High Sierra - a step too far?

[Mick F]

Two MacBookAirs and an iMac in this household.

Mrs Mick F's MBA is still at Yosemite 10.10.5 but will take High Sierra 10.13.4. She's not interested in updating.
The iMac is too old to take High Sierra, so is stuck at Yosemite 10.10.5.

I'm a sucker for technology, so update my software as soon as it comes out, so consequently updated to HS.
Trouble is, I didn't like it. In fact, I hated it .............. but stuck with it ................. until .................

My beloved program Ascent that I have recorded ALL my bike rides on since 2004 wouldn't run properly.
That was the fillip to make me do something and downgrade back to Yosemite 10.10.5.
I checked on iMac to see if Ascent would work ok and I could see all my bike rides - all fine.

But how to get Yosemite 10.10.5?
I was able to download it, but it wouldn't install because it wanted 10.10.0 first, but that's not available.
I cloned the HD of the iMac and booted up my MBA with it. That worked ok although I couldn't get to any of my files or programs.
I couldn't work out how to partition my MBA's HD so I could run Yosemite and High Sierra on the same HD and start up as required.
I then found out, that the file structure of HS is APFS and the previous software file structures are MacOS Extended (journaled) but the two aren't compatible in the slightest.

I saved everything to an external drive, everything that I wanted. All applications, all files, everything. Any eMails that I wanted to keep, I forwarded to our Hotmail address. I use iCloud, so my contacts lists and stuff on my iPhone and computer are all synchronised.

I left the cloned iMac HD connected and booted it up, then completely deleted the MBA HD then switched off.
I switched back on and held down Shift/Cmd/Option/R to put my MBA into recovery mode and loaded the original software it came with ............ Yosemite 10.10.5 This took some hours with my fingers crossed tightly. It worked. Phew!

Yesterday morning, I spent a happy couple of hours or so setting it up, and now I feel I have my old computer back again!

This whole thing from start to finish took me from sometime on Friday afternoon until yesterday (Sunday) afternoon.

Normal service will be resumed.

[francovendee]

I'm pleased you've got it sorted. I got as far as paragraph 5 in your post and after that you could have been talking Martian I'm afraid my level of computer knowledge is very low.
I know you are an Apple fan but due to my experiences with my wife's two Macbook pros I'm not.
My Chromebook has stopped me worrying about back ups, software changes. Google does it all for me

[Mick F]

The trouble is, technology moves on, and leaves the old codgers behind.
Not suggesting you're an old codger though!
We old codgers are happy where we are, but the young people are ripe for new stuff and are happy to accept it.
I suppose I'm in the camp that says if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Yosemite 10.10.5 ain't broke IMO.

Heard this morning on R4 that Fray Bentos pies are having to redesign their tins and the Millennials can't open them.
The tins have been the same design for 60years and young people don't know how to work tin-openers.

[mercalia]

not all so called "advances"are so

I store and watch all my thousands of dvd/blu ray/tv shows recorded from live tv on a discontinued product called MEDIA CENTER made by Microsoft that was only generally available on Windows 7 that pc wont ever be upgraded beyond Windows 7. It is far superior to any settop box and has 16 tb of storeage

[Psamathe]

Normally I hate each upgrade of OS X/macOS but the Sierra to High Sierra was an unusually good one. APFS is a dramatic improvement for machines with SSDs, lots and lots of bug fixes (unusual), a lot more robust (e.g. AirDrop is pretty solid, Wi-Fi sync works (High Sierra most of the time, Sierra virtually never), etc., etc.

Apple have started to warn about 32 bit programs but still support them (only 1st time running such a program will generate the warning, subsequent runs just run as usual).

Ian

[Mick F]

I don't agree completely with you.
HS wasn't robust. Not for my machine anyway. I can't see why APFS is better for SSD, because I never noticed anything better at all.
Not used Air Drop, so can't comment.
WiFi is always rock solid, and has always been since we first had it back in 2002? with our iBook and Airport.
32bit or 64bit, I don't care one way or another. Many of the progs I've been using came with a message about it when first launched. Ascent would crash - a dead program and never going to be updated. Safari would crash too, and that's an Apple program!

I'll be monitoring how I'm getting on now with Yosemite. I'll post here if I get any issues. Mrs Mick F never gets issues with her MBA in Yosemite.

My MBA that I'm on now is getting a bit broken physically. The battery needs replacing as it seems to be swollen and stopping the shift key and the Cmd keys working on the left of the keyboard. If I squeeze the base and twist the bottom, it'll be ok for a while.
Also the track pad won't click properly any more - magnet issue I think.

Basically, if I can afford it, I'll be buying a new MBA. Trouble is, it will ship with HS, so I want to downgrade the OS to Yosemite.
To that end, I'm going to clone my HD soon, and when or if I get a new MBA, I want to delete the new HD and clone my clone onto it.
Whether I can do that or not, I don't know, but I'm going to do some research about it. If I'm in Plymouth soon, I'll be popping into the Apple Shop and asking the question.

[PDQ Mobile]

I thought this was a thread about a planned holiday in Spain!!
This tells you something about my aptitude in all things digital.

[Psamathe]

...
WiFi is always rock solid, and has always been since we first had it back in 2002? with our iBook and Airport.....

I said Wi-Fi sync NOT just Wi-Fi.

I can't see why APFS is better for SSD, because I never noticed anything better at all.

Far faster, far better use of storage.

Ascent would crash - a dead program and never going to be updated. Safari would crash too, and that's an Apple program!

Trouble with Ascent is has long been abandoned by the developer. If you are having issues with Safari then there is something bad wrong with your installation as for most it is a far more robust OS.

Ian

[Mick F]

Ascent is always rock solid .......... but not in Sierra or High Sierra.
Safari has never been rock solid.
Some time back because of Safari issues, we started using Firefox. Much better.
Safari in Yosemite is ok - just - this is both our MBAs, not just mine. In Sierra and High Sierra with mine, frequent crashes.

[Psamathe]

Ascent is always rock solid .......... but not in Sierra or High Sierra.
Safari has never been rock solid.
Some time back because of Safari issues, we started using Firefox. Much better.
Safari in Yosemite is ok - just - this is both our MBAs, not just mine. In Sierra and High Sierra with mine, frequent crashes.

Then you almost certainly have other issues (loaded plug-ins, corrupt libraries r something because nothing inherently wrong with Safari (I use it all the time and it's rock solid - every since I've had a Mac. I have other browsers installed but never use them.

Might be that whatever corrupt stuff is affecting Safari is also affecting Ascent (or vice versa).

Ian

[Mick F]

No plugins.
Clean installation of MacOS only at the weekend.
Safari has had issues a few times since then.
Reset it and deleted history and cookies etc.
Restarted the computer two or three times.
Safari has never ever been stable on any of our computers.

Safari doesn't like Netflix on our iMac, as we've found recently, so watch it on Firefox, though it's fine on the MBAs.

[Mick F]

PS
Ascent wasn't working on High Sierra. It was really I suppose, but crashed sometimes during use.
Main issue with it, was that if I went to Ascent Preferences, Ascent crashed immediately every single time.

It was fine on the iMac in Yosemite 10.10.5, and is fine now that I've gone back to 10.10.5 on this MBA.
I reckon it's all to do with using an old dead program on a brand new operating system.

[Psamathe]

PS
Ascent wasn't working on High Sierra. It was really I suppose, but crashed sometimes during use.
Main issue with it, was that if I went to Ascent Preferences, Ascent crashed immediately every single time.

It was fine on the iMac in Yosemite 10.10.5, and is fine now that I've gone back to 10.10.5 on this MBA.
I reckon it's all to do with using an old dead program on a brand new operating system.

When I had it (ages ago) it was always crashing. You made me aware of it here and I downloaded it (trial/limited version) but it was too unstable way pre-Yosemite (never reliable enough to pay for full/unlimited version). I suspect those issues are Ascent related not OS related.

Ian

[Mick F]

................ and another thing.

The security aspects of HS are far higher than I want or need.
Logging on to this site, for instance, requires three(?) clicks in HS, but on Yosemite, just the one. The computer fills in the username and password, and all I need to do is accept.
Same as any website I frequent, even Hotmail.

Macs remember passwords of course.

Personally, I don't need any security like HS gives, though I'm sure many folk do.

HS is not for me.

[Psamathe]

The trouble with all these things is that it is a "direction of travel".

Before High Sierra I have felt the same about pretty well all new versions of OS X/macOS. But when you think about it, given a "direction of travel" and then in e.g. 10 years time will you still be running Yosemite (and whilst you'll still have Ascent and any other abandoned apps, most will no longer run on the very old OSs).

If you don't like High Sierra then you'll probably dislike 10.14 even more.

Pre High Sierra I've ended up just having to "go with it" and "get used to it" and one does.

It's like phones; I hate the modern trend for large phones. iPhone 5/5S/SE is largest I can handle but when battery on my acceptable size handset finally needed renewing it made no sense to pay out for a new battery on such an old handset so I've had to go for a more up-to-date one and although I still hate the size of the thing, when I picked-up and used my old 5S it had started to feel "a bit small". When there is a "direction of travel" you end-up having to go with it in the end and holding back means an even bigger jump when you finally do have to upgrade.

How I see it anyway (having gone through many "I hate this" upgrades).

Ian