I upgraded to Yosemite on my laptop, and now it is essentially worthless. Every time I fire it up and try to do anything, I get the spinning circle of doom forever. I get a message about Java 6 Legacy, but I can’t even get to force quit or shutdown, it locks up so tight. What do I do?
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mb
shoulda bought a pc
J C
You need to update Java. It’s one of the major known issues.
Also, you have to be an idiot not to wait until they iron out the kinks. Did you not hear what happened to the iPhone 6’s with the IOS 8 Update?
LT
Wait – there’s something after Mavericks? I’ve got 10.9.5.
WereBear
What kind of Mac? What OS are you upgrading from? Can you boot from your CD or an external HD? Have you tried rebooting while holding down the various key combinations, like holding down CMD & r, or the Option key?
karen
Did you back your laptop up first? What you may have to do is wipe your harddrive clean then restore from the backup. I had to do that but for another reason. Call Applecare since you’ve downloaded their product and it’s messed up your laptop. Then do what I do, don’t upgrade unless you have no choice. Let them get the bugs out first!
hilzoy
So you can’t even get it to restart with the on/off button?
LT
John – this says Java 8 rec’d for Yosemite:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6601242
BethanyAnne
Have you tried booting into safe mode? Hold Shift down when you boot to do so.
Seanogar1
Do you have a solid state drive? Do you have TRIM enabled? Yosemite doesn’t get along with TRIM. You’ll have to restart from the recovery disk or another source of bootable OS and disable TRIM, then the laptop should run fine.
LT
@BethanyAnne: Wait – why tell him to boot in safe mode? Then what?
hilzoy
Also, link to Java 6 Legacy: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1572?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
BethanyAnne
@LT: if it’s not booting all the way, I’d boot into safe mode to see if I could access the laptop at all. From there he might be able to upgrade the Java, or he might be able to run the Yosemite installer again. It would be a place to start.
LT
@BethanyAnne: That makes sense.
Alex
I had the same problem – hit the more info button on the Java error message, and then install the update on the Apple page that comes up. Once you’ve done that, restart and it will work just fine.
Xantar
How to boot up in Safe Mode.
shelley
You’re asking the wrong gal. I tried to update my Safari browser last weekend. Turned out it wouldn’t work with my current OS. All well and good, but it completely overwrote the browser, making it useless. Had to reinstall the original system to get back a workable browser. (And yes, I should have had a backup like Firefox….) Took me a cautious while to upgrade to where I was before. So right now I’m staying with OS 10.5.8 and Safari 5.0.6
Why the heck’d they name it Yosemite . Keep thinking of Yosemite Sam
jehrler
@shelley:
They are now naming their OSes after places in California. Doesn’t get much more iconic than Half Dome.
raven
I was a beta for Yosemite and upgraded a couple of months ago without issue. I put it on my work machine Friday and it works fine.
The Dangerman
@Seanogar1:
He’s boned because he enabled TRIM?
raven
Apple discussion page devoted to this issue with a solution.
Java for OS X 2014-001
scav
@jehrler: Half Dome? Then again, that’s a bit too close to Half Done if things go pear shaped. Although there’s always something to play with.
guachi
What kind of garbage OS doesn’t work with TRIM on an SSD?
Another Holocene Human
@LT: 10.9.4 here but yeah, I bought this damn thing this summer* after a lightning strike lit up the Cox cable lines and blew out my mac mini from the inside. Up until then I’d always thought those cable surge lines were a ripoff … boy that would have saved me some dosh.
*-and still working overtime I wish I didn’t have to to pay that shit off, thanks OBAMA
tom
Delete Java, you probably don’t even use it. Reinstall if/when you do need it. If you’re using any plugins/extensions in your Web browser, turn those off until updates are issued, sadly, plugin authors seem to lag behind OS updates in my experience. Same for any plugins/extensions you may be loading on start up, turn them off until updates are issued.
Another Holocene Human
@The Dangerman: lolTRIM
Diana
Running an old Imac (OS 10.6.8) I got the message in gmail that my Safari was no longer a supported browser. I downloaded Firefox, and lo and behold same message. All extensions turned off, and still gmail thinks it is running in a no-longer-supported browser, whether Safari or Firefox.
Does this have anything to do with pushing me to upgrade to Yosemite?
all responses appreciated. thanks.
Another Holocene Human
OMG, Genfare are such fucking douchnozzles they have their current stock price on the bottom right corner of their webpages. My god, fuck them with a rusty pitchfork.
This is what your government spends money on, multi-million dollar farebox systems for bumblefuck, Iowa’s paratransit+ 4x/week senior shuttle service instead of spending money on “operations” ie driver wages so the goddamn bus comes more often than once an eon and the bus driver can finally afford to take her three kids off of Medicaid.
Another Holocene Human
@Diana: I’m using Chrome. Chrome is determined to be a POS on my android phone but no problems with Chrome+ghostery on my iMac except for the fact that Streak, which I’m using in conjunction with Gmail, has a hate-on for Ghostery for some reason.
El Cruzado
@tom: What he said, unless there’s some actual reason (a few popular multiplatform apps like CrashPlan still use it) get rid of Java, it’s more of a security problem than something useful these days.
Howard Beale IV
@The Dangerman: @guachi: Google revelas that TRIM can be enabled via a 3rd party driver but has to be done after Yosemite is installed.
Mike J
@Another Holocene Human:
Apps that block cookies and web apps don’t work well together.
Using those together is like turning off your GPS and complaining that your apps don’t know where you are.
Baud
@Another Holocene Human:
I’ve lately had issues with video playback on this site with Chrome for Android.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
Are you sure? I thought Apple/OSX was just supposed to work. It’s unpossible that there could be a problem with it!
Another Holocene Human
@Mike J: Actually it works fine and ghostery lets me turn trackers and scripts on/off if I want*, it is not a cookie blocker. But streak is always warning me (dun dun dun) that something something ghostery conflict something something.
*usually I want because a page having to load 30 other fucking things that all use javashit scripts makes my processor light up like a fucking electric burner and slows loading down to a crawl when I all I usually wanted to do was read a goddamn text post
Keith G
At least the iTunes upgrade to v.12 last week has made things a bit more bearable for those of us who use iTunes primarily as a way to collect and sort podcasts. Versions 10 &11 were cripplingly stupid on that front. It seemed to be designed by folks who had no idea what made for a useful and efficient user experience.
Another Holocene Human
@Baud: Do you mean video starting/stopping a lot or those goddamn autoplaying video ads are on every website now because, yes, they are, and it kills me that Chrome will tell me which browser tab is making the noise but I can’t just mute the tab.
Come on, somebody needs to make a browser where I can mute tabs. Pretty please?
Baud
@Another Holocene Human:
No. When I click on a video a front pager has posted, the audio works, but the video is half greyed out so there is no image.
5x5
I’m sorry, but I have no advice.
I have two questions.
Is there a way to get a replacement screen for an IPod Touch 4 in Chicagoland for under $50? I can’t go the DYI route. I have bad eyes and shakey sausage-fingered hands.
I have an old Apple. 10.4, I think – Tiger? What would it take to upgrade it enough to give it away?
I hate Apple.
Thank you!
raven
The Georgia debate has a question about Gurley!
dmsilev
@5×5: A Tiger machine is going to be pretty hard to give away unless you’re giving it to someone with very very basic needs. That’s most likely a PowerPC-based machine, or possibly the first generation of Intel-based Macs. If it’s the former, there’s only one subsequent version of the OS which will run on the machine (10.5, aka Leopard), and you’re going to be limited in terms of what software can be installed (an issue if, for instance, you want an up-to-date and fully security-patched web browser). If it’s one of the early-generation Intel Macs, you’re in somewhat better shape. It’ll run 10.6, possibly 10.7, and you’d be decent shape for software availability.
To check, go to the Apple menu at the upper left corner of the screen, and click on the About This Mac entry. If you see ‘G4’ or ‘G5’ in the model description, it’s a PPC machine.
Tree With Water
Stay away from a hammer, that’s what you do.
Xboxershorts
Use Google and do your damn research before you do your next major upgrade on a production piece of equipment.
Also, Apple sucks as a corporation, stop fucking supporting them.
the Conster
I blame Obama.
5x5
@dmsilev: Thank you so much. I figured there wasn’t much hope. I’ll take your advice and look into it.
If my niece can’t use it, I’ll clean my stuff off of it and give it to the Salavation Army.
JPL
@raven: I missed most of it but I did catch where Deal’s wife said Sunday voting was okay, as long as Republicans went to church first. wtf, wtf, Neither Carter nor Hunt said anything.
jeffreyw
Thread needz moar kitteh!
Original Lee
Just updated Kaspersky (decided to go with Kaspersky PURE 3.0) and now can hardly access anything unless I use Safari. Firefox, IE, Chrome, all locked down tight as untrustworthy. Safari gets me a few places, and I finally persuaded Kaspersky to let me use Yahoo! in Firefox (although I can hardly go anywhere with it). It’s a hot mess on my PC right now. I am very unhappy to have spent most of today struggling with this.
Mike J
@Original Lee: Honestly, all you need for anti-v on windows these days is Microsoft’s.
Original Lee
@Mike J: I have to have an antivirus software approved by both my employer and my spouse’s employer because we telecommute. We had McAfee for a long time but got fed up with it and decided to try Kaspersky. Maybe I went overboard with the PURE, though.
jheartney
@5×5: I have a G5 Power Mac sitting about ten feet from me. In its day, it was a nice machine. These days all it ever does is record school music instrument playing tests, or the occasional very old game that doesn’t run on modern hardware. Its current value is probably negative.
I told my wife in no uncertain terms NOT to install Yosemite as yet. Nothing I see on it that offers any real enhancement, AFAICT, and it’s just asking for problems with software we depend on (Chrome, Adobe, etc.) Maybe in a few weeks.
OTOH when Android Lollipop drops, I’m right there! (No mission critical apps on the phone.)
Comrade Mary
@Keith G: Thanks for the heads up! My stupid (Windows) iTunes wasn’t even telling me there was an update, so I’m installing it right now.
What problems were you having? Besides it getting very confused about which device I was plugging in, it was spontaneously unsubscribing me from podcasts I listened to regularly, treating “delete after listening” as a default choice, forgetting to download new episodes from my feed as they arrived, creating multiple copies of podcasts on the computer and devices, and generally getting me ready to pay for another app for my devices.
JPL
So during the GA debate, the Governor was asked about Sunday voting and he responded by saying what his wife said. that Sunday voting was okay as long as Republicans went to Church first. Does that mean that there are no Jewish members, as well as other religions that practice on days other than Sunday, in the Republican Party. I’m still shocked that Jason Carter didn’t say something about that statement.
Raven.. are u still around.. maybe I misheard..
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Original Lee: I had to give up on Kaspersky. Trying to run that mess was worse than having a virus.
BethanyAnne
I run Bitdefender on my Windows gaming rig. So far it’s worked fine.
5x5
@jheartney: My worst fault (I have many) is not getting rid of things while they could still be useful to someone else. Size 4 suits hanging in the closet after I’ve moved on to 8s and a casual dress office.
Apple and I both suck. I’m going to get better.
raven
@JPL: I stopped watching after the football question. I now have to see how many more people get waxed on Boardwalk Empire.
different-church-lady
@jheartney:
To me it’s worth about $300. I’m going to have to go searching for one soon — my G5 digital audio workstation died, and to replace/upgrade all the hardware and software from scratch into a modern rig would be in the ‘hood of 4k. Which I don’t have to spare, what with needing a root canal and a new roof and a 10 year old car. So I’m going to be shopping for a 10 year old computer (or parts) very soon.
JPL
@raven: I actually just sent a note to Political Wire.. cuz it was so repulsive. Gosh .. I wish I had tivo.
slag
Vis-a-vis your post on guns and mental illness, we may have found the fountainhead of the ammosexual revolution. Lead poisoning: http://projects.seattletimes.com/2014/loaded-with-lead/1/.
divF
@El Cruzado:
When Java first came out, it was supposed to be a solution to security problems relative to C, since it eliminated pointer arithmetic. How is it a security problem now?
I have been hanging on to OS X 10.8 for dear life. As of 10.9, Apple has made it extremely difficult to use any of the gnu compilers. Rumor has it that this was to the more intrusive nature of GPL 3 – the IP lawyers at Apple said to scrub all traces of gnu out.
5x5
@different-church-lady: I will let you know if my niece doesn’t want it. Perhaps by week end.
WaterGirl
@JPL: I have a Tivo Premier XL box I am not using, if you are interested. I replaced that box with a Tivo mini and still have my Premier 4XL.
jheartney
@different-church-lady: $20 plus shipping and it’s yours. If you’re interested, email at jheartney at-symbol yahoo.com and I’ll send full specs and photo.
Steeplejack
@Original Lee:
What Mike J said. I do a lot of troubleshooting and tech support for friends and acquaintances, and at this point I don’t see where any of the antivirus programs add value beyond Microsoft Security Essentials to make up for their oddities and idiosyncrasies.
(Exception is if you’re still running Windows XP, support for which has been dropped in MSE.)
It seems odd that your company wouldn’t approve MSE, since it comes from the Microsoft mother ship. You might want to ask your no doubt friendly and helpful tech-support guy about that.
ETA: I use/recommend Avira for machines that need non-MSE protection.
Richard Bottoms
Zero problems here on my MacAir.
karen
@Another Holocene Human:
Try Flashblock. My flash has to be clicked on to work. End of problem.
Howard Beale IV
@divF:Privilege escalation issues, SQL injection isssues, – basically Java suffers the same issues that plague C/C++ applications with the exception of buffer overflows due to the lack of pointers. And of course, many of the Java frameworks introduce some of their own unique vulnerabilities.
karen
@divF:
I won’t upgrade to Yosemite unless I have no choice. That was why I upgraded to Mavericks from Mountain Lion.
normal liberal
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
What a coincidence – just today I gave up and deep-sixed Kaspersky. I also installed Yosemite – so far so good.
Kaspersky kept forgetting its updates, and every so often would go all amnesiac on the license key. Now all I have to do is make sure it doesn’t auto-renew in a couple of months.
I’m hoping it was Kaspersky that kept crashing my iMac – I’m giving it a week, during which I’ll be talking myself out of the retina iMac as a replacement.
Apple fangirl? Hey, I haven’t ordered a new iPhone yet.
dmhlt
Poor baby …
Fucking tired of hearing APPLE APPLE APPLE
Basically Apple thrives on its “I’m-So-Cool” reputation.
LIVE WITH IT!
Nom de Plume
Well, it’s far too late for this advice, but the best thing to do is not “upgrade” to something just because it’s new. Wait for an actual reason to upgrade, like it adds some sort of functionality that is beneficial. I am still on 10.7, and I have found absolutely no reason to go any higher.
John Weiss
@Another Holocene Human: How about bitching to the sites that employ autoplay? Maybe boycott sites that use that excretable technique.
JPL
@WaterGirl: I’m on antenna so I don’t think it would work.
thank you though.
Leslie
I installed Yosemite on my early 2011 MacBook Pro with no problems. I hope one or more of the many suggested fixes here work for JC.
Comrade Carter
The Safe Boot thing ought to work… Although I’ve had it on my iMac since the first beta came out and it was no trouble at all.
If you had a PC there’d be a lot of answers… Each depending on the OS you are currently running. Ha-de-ha-ha.
divF
@Howard Beale IV: Thanks.
I’m primarily a scientific software dweeb who would happily live out his life on Linux boxes, were it not for the fact that I am also a narrow-gauge manager so that I have to engage with a steady stream of Microsoft Office stuff. (Unix) \bigcap (MS Office) pretty much means Apple, at least for the present.
RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac)
Up until the middle of last month, I was still on 10.4. I found a steal of a deal on an Intel Mac Pro on Craigslist and I had to jump at it. The Mac Pro now runs 10.6.8 and I have no desire to upgrade as things work very well right now. I’m quite happy with the Mac Pro, but I could easily jump back to 10.4 if anything were to happen. The G5 I had as a daily driver could easily step in to cover for me while I saved up for another Mac Pro.
Incidentally, I could get Yosemite to work on here with a lot of massaging, but I won’t.
Ron Beasley
MS has always been a pain in the you know what but looks like Apple is even a bigger one that costs a lot more. I am still running Windows 7 which works great and I have had no problems for over 3 years. Windows 8.1 let’s you pretend like you still have Windows 7 so why should I upgrade?
Nom de Plume
@RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac):
You’re the same as me. I just got a great Mac Pro on Craigslist as well, dirt cheap. It was a $3000 computer new. It is still fast as hell, even by modern standards. The Macbook I’m typing this on was another Craigslist steal.
If people weren’t so obsessed with the latest thing, they could easily outfit their entire household with screaming fast computers for maybe a grand.
Nunca El Jefe
@5×5: put lubuntu, or some other lightweight distro, on that thing and you’ll get a lot more life out of it. I have never actually installed Linux on a Mac, but I know enough to know that the Mac os is Linux based, so… I have a ten year old laptop with a Pentium four running pretty well on an xfce based distro.
None of the above should be taken to deprive adcl of what she wants, but all of these machines are still pretty powerful, if you can put a little work into them.
Jay Noble
Folks, if you have your original Tiger install disc(s), you are sitting on a nice chunk of change. You can’t make a bootable back up without it. Apple doesn’t have them anymore and if you can find them they will be over $100 bucks. So while the hardware may not be worth much . . .
Incitatus for Senate
@Jay Noble: A: Why would anyone run Tiger? I think that anything that runs Tiger will run Snow Leopard.
B: Just clone your drive, that will give you a bootable backup.
C: A hundred freaking dollars? Just download a disc image.
Southern Beale
This might help:
How to fix Yosemite’s biggest annoyances.
RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac)
In my experience on multiple PowerPC Macs, Tiger was the most stable and useful system I used. Leopard was too much of a resource hog and broke a lot of basic things that I used every day. Leopard was the last verison that PowerPC Macs could run.
When I transitioned to Intel, I stuck with Snow Leopard, waiting a week for the DVD to arrive at the house instead of loading Leopard which I already had.
Southern Beale
Also, thanks for the tip. I’ll hold off upgrading until the fix the issues.
Southern Beale
@RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac):
I really miss the PowerPC functionality. It made working with a variety of different things, like DVDs that come with my work materials, a gazillion times easier. Kinda pissed they got rid of it.
My old clunky laptop finally got a glass of water spilled on it and I had to buy a new one. Wonder if it’s worth trying to fix the old one just to use for things like DVDs
Incitatus for Senate
@RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac): Thanks, I’d forgotten about PPC maxing out at Leopard. I liked Tiger, but I’ve always thought that OSX peaked with Snow Leopard.
Southern Beale
@Jay Noble:
NOW you tell me. Think I just got rid of mine.
browser
@Southern Beale:
External DVD drives can be had for about $20 now. I’d bet that it’d cost that much just to have somebody look at your old laptop.
Southern Beale
@Diana:
I don’t think your old iMac can take any OS after Leopard. Different processors. I’m not a tech geek though so what do I know, but that’s why I kept my old laptop running the old OS as long as I did.
Southern Beale
@browser:
I have an external DVD drive, actually, but it still won’t play the materials for certain DVDs that come with my teaching materials. I’ve tried to install the supposedly “mac friendly” installer and get a “no can do cuz PowerPC functions aren’t supported” prompt. I’m sure it’s because the DVDs are old, but I’ve got this old laptop that I might be able to get working again so I just don’t know if it’s worth the effort.
Original Lee
@Steeplejack: The company says, in the telecommuting agreement, that we must have acceptable antivirus software. Acceptable = Norton (no way in hell), McAfee (just dropped overboard), and Kaspersky. However, over the course of the evening, I have tweaked various parameters, and now my worst issue appears to be with Firefox. I can now get Safari, Chrome, and IE to work, but with numerous awful popup ads all over. I have the adblocker addon for Firefox, which means I get no popup ads at all anywhere I go, but Firefox refuses to let me go almost anywhere. Oddly enough, BJ is one of those places. Grrr.
RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac)
And just for the record, Tiger was also the last good looking Mac OS. When Leopard brought pink wallpapers, gray menus and windows, and light blue folders, it was grotesque in its ugliness. Tiger’s blue and gray colors flow well together and are very eye-pleasing.
Snow Leopard is also not as visually appealing, but I made my peace with it.
The flat iOS-looking Yosemite doesn’t do much for me, either.
RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac)
@Diana:
Diana, I just tried to access Gmail from Firefox 32.0.3. It works so far without any notices or issues. I got the notice about Safari when I tried it using version 5.0.5.
Joel Hanes
but I know enough to know that the Mac os is Linux based
Non-fact.
The OS/X kernel is based on Mach, a UNIX-alike that is/was not Linux.
OS/X _does_ use bash for the default command shell, and provides almost the same UNIX experience at the user level, but its fundamentals are quite different than Linux, and are not descended from the Linux kernel implementation in any way.
TriassicSands
@different-church-lady:
Consider running Linux. I have a 10-year-old Dell that I use as a backup computer running a very nice Linux distro (distro = distribution or one could call it a “flavor.”) One of the most popular Linux distros today is Linux Mint and a ten-year-old computer (say, a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 with 2GB of RAM) will run Mint 13 Maya very nicely.
Anyone familiar with Windows XP, Vista, or 7 ought to be able to become functional with Mint (Cinnamon or MATE desktop) or Zorin OS in a few minutes. Making the transition to Linux is not always simple — it can be difficult to impossible to get some printers to work (HP offers Linux drivers for all of their printers, while Lexmark offers none). Unlike Windows, Linux uses the command line a lot, but it’s not that difficult to learn and it can be the best way to do some things.
If you’re a Mac user, then something like Elementary OS (Canadian) or Deepin (Chinese) would be a good choice. I think Deepin has the nicest interface of any OS I’ve used.
One very nice aspect of Linux is the fact that there are no known Linux viruses “in the wild” today. That means there’s no need for anti-virus software.
Gian
@RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac):
there’s a big race on to find a way to make a unified desktop to phone to tablet to notebook OS “experience”
it’s why windows 8 sucks on the desktop. People understand and like that desktops are different the phone. I’m not at all convinced that forcing them to merge will actually work
E.
@TriassicSands: Why are you scaring people about with this “Linux uses the command line a lot” business? Linux *offers* the opportunity to use the command line but semi-current versions of linux that run just fine on 10-year old PCs like the one I am using right now do not require it at all.
E.
Not to be a dick but I really cannot understand why people buy Apple computers. They are very well known for becoming useless in a short space of time, with no hope of upgrades, and they cost far more than their competitors. I get that people who are doing high-end video work have reasons to like them, but for the rest of us? I run a law office on antiquated computers running whatever the newest “long-term support” (which means “super-duper stable”) version of Ubuntu Linux is. They work flawlessly. I never think about them, they just work.
? Martin
@E.:
Define short space of time? My daughter’s MacBook Pro is 6 years old and running fine.
But two points:
1) Macs have very high resale value. I have friends that move from new machine to new machine for about $200/year.
2) When you buy a car, do you buy the cheapest possible car you can find on the market? If you buy a house do you struggle to justify something better than a single-wide?
I spend 8-12 hours a day with my laptop. Assuming you use it for 3 years (the minimum I keep my Macs in use), a top of the line MacBook Pro will cost you $2/day. I spend at most 45 minutes with a cup of coffee and it costs the same amount, so yeah, I’m going to buy the laptop that I like. My laptop is an absolute steal in terms of value/time.
JohnM
You should upnerd to cromulent 5.0
Ripley
So what’s their next OS gonna be, Riverside or Victorville?
RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac)
I have a ten year old G5 that was my daily driver for two years until I got my Mac Pro in mid-September. The Mac Pro is from 2006 and so far runs just fine. I have a 13 year old G4 Mac that serves as a backup server with 3 TB of space among six drives. Sure, the processors are nowhere near as fast as today’s stuff and software support is nonexistent, but the machines still work with a little bit of TLC. Hell, I even used the 13 year old 466MHz G4, with 1.5GB of RAM and a Tiger installation, as a daily driver for three months in 2012 before buying my first G5, an iMac with a faulty screen.
So I dispute the idea that Macs could become useless or be upgradable.
dopey-o
@5×5: I have a Dual G5 Mac, picked from a dumpster. I put in a $30 power supply and it worked great. Then I went looking for a buyer. The best advice I got was:
DivF
@Ripley: as appropriate as those names might be I’m guessing Shasta or Tahoe.
Robert Sneddon
@RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac): The oldest usable PC I have in my collection is a Compaq laptop from the late 80s, a 386 with Windows 3.1. I played Doom on it a few months back for nostalgia’s sake. The backup server under my desk is from the mid-90s, a Pentium 1 box with Win2000 on it.
MS believe in backwards compatibility — I’m running 15-year-old software (Corel Draw 6) natively on this 4-core Windows 8 box of mine and I’m pretty certain it will run under Windows 10 too. Apple tend to break compatibility on a regular basis forcing users to either stay with older versions of hardware or OS or pay to replace their toolchains.
delk
@E.: I did get my first mac because of video editing (Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro). I had gone back to school and was tired of having to use the lab computers.
I booted up that 2002 iMac about a month ago. First time in about five years and it runs fine. FCP ran slower, of course, but nothing that would prevent me from using it if push came to shove.
Sherparick
I would contact Applecare. I have been exploring the update for my wife’s Mac and everything I read says I need to back up her machine before I start. By the way, the Best Buy Geek Squad people in Spotsylvania County are useless. They just try to get you to buy a new MAC.
Sherparick
Open thread, Mary Matalin must have some redeeming qualities, but boy is she odious as far as her politics and her view of minority groups as simply not counting as real Americans and candidates who rely on their votes therefore not having legitimacy. http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/sorry-ladies-your-nice-little-war-is.html
Also, as Digby notes, apparently this a shared assumption in The Village.
Jasmine Bleach
@Diana:
Hah! No, that message is from Google, not Apple. Nothing to do with pushing you to upgrade systems.
Google makes gMail, of course, and when they release new versions of their web applications, they only test against the browser versions that have been around for the last handful of years. If you have a version of Safari that was released before that, you’ll get that message.
Most things should still work–I’m working off an older version of Mac OS X and probably have an older version of Safari than you do and things still work okay–but you might start to notice some little bits of weirdness, like not being able to fully utilize other Google applications (like Google Drive/Docs).
jak
iMac desktop install with no problems. OTHER THAN THE 8 HOUR DOWNLOAD TIME o/s is working fine.
Nunca El Jefe
@Joel Hanes: fair enough, but you’re splitting hairs from way down in the rabbit hole. Care to address the substance of my comment (meant in a non cromulent way, which doesn’t always come thru in text)?
FlyingToaster
@karen: I learned (through several catastrophic failures in the 90s) to never upgrade my OS. The one it comes with is pretty much the one I’m using until the box dies, becomes the media server, or goes to my grade schooler.
@Xboxershorts: It doesn’t matter which OS; I had failures on all the early versions of Windows, old MacOS, OS/2 (which was a work box and a complete fucking nightmare), and in the 00’s had a very ugly Linux upgrade fail. Apple’s not that much more evil, since every multinational seems to funnel their profits through Ireland.
That being said, the “click more info and follow instructions” seems to be the only way through this mess. Or drive to the Apple Store in (Pittsburgh? Wheeling? Columbus?) wherever and make them deal with it.
Sloegin
Slapped Yosemite on my ’08 Macbook Pro and it’s pokey but working. (It was pokey before updating the OS).
You do have at least 4gb RAM in the thing? I had more ram added after going to Mavericks, because 2gb made for an unusable laptop.
burnspbesq
I’ve only had one hiccup since upgrading, and it turned out to be a Java issue rather than a Yosemite issue.
If you have any apps that are saying you need to update to Java 8 runtime, fuhgedaboudit. Update to Java 8 feveloper kit instead.
Xboxershorts
@FlyingToaster: We all go through such things if we’ve been around it long enough. Myself, since CP/M and Dos 3.1 and AT&T System V on an Altos 386 with serial cluster controllers….
What did we do prior to the existence of the single greatest research tool ever constructed but used mostly for porn and kitty pics?
We read the release notes and caveats. Maybe dialed into a bulletin board to see what other people had experienced or checked out the usenet threads
As for my disdain for Apple, it comes not from their tax evasion, it comes from working as a certified Apple repair shop. They’ve been dry humping their customers for decades in terms of costs and forced upgrades.
At least M$ offers you a little KY
Dice
The Java 6 message means that you have an app or apps that are designed to run under that version of Java; if you can identify the one(s) causing the error, you should be able to update them to run in Yosemite, or if you don’t use them, just ignore the message. This happened to me when I installed a Yosemite beta a couple weeks ago to get a feel for it.
If some of the apps you need require Java 6 & won’t update, you can actually install it and run both v6 and v8 at the same time.
My biggest trouble with the upgrade has been that it skrood up some of the Applescript tools I use to do my job; working through that, though. It’s a fixable pain in the a$$.