Q: Is there any reason at all to upgrade to El Cap? The hassles people encounter give me a strong NO answer.

Just come here, plenty of people here that know how to do it correctly, if a machine is so messed up that it will take a very long time to correct it then, and only then is a 'clean install' (which simply means a Mac with the useful stuff removed along with the junk) suggested, because it would be quicker, not better.

Jim Chubb wrote:

 

Is there any reason at all to upgrade to El Cap?

It would be better to ask why anyone should lend a shred of credence to incoherent rants from uninformed people. As of last month there were approximately 20 million El Capitan users worldwide, and 99.98% of them haven't posted any reviews on the App Store. This support site is primarily intended for those experiencing trouble of one sort or another, and the vast majority of those problems are due to incompatible, outdated, or ill-conceived products that should never be installed on any Mac. They exist in same proportion as every other OS X upgrade there has ever been, since Jaguar at least.

Read Upgrade to OS X El Capitan - Apple Support.

Assuming that you are already in the habit of routinely backing up your system you can evaluate El Capitan at no risk and at no cost. If you do not routinely back up your system, you should. Obtain an external USB, FireWire, or Thunderbolt hard disk drive for your Mac, then download and install El Capitan on it. You can choose to start your Mac from that disk or the internal one using Startup Manager (hold an option key while you start your Mac), and evaluate El Capitan at no risk whatsoever to your existing installation. Just be sure to designate the proper installation location for El Capitan when you get to that installation step.

Running OS X from an external USB hard disk won't be as fast as the Mac's internal one, but it will be sufficient to draw conclusions regarding its suitability for your needs.

An external hard disk drive of adequate capacity can be purchased for well under $100 - much less than the cost of some previous OS X upgrades themselves. When you satisfy yourself that El Capitan works for you, then "clone" the external disk's contents to your internal one, and use the external disk for backup purposes — which you ought to be doing anyway.

Inviting troubles into one's computer seems like a terrible idea.

It certainly is, but that is exactly what people do when they download and install garbage software such as "cleaning" and "anti-virus" utilities, which accounts for the vast majority of Mac-related problems reported on this site, and erroneously attributed to OS X updates or upgrades.

There is no reason for you to rush into things though. Yosemite and Mavericks are far from being outdated, but eventually all OS X versions will be superseded, leaving your Mac unsupported. Users who waited to upgrade to Yosemite are now out of luck.

I'm sorry but I beg to differ and just do not see it so clean cut as you, do not see why starting again with a clean or new install every now and then is such a bad thing - and if you bring back your data from backup you should not end up with "a Mac with the useful stuff removed" - but this is now straying off topic.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion and its for the OP to decide on what is best for him (and that's what I have tried to give), but the last post from John Galt offers some very good advise particularly with regards to the external disc option which is something I have not considered.

As said before, lets agree to disagree and call it a day.

Go right ahead and disagree, it makes no difference to the facts.

And please don't put words in my mouth, I never said it was 'bad', just unnecessary, stick to what I said when you criticize.

I concur with Csound. The so called "clean" install is a waste of time in the vast majority of cases. There is nothing "bad" about it provided you do all of the correct steps prior to start it so that you are able to reinstall all of your software again.

The only quote I used was "a Mac with the useful stuff removed" - sorry you felt I was also implying that with the use of the word "bad" as well, I was not.

With respect to the facts, I wish you would try and understand we are not all as tech savvy as yourself (or Allan) - I, like many others just have a basic understanding and when issues arise we do not have so many options available, but starting a fresh is one we do have, it is a simple way to get it all working again. I do not suggest its used every day, but at the right time it is an effective method.

This can go on and on but I think the OP has closed it out with a "thank you".

But this "clean install" is a lot of work and it's really akin to demolishing the bathroom because you have a cracked tile. It's utterly unnecessary. I've never clean installed on a Mac - ever* - and I'm using them since the early 90's. In that time I've reinstalled the OS maybe a handful of times for quite specific issues. When I stated out I did the reinstall thing a couple of times, but then, that was before internet searching and resources like here.

*I have erased and installed on machines I was trading  in/ selling on of course...

Yes, it is like you say - another analogy is sledge hammer to crack a nut, but it works - trying to identify and resolve individual issues depending on how many and how hard they are can often take a lot longer for the inexperienced.

I can see were you, Csound1 and Allan are coming from and may be I'm too set in my ways, but while being in this forum I have read of peoples frustrations regarding issues that they seem unable to resolve, all I'm trying to do is give an alternative (all be it not a technically correct one).

SiHancox wrote:

Yes, it is like you say - another analogy is sledge hammer to crack a nut, but it works - trying to identify and resolve individual issues depending on how many and how hard they are can often take a lot longer for the inexperienced.

The problem with that is while immediately after doing a clean install of the OS the system is "clean," the next step is deciding what items from the backup also are "clean" & thus safe to restore to it. That is difficult to determine even for experienced users.

For instance, one or more third party apps might be corrupted, & maybe some items in your home folder are too, particularly items in the normally hidden user Library folder. There is no simple way to determine that, so to avoid reintroducing what may be causing the issues you are trying to fix, the only sensible thing to do is to reinstall all your third party apps from their original sources (installer disks, new downloads from the Mac App Store, etc.).

That can take a very long time, & you still have to figure out what home folder items are safe to restore.

So really, the analogy is more like smashing a nut with a sledge hammer ... & then trying to reassemble it piece by piece, replacing any potentially damaged ones while you do that.

Importing the issue back in can be a real risk I agree, but don't you consider that is reducing now a days - with cloud storage for example you just sign in and all your contacts, calendars, podcasts/music, mail etc just reappear. If like me you still use a pop account it is a little more involved but even then if you saved mbox's its just a matter of importing - thats the basic part of your system sorted.

With respect to 3rd party applications I think several things come into play, do you need to reload everything you had before - I don't, you can take the opportunity to do a little pruning, for example I used to use EyeTV but with iPlayer taking off it is now redundant, how many other Apps build up over the period that we no longer really need/want. When you do install again going to the Devs site and downloading (as you quite rightly point out) the latest version helps also because your installation disk may contain a buggy version, if not a certainly out of date one.

Regarding taking things from your previous User Library, it is something that I would try not do, starting from scratch with the system should apply here as well - yes you have to reconfigure your 3rd party Apps by hand, but is it not a small price to pay to avoid a reoccurrence of the issues.

When I have started again the first paragraph is quick and easy, you then have a basic system up and running - regarding any further installations, I normally do that over a few weeks a bit at a time - it gives you time to make sure you really do need the App in the first place and it keeps you from trying to do everything at once (of course I'm assuming you do not require your system for critical work and can therefore spare the time).

SiHancox wrote:

 

Importing the issue back in can be a real risk I agree, but don't you consider that is reducing now a days - with cloud storage for example you just sign in and all your contacts, calendars, podcasts/music, mail etc just reappear. If like me you still use a pop account it is a little more involved but even then if you saved mbox's its just a matter of importing - thats the basic part of your system sorted.

And if the 'issue' is amongst the items that POP back up, then your time has been wasted, putting data files back is the easy bit but the majority of posters on this site do not backup (and iCloud is not a backup) so even that becomes complex, or impossible.

After all that is done and your Mac works again you still have no clue what happened, and may happen again.

We'll just continue to disagree.

Importing the issue back in can be a real risk I agree, but don't you consider that is reducing now a days - with cloud storage for example you just sign in and all your contacts, calendars, podcasts/music, mail etc just reappear.

Not everyone uses the cloud - for instance I do not and never will mostly due to privacy concerns, but also because any server will get hacked into sooner or later or people simply steal your property (download pics/music). You do know that nothing is safe online?

If like me you still use a pop account it is a little more involved but even then if you saved mbox's its just a matter of importing - thats the basic part of your system sorted.

That depends on which OS you are on; I needed to do that once and had to dig deep into all the (sub)folders to copy over the actual individual emails and attachments. It worked, but it took hours.

Yes, you can always reintroduce the problem especially if you are not sure what caused it in the first place, but if you start clean your core system should be ok, not reinstalling some Apps you no longer deem necessary and for the others use the Devs latest version should also improve matters, and just bringing back data whether from your own periodic exports (we should all back up something) or if available through the cloud (not just iCloud) and therefore not using anything from your old system like the Library folder should altogether reduce that risk.

The above for me is quite easy, but if you asked me to dig deep into the system, read and understand log files to diagnose issues I would simply be lost - and because I feel I'm not any different from the average Mac user out there its why I consider doing a clean install every now and then a better solution.

But I can agree with you last paragraph and have also enjoyed this exchange.

Let Apple look after syncing mail, contacts, calendars, reminders, safari and notes for convenience and not really bothered if anyone else saw them, they would probably be bored stiff anyhow - but yes, realise nothing is safe, I'm one of the "few" happy TalkTalk customers! and the UK Government is currently trying to get its Communications Bill through Parliament - good times ahead.

With respect to mail, not had that difficulty - also run a MacBook Pro with Snow Leopard and every now an then I update mail by deleting all messages and then reimporting the mbox's from my iMac - to get the mbox's I just right click and choose export, copy over on USB stick and then do the same but choose import, it seems to work fine so far (fingers crossed).