Yo, Yosemite
Close, but no cigar—things to note when upgrading.
There has been significant amount of fanfare generated upon the public beta release of OS X Yosemite. Pretty much wanting to keep abreast of OS X development and also desiring the retain the bragging rights of “oh I’ve tried that” at the workplace, I decided to take the leap of faith and give Yosemite a try.
My experience with Yosemite was a mixed bag of beans. I was floored by the flat but dimensional redesign of the interface. Some degree of semblance to layering and context stacking was retained despite my initial fears of a purely two-dimensional revamp. Drop shadows were retained but significantly toned down. The polished feel of blurring (unlike the brash attempt made by Microsoft in Window Vista’s Aereo interface) added depth and context to each window.
After upgrading—and then chickening out and downgrading from—OS X Yosemite, I thought I could share a few tips.
Not everything will work
Understanding that OS X Yosemite is in essence a beta release that the public is invited to participate it is of utmost importance. You shouldn’t expect everything to work smoothlessly and seamlessly like a well-oiled cog. Apps will fail to run. Programs will crash. Selected functionalities may not work as intended.
For me, iTunes stopped working. After an initial library database update by the latest iTunes version shipped with OS X Yosemite, the application simply refused to cooperate after that. Rebooting my MacBook Pro helped, but only to have iTunes stuck at the “checking iTunes library” step.
I waited patiently. Went to the beach for an evening swim. Made dinner. Watch endless cat videos. Got into keyboard fights with other Redditors. Six hours ticked by… library was still being checked. I noped the hell out.
To rub salt in the wound, Finder also decided that it’s an opportune time to launch a boycott by… simply refusing to launch. Finder crashed after the nth reboot to get iTunes going, and I never got it to work since then. Tried restoring the BrowserWindow.nib and IconView.nib files from a working Mac at work via SSH, still no cigar.
iCloud: To upgrade or not?
If you are having an iOS device that will not be included in the iOS8 update rooster (scroll to the bottom), do not upgrade to iCloud Drive. iCloud Drive is incompatible with the current (or soon to be legacy, perhaps?) iCloud architecture, meaning that owners of iPhone 4 or older, and the first generation iPad owners, will be left high and dry if you choose to rollback to OS X Mavericks. That is unless you are considering shelling out some money for an iOS8-compatible device.
I decided to skip the iCloud Drive update.
Back it up
You have been warned by the OS X Yosemite installer to have a Time Machine, or a manual, backup ready before attempting an upgrade. Heed the warning, for it is there for a reason.
While I have not suffered any loss of data during the rollback (see later), my iTunes library refused to load because it had been modified by a newer version of iTunes that came with OS X Yosemite—yes, newer than v11.3, the latest version available to OS X Mavericks.
What separated me from a cardiac arrest lies in the safety of knowing I have backup of my iTunes library before I attempted the upgrade. In fact, the .itl file was the only file I have to recover. The rest of the data on my MBP remained intact after the rollback.
Scheiße, I need to rollback
That horrifying thought sitting at the recesses of my mind bubbled up as my MBP heaved and sighed under the beta OS. iTunes and Finder are not working, and almost every single app I fire up will definitely fail to respond and crash with great brilliance after the second launch and onwards. Also, my MBP freezes whenever I initiate a reboot in OS X Yosemite.
Scheiße.
When it comes to rolling back, restoring it from the recovery partition was out of the question, as alongside with the upgrade you have also relinquished the restoration option to Mavericks. The recovery partition will stubbornly, much to the joy of seeing you pull your hair out, insist on restoring OS X 10.10 (aka Yosemite), something that you dreadfully want to get out of.
Reinstall OS X Mavericks over the Internet
The next available option would be performing an Internet recovery. Simply hit Cmd+R when rebooting your Mac. It will take a variable amount of time for your machine to download Mavericks and install it, but the entire rollback process took me around 45 minutes in total.
Warning: Internet recovery is only available on selected models. Please check beforehand!
Performing an Internet recovery will install a fresh new copy of OS X on your machine, but not at the expense of your data. However, it is still always good to keep a backup if anything happens—for me, I needed the pre-Yosemite iTunes library because Yosemite’s iTunes rendered by library non-backwards compatible.
Reassign administrative rights to your user
One little hiccup that comes along with Internet recovery is that your account will lose administrative privileges. In order to reinstate those privileges, you will have to go through the setup procedure (the same one you went through the first time you used a new Mac) to create a user with admin rights. Use this user to grant the same rights to your user, and then delete the former afterwards.
You can follow this verbose guide written by Topher Kessler, publihsed on CNET, to reestablish your user as the machine’s administrator.
I have tried OS X Yosemite for around 36 hours in total. The redesigned user interface is sleek, flat and of sheer empyrean beauty. That, however, came with the price of non-functional apps, which is not surprising given the beta nature of the release. Still, I’m looking forward to the stable release of Yosemite this fall. For now, to those who want to venture forward, I recommend upgrading to Yosemite on a non-primary machine, or installing Yosemite on a secondary partition.
Stay hungry, stay foolish.
