Updating to Mac OS 10.9 Mavericks

Question: I see a free offer to upgrade to Mavericks in the Apple App Store. Is there a compelling reason to upgrade?

I believe it’s a good idea to stay up-to-date on Mac OS upgrades…but only cautiously with excellent backups in place BEFORE upgrading. Mavericks is FREE and it’s been out for a while…so it’s somewhat of a no-brainer to move forward. Some of the main things that are supported better in Mavericks with be Mail, iCal, iCloud, Pages/Numbers/Keynote, iPhoto, iTunes, etc. If you use an iPad with sync to your Mac or anything online you want to be on Mavericks. Then there are a number of other new features like Maps, iBooks, etc. that make it a good upgrade. See this article of info on Mavericks impact on FileMaker.

So, if you’re ready to make the move to Mavericks, my #1 tip is this:
Make a full SuperDuper! backup of your workstation on an external hard drive BEFORE upgrading. If you have a Time Machine backup, you may believe you’re safe but I would argue that it is not enough to EASILY recover if something goes wrong. With a full system sofware change, it is quite possible that something may go wrong. See my backup article for some details.

Then upgrade to the latest versions of all your applications on your current system. I’d also look at upgrading to MS Office 2011 if you have an older version. It is less expensive than ever (if you can still get it) and is a better version for compatibility with the Windows version of Office and the Mac OS.

In general, you always want your OS to be the OLDEST piece of software you’re running. This is because software needs to be upgraded to be compatible and take full advantage of the operating system.

Once you’ve completed the above steps, the Mavericks upgrade is done through the Apple App store and is pretty automatic. It may take a few hours depending on the speed of your internet connection. The download file is about 5GB!

By the way… I always suggest that you open System Prefs>Software Update and turn off “Check for updates” so you do not get prompted for new software updates every week. You do not want to be the first person on the block testing new updates…especially if everything is working OK for you. Do system updates manually every few months when you know things have been backed up and you have a few moments in case something goes wrong.