Old Dogs, New Tricks

[Loose Canon]

I am firmly planted in the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” camp.

I was running Snow Leopard on my Mackbook Pro (2011). I considered it to be one of the best OS Apple made. Everything worked together nicely and I have always been happy with it.

Unfortunately, it is now dated. I wanted to take the next rocket ship to the Cloud and of course Snow Leopard is not supported by Apple or Adobe. So I read the horror stories regarding the new OS upgrade, probably mostly to support my own resistance to change. But resistance is, of course, futile and I wanted to take advantage of the $9.99/mo. Adobe CC offer.

For the first time Apple is offering a free upgrade to their new OS, Mavericks. Backed into a corner I pulled the trigger.

So far everything looks good, but I haven’t had the chance to test everything yet. I lost a couple of very old apps but nothing I can’t live without or update if needed.

Of course, first thing I checked was CS6 (pre-CC) and associated plug-ins. All good.

I seemed to have picked up some speed with boot times, shut-down times, internet browsing, app openings, and generally all around. But I have yet to do any down and dirty editing.

Aside from the old apps incompatibility it seems at the moment to be an improvement. The new OS will also put me into the iCloud for syncing my iPhone gizmo thingie (once I figure it out)!

I’ve been accused of walking around with my head in the clouds so I am just going to see if I can take my gizmos with me!

I still have the feeling that I have shot myself in the foot so I’m keeping a clone of my previous machine handy in case things go horribly wrong!

Shame that I’m going to need that foot to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future!

[Polar01]

Terry I understand that some of the drivers of older equipment will not work as intended as the suppliers have not all updated to Mavericks' OS. One thing is printers some are fine others are not.

Cheers: Allan

[Loose Canon]

Thank you for that head's up Allan.

Since you mentioned it I tried my little Epson. Works just fine.

Did a couple of quick edits. Faster response and saves.

Wacom: check. Works well.

So far so good.

[Tringa]

I can understand you feelings Terry, I'm with you in the same camp.

I'm a PC user and all our main machines are still using Windows XP which, even as a Mac user, you probably know is really old. It does run a bit slowly, but that is probably the six year old PC rather than the OS, but it works and it is rock solid. However, sometime we are going to have to move to something else, probably when I build another PC, but I'm going to be a bit wary of the outcome.

Dave

[proseak]

Dave,

When you build your new machine you might want to make it dual-boot, with XP and 7 as the boot-options. That way you should still be able to use everything you're used to and use 7 for the more up-to-date stuff.

I'll skip 8, as I did Vista

[dabhand]

It's also worth remembering that you can run programmes in XP compatible mode when using win7.

[HenkB]

Terry,

As you say, resistance is futile. I bailed on Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion specifically to be able to upgrade Lightroom from 4 to 5. I am dragging my feet on Mavericks. Sorry to lose the legacy apps (the sort that worked just fine but the company no longer exists to port the software to newer machines) but I do have a G4 laptop in a closet just for them. Oh well…

[Downrigger]

I can't figure out why they don't just all settle down and let us use the same operating system for a couple years, but understand the constant hoi poloi is mostly about maintaining new product-related cash flow. Howsomever and at least, nonetheless, Mavericks worked fine with my LR4 and with my upgrade to LR5.3 on a 9 month old macBook Pro retina.

[PhotomanJohn]

No issues at all with with Mavericks - Everything works great. One nice thing is that anyone running a MacBook will notice an improvement in battery operating time. It was very significant on my previous generation MacBook Air.

John

[Loose Canon]

Dave,

I have a windows desktopper sitting right next to me and it’s the Wifey-poo’s! Got it this past year and it has Windows 8 on it. She is an accountant and she hates it. XP is the only system she has really liked. She uses 7 at work and thinks it is at least decent. Up until this year we had XP on her machine which came with it installed originally! She just wouldn't give it up!

Hendrik, I tossed around just upgrading to Lion or Mt. Lion instead. But I had to face the reality that these are going by the wayside as well and I might as well get the most recent, work out the glitches if I could, and don’t look back. I’d get more time before this old dog had to worry about new tricks again!

I’m with you Mark!

At least Mavericks seems to be working on my present machine so hopefully I won’t have to replace the hardware for a while!

Thanks for the Heads-up John.

I have read that Mavericks is easier on the energy saving. Really, despite all my harping I’m really digging what I’m seeing so far! Things seem a lot snappier and at least everything seems to be working nicely. Knock wood! I was doubly scared because most of the difficulties I had read about were Macbook related and mostly the Pro line. Be interesting to see how things go in the Adobe Cloud!

[HenkB]

Hendrik, I tossed around just upgrading to Lion or Mt. Lion instead. But I had to face the reality that these are going by the wayside as well and I might as well get the most recent, work out the glitches if I could, and don’t look back. I’d get more time before this old dog had to worry about new tricks again!

Terry,
There was no Mavericks when I made my move so now I find myself hugely interested in your experience. My everyday laptop (MBP) is currently running Lion so any major Adobe upgrade will mean that, for that machine at least, I will have to go to Mavericks or beyond. If it seems to be relatively trouble-free by the .2 version I will more than likely jump both machines then. As you imply, the price is certainly no impediment.

[Black Pearl]

Upgraded to Mavericks the second it was launched - I like to live on the edge - and have to say everything is spot on. It is definitely quicker, particularly Safari and fingers crossed I haven't found anything that won't work with it.

As to my experience with Microsoft then I'm forced to use Windows XP at work and hate every single second of its miserable, dull, featureless monotony. As an OS I wish I could drag it into a field and have it shot. It is a truly hateful, ugly thing with its lack of transparency, lack of animations, no automatic window resizing, a start button that hides everything you want to get at and, in a oxymoronic way, you have to press to shut it down. It is sow to start, slow to sleep, slow to wake from sleep and slow to shut down.....with the start button. Vista was a little better, W7 (which my son runs on his Dell laptop) is much nicer to use and from what I've seen of W8 it looks amazing. The sooner MS can kill off the old operating systems and get everyone onto W8 the better.

[royphot]

It's also worth remembering that you can run programmes in XP compatible mode when using win7.

Ah, but not with the cheaper versions of 7. So dual boot.

I did, so that I could still run my Epson 1290 with reasonable dialogues, and not the crappy "updated" driver for Win 7. It has since died, but I am keeping XP going, just in case.

Roy