to get the installer files, which can then be re-downloaded from the App Store as older versions will appear in Purchased. If this is not done, then there will be no purchase record, and downloading previous versions won't be possible without help from others.

[french frank]

Anyone who doesn't want/need Siri or PiP might, IMO, just as well stick with El Capitan - though if anyone thinks of anything else which is a reason to "upgrade", please feel free to post it.

I mentioned the point earlier: all the @for3.org email addresses required an upgrade to Sierra - which Mark told me about. So there are systems/software which are ahead of the game.

[Anastasius]

I'm finding that many of the websites and forums that I frequent no longer will display embedded YouTube videos in posts due to changes re Flash etc and end of support for older versions of Safari and Chrome on Mavericks. I may well bite the bullet and migrate to El Capitan. Will probably delete the Snow leopard partition as the programmes there...Adobe stuff like Photoshop I've never really learned to use them and certainly in the last two years not even booted into SL.

[Dave2002]

I'm finding that many of the websites and forums that I frequent no longer will display embedded YouTube videos in posts due to changes re Flash etc and end of support for older versions of Safari and Chrome on Mavericks. I may well bite the bullet and migrate to El Capitan. Will probably delete the Snow leopard partition as the programmes there...Adobe stuff like Photoshop I've never really learned to use them and certainly in the last two years not even booted into SL.

I spent a few happy hours this last weekend installing El C on an office machine (not mine) not far away. It took a few of us to do it, as we wanted to be very careful as the machine is used daily for a "real" work purpose. The machine is capable of running Sierra - we checked by running it from a Sierra partition I now have on an external drive, but we settled for El C as the one most likely to work.

A particular problem is that the user of the machine likes Entourage for mail, but Entourage has been obsoleted since around 2009. The particular sofware is part of Office 2008, and the principal user doesn't particularly want to move away from that package. I was sceptical that El C would work with Entourage, as others have reported that it doesn't work with Mavericks, Yosemite, El C etc. gradually over the last few years, but we worked with users who have a version which apparently works on their own home machine.

We did notice that running Sierra on our target machine seemed to give a very fast response for web pages - even faster than El C.

One apparent gotcha is that if you haven't updated Snow Leopard on your machine for some while, a message will come up that you can't upgrade it from 10.6.8 but you have to have 10.7 if you're starting from Snow Leopard. This turns out to be fixable, as Apple issued a retrospective fix to 10.6.8 not very long ago. That is probably not a technical fix at all, but just a licence permission flag reset. Once SL has been given the very latest update - you may think you've already done it - but do it again, then it should be possible to install El C or Sierra.

If you already have the download files for El C or Sierra, or have downloaded those in the past, you are more or less set to go. Previous downloads can be found under Purchases in the App Store.

If you haven't done that, then finding the download/installer files for El Capitan might be a bit tricky, though they are available direct from the Apple site - but do require a bit of tricksy searching. Going straight to Sierra is easier, as the download files should show up as the current upgrade from SL - though not all machines are capable of running it. My 24 inch iMac can only be upgraded to El C, so it's a good thing I already have the installer files.

As far as we can tell the office machine is now running much better with El C, and some overheating problems which we noted have now been contained. Generally it runs much faster, and web sites which were not accessible previously have now become visible again.

We might not push that one on to Sierra though, as it may cause the Entourage email system to fail. At some stage the main user may have to adapt to Apple Mac Mail, but that has been deferred for a little while. Alternatively when a new machine is purchased as a replacement in the near future it'll probably have Office 2016 on, so moving the Entourage mail to Outlook might not be too difficult, and acceptable to the user.

How big is your Snow Leopard partition? I'm thinking of partitioning the main drive on the one machine still running that, and having it boot normally into El C, though I'm slightly nervous or repartitioning the main drive. I ran Disk Utiliy partitioning a few times recently on an external drive, and the very last time I ran it I managed to wipe out the data on the last partition before I split it. Not a problem, as have (fortunately) found backup files, but could be a severe problem if I did that on the main drive.

If you need help finding the installer files for Sierra or El C, do PM me.

[hmvman]

I'm finding that many of the websites and forums that I frequent no longer will display embedded YouTube videos in posts due to changes re Flash etc and end of support for older versions of Safari and Chrome on Mavericks. I may well bite the bullet and migrate to El Capitan. Will probably delete the Snow leopard partition as the programmes there...Adobe stuff like Photoshop I've never really learned to use them and certainly in the last two years not even booted into SL.

I've just found this thread having been about to post a question about videos on Safari.

I now can't see or play Vimeo videos on either of my computers. I have an iMac and a MacBook Pro both running 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion). Up until last Saturday I have had no problems playing Vimeo videos (principally on the All of Bach site). However, when I tried to play one on Monday nothing happened. I checked another site where there are some Vimeo videos and there are just black rectangles instead of the videos. Does anyone know if Vimeo have stopped support on older OS versions?

Like others here I haven't updated my OS because of the implications for several applications I use - including Photoshop.