After waiting on the fence since its release last October 17th (UTC+8), I've finally given in to upgrading my MacBook to Apple's latest operating system – the OS X Yosemite. First off, before you proceed in reading this post, kindly note that this ain't an in-depth review of the OS. There's already too many of that online. I won't be going through each of Yosemite's features and highlights.
Why the wait?
The reason I've waited this long to have a taste of Yosemite is because of one primary reason… Adobe Creative Suite. With every new OS X upgrade comes a plethora of bugs, incompatibilities and patches for us graphic designers and our apps. I wanted to make sure that this time around my workflow wouldn't get disrupted with such nuisance. There's also the fact that I was a little apprehensive about running Yosemite in my half a decade old Mac. Yes… five years old, that's like 50 in human years. I got it back in October of 2009. So far my unibody MacBook have housed a total of five Operating Systems: Snow Leopard (which came out of the box), Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks and Yosemite. So far, this is my longest lasting, most reliable and most used computer ever. No major crashes, no BSoDs, never overheated, never got f*cked up by any viruses, never got serviced for being ‘unusable'. The only three separate times I tinkered under the hood is when I upgraded its RAM to 8GB, upgraded my SuperDrive into an SSD and when I replaced the battery. By now you could just imagine how much I'm taking good care of this baby.
Patches, patches everywhere…
Adobe officially announcing that Photoshop (and other CS apps) are working properly with Yosemite was all the reason I needed to upgrade. And so I did. They did note in the forums that after upgrading to OS X 10.10 you'll have to update your Java in order to launch Illustrator, well that's true. Right after I launched AI it prompted me to update my Java. No biggie, I just followed the Java download link from Apple that AI provided and followed the installation wizard.
- I'm running a mid '09 non-unibody MacBook which I've had to dual boot Snow Leopard and Lion/Mountain Lion for performance and stability reasons. Just came to add that Mavericks is definitely running better than Lion/Mountain Lion did, though it doesn't seem quite as quick as Snow Leopard and definitely has a larger memory footprint.
- I have a white 13' MacBook (late 2009) with 2GB memory. It is currently running Mavericks. The machine is too slow, probably because the memory is just 2GB. I'm considering downgrading it back to its original OS, which was Snow Leopard. I bought Lion from the App Store when it came out, but I can't find it now, only Mountain Lion and Yosemite.
- The good news is that Apple still sells a boxed version of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard here for £19.99 (at its launch in 2009 it cost £25). In the case of Snow Leopard you will be sent a physical.
Update Macbook Os X 10.6.8
I got a AHT.pkg package from an Apple forum thread to make Apple Hardware Test work on my mid-2009 MBP (no more AppleCare available) running OS X Mavericks. It used to run Snow Leopard - Apple staff upgraded to SL before giving me the MBP). Make sure your computer is compatible with OS X Mavericks. The model must have at least 2 GB of.
Another issue that came up, which OS X actually caught and notified me with, was that my Wacom tablet driver was incompatible and cannot be used. How to restore macbook pro from backup. I knew from the moment I started using a graphic pen and tablet that I'll be getting driver updates from time to time (specially during OS upgrades), so I already had the Wacom tablet driver download page handy in my bookmarks.
Another satisfied customer
How do i update my old macbook. Haters often say that Apple computers are overpriced, underpowered and overly-hyped pieces of trash. But what I often notice is that most of the people who say these kind of things are users who haven't actually used a Mac for an extended period of time, enough to actually incorporate the machine into their workflow and in their everyday lives. Yes it's true that for half the price consumers can easily buy a PC or a laptop with the same or even better specs. But it's not always about spending big money for the highest specs, with Macs its more about paying a premium for the assurance that all of your machine's components will work seamlessly and not collapse overtime and that you'll get the support you need—when you need it. Take my experience for example; how many laptops have you owned that lasted you five years that you can still use for professional work and a little bit of gaming?
Macbook Os X Download
Macbook 2009 Os X Mavericks Pro
With all that said, I've upgraded and I'm happy with how seamless and fast everything is. Back when I upgraded to an SSD with Mavericks, booting up the Mac took less than 10 seconds but somehow shutting down was a drag… it took somewhere around 30-45 seconds. I don't know why, but it was inconvenient specially when I'm nearing my bus stop and waiting for it to finish. But now with Yosemite it's surprisingly quick. Shutting down takes less than 3 seconds! I was so surprised the first time I shutdown my Mac, I thought that it crashed or something ominous was brewing, I had to boot it up and shut it down again just to make sure everything was fine and it's just the way it is.
