So, time has finally caught up with me, and going to update to El Capitan on my venerable old cheese grater 2009 4,1 (flashed to 5,1) mac pro.... any "gotcha's" or things I should look out for?

Probably will need to update things like HandsOff and LittleSnitch etc... realize leaving PT10.3.10 on the field for most part, (but will have a bootable clone).. but was wondering if any of you other guys had any advice...?

Thanks in advance.

 

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Last edited by a moderator: May 23, 2018

In contrast to my bad experiences with 10.10, the transition to and work with 10.11 was surprisingly smooth.
Very few older apps had graphical glitches (the worst being a scrollable text field that would sometimes crash the app when scrolling) but overall I had the impression that Apple not only added new features but also cleaned up a lot of old code fragments that were causing issues in previous systems.
Depending on what software you want to use, you might need to disable system integrity protection which can open your machine for security risks when connected to the internet.
Also, for whatever stupid reason, you still need an application firewall to block outgoing connections for applications individually.

 

So I was going to El Cap as I was told by some friends IRL that it was pretty damn stable, was gonna hold off on Sierra for now... do you have thoughts on that? I know as you said some of the graphical glitches you speak of, probably gonna have some issues with my old 32Lives! etc with these os's... and yeah, my work system is generally offline except for necessary updates etc... but will have to block as usual a lot of apps etc, and hopefully the legacy settings from Little Snitch and Hands off will transfer over...

 

I had no problems with the update to El Capitan myself (2009 mac pro & 2010 mac book pro) other than my macbook became a little bit slow. Doing some research, I discovered that it needs a lot of empty space on the hard disk, perhaps more than 60%.
So, I made some space and my laptop became much faster, at least as fast as it was with Yosemite. Very stable too, I've never seen a crash.
But, take my advise: free up as much space as you can. You'll be surprised!

 

Have the same 2009 mac pro (4.1 > 5.1) and went High Sierra with zero issues. Can't think of any gotcha's.
I had old SSD in reserve along with CCC backup. Hope all works out for you

 

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Last edited by a moderator: May 23, 2018

EL Captain was a very stable OS when I used it in the studio, I never encountered any problems with it.

But at this stage I wouldn't recommend updating to EL Captain, because you're about two years too late.... if you're going to bite the bullet and update your OS, I would at least update to OS Sierra as that has become some of the minimum requirements to run OS Software (Logic Pro X etc).

Best of luck with the update

 

Thanks mate, I think you are right, there was "some" reason I was only going to go to el Cap, and tbh, I can't remember what it was for the life of me. Perhaps had something to do with some external hardware I had, or availability of 32Lives! for it, or whatnot... as I know I am already leaving PT10 behind... I will scratch my head to remember, but hmm... I DO remember there was a reason beyond my own occasional idiocy...

Thanks so much to you and EVERYONE else for chiming in. Sincerely.

 

I don't want to leave El Capitan until I'm forced to for whatever reason. I went ahead and got another drive, put High Sierra on it, (to use some apple apps) tried my audio stuff on it and it's just sluggish in comparison for whatever reason. So for me it's audio related only on the El Capitan drive, and web, apple apps, ect on the other. Just a reboot and pick an OS.

 

yeah, i definitely don't wanna go to High Sierra, and I can't remember the reasons I was given to stall at El Capitan rather then Sierra for now... I just know there are certain "cherry" osx's for audio in my experience (from way back in System 7/8/9 days to 10.6.8 being a great one (from my cold dead hands unfortunately).. 10.8.5/10.9.5 ok... 10.7 sucking....)... but yeah... I worry I am going to have to go damn "tri-boot"! argh....