Get your Macintosh ready for OS X Yosemite

“Apple recently circulated its second pre-release ‘Golden Master’ build of OS X Yosemite among developers, signalling introduction of the new Mac software is close,” Jonny Evans writes for Computerworld. “If you’ve not been using the public beta, what can you do today to get your Mac ready for the new OS?”

“This may also be a good point to buy your Mac some extra RAM,” Evans writes. “If your Mac is compatible then you should run Software Update to ensure your current system is up-to-date before you install the new OS. It makes sense to check the Mac App Store to ensure you have the latest versions of your apps installed. This is also an excellent time to go through your apps and check your larger files — do you still use them? Spring clean your Mac to maximize available space as you prepare for the new OS.”

More info in the full article here.

21 Comments

        1. BTW, if you are ever concerned, do your Time Machine backup first, then upgrade. I find the small updates have not messed anything up lately, for us anyway.

        2. Yes, you are right. Using Time Machine, or doing a clone immediately before the update, is the solution for these concerns. Even if you think it is “safe” (you waited “6 months or so”), existing data corruption on the startup volume can still cause problems when applying a major system update. Or maybe there is a power outage during the update process (or your cat steps on the surge suppressor switch).

          So, since you still need to do a backup immediately before a system upgrade to be “safe,” there is no need to wait halfway to the next major OS X upgrade. Just wait until the “dot dot 1” update appears.

          (It is also important to understand HOW to restore your complete system from a backup, whether you use Time Machine or a clone.)

  1. macdoctors is right.

    For the first time since starting with Tiger, I’ll postpone Yosemite until well after MDN and the usual Mac sites have evaluated it.

    IOS 8 isn’t Yosemite, but it says something about Apple to release something so flawed. My iPod 5G performance has slowed conspicuously, the WIFI sync on iTunes has stopped, so has the sync with the iPad Mini.

        1. I’ve had the same experience. My only problem has been the flaky back-to-my-mac screen sharing. The rest has been solid, including Mail.

          As to the ‘Extra RAM” advice: I just ran a computation that took 10,000 randomly generated 5×5 matrices and found their LU decomposition. On my home iMac (3.4 GHz Core i7) with 24 GB ram, it took ~29 seconds, on my office iMac (3.4 GHz Core i7) with 12 GB ram, it took ~45 seconds. RAM is the cheapest enhancement with the biggest return on investment.

  2. I think I’m all set on RAM. I upgraded my 2011 MacBook Pro’s RAM to 8 gigabytes after I upgraded from Lion to Mountain Lion. The hard drive is a Seagate hybrid drive, so it has 8 gigabytes of flash cache, which seems to double my effective RAM.

  3. Signed up for beta and have been running it for a little over a month now. Have had no issues. Work tech support in school district and wanted to see how it ran since, without a doubt, there will be some staff that will ask about Yosemite when it’s out to the general public. I haven’t found anything I use that went flaky. Even my cDock settings carried right over. Of course, your mileage may/will vary.

  4. In my experience with the Yosemite DP, 8GB of RAM is easily enough and you can get away with significantly less if you have an SSD(I discovered this when old ’09 Macbook with only 3GB of RAM and an SSD I have ran Yosemite ridiculously well, and I mean RIDICULOUSLY).

  5. Just make a good clone of your Mavericks installation, so if Yosemite is full of bugs like iOS 8.0.2, at least you will be able to revert back to Mavericks and not have to wait for some update that will hopefully fix the issues you are having.

  6. Rather than upgrade your Production Drive, install it on an outboard USB drive (may have to install an older OS and then upgrade it) and then startup from it and run it through its paces. If it blows up, you can always start up from your internal drive, but make good notes so you know what to avoid next time.

    Also check out Macintouch for the latest enduser reports. Invaluable website.

  7. Our little seven computer office network will wait until winter …. We are super busy trying to finish outside work before winter hits – no time to update except for the one MacBook pro we have which is not overly important to our operation …..

    But come this winter we will likely get new iPhones, iPads and couple new iMacs as we update the office system!

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