MacOS Snow Leopard to Yosemite

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Level 1

33 points

MacOS Snow Leopard to Yosemite

Hello! My trusty Snow leopard loaded mid-2009 MacBook Pro (4GB) have been stable as a rock and it accomplished a lot of work in the past years. But the Safari 5.1 on it began chocking on some complex websites for a year+ and I'm now begining to see messages about outdated and/or insecure browsers, on gvmt or transactional sites. Firefox is frozen to version 48 on my machine.

I'm thinking of going to Yosemite as a step-gap, before eventually going to the latest OS.

I have a nice Time machine backup on hand, but I need to absolutely and positively know that those things will continue to be working in the newer apps in Yosemite :

My iTunes library

My iPhoto library

My contacts

My iCal content, past and upcoming

My emails in Mail 4.6

My Safari bookmarks

My Keychain Access content.

I understand that some older applications and drivers may no longer works, but I need the list of things above to appear unaltered in the new apps. Will it be the case?

Thanks!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo 4 GB, june 2009

Posted on Mar 10, 2017 10:44 AM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

685,251 points

Mar 11, 2017 7:36 AM in response to Deromax

All should transfer okay, but you might need an updated version of iPhoto.

Check to make sure your applications are compatible. PowerPC applications are no longer supported after 10.6.

Application Compatibility

Applications Compatibility (2)

El Capitan 10.11 Compatibility information

macOS Sierra 10.12: Compatible Apps

Also check to make sure there is a compatible driver for your printer.

Do a backup before installing, preferable 2 backups on 2 different drives.

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Answer 2

Kurt Lang

Level 9

68,620 points

Mar 10, 2017 1:27 PM in response to Deromax

Unless you obtained Yosemite through the App Store while it was the most current release of OS X, you can no longer get it.

Since your model is not capable of running Sierra, you can still get El Capitan.

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Answer 3

Kurt Lang

Level 9

68,620 points

Mar 11, 2017 7:53 AM in response to Deromax

Make sure to first follow Eric's suggestions. Some software you use now will not run if they're PowerPC apps, and others may need an upgrade or update.

But when you're ready, all you need to do is log into App Store account from the Mac you want to upgrade to Yosemite. You'll be asked if you want to verify adding that device to the account (if you haven't already done that). Then download and install Yosemite.

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Answer 4

Deromax Author

Level 1

33 points

Mar 13, 2017 7:20 AM in response to Eric Root

Hey! Thanks for that great web site for verifying app compatibility! Out of all I have, maybe only my Final Cut Express is on it's last leg. I know first hand that it worked on Maverick, but won't work on El Captain. So compatibility is lost somewhere between those two OSes. FCE is no longer in my main video workflow, but it's still useful for capturing old analog footage via Firewire, something that FCP-X won't do.

I was able to install iPhoto on a El Capitain iMac, so I guess my photo library is safe. My iCloud emails are also working on that El Capitain machine.

I also have a lot of great jingles in my Garageband 5.1 that I'm using often when I need royalty-free music for my video productions. I'll try to convert all of them in real audio files before updating, on fear that those pre-sets disapear when/if a newer Garageband ends up being installed when upgrading the OS.

I'm going to keep the machine stable up till my high-season editing period is over (by mid-june) then do the update and repport back.

Thanks again!

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