Worth upgrading to Mountain Lion or stick with Snow Leopard?

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Level 1

4 points

Worth upgrading to Mountain Lion or stick with Snow Leopard?

A few weeks ago some of you helped me navigate the pros/cons of buying a spanking new Imac vs a mid 2011 (I decided the 2011 was plenty worthy). I thank you for that, and now I want to ask: if I were to get a mid 2011 Imac, is it worth to upgrade to the latest OS, or is sticking with Snow Leopard (my current OS) fine?

I'm using some older software like FCP 6 and its associated suite of programs, and probably plenty of other applications I'm not thinking of at the moment, that I got back in '08 or so when I got the Imac I have now. I think I've heard that Lion/Mountain is a total overhaul of the OS compared to Snow Leopard, and that makes me wonder if there are compatibility issues/problems associated with trying to use these older pieces of software with the new OS. What are the super amazing benefits of Lion or Mountain Lion vs Snow Leopard? Are they worth it? Do the aforementioned issues exist? Thanks.

Posted on Dec 24, 2012 6:18 AM

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Answer 1

mende1

Level 10

93,538 points

Dec 24, 2012 6:21 AM in response to The Bass

The Mid 2011 iMac comes with OS X Lion, not Snow Leopard. Final Cut Pro 6 isn't compatible with Mountain Lion nor Lion because PowerPC programs aren't supported, so you have two possibilities: keep your actual Mac or update Final Cut to the most recent version. See if your other programs are supported > http://www.roaringapps.com

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Answer 2

CT

Level 7

23,987 points

Dec 24, 2012 6:25 AM in response to The Bass

Two things come to mind.

(1) Are you sure your new iMac will run Snow Leopard (10.6)? Generally speaking, macs will only run the current OS (at the time they hardware came out) and later. Which OS is on the new iMac? If it is Lion (10.7) or Mountain Lion (10.8), you probably can't go back to Snow Leopard.

(2) Support for "Power PC" applications ended after Snow Leopard. If you have such applications, they will not run in 10.7 or higher.

charlie

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Answer 3

The Bass Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 24, 2012 6:31 AM in response to CT

Ah. Ok, I didn't know either of those things. I guess my plan was to a "transfer", kind of like a time machine backup/restore, when I got the new computer. . .load all that stuff onto the new one from the old one. Didn't realize I may not be able to even keep the old OS, even if I wanted to!

I guess I'll need to take inventory of what I have software-wise, what I need, how much money to update everything and be compatible with the new OS, and whether it's ultimately worth it right now.

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Answer 4

The Bass Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 24, 2012 7:17 PM in response to The Bass

Ok, so this is weird. . despite what you guys said, that site you pointed me toward said FCP 6.06 and Motion 4 (that would be from the FCS3 suite) are both good to go with Lion and Mountain Lion. Are they wrong? If not, that's good news.

I have the Adobe CS6 suite, and I may start using those programs instead of FCP, but if I needed to revisit a project in FCP I'd be screwed if they're incompatible. I'm guessing FCX doesn't open those older projects correctly. .. how could it? It doesn't have tracks, etc.

Other than than the FCP Suite and the Adobe stuff, there aren't that many paid programs I use regularly. The others are relatively affordable and may not have issues anyway (Anime studio, Logic Express).

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Answer 5

babowa

Level 9

78,097 points

Dec 24, 2012 7:30 PM in response to The Bass

Another thing you need to watch out for:

Your app may work in Lion or ML; but, as an example, I have Final Cut Express 3 and it runs just fine in Lion and ML - but........ its' installer is PPC and will not work - period. I found a way around it though since I still had my Snow Leopard partition: I manually copied each and every FCE related file from the old one to the new one putting them in exactly the same folders/spots. That worked - no installer needed - and FCE is running. I do know that some versions of FCP also use a PPC installer.

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Answer 6

The Bass Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 24, 2012 9:06 PM in response to babowa

Ooooh. . .that is very poopy.

I guess I thought you could do a time machine restore to the new mac from a backup? Does that still require the installer to. . .uh. . .do stuff?

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Answer 7

babowa

Level 9

78,097 points

Dec 24, 2012 10:47 PM in response to The Bass

Someone else will need to answer your Time Machine question because I do not use it. It may work because it should port over all the applications, settings, etc. I was going on the assumption that you would be reinstalling your apps from scratch (I guess I thought that because that is what I did - I wanted as clean an install as possible). Anyway, TM should just transfer things - just remember, if any of those transferred apps have PPC installers and you get rid of your Snow Leopard machine, you'll never be able to reinstall them.

You might want to check these links (and by doing a search here on the forums, there'll be more):

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3890615?answerId=18179294022#18179294022

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3558621?answerId=16964725022#16964725022

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3690860?answerId=17434537022#17434537022

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Answer 8

The Bass Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 24, 2012 11:15 PM in response to babowa

Seems like that's quite a mess. What makes it worse is I just remembered that I didn't buy FCS2, I bought FCP 5.0 and bought the UPGRADE to FCS2. So even more of a mess.

At the risk of asking more dumb questions, what are the advantages of the clean install vs porting everything over? Granted, I really don't have that many things I use regularly in terms of software that would need to be installed fresh, but what makes me nervous is all the plugins/add ons etc. that I got later that I won't remember and will be mad that I'm missing with the fresh install.

Maybe I'll just go make an appointment at the Apple store to talk to them about this whole process in detail.

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Answer 9

babowa

Level 9

78,097 points

Dec 24, 2012 11:26 PM in response to The Bass

Well, the advantage would be that you will not port over any (possibly hidden) problems in User files - you'd be starting with a brand new installed OS and adding fresh installs of your apps. It is more work though. Since Apple decided to go to a digital download only method, I have clones of fresh installs of both Lion and Mountain Lion - these clones are not being updated with my files purposely (except for occasional Software Update checks) so I can use it if needed instead of having to use the built-in Recovery process (which would mean a 4 GB download if necessary).

I purchased a mid 2010 refurb iMac earlier this year - also purposely - it can run Snow Leopard, so I still have a partition with that for a couple of PPC apps.

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Answer 10

The Bass Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 24, 2012 11:52 PM in response to babowa

That's what I figured. . .basically not bringing over any deep-rooted corruptions/problems. But the refurb would have the OS already on it when I buy it, right? So your clones are just in case something goes wrong down the line, you don't have to download anything to fix? When you say "clone" what do you mean, exactly? There are certain aspects of being a Mac user I'm not familiar with. Is that like a disk image or something?

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Answer 11

Dec 25, 2012 12:18 AM in response to The Bass

"Clones' are just that - exact duplicates of your system in its current state. I use both two Time Machine backup disks as well as two clones of my internal drive and one clone of my 2 Terabyte 'working' drive. A total of five backups in all.

In my experience, it's best to have at least one Time Machine backup and one clone. I use Carbon Copy Cloner- seems to be the most agile of all the clone software available. I highly recommend at least one TM backup and one clone - as a minimum.

Any other questions? Shoot...

Clinton

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Answer 12

The Bass Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 25, 2012 12:41 AM in response to clintonfrombirmingham

I guess I've never heard of the clone thing. I have a TM backup that backs up the mac drive as well as the external I keep my media, etc. on for projects. I don't have RAID or any of that fancy stuff. . .just one internal drive, one external, plus some older externals with older stuff on them. My setup doesn't sound as sophisticated as yours

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Answer 13

Dec 25, 2012 12:45 AM in response to The Bass

The good thing about having at least one clone is that you can just get a drive that's the same size as your internal and put it in an enclosure and schedule clones. Then you'll have a good, reliable bootable recovery drive.

Oh, yeah, I've tons of backup space - a little over 8 Terabytes including the 6 Terabytes that I have on my Thunderbolt chain. Coming from a mainframe background, I'm just a big believer in BACKUPS!

Clinton

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Answer 14

Dec 25, 2012 1:00 AM in response to clintonfrombirmingham

I know CONTROL+R will let you restore from a TM backup - what about CCC? How do you restore from it?

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Answer 15

Dec 25, 2012 1:03 AM in response to strangedogs

With CCC all you have to do is restore one drive from another, after reformatting the drive to which you want to 'clone'. Download it and have a look at it - I believe that there's a 14-day free trial. The interface is quite easy to understand. And, it will backup recovery partitions, as well: something that other cloning software won't do.

Clinton

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