technosomy Posted August 18, 2015 Share Posted August 18, 2015 this is an extension for my other topic but thought may go unnoticed i am still running snow leopard 10.6.8 on my mac (2009) have not had any probs so far as not updated for years pretty sure i have to go to lion then the others... should i bother? have no plans on getting new software, everything seems fine at moment has anyone encountered probs with later systems or updating from where i am to them? thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pdinklag Posted August 18, 2015 Share Posted August 18, 2015 There are people that say "never change a running system", but this is really a philosophical question that I've encountered numerous times (software developer here)... Generally speaking (non-Mac user): if you're concerned about your security, you should probably update (especially after 6 years - a LOT has happened). You should at least keep your browser up to date (and other networking software, for that matter), as SSL encryption changes a lot over time. If you don't, at some point, you might not be able to use HTTPS anymore, for instance. Apart from that, updates may have impacts on performance - positive or negative, always keep that in mind. If Lion is optimized for newer hardware, you might run into performance issues, but I really can't speak for Apples backward compatibility, somebody else will have to. If everything runs fine at the moment, you can keep your browser up to date, and you're not going to get new software and you're not eager to try new features in new OS X versions, then you should probably just stick with Snow Leopard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Purple Sunray Posted August 18, 2015 Share Posted August 18, 2015 Like said above, if this machine is online on the internet, you should update as soon as possible. Apple has/had the policy (not sure about what's their current policy) of only supporting the current and last released OS X version with updates. If you want a save system, you HAVE to update, there is no way around -- it's not like with MS, still delivering security patches for a Vista (released on 2007). Apple simply drops supports of old OS version after some time. It's even worse - they provide detailed information about security relevant fixes on follow-up version. Like https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202854- nice list of security issues that have been fixed with Mavericks, but won't be fixed on any older version. So this list is not only about what's fixed on Mavericks, but it's actually also a kind of guideline on how to attack old OS versions, which will not receive those fixes. If you have a system with lot of software, drivers, plugins, ... running on it, rather remove the internet connection and keep it as it is (never change a running system). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Padmapani Posted August 19, 2015 Share Posted August 19, 2015 i've had no problems updating from slow leopard to mountain lion. with a few adjustments (there are guides on the internet) you can make everything look and behave just like before the update (except that the scrollbars lose their arrows). now i'm holding out with ml until i'm forced to update again (iirc updating would force me to switch to logic x, breaking compatibility with all 32bit plugins, yikes!). so far, i have not run into software that didn't accept mountain lion as sufficiently advanced. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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