Given how tough the last releases have been particularly with iOS 7.0 and 8.0 and Mavericks (which seemed pretty rough), I have to say I’m surprised by how smooth 8.1 and Yosemite have gone.
Seems like it runs the same if not faster on old hardware. Our venerable iMac 2009 seems to like it (albeit we’ve double memory to 12GB on that baby). And of course with all old MacBooks, put an SSD card in if you want it to go faster as well.
I’m actually surprised how well MacBooks hold up. Our 2008 (now 7 year old!) MacBooks are doing well. One died because of a smashed glass screen, but the electronics work. We’ve had to do three motherboard upgrades. Apple actually covered two of them! And we’ve upgraded all with maximum memory of 8GB and SSDs. So they are very decent web browsing machines.
So on to Yosemite on the next round:
- MacBook Pro 2010
- MacBook 2008
- Mac Mini 2011
- Mac Mini 2012
Wish me luck!
In Yosemite, there’s less clutter and the user interface is simpler and free of effects like drop shadows that put a strain on both the CPU and GPU. It requires fewer clicks to perform common tasks and Safari in Yosemite gives you even faster performance, especially when watching video.
via Can your Mac run OS X Yosemite? Find out here.
