MBPr and new os

I need to buy a new 15" MBP. If the release of the updated OS is announced next week does anyone have an idea how long it might be before they start shipping MBP's with the new OS installed?

Thanks

Andrew

No idea because it isn't just when they start shipping them, it's also about how many of the model with the old OS are still in the channel.

Anyway, consider that it is an advantage to have a MacBook with the older OS installed. It gives you more choice. Sometimes critical production software is not yet compatible with the new OS. If you have some software like that and you get a new Mac that only has the new OS, you might be stuck until you can figure out how to get the older OS onto it. If Apple rolls out a whole new line of Macs and you buy one of those, typically you can't go back an OS because new models only support OS versions forward.

If you get a MacBook that still has Mavericks on it, you have a Mac that you know can run everything available now, and you have the option of upgrading to Yosemite at your leisure and the flexibility to wait until all your applications and utilities finally become compatible.

There will probably not be any price penalty for having to install Yosemite on your own, if Apple charges the same price they did for Mavericks: $0

All excellent points but I recall from my Windows days that upgrading a computer with an already installed OS was always a nightmare. I've been waiting under the assumption (incorrectly?) that it would be much safer and more stable to wait and buy the new MBP with the new OS. Not so? Have Apple OS upgrades been seamless?

Nothing is without the possibility of problems, but it's a long way from Windows. Gray balanced is spot on. In addition, I never install a new Mac OS until at least a .3 release. There are always bugs to fix. Installing later "over" Mavericks should be problem free.

I would prefer getting with the older software. The upgrade will be free. Unfortunately, nothing is on DVD any longer.

I'm not sure what the big concern is. I have been running Yosemite since the first beta release with no problems on a late 2013 MBP. I think that I read that it's the largest public beta every conducted by Apple...wasn't it something like a million testers? Don't remember exactly.

I haven't had any issues with upgrading over existing OSs before with Apple, and I've been doing it for years.

I recently bought a 2008 MBP 4.1 and , after putting on a clean install of Snow Leopard , ran the mavericks download , which it runs happily .

Just out of interest , I tried the Yosemite installation and found that went on just fine . What I didn't like was that Yosemite does not support FCP7 , and although I have FCPX , I don't like it , so I reverted back to mavericks .

I also don't like the iOS8 style appearance of all the icons , and also preferred Mavericks for the classic style icons ( not that appearance on its own would be a factor for choosing or rejecting the OS ) .

Andrew said:

All excellent points but I recall from my Windows days that upgrading a computer with an already installed OS was always a nightmare.

Click to expand...

Really? From what to what? I updated a computer from Vista to Windows 7, and it was a piece of cake. A very fast upgrade too. We also did lots of XP to Windows 7 upgrades when XP got close to EOL. Not a single hiccup.

Andrew said:

I've been waiting under the assumption (incorrectly?) that it would be much safer and more stable to wait and buy the new MBP with the new OS. Not so? Have Apple OS upgrades been seamless?

Click to expand...

The longest part of an OSX upgrade is waiting for it to download! I've done lots of Snow Leopard to Mavericks upgrades, and it has been quick and painless in every case. I think I've only lost one application to compatibility (it was from before Snow Leopard days). One of my colleagues did manage to screw up his own upgrade (not sure how), and it wouldn't revert for him or boot into anything. But he gave me his last time machine backup and his laptop, and I had Mavericks running within a couple of hours, with all his stuff on it. I was surprised how easy this was to fix.

I would definitely want the old OS until all the big problems with the new OS have been sorted out. AS I see it, the only reason for waiting would be the possibility of a price decrease for laptops with the old OS on it, or better specs in a new model.

Andrew said:

All excellent points but I recall from my Windows days that upgrading a computer with an already installed OS was always a nightmare. I've been waiting under the assumption (incorrectly?) that it would be much safer and more stable to wait and buy the new MBP with the new OS. Not so? Have Apple OS upgrades been seamless?

Click to expand...

When you switch platforms (in any direction) you really do have to question the assumptions you brought from the old platform.

I haven't done a fresh clean install of OS X on either of my Macs in years. I can't even remember when that was. I just keep upgrading them. I wouldn't promise that it is always seamless; I have at times had minor glitches caused by old incompatible software still loading at startup, but they're usually fixed by updating or removing that software, not by having to resort to "nuke and pave."

It's related to another myth brought over from Windows: I've often heard that you need to clean install Windows every year/6 months/or so. Nobody I know needs to do that with their Macs. What a time sink that would be!

Some Windows switchers also seem to obsess over maintenance tasks like defragging, which you only need to do on Macs if you are doing specialized work. But OS X and HFS+ have always had fragmentation-resistant disk routines in them, and since no one on any platform should be defragging SSDs, SSD-based Macs (which are most models now) should never be defragged anyway. OS X maintenance is highly automated.

The one time I would do a clean install would be if I suspected the OS and files were corrupted due to a drive hardware defect. Because then I wouldn't trust the files.

graybalanced said:

It's related to another myth brought over from Windows: I've often heard that you need to clean install Windows every year/6 months/or so. Nobody I know needs to do that with their Macs. What a time sink that would be!

Click to expand...

That's silly. If you had to do that under normal use, no one would be using Windows. The only time I've had to do a Windows re-install was when my primary hard drive failed during a power surge. My desktop is from 2009.

graybalanced said:

Some Windows switchers also seem to obsess over maintenance tasks like defragging, which you only need to do on Macs if you are doing specialized work. But OS X and HFS+ have always had fragmentation-resistant disk routines in them, and since no one on any platform should be defragging SSDs, SSD-based Macs (which are most models now) should never be defragged anyway. OS X maintenance is highly automated.

Click to expand...

Same desktop has never been defragged. I check from time to time but it never needs doing, for the same reason as OSX. It gets done in the background automatically. My computer has been used primarily as a DAW so is used to processing heavy files, and streaming large samples.

I think Mac users sometimes don't realize that Windows no longer means Windows XP... or older.

They will probably give ship dates during the announcement event. As far as upgrades go, when I updated from Snow Leopard to the first Mavericks release all went smoothly, as well as with each update through .5. I know that it is unlikely, but I would really like to see the MBP 17 reappear.

Andrew said:

Have Apple OS upgrades been seamless?

Click to expand...

Depends on what you do with the machine.

My spare Mac is a 2009 13" MBP and it started with Leopard and then went through Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks and is now working it's way through Yosemite Betas and release candidates.

The main software I use (Lightroom, Photoshop, Xcode for iOS development etc) has never been a problem.

You occasionally see an arcane little tool that's been badly coded to need a specific OS version and not a "Mountain Lion or Above" type of switch, but these are few and far between and almost unheard of with software that remains in active development.

66GTO said:

I know that it is unlikely, but I would really like to see the MBP 17 reappear.

Click to expand...

I don't see it reappearing unless they can do a Retina version – which would mean they'd need a 3840x2400 pixel display (one with greater vertical resolution than a UHDTV).

richiebee said:

I think Mac users sometimes don't realize that Windows no longer means Windows XP... or older.

Click to expand...

I'm not generalizing that to all Windows users, so you shouldn't generalize what I wrote to mean all Mac users think that way.

What we can probably agree on is that users of older OSs who are not aware of the improvements in newer OSs (Mac or Windows) tend to bring forward habits based on anxieties that no longer exist.

Because while I would not say that all Windows users think regular system reinstalls and defrags are necessary, I sure have seen lots of posts from Windows users who do think so. Just as I've seen posts from "veteran" Mac users who don't realize that the maintenance habits they've done since 1989 stopped being necessary around 2001.

What this thread is about is the subset of Windows users who have brought forward 20-year-old anxiety-based maintenance habits that they probably could have stopped doing by Windows 7, and are assuming they should also bring those habits across to modern OS X.

Thanks for everyones input. Got my new MBPr yesterday with a 1T SSD. Migration assistant is currently at work transferring 480 GB of data and pictures in 23 minutes. What a joy.

Andrew

Andrew said:

Thanks for everyones input. Got my new MBPr yesterday with a 1T SSD. Migration assistant is currently at work transferring 480 GB of data and pictures in 23 minutes. What a joy.

Click to expand...

Just curious, was that via TB?

Yes it was. Not so long ago it would have been an overnight ordeal.

Andrew said:

Yes it was. Not so long ago it would have been an overnight ordeal.

Click to expand...

We're so lucky these days. I still feel lucky cloning 1TB of data to a new drive in less than 3 hours with FireWire 800. (Not all my Macs have Thunderbolt yet.)

Just a few years ago I tried to clone the drive of an old IBM Thinkpad. I didn't think a few GB was that much, but have you ever seen how long it takes when the fastest ports on the old laptop are USB 1.1? It was like, kill me now! Thunderbolt is a miracle in comparison.