The software update has been advertising the free Yosemite upgrade for I-don-know-how-long. Yesterday, having a couple of hours I didn’t need to be on the computer, I decided to go ahead and get it, along with the Safari update that caused the App Store window to open in the first place. It took longer than expected. I opened Safari, and the first thing I notice is that my bookmarks bar is missing. So I go to Bookmarks on the toolbar to see if it still exists. It never responded. I force-quit Safari and tried again. Same thing. ‘Safari not responding.’ I tried rebooting. No joy. I can use Firefox, but I’m taking a class at the local college and it says my browser is not supported in Canvas (their system). It worked anyway, but it’s not ideal.
AND…
My computer is deadly slow. It’s torture.
Apparently my 2010 or 2011 MacBook Pro isn’t up to this newfangled Yosemite operating system. I need to revert to Maverick (or maybe it was El Capitan, I don’t remember). I searched for Time Machine in Finder, and it said I had to set up Time Machine. So I’m guessing this is not as simple as clicking a button. I looked online, and I saw something that said ‘Put your Maverick flash drive into the computer.’ I don’t have a Maverick flash drive. The computer is so slow, searching for a fix takes more time than I have. So…
Any Mac geniuses out there who can tell me how to fix my computer? Or should I just take it to the Mac store and have them sort it out? (I still have my PowerBook G4, and I was able to connect to the office last time I tried it.)
Do you keep Time Machine backups? If so, and you need to use the machine, try rolling back to the last backup before you updated. I had to do that when I updated to the latest and half my Adobe software stopped working. A little later, there was an Adobe update, then when I updated again, things were fine.
OK, I just looked Gateway Go-Back up, and it’s not a backup program like Time Machine. It just lets you undo some small amount of file system changes (8GB max).
So, you probably don’t need to configure it, since it’s not backing up your entire machine.
I haven’t been offered the Yosemite upgrade, running an iMac (mid-2011) … my understanding is that Yosemite won’t run on my machine … so be it … sick of my /usr directory being deleted …
Sounds like another built in feature of Windows, System Restore. And it also automatically works.
More importantly, though, is that Microsoft lets you undo any upgrade. The old files are put in a different folder. I’m really surprised that Apple doesn’t do this. There’s always a chance that things will go wrong.
First of all, you need a backup drive.
This can be a USB (or Firewire) external drive, or an Apple Time Capsule.
If you use a USB drive, as soon as you plug it in, the Mac will ask if you want to use if for Time Machine. You can go into System Preferences->Time Machine to tweak settings.
Favorites bar in Safari?
View->Show Favorites Bar.
Plug in an external hard drive. Go to System Preferences > Time Machine. See that obscenely large ON/OFF switch? Switch it to “ON” and select the external hard drive.
In the Safari menu bar, go to View > Show Favorites Bar.
Tried that Sunday. It opens a pane on the left side of the screen. What I’d like is to have my Favourites bar below the toolbar, where it’s supposed to be. I can click on the URL box, and it will display ‘icons’ of my faves; but that means I have to click twice instead of once. With the bar up there, I could click on SDMB to go back to the main page from the thread. It was handy. Or I could to to my webmail or whatever. Now, not so much.
In any case, the guy at the Apple store said you can’t have the Favourites bar. You have to open the side pane, or else click on the URL box. Also, you can’t install a previous version of Safari.
As for the other issue: Sunday night, the computer was virtually unusable. Last night it was better. Still slow, but much better. It seems I am running El Capitan. The Mac guy said it eats up a lot of memory. I had them double my RAM from 400 to 800. It still seemed to be slow. Mac guy said I have File Vault turned on. If I turn it off, the computer will run faster. But… It takes 10 hours to decript the drive, so I’ll have to wait until just before I go to bed before I start it.
I also got a 1Tb external drive so I can run Time Machine. I wish I’d had it before the upgrade.
He’s wrong.
I have a Favorites bar under the Address bar in Safari 9.1.2 (the latest).
And, showing and hiding the Favorites bar does, indeed, show and hide it.
I also just upgraded my 2009 Macbook Pro to El Capitan. It’s running just fine, no lags on regular tasks. It’s a 2.8 GHZ Intel Core Duo with 4GB of RAM.
A few months back I had been having trouble with my 2007 iMac, similar to what you have described. No matter what task I tried to do, just opening an application or trying to load a web page, it took minutes. I hauled it to the Apple Store as well, and asked them to have a look at it. They were unable to find the issue, so I had them wipe the drive and do a clean install of the latest operating system which at the time was El Capitan. (This was not my main machine, and I didn’t have any important files on it). This 9 year old iMac works great now. I use it mostly for watching streaming video.
Now that you have a backup drive (and hopefully have backed up all your data), wiping your hard drive and starting over is likely going to be your best bet for fixing your issues.
