Are all of these failures of El Capitan normal for a new OS X?

I'm kinda new to Macs/Apple, so this is the first time I've encountered a new operating system installation. That's a lot of problems. Gotta say, it kinda scares me. My installation went completely smooth, except for the first start-up but it wasn't that bad and I figure it's just familiarity with the "Apple way". I don't fiddle with unusual apps much (which seems to be causing a lot of headaches) and would probably concentrate on Apple-supported apps, anyways, for the sake of safety. As my machine gets older (I think my last windows machine was 15-20 years old when I converted), I'll probably be more careful to check requirements on a new installation and make darn sure I can revert back to the previous version, if it breaks.

Mac mini, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Oct 4, 2015 11:42 AM

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69 replies

Oct 4, 2015 12:05 PM in response to Whickwithy

I am sitting here in front of El Capitan that I clean installed from a bootable USB stick, and restored my account from Time Machine. This is a 2011 Mac mini Core I5 (refurbished and without discrete GPU) with an internal OCZ Vertex SSD as the boot drive. The machine boots to the Desktop in about 10 seconds, and is running perfectly.


Most of the posts in this El Capitan community are either issues caused by outdated, or incompatible software, drivers, or peripherals that are indigestible by El Capitan. Or by those that attempt to do something outside of their actual skill set, or ill-advised to the installation process, and when things go bump, blame Apple or the the new OS X release for their troubles, because it is human nature to redirect blame.


El Capitan is just fine on our older hardware. No need to be nervous. There will always be issues with initial release software regardless of whether it is Apple, Microsoft, Ubuntu, or commercial OS providers. Apple is already working on OS X 10.11.1, and when the initial, inevitable issues are resolved, they will turn their attention to stability and performance tuning — though El Capitan is faster on this Mac mini that I expected. I have been using OS X for a very long time, and this may be the most stable, performing point 0 release in many years.

Oct 4, 2015 12:06 PM in response to Whickwithy

If one thinks about how many computers the OS could be installed on, how many variations there are of each

computer, how many different applications can be installed on those computers and combinations

of those applications, different hardware accessories that can be attached (and combinations of them), etc.

the permutations of all that would probably be more than grains of sand on a beach. Also, there are the users

themselves and how well they maintain their computers.


So, bottomline is there will be issues with any new OS release on any platform. The more computers and

users there are, the more problems can pop up. The best that can be expected is to cover the "broad strokes"

and work on fixing the larger details as they crop up.


As for myself, I have installed El Capitan on four Macs ranging from a 2010 Mac Mini to a late 2013 27" iMac

without any issues with their operation.

Oct 4, 2015 12:30 PM in response to VikingOSX

The only reason I can see people being able to use EC is them using only the bundle mac apps.


I can't understand what am I doing wrong compared to you, 3 iMacs down the drain by El Capitan here, it's scary. I see people saying "I installed El Capitan…" I couldn't. Installed it from app store, worked for 10 minutes and… gone, since then I cannot access my data.


Whatever you say, it's scary… For the last 3 days I am struggling to get my data back or a way to reach it with no success.


Yes, I have backups, 2TB that I can't fit in any on my other iMacs and Time Machine restore allows only the full disk to be restored to my knowledge.


Installed in other IMac 2TB disk, boot from USB pen, restore… takes up to 18 hours, every time I came back, it did a reset, no reason no

explanation, no success.

Yes, I have a lot of stuff installed and Yes, I logged in, command line, move off *all* the extensions to an "Unsuported" folder, on the safe side, moved also the LaunchAgents and some suspicious LaunchDaemons, like hp stuff and so on.

One of the iMacs went zombie, the video card shows vertical green stripes at boot (since EC upgrade, too much coincidence) and whatever I do doesn't boot.

As I write this message (on my old faithful MBAir, 10.7) the iMac keeps rebooting by itself, slightly different results between every boot that keeps me trying despite I don't understand why different results on each boot Read from somebody that after 20 reboots it got back, I didn't count them, by for sure its over that by now.

Does anybody have a clue on what to to, I really need to get back to work.

Oct 4, 2015 12:45 PM in response to MikeB1967

MikeB1967 wrote:


No, they're not. In fact, this is the first time in almost 15 years that I've seen that many critical issues in a new OS release. Every new version has its bugs, but this time lots of previous Beta testing was supposed to have solved most of them. However, apple screwed up big time this time. I expect them to come up with an urgent fix in a few days.

Well there ya go, everything worked fine on all 3 Macs that I upgraded. I see no signs of an Apple "screw up"

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Are all of these failures of El Capitan normal for a new OS X?

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