OS X El Capitan is the latest version of OS X for Mac machines, but how does it perform on an older Mac?
While El Capitan has mostly the same look and feel as OS X Yosemite, the new version includes many new features, both big and small, that prove to be a nice upgrade over the previous version. Also, Apple claims that users will get up to 2x faster speed when switching between apps, so performance is slightly better this time around.
In the past, I’ve been using OS X Yosemite for a few months on my 2008 iMac, and performance was what I expected from an older iMac like this. Apps are pretty slow when it comes to opening, and even accessing System Preferences can be a bit slow at first.
I added 4GB of memory instead of the 2GB that came with it, and performance increased slightly, if not much. When I replace the hard drive with a good solid state drive, I think performance will see a huge boost.
But I need to get the best performance out of what I’ve had so far, and with the promise of better performance on OS X El Capitan, I’ve decided to upgrade my iMac right away. Here’s what you need to know about OS X El Capitain on an older Mac.
First of all, the breakpoint OS X El Capitan supports iMac is mid 2007, and I’ve only refreshed once or twice from that point, so it’s a close point, but OS X El Capitan still works on my aging iMac.
The good news is that OS X El Capitan installed perfectly on my iMac, although it took much longer than my 2013 MacBook Pro. This is to be expected from an older Mac, so make sure you allow plenty of time for your old machine to be updated to the latest version.
Once installed I didn’t have any major issues and the iMac handled the new version like a champ for the most part. The smooth installation alone was cause for celebration as I expected at least a few hiccups during the process. Fortunately, it went the other way.
As for performance on OS X Yosemite, I haven’t seen a huge difference since I’ve been running El Capitan for the past few months, but I can say it’s definitely not slower.
However, System Preferences loads much faster than before, and most apps open within a few seconds, so it’s certainly not a huge improvement over before, but this time around it’s more or less the same, if not a little faster. .
That said, Spotlight Search is still pretty slow, even though Apple is very focused on making it faster and better. Still, features like being able to quickly get weather and sports scores and being able to use natural language to search for various things are pretty cool.
Luckily, I haven’t run into any issues other than some issues I’ve had with my Logitech mouse, but it’s not really an OS X issue, it’s more of an issue with Logitech’s software and OS X El Capitan support. I thought I fixed it by reinstalling the software, but I’m still having some issues with it.
Overall, I feel OS X El Capitan is a great update for those running older Macs. If you have OS X Yosemite installed on an older machine, updating to El Capitan won’t hurt it at all and may even improve performance a bit. However, you can always switch to OS X Yosemite if needed.
However, I recommend upgrading your Mac if possible. Replacing the hard drive with a solid state drive and adding more memory can do wonders for speeding up your old Mac, especially if you use it as a daily computer. You will immediately notice the performance increase.
