“I always recommend that my readers be careful about new operating systems, to take the process seriously,” Gene Steinberg writes for The Tech Night Owl.
“I wouldn’t assume that Sierra is going to be the perfect experience for everyone. There are far too many variables, so it’s best to prepare for something to go wrong and have a backup. It is also a good idea to check online and see what sort of problems others are reporting,” Steinberg writes. “While almost anything can happen to someone, if you see a number of Mac users describing a specific problem, it has to be taken seriously, even if it may not impact your setup.”
” I read one article suggesting the onset of Wi-Fi connection glitches. This takes us back to OS X Yosemite, which produced similar problems for many people until it was finally resolved not long before its successor, El Capitan arrived. I wouldn’t assume the causes are the same, or how many people are affected,” Steinberg writes. “Even though Sierra doesn’t have that many new or changed features compared to previous releases, there are enough under-the-hood alterations to cause trouble. So it doesn’t hurt to check the App Store or the sites run by the developers of your work-critical apps to see whether there are any problems with Sierra [before upgrading].”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Good advice. Check online about how your critical apps are working with new OSes and always, always, always back up first!
Are you experiencing any issues with macOS Sierra?
Works fantastic for me so far, but I only have it installed on my personal laptop. My work laptop is far more mission-critical, so I’m waiting on that.
Personally, I think Siri is a little silly, but I absolutely LOVE being able to unlock my laptop with my watch. Far more useful than I expected it to be!!
I updated. I was locking up on El Capitan 10.11.5 where sometime late at night, after Time Machine Backup. Not every time maybe once a week. I decided to upgrade and see if it helps. Time will tell.
I have been suspending my VMs every night while this has been going on.
Sierra is a solid upgrade, even through the betas. So I am not so worried.
For Time Machine users, I would recommend at least 1 direct clone of your boot drive to an external HD as a direct fallback bootable drive.
Reliance on Time Machine for a reliable bootable drive might backfire.
I have a lot of external bootable media. Have tested, restoring from Time Machine after an OS upgrade. I was successful. But I hear you, definitely have a bootable back up with CCC too.
El Capitan was getting unusable; locking up weekly. Took the plunge.
So far, all’s well on Sierra.
This was the easiest update yet, and everything works like a charm! I love the features of this upgrade, and the price was perfect too! By the way, I had seen any number of articles about doing a clean install, I posted a question on Apple’s support system asking if it was necessary, got two replies within minutes from other users that it wasn’t, so I went ahead. I did make a complete backup first just in case, but really, this is such a solid upgrade. No worries. No problem.
Works perfectly for me. Love Siri!
I would sincerely like to know…what do you use Siri for? Initially it seems like more of a gimmick, and I can’t see myself ever really using it. I’d like to know what others use it for.
Siri works well with Finder.
“List all files that are yellow”
Siri: Here you go: [Lists the first ten, followed by “Show all 217 results in Finder…”
“Just those in the last 30 days”
Siri: Have I ever told you your filin’ is so stylin’? [Lists the first ten such, followed by “Show all 24 eesults in Finder…”
Haven’t found anything broken yet.
Would anyone be able to comment on Aperture and iPhoto compatibility? Since they are no longer updated or supported, I know they’re on borrowed time, but still better and more useful (and user-friendly) than any of the non-subscription alternatives.
I’m interested in this as well. The latest update from Roaring Apps (https://roaringapps.com/apps) is that iPhoto compatibility is still not known. So, my Sierra upgrades are on hold for now.
Another application I use a lot is endnote. I received an email last week from the publisher telling endnote users to not upgrade to Sierra because of compatibility issues.
An update on iPhoto and Sierra. Roaring Apps has given both Aperture and iPhoto the “Works Fine” rating, so you should be good to go for the Sierra upgrade.
Thanks, Tom!!
Traffic Light (Red, Yellow, Green) buttons are still way too small. My only complaint.
Works great for me AFTER a few days of Photos indexing my faces database.
I wish Apple would make these things noticeable to the average user. My fans were running on maximum with no Apps open and both CPUs on my Core2Duo were consuming 100%…
Turns out it was a process called photosfacesd or something that was scanning all the faces in my photos. No notification of this unless you count the one notification at the beginning saying my Mac was being optimized…
If you have Photos open the process pauses, so that was a workaround, but damn Apple, you don’t make things easy for the average Joe with a 6 year old Mac!
Updating is not recommended if you use ScanSnap scanners to create PDFs, apparently due to a change in Apple’s PDFkit. You can visit the Fuji Scansnap site to verify the status of the problem, but right now the recommendation is to stick with Yosemite. The problem affects even existing PDFs created before the upgrade, so that if you open ScanSnap created PDF data can be lost
Apple should be dinged for poor QA in changes to PDFKit in Sierra. Serious compatibility problems created for users of one of the most popular scanners, but without any commensurate value created by the changes. This simply should not have happened!
Another important program, QuickBooks, has issued a warning to its customers that they should not install Sierra at this time.
Apple’s issuance of OS upgrades on a schedule instead of when the upgrade is really ready should stop. And Apple failed to properly use feedback during the public beta period to clean up the OS before release. Some people are facing serious loss of data created under previous versions of the OS.
At intuits support site (FAQ) they said quickbooks is compatible- just run quickbooks updater before and after
https://community.intuit.com/questions/1430533-is-quickbooks-for-mac-2016-compatible-with-mac-osx-sierra
Lose wifi connection after display awakes from sleep …. never had this problem before …. damn ….
Same here. Every wake-up requires manual wi-fi turn off then turn on to establish a connection. The problem seems to be that Sierra tries to connect to wi-fi but then times out too soon. Had this same problem with a previous OS update but don’t remember which one. Fix came with next update. Stuck with the problem for the next many weeks. Also, Sierra corrupted Evernote – had to delete it and reach back withTime Machine to save all my data.
I have had that problem since El Cap, not every time but probably 25-50% of the time.
When Apple is trying to be all things to all people, and trying to cram feature after feature after feature to attract people using shiny objects, this is what you get.
I just work around it, its a different world.
Installed Sierra, seems to be no wireless problem. Siri: works about as well as it has in the past. You can open apps with it (open Mail) etc. looks like you still have to magically know the words Siri wants. tried opening various files by name, have to figure out what exact wording Siri wants, so If I stumble on the combination I will use it, otherwise I wont put any serious effort into it.
Logitech control center wasn’t ready on time and I lost my back and forward side buttons. I now see 3.9.5 is out and restored my buttons. I had no idea how often I used those buttons until I lost them.
Upgraded from El Captain with quite basic extra apps on a SSD drive and with another SSD drive running Maverick being my main audio & video prod system on the same MacPro 2010, I can’t bounce between them from “Startup Disk”, only when I disconnect one of the drives. Any clue?
I have a 2008 MacBook Pro that when installing, hung up and didn’t progress for 4 hours. I shut it down and when rebooted it, kept saying kernel error. Thankfully I read an article (featured here) about making a boot up card. I did that and reinstalled sierra and everything seems fine. On another note my mini mac and MacBook Air installed sierra without a glitch
Installation was a snap and it all works well. Siri alone, was worth the whole download. I use it all the time and it really saves me a lot of time and effort. I’d say it was a big OS upgrade and worth it. Now if they would only come out with a new iMac to run it on!
macOS Sierra works great EXCEPT…. the one feature that I looked forward to most… unlocking with my watch. I’ve set up everything just like I was supposed to and it did work one time earlier today right after I set it up. Now, I open my MacBook and it says “Unlocking with Apple Watch” with the spinning gear and then politely pops up the prompt for my password. So much for that great feature. My watch has been slow throughout watchOS2 and is still not back up to original speed but is faster. But I really think this issue is because the watch is just too slow. Really sucks though because this is really why I went on and installed Sierra. Oh well…. Another bite out of the Apple.
The Apple Watch unlocking is still buggy, but it has worked most of the time for me. It seems like both your Mac and the watch have to get used to each other, since it seems to be improving over time.