Mavericks update experience

Updating to Mavericks was one of the things I was excited about a few months ago. And I am pleased to share that I finally did it. Here are my thoughts on the process.

To begin, I’d like to share my 3 reasons why it took me this long to do it.

1. Large install file, slow internet speed.
   I checked the App Store as soon as Mavericks was available and I saw the 5gb file size of the install. I had a 1mbps connection back then and that was a long wait, so I held back.
2. Bad news about installing Mavericks.
   So many bad experiences shared by early adopters of Mavericks filled the internet a few days later. There was news of compatibility issues here and there for some apps and I couldn’t risk it especially with some projects in the pipeline. Good thing I held back.
3. Newbie jitters.
   Well, I’m new to Macs so I really didn’t know what to expect. I read up on things I must do first before updating, and consistent tips on backing up with Time Machine did not inspire confidence. So I held back some more.

So after many months of putting this on hold, the dust generated by the Mavericks buzz finally settled (and also now that Yosemite is around the corner) and Apple and app developers worked out the kinks which ultimately gave me the confidence to go for it.

The one important step that I took was to back up all my data…all the important ones. I typically backup my photos quite often so it did not take long to backup some of the newer photos and some important documents. I did not use Time Machine because I did not need an image of my Mac. If the update does fail, I can just use the other recovery methods made available by Apple and reinstall all of the Apps.

I did get a bit of a speed boost on my internet connection recently…2mbps…still slow compared to LTE speeds, but that’s at least twice as fast as my previous internet speed. So downloading the installer took half the time to complete…I think that’s still about 6 hours for the 5gb installer.

When the download completes you can save a copy of the installer before installing Mavericks if you plan on making a recovery USB or recovery partition of Mavericks, because the installer is automatically deleted after installing Mavericks. The installer should be visible on the launchpad if you haven't installed Mavericks yet. But if you forgot to save the installer, you can always re-download it from the App Store.

So after downloading the update on my Mid 2011 iMac, I clicked install. It took almost an hour for the update to complete and it went without a hitch.

A lot of the uncertainty that I had was how the Mac would behave during the update. It’s not like Windows where I’ve done many reformats and knew well what to expect, so the unfamiliarity with Macs bugged me. What I experienced was that my iMac rebooted a couple of times during the process on its own. So the screen would just black out suddenly and would light back up. The progress bar would sometimes get stuck at certain points for longer than some other progress bar stops. I also remember that it showed the estimated time remaining at the start of the process, which suddenly changed to a longer estimated install duration.

So despite those little things happening where you might think that something went wrong…well…it didn’t. And if you haven’t updated your Lion to Mavericks, I hope that the experience I just shared will inspire some confidence.