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To upgrade or not: Anyone share these feelings?
I am looking to hear from those of you who are successfully running a stable system with as late as (or latest) versions of both Apple and Adobe software. I am wondering if I should upgrade to something higher than my current OS, but less than the latest version, and if there are any benefits. (i.e. does CC 2015 run smoothly on Mountain lion? Is there any benefit to upgrading to Mavericks or Yosemite prior to waiting for El Capitan to settle down?
I am running OS 10.8.5 Mountain Lion on my Med 2012 6-core Mac Pro. I currently have apps from Adobe CC, and CC 2014, (and even CS6, like Encore) along with a few plug-ins, etc. I am frustrated that although Apple is now up to OS 10.11, I have been petrified to make any moves towards it. I have also been petrified to remove any versions of Adobe CC, leaving me with only 2014 to access any of my prior work.
Now with the 2015 versions of the Adobe apps out, I once again look at them with a lustful eye, but am scared to make any changes to my existing setup (which runs quite nicely).
So although I pay for the wonderful service of continual upgrades, I fear the worst, as I read post after post about machines and applications no longer working optimally, as the original intent was.
Does anyone see this as ever becoming important to the folks who produce these products? I have heard of “planned obsolescence” before, but it just seems that I never actually get really good with the latest version of something, before a major upgrade comes out with features that I really “NEED,” yet am unwilling to move towards because it has been RUSHED into service. Bug fixes to OS and software never seem to be as rapid as the initial rollout.
I realize there will always be bugs in this very amazing and powerful software we run. But we have become so numb to that fact, that no one seems to make the offering of good, stable, COMPATIBLE software a priority.
I love working with my Adobe apps, but am somewhat disappointed that I can never confidently click UPGRADE.
Im tired of reading horror stories of crippled software/systems.
I’d love to know what versions of each OS and CC software people are running, that seem to be making everyone happy and productive as advertised.Thanks for taking the time to read through my rant.
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3 Replies
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El Capitan .1 update is coming soon. Maybe hold out for that and then install updates for everything. When installing CC 2015, make sure you are NOT uninstalling your 2014 apps. I’ve found 2015 to be very buggy.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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Thanks John,
I’m standing by! Hopefully 2015 issues will get resolved before the 2016 version is released ;-P
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The 6-core w/ Mountain Lion running CC 2014 is probably one of the most stable and best bang for the buck systems right now. I’d say you’d be fine upgrading your OS, but if you’re stable just wait. I’m on a 2013 8-core Mac w/ D700s on Yosemite. The first 6+ months were a nightmare–I couldn’t use Mercury acceleration at all (in this case it appears to have been Apple who dropped the ball with their implementation of OpenGL). I invested in the dual D-700 model because I knew that CPU tech is hitting a Moore’s law brick wall, and GPGPU is where the new gains are going to be realized.
Last year Adobe took a poll asking users if they wanted features or a massive increase in speed. They overwhelmingly received requests for speed increases. In CC 2015 Adobe made some major changes to the underpinnings of the core tech. in Ae but it’s only half-baked for what was expected by the community. For instance, in Ae 2015, Multi-Core support is removed to make way for the new tech which isn’t yet implemented. Which means that you need to retain Ae 2014 to handle the multi-core rendering of 2015 projects (to Adobe’s credit they did make the bridge for this to work with compatibility, but they didn’t make it clear to users that this was the path to the interim workflow).
Adobe demonstrated massive speed increases to Illustrator and a couple of select plugins in Ae using Apple’s new Metal API in El Capitan at the last WWDC, and stated that they were committed to fully supporting Metal in all Adobe apps. They recently backtracked, even though they had said at the WWDC event that the Metal implementation was extremely quick and easy to implement. It doesn’t appear that GPGPU support will be fully realized until at least CC 2016.
Premiere doesn’t work with El Capitan yet. I’ve had some serious issues crop up with my current project on Yosemite the past couple of days–app crashes, system freezes due to app crash, and for the first time ever I got an OS popup saying that my system was completely maxed out on RAM and couldn’t continue until I cleared up some memory space. In Activity Monitor it showed on my 64 GB system only running Premiere (with one Ps file in the project) that I had a couple dozen GB of compressed RAM (virtual), and it showed 26 GB of active RAM dedicated to Photoshop Server. I can only think that there’s a memory leak in Adobe’s code creating this.
I’d say, wait at least another month until there is official and user verified stable support for CC 2015 with El Capitan. Then backup all user and project and media data. Format your boot drive and do a clean install of the OS and Adobe apps.
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