Reinstalling and updating Mac OS. How to update the system
They made a lot of noise. And the most interesting thing is that in most cases, users frankly don’t care about “some kind of imaginary security.” Productivity is important to us.
So, because of those same patches that close holes in Intel chips, many computers began to work much slower. True, this is in theory.
In practice, we decided to conduct our own independent testing and monitor the performance of macOS. Does the performance of iMac, MacBook and other Macs deteriorate with the release of new firmware versions?
This is what we are trying to find out.
How events developed
Since January, Apple has been actively working to fix the Specter and Meltdown vulnerabilities. At the same time, the company learned about the presence of such in early December, although information about a potential slowdown reached ordinary users only in early January.
There are already two tests behind us:
- when we compared performance MacBook Pro before and after installing the December patch with macOS 10.13.2. The developers claimed that they had fixed the Meltdown vulnerability, but what we were most afraid of was Specter.
- when on Mac App Store There is another update with macOS 10.13.2. The hefty update promised to fix a security hole in Specter.
Fortunately, none of the updates hit MacBook performance. The laptop works as stable as before the vulnerabilities were discovered.
But in order to sleep peacefully (or restlessly), we decided to continue testing Apple operating systems. After all, we all know that evil awaits where you don’t expect it.
Yesterday Apple released another update in the form, and at the same time they fixed a security hole. We decided to find out whether the system performance had changed after the next update.
Test laptop
We continue to adhere to “ideal” testing conditions. The same 15-inch MacBook Pro from 2014 was chosen as the experimental laptop.
Intel Core i7 with a frequency of 2.2 GHz per core, Intel Graphics Pro, 16 GB random access memory and a 256 GB SSD drive.
When testing, we used a set of software that has already become a standard:
- GeekBench 4 to determine processor performance.
- CineBench- to calculate graphics performance.
- Black Magic Disk SpeedTest- to test the read/write speed of the drive.
- PeaceKeeper- to determine browser performance.
Before testing, close everything third party applications, reboot the Mac and check the quantity running processes. On average, this value varies between 300 - 310.
Let's start testing.
macOS 10.13.2 from January 8
We are repeating MacBook testing Pro in the operating room macOS system 10.13.2. According to Apple, this version of the OS already includes Specter and Meltdown security patches.
Install the macOS 10.13.3 update.
macOS 10.13.3 from January 23
The update weighs about 2 GB (depending on the Mac model). Installation took about 15 minutes. There are no visual changes. Let's start testing using the same set of utilities.
It's time to draw conclusions and compare how things have changed Mac performance after the patches are released.
Visual comparison of results
Since the day we learned about the Specter and Meltdown vulnerabilities, Apple has released three public versions macOS operating systems.
As a reminder, macOS 10.13.1 comes without a patch. macOS 10.13.2 was released twice - first with the Meltdown patch, and a couple of weeks later with Specter. Update 10.13.3 was released only yesterday. It contains both patches and, by Apple versions, maximally optimized.
And now a rather interesting situation is emerging.
From the four operating system versions tested, several conclusions can be drawn.
Positive points:
- CPU performance has improved slightly (according to the Geekbench 4 test);
- CPU performance in the Cinebench test has improved by almost 13%;
- Graphics performance remained at the same level.
Negative points:
- active degradation of performance can be traced standard browser Safari;
- There will be a noticeable drop in the performance of the drive.
The last point raises especially many questions. With the release of all versions of macOS, in which the Specter and Meltdown security hole was patched, the SSD read/write speed dropped significantly.
Apple has released the new OS X Yosemite, the company called the most important advantages a 100% updated interface, the operating system has become more transparent and “flat”. Here we must admit that not everyone will like such revolutionary changes in design. Mac users, and many in the reviews are not happy with such a “primitive” appearance. In terms of stability and speed, some compare it to Vista in Windows. This is due to the fact that some programs do not work correctly in the new OS + there are problems with Wi-Fi, but I think that the next updates to the operating system will correct such shortcomings and the new OS X Yosemite will work no worse than previous versions of OS X. In addition to the interface global changes have occurred in interaction with iOS, namely: now you can receive/answer calls/SMS from iPhone directly from your Mac. Applications running on iPhone can be viewed on Mac or iPad (Handoff function). Function Instant Hotspot will allow you to use your iPhone as a modem to access the Internet. In general, in my opinion, try something new operating system It’s worth it, especially for those who have an iPhone with iOS 8 or higher, plus OS X Yosemite is free, so the maximum is that you will lose this time.
Before you start upgrading to OS X Yosemite, I advise you to follow a few recommendations:
1 Check your Mac device's compatibility with OS X Yosemite.
Unfortunately not all Mac devices suitable for OS X Yosemite, below is a list of devices that are compatible with the new OS X:
iMac (Mid 2007 model or newer)
MacBook (late 2008 aluminum model, early 2009 model or newer)
MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 model or newer)
MacBook Air(late 2008 model or newer)
Mac mini (Early 2009 model or newer)
Mac Pro(early 2008 model or newer)
Xserve (early 2009 model)
To find out information about your Mac model, click apple icon in the left top corner screen, select About This Mac.
In the window that opens, click the "Details" button.
A window will open in front of you, in which the model and Technical information Mac.
Besides this, there are some other restrictions technical plan:
You must have OS X 10.6.8 or later installed (this information can be found in “About this MAC”, see the print screens above).
The Mac must have at least 2 GB of RAM (this information can be found in "About This MAC", see the print screens above).
8 GB of free space on hard drive/SSD.
2 Make a system backup.
It is not known whether you will like the new OS X or not, everything will go smoothly during its installation, as is usually the case, or there will be failures, protect yourself and do system backup . If the new OS X Yosemite does not suit you, you can easily restore from a backup and work in previous version OS X
3 Update all installed applications.
For correct operation everyone installed applications You need to update all previously installed applications. To do this, connect your MAC to the Internet (via Wi-Fi or via Ethernet cable), click on the apple in the upper left corner and select "Software Update".
At the top there will be a banner asking you to upgrade to OS X Yosemite, and below all applications that require updating will be listed, click the "Update All" button and update them in one fell swoop.
Upgrading to OS X Yosemite
After this, you can start updating to OS X Yosemite, to do this, click on Apple logo in the upper left corner and select “Software Update”, then in the banner click the “Free” button.
However, you first need to ugprade to 10.6.6 or 10.6.8 from Apple via the support website. Once you do this and you have installed Mac App Store, go there to update. And in fact, you can no longer upgrade to Lion, as it has been removed from the Mac App Store as of July 2012. You must upgrade directly to Mountain Lion. If you already have Lion installed and you need to install it again, though, hold down Option and click on the tab, purchased in the shop Apple Mac to see the download link again.
Upgrade from 10.7 “Lion” (or 10.6.8 “Snow Leopard”) to 10.8 “Mountain Lion”
Mountain Lion system requirements:
- 2 GB RAM
- 8 GB hard drive space
- OS X 10.6.8 or later
Early Mac models supported: Mid 2007 iMac, late 2008 or early 2009 MacBook, mid 2007 MacBook Pro, late 2008 MacBook Air, early 2009 Mac Mini, or early 2008 Mac Pro
If you have a system that meets the requirements above, you will be able to upgrade your Mac from Lion to Mountain Lion (or even from later version Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion) via the Mac App Store. It will cost $19.99 US with at different prices to other regions.
Upgrade from 10.8 Mountain Lion to 10.9 Mavericks
The system requirements of Mavericks are almost the same as Mountain Lion. It will be released towards the end of 2013, but no release date has been announced yet. Just like the upgrade to Mountain Lion, the upgrade to Mavericks will be done through the Mac App Store and will cost $19.99 US, with varying prices in other regions.
Mavericks is only available as preview developer in this moment but that's it what he looks like.
It turned out to be true, and yesterday telephone conference Tim Cook announced that the new system will be available for download on July 25, that is, today. While the United States sleeps, you and I will prepare our Macs for the transition to the new system. I hope everyone will update to 10.8?
Like last year's Lion, Mountain Lion is extremely easy to install and does not require any user skills. Apart from following the instructions on the computer screen, you will not be asked to do anything more. The first thing you need to know before upgrading to Mountain Lion is the system's compatibility with your computer. As Apple itself says, the new version of the system will work on the following computers:
MacBook (Aluminum Late 2008 or Early 2009 or later)
MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or later)
MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later)
iMac (Mid 2007 or later)
Mac mini (Early 2009 or later)
Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later)
Xserve (Early 2009)
Please note that despite system support, some functions, such as PowerNap or AirPlay, have more stringent restrictions and work not on all computers.
Apple says your computer must have 2 gigabytes of RAM to install OS X Mountain Lion, but we advise you to upgrade your Mac's RAM, since working with 4 gigabytes of memory in 10.8 is much more enjoyable.
Note that there is no need to install RAM in your computer from the same manufacturer that Apple itself installs. The main selection criterion is the operating frequency of the RAM. When you arrive at the store, we recommend that you provide the sales assistant with accurate data on all characteristics, for example, by saving a screenshot of the screen on your iPhone.
If you're having trouble identifying your Mac's system data, you can always use the free Mactracker app, which provides all the information on every device ever made by Apple. In the program you will definitely find your “Mac” and its technical characteristics and data.
The key software limitation when installing Mountain Lion is current version systems no lower than OS X 10.6.8. The fact is that Mountain Lion, like Lion last year, is installed on your computer only through the Mac App Store, which is only available on OS X 10.6.8 and higher. In addition, Apple advises checking your computer for all available updates. You can check it in Finder from apple menu- Software updates.
If your Mac is running Mac OS X Leopard (10.5), then there is only one way to upgrade it to Mountain Lion. First, you will need to purchase Snow Leopard ($29) and from there upgrade to Mountain Lion, the release of which, let me remind you, we are already waiting for tonight.
While upgrading to OS X Lion last year, I purchased a wireless Magic Trackpad for my iMac. The reason for this decision was the new multi-touch gestures introduced by Apple in OS X Lion. Since then, I've been working on my Mac using a combination mouse and trackpad. With the advent of Mountain Lion, gestures will become even more common, and it will become more difficult to manage without a trackpad. If you have not yet purchased this wonderful thing, then I strongly recommend it to you - working on a desktop Mac becomes even more enjoyable.
To do this, launch Disk Utility on your Mac, select your startup disk in the left column and click the “Check Disk” button. Checking the disk's functionality will take some time and may slow down the system somewhat, but this is not a big deal. At the end of the test you should see something like the following.
If, during the check process, Disk Utility found some problems in the operation of your boot disk, then we advise you to boot from another partition and, running again Disk Utility, try to fix all the problems in the partition where they occur by clicking on the “Fix disk” button.
If you are upgrading from Lion and your Mac is using Lion Recovery, you have the option to boot into the appropriate mode by holding Command+R after turning on the computer and use Disk Utility from there.
Do backup your Mac. We definitely recommend that you create backup copy system using a program built into OS X Time Machine. To do this, you will need an external capacious storage device that is capable of storing all the information from your boot disk.
Mac users running Snow Leopard should deactivate FileVault. Mountain Lion, like Lion, has a slightly different encryption principle - FileVault 2. According to Apple, this principle is the best previously existing, and if FileVault is enabled on your Mac, then you can switch to a new system without loss by simply disabling FileVault before upgrading .
If you use third-party disk encryption, we recommend that you temporarily disable it when upgrading to a new version of OS X. Many of these products interact with the disk and operating system at a low level, and incompatibility with Mountain Lion may result in your Mac being unable to boot or unable to access all of your information. You can put encryption into action as soon as Mountain Lion is installed on your Mac and you have verified that the software encryption is compatible.
We definitely recommend that you check your computer for updates. For example, system 10.6.8 contains the fixes needed to upgrade to Mountain Lion. You can update the software on your Mac from the Apple menu.
In addition to the main system updates, we recommend monitoring all third-party software installed on your computer. The upcoming release of a new version of the operating system always encourages developers to work on updating their applications to support new version system and hassle-free transition to the new OS. To do this, you can either visit the website of the developers of each of the programs installed on your Mac, or use Mac program App Store and check for software updates there.
If you are too lazy to browse developer sites, we recommend using more convenient solution. The site maintains a list of programs that have already been supported or are planned to be supported in OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion.
Set up your iCloud account or start one if you haven't already. On June 31 of this year, the MobileMe service ceased to exist, and if you were its user, you probably know about its closure, since Apple notified all its users about this more than once.
You can set up a cloud account in the “System Settings” program. Just go to the program and in the “Internet and wireless network” section, select iCloud. If your account has not yet been set up, you will be prompted to create a new one. There are more and more app developers now supporting iCloud on both iOS and OS X, and using this service will definitely make your life easier in the Apple ecosystem.
With a new operating system on the way, it's time to prepare your Mac for an upgrade. Of course, if you plan to switch to a new operating system. OS X Mavericks contains more than 200...
In April, we briefly talked about the ability to install OS X 10.8.3 Mountain Lion on older Mac models that are not officially supported by the system. I used the method described in that material, and today I will tell you about it in more detail.
So, one important change has happened since April - now you can install OS X 10.8.4 on old Macs, which is Apple's most modern desktop OS today. List of supported Mac models has not changed - just in case, I quote it again:
All models from 2006 to 2008 with Core processor 2 Duo and installed Lion OS or higher (PPC, Core Duo and Core Solo are not supported)
- MacBook late 2006, 2007 and 2008
— MacBook Air early 2008
- MacBook Pro late 2007 and mid 2007
- iMac 2006
- Mac Mini 2006
— Mac Pro 2006, 2007
— Xserve 2006 and early 2008
I installed OS X 10.8.4 on a white 2008 MacBook with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor. I’ll report on the results later, now let’s talk about the process of installing the system on a computer (the screenshots below are taken from the utility).
So, we will need the MLPostFactor utility (download) and the operating system OS X 10.8.4, which can either be officially downloaded from the Mac App Store, or obtained by some other method, which we will not describe here. There is no dependence of the operation of the MLPostFactor utility on the degree of “officiality” of the operating system, although many resources write that only an officially purchased OS is needed.
Having made sure that both the utility and the OS are loaded and located on the computer’s hard drive, we proceed to partitioning the disk for installation new system. We will need two new sections. Let's call one Install and allocate 8 GB to it disk space. The second one, the one in which the OS will be installed, let's call it ML, its volume should be at least 10 GB, and better, of course, more. My volume of this partition is 200 GB.
Having finished partitioning the disk, run the downloaded MLPostFactor utility and install it in the Install partition we created.
Reboot the computer with the Alt key pressed and select Install as the boot disk. Install OS X 10.8.4 in the ML partition. After the installation is complete, go to the Utilities menu item, select MLPostFactor there and apply it to the ML section.
That's all, OS X 10.8.4 is installed on the computer. The ML partition has become bootable by default, so that the next time you reboot or turn on the computer Alt key no need to hold.
Now let's talk about how OS X 10.8.4 works on my old MacBook. In short, it works great. Compared to OS X 10.7.5 Lion), the laptop simply flies, the small amount of RAM (2 GB) has virtually no effect on work (unlike Lion, where slowdowns were observed regularly, one only had to open 8-10 tabs in the browser and run several standard applications). Notification Center works, iMessage too, special problems was not noticed.
But small bugs are still present, although they are not at all critical during operation. First, when the laptop wakes up from sleep, sometimes (very rarely) “Image Capture” and iTunes launch - as if the laptop thinks that an iPhone is connected to it. Secondly, “Preview” sometimes crashes, especially when working with large images. This also happens extremely rarely; it happened to me two or three times during my entire time working on OS X 10.8.4.
Another problem appeared quite recently. I use Safari as my main browser, and for YouTube and some other Flash video sites I keep Chrome handy. And here in Lately It has become simply impossible to work in Chrome - when you open a new tab, the browser simply crashes, and this happens all the time. All this is due to the fact that the last Chrome version(29, I think) does not want to work with OS X 10.8.4 installed via MLPostFactor. The solution here is simple - download (27th) and disable automatic browser updates. Automatic Chrome update disabled using the command in the “Terminal”:
Defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 0
You can return everything back using the command:
Defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 18000
Here 18000 is the interval between browser update checks in seconds. This value can be set at your discretion.
To summarize, I am quite happy with OS X 10.8.4 on my 2008 MacBook, much more than with the official OS X 10.7.5 Lion. But the noticed bugs are not so significant, and they do not force me to stop using Mountain Lion. Therefore, I confidently recommend the method described above to everyone, but just do not forget that you will perform all manipulations at your own peril and risk.
P.S. The MacRumors website has an English-language MLPostFactor - where the utility developers answer user questions.