Hello, everyone. As a MacBook Air user of just under three months, I am posting a little tale about my brief experience upgrading to El Capitan. I do this for two reasons: to acquaint new users thinking of upgrading with one rookie's experience and perhaps to generate a bit of commentary from more experienced users.
As someone who has come up through the ranks of CP/M, MS-DOS, Windows, and Apple iOS, I am no newcomer to the world of computers. In July, I bought a MacBook Air, which came with Yosemite 10.10.3, which I upgraded to 10.10.5 in early September. I love reading documentation, so I threw myself happily into reading lots of VoiceOver and OS X resources, including Tim Sniffen's and Janet Ingber's books, AppleVis posts, and various podcasts, supplemented by generous chunks of David Pogue's _Yosemite: the Missing Manual_. The learning curve was steep, but I almost enjoyed my first few weeks. Troubled by some bugs, notably in Mac Mail, I wondered if I should upgrade to El Capitan. Years and years of caution prompted my inner voice to urge me to stay put and be patient as I learned; but one day in October, I took the plunge. Buoyed by my success at upgrading, I started to play with El Capitan only to discover within a few minutes that not only were the Mail bugs still present but also Safari often displayed a "busy" status at times when performing the same operations in Yosemite produced happier results. I decided to return to Yosemite 10.10.5, so, urged on by an Apple Accessibility rep who told me I could downgrade without a bootable drive, I decided to use Internet Recovery to restore the OS that came with the machine. Something went wrong during the attempt to downgrade, and the Mac refused to acknowledge my router. A couple of earnest attempts by Apple Accessibility personnel to help the machine recover failed, and I decided to take the computer into the nearby Apple Store for a clean install. The bottom line is that the machine has been restored to its Day One state, so to speak, and I am quite content to wallow in Yosemite for the time being. My point is simple: if you're new to this game, consider carefully whether the advantages you may gain when trying to upgrade are worth the risk. Better to learn carefully what you don't know now than to add more layers which you may not have bargained for. Some of you might be wondering why you have bothered to read something so self-evident. All I can say is temptation doesn't always yield beneficial results. At the risk of stating the obvious, I have stated the obvious. <grin> Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
