The IT Nerd

Today is the day that Apple releases their latest version of OS X. Dubbed El Capitan, it is basically a release focused on stability and performance improvements with only a limited amount of new features. Before you upgrade to this or any other OS, you need to prepare your system for the upgrade so that things go smoothly. Here’s what I would suggest:

1. Check to see if you can run El Capitan: Here’s the bottom line. If you can run Yosemite, you can run El Capitan. But if you need some reassurance, here’s the list of Mac hardware that can run El Capitan:
   • MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)
   • iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)
   • MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
   • MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
   • Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
   • Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
2. Run Disk Utility or a utility like DiskWarrior: By doing this up front, you fix potential disk related problems that may send your upgrade horribly sideways.
3. Ensure your existing OS is up to date: You can do that by running the App Store application or through Software Update. I find that when I do that, “bad” things are less likely to happen.
4. Make sure your apps are up to date: This is REALLY important as El Capitan brings significant changes to how OS X works and your apps need to be up to date to work properly. I tend to check RoaringApp’s software compatibility list to make sure that everything that I rely on has a version that works with whatever OS I am updating to. If there are to many non compatible apps, I don’t upgrade.
5. Back up your data: This is cheap insurance in case things really go south during the upgrade. But I am constantly shocked by how many people don’t do this. I’ll make it really simple. Read this. Then do it and if you have a disaster, you can recover from it easily.
6. Consider waiting a day or two after the OS becomes available: Unlike you, I need to have the latest and greatest of everything on my system because someone will ask me to train them on it or fix it. Most of the people reading this aren’t in that position. Thus waiting a day or two while the suckers early adopters like me dive head first into upgrading their systems and discover, remedy, and document publicly all the weird problems that are sure to arise may be a wise strategy.

If you’ve done all that, you can upgrade with confidence. As an aside, I will be upgrading later today on both of the Macs in my household and I will post a review of the new OS tomorrow.

UPDATE: OS X El Capitan is now available on the App Store for download…. All 6.5GB of it.

This entry was posted on September 30, 2015 at 9:07 am and is filed under Tips with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.