WHAT IS THIS? This article really misses some significant points. And when I say “significant points”, I mean almost every point of meaning.
THE BIGGEST FEATURE OF SIERRA, WHICH IS GOING IGNORED BY MANY PUBLICATIONS
The biggest single upgrade with Sierra is the pending APFS, Apple’s new file system that will replace the two-decade old HFS+. This is a massive undertaking. You can ONLY upgrade to APFS with Sierra, and you WILL be able to upgrade file systems WITHOUT having to do a clean install. Right now, early 2017 is when APFS should be pushed to general users. This file system has better data integrity, better multi-tasking abilities, is optimized for high-speed flash storage, and offers MAJOR improvements in encryption options. In the future, by using APFS on OS X, this will allow OS X to have a degree of interaction with iOS that was never before possible (currently, as iOS uses APFS, and Mac HFS+, there are some compatibility issues between Macs and other Apple portable devices that APFS can lift.)
BRAND NEW OPERATING SYSTEMS ARE ALMOST NEVER AS SECURE AS THE MATURE PLATFORMS THEY REPLACE.
As for security, expecting a brand new OS to immediately be more secure than a mature platform is a risky assumption. Beta testing has the limitation that the quantity of beta testers are a tiny fraction of real-world users of the stable version, so beta and pen testing provide valuable data, but there are limited. Apple, like Microsoft, doesn’t drop support on one version of OS X the moment the next comes out. The security flaw you are referencing IIRC has been pushed out to all versions of OS X dating back to Mountain Lion. As of right now, the XTS-AES whole disk encryption used by FileVault2 is secure on all recent implementations of OS X. When Sierra gets APFS, users will have more encryption options, and the potential for greater security. As for general usage, the greatest security vulnerabilities are usually attacking add-ons and extensions in browsers (such as Flash.) Using a modern browser, keeping it updated regularly, using a site like SSL Labs to test a website you are about to buy from but want to know if they use good cryptography. Users worried about security and privacy should consider Little Snitch, Murus, BitDefender, 1Password, good password habits, encrypting internal & external drives, as well as flash & SD cards & drives, and ensuring their use of cloud computing is secure. No operating system can compensate for bad security habits.
FIX PROBLEMS BY FINDING AND RESOLVING THE ACTUAL PROBLEM!!!
Doing an in-place OS update on a malfunctioning system is like replacing your brakes if you need new tires and hoping that things turn out OK. If you are having problems with a current release of El Capitan, it is unlikely that upgrading to Sierra will fix this and it increases the chance that you screw things up even worse than before. Think about that for a second…you are having issues with a mature operating system that has proven reliable, so you upgrade to a new one with far less known? El Capitan is an extremely reliable operating system…if you are having an issue, you need to determine if it is related to the OS, Apple software, 3rd party software, or hardware failure because the course of action to fix the issue is completely different. A free program such as Onyx can fix many OS issues, and along with utilizing Disk Utility, resetting PRAM/NRAM/SMC, Apple’s hardware testers, and a utility that pulls SMART data from the local drive, you can get a good idea of what is going on and may be able to fix it. If there are issues with severe disk corruption, upgrading without a clean install will not do a thing, and the only application that reliably repairs severe corruption that even OS X itself cannot is DiskWarrior.
OVERALL, THIS MINOR UPDATE HAS BIG POTENTIAL
Functionally, Sierra is not currently all that different from El Capitan. As El Capitan is extremely reliable, this makes sense so Apple has a solid base for the OS leading us to APFS, where a mid-life update (or what replaces Sierra) may then implement larger changes that makes the interaction between different devices a far better process, with greater ease and improved productivity. Apple also likely realized that with such a rapid update schedule, minor changes to OS X are better than radical changes because reliability suffers with changes as such. Leopard, Lion, (and Mavericks and Yosemite to a lesser extent) all introduced awesome features but had a lot of issues. Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion, and El Capitan introduced few new features and instead vastly improved reliability.
MAKE A CLONE BACKUP IN ADDITION TO OR IN PLACE OF TIME MACHINE
Before updating, I advise having a CLONE (not a TimeMachine backup) of the disk you are going update. A program like Carbon Copy Cloner makes a superior backup and one of the optimal quality desired should you need to revert back to your older OS without doing a fresh install. Clones can be made bootable, where Time Machine cannot.
USING VIRTUAL MACHINES TO TEST NEW OPERATING SYSTEMS SAVES A LOT OF CUSSING TIME
If someone has compatibility concerns, consider purchasing VMWare Fusion, Parallels, or downloading a free player. These virtual machine apps allow you to run Windows, Mac, Linux, etc. operating systems on your Mac in an isolated environment. You can then ‘test’ the new OS to ensure it works reliably enough for your needs and has no issues with your older Apps. The $100 or so spent on this software can save a ton of grief, and many hours of your time by preventing you installing an OS, finding it doesn’t work right, and then manually having to downgrade (which still may have issues.)
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So, should someone update to Sierra? As of right now, my opinion is…
YES, if:
-the need to have the latest-and-greatest ASAP is more important than reliability, compatibility, and security
-you want to immediately benefit from improvements made with iCloud
-you strongly like the updates to Mail and Messages (IMO they are very minor compared to iOS10)
-you love Siri and feel it will be useful for you with your desktop/laptop
-you frequently use multi-monitor displays with a MacBook Pro
-you want to take advantage of the benefits of APFS (this will apply sometime in early 2017)
NO, if:
-reliability is the single-most important thing to you (wait until 10.12.1 or 10.12.2, as these updates always address the most significant issues of the first release.
-security is the single-most important thing to you (wait a bit, same as above.)
-you use a lot of older software that is no longer supported by the Maker(s)
-you are not comfortable manually downgrading the OS should Sierra not work well on your machine (also wait a bit.)
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