Should You Upgrade Your Mac to macOS Sierra?

Although Apple makes new software updates available to as many older devices as possible, there are always some reasons why it may not be in your best interest to install the latest and greatest, even if your Mac is compatible.

http://tinyurl.com/zt5jjxh

-Bill

Apple has just released the first point release, 10.12.1, for MacOS Sierra. I typically wait until this .1 release before jumping on board giving Apple a chance to iron out some of the rough edges. I have not read about any big issues, such as WiFi capabilities since the release of MacOS Sierra a little over a month ago, so I'm comfortable moving up to the latest version of the MacOS.

Having said that, I always leave myself with a fallback position when making a major upgrade such as this. I make a cloned backup using SuperDuper, so I can return relatively easily to the former OS if there's some kind of showstopper. 

It takes about an hour, depending on your internet bandwidth, to download the almost 5 GB upgrade. It took just over an hour for the actual upgrade. That was on my Mac Mini. Because I have my AppStore preferences set to download in the background, the upgrade was ready to go when I was. Because that blob had been downloaded before the point update became available, upon emerging from the upgrade I then had to download the and install the point release. This took another 15 minutes. Since I don't have the download in the background option on my MacBook Air, I got the whole package at once. The whole process took just under an hour on that machine.

There were no issues during either upgrade and the system is stable. Of course, your results might vary, which is the reason for the backup, but I have never had a problem with an upgrade. If you're wondering what's in it for you, here's a link to some of the features. I can see using Siri and the Universal Cut and Paste. You can also elect to keep your Documents and other files in iCloud (providing you have a plan with enough space). Files you use often are kept locally and the others reside in iCloud. Those files can be accessed by your other devices such as the iPhone. Look at this as the DropBox option.

http://www.apple.com/macos/sierra/

So what are you waiting for?

-Bill

Since upgrading to Sierra about two weeks ago, I have found one bug, which is annoying. It has to do with scrolling using a mouse, which isn't very smooth, particularly in the browser. I have found that while scrolling, the scroll will actually jump up forcing me to loose my place while reading. You may not find this noticeable, but I have. There are reports about this in the Apple Support Forum. I have sent feedback to Apple on this issue. 

There are ways around this. On the MacBook one can use the trackpad rather than the mouse. On an iMac or MacMini, one can use a Magic Trackpad. Or one can use the scroll bar along the right edge of the browser window and just drag that. Also one can just tap the space bar and that will advance the window. 

Hopefully this issue will be addressed in a forthcoming update, but this would seem to be a rather minor bug and as such might have a very low priority. As such, if you find this problem, you may want to use one of the work-arounds mentioned above.

Other than that, I am happy with Sierra.

-Bill

Last Week Apple put out a second update to Sierra, MacOS 10.12.2, and it resolved the issues I was having with scrolling in Safari. This issue was not specifically addressed in the update documentation, but there is usually an item in all these updates, which says something like "stability and performance" updates. However it is attributed, I am pleased that the update addressed my particular issue, because I was seriously considering rolling back to Yosemite. 

The ability to roll back to a previous MacOS or version of MacOS is one of the advantages of doing a clone backup before major OS or security upgrades. I use an app called SuperDuper to create these cloned backups.

-Bill

One thing I had overlooked in my consideration as to whether to upgrade to MacOS Sierra was whether the latest version of SuperDuper, the backup/cloning utility I rely on heavily, was compatible with the new release. As it turns out version 2.9.1 is fully compatible and it has been ever since Sept 12, 2016, even before the Sep 20th release of Sierra. 

SuperDuper is one of my critical apps and I was more than willing to pay for it, even though there is a free version available, so that this kind of outstanding support would continue.

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html 

-Bill