OS X Upgrades - easy or painful?

I am thinking of buying a mbp and not waiting for the next upgrade, however, I didn't make my mind yet.

I was curious whether upgrading the OS X is painful or not. When the lion comes out I would like to upgrade to that version. I also plan to use bootcamp and have a win 7 partition.

How is it compared to windows upgrades? I've been a windows guy for quite a long time and I always had to install the OS from scratch. Is that the case with OSX or can you simply upgrade on top of the existing OS and everything will magically work?

Thank you

 

I find it generally much faster/easier to administer Mac updates, and much easier to administer upgrades than Windows machines. I've been using Windows much longer than Mac OS, but I find that learning the Mac OS is much simpler and easier to pick up. I really like that the Mac OS simply makes upgrades available for implementation at the users discretion, as opposed to Windows which affords the user less control and understanding.

In short, I find the Mac OS's elegance is it's apparent simplicity of the user interface which makes me much more productive. It's weakness is the breadth of software that may have some users needing Windows for its platform specific Apps.....However, that situation is improving rapidly.

I hope this thread does not degrade into a flame war that gets the thread closed.

 

I really hope not, my intention is not to bash windows and my question was very specific. When you upgrade, do you have to reformat the HDD or do you install on top of the existing OS? In case I buy an MBP now, I am trying to figure out how much work I have to do in order to install lion.
Thanks

 

If you are talking about OS X, then the answer is, no. The incremental upgrades are done upon the existing installation. Sure there are some extreme cases of failure where a reformat might be needed, but never for ordinary upgrading and updating.

So far I have never had to reformat a Mac OS X drive, other than the time I sold my old MB and reformatted for my security.

In relative terms, I think one has to resort to a fresh install on a Windows system much more often, simply due to the fact that Windows installations seem to suffer from an accumulated degradation also exacerbated by its greater vulnerability to web-borne destructive malware (viruses, trojans, etc). This degradation doesn't seem evident in OS X. Although, with attention it is possible to have a relatively trouble-free Windows installation. But with OS X, it sure seems to me that it is more trouble free. But then again, I don't use OS X for near the same number of hours per day.

 

That's good to know. To speak in windows terms, upgrading to a newer version of OSX is more like installing a new service pack, right?

Thank you

 

Eh, more or less, yes. Except in general, major OS X upgrades are done by CD. However, it might be different with Lion. I see Apple leaning towards much less dependency upon CD's (App store, MBA, etc).

 

Installing a major upgrade from disc is like upgrading from Vista to Win7... but I've never had a problem upgrading to any version I have done since 10.2.

Updates (like service packs sometimes) are usually just simple built in in the Apple Software Update.

 

Upgrading from Mac OS 9 to OS X was a major change, but OS X upgrades never gave me any trouble.

 

OS9 to OSX can't even be equated to in Windows... thats like saying upgrading from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux.... just cuz they were Mac OS doesn't mean they were similar.... they were VASTLY different... a whole different OS from the inside out.

 

We probably can't tell you if the upgrade to Lion will be easy, as these complex operations can run into unexpected snags that developers don't test for.

Personally, Snow Leopard is my first Mac OS and I've never done an upgrade with this OS. However, I can tell you that Windows upgrades tend to be perilous and unreliable, though Vista to Windows 7 was an exception.

 

The important part is the bit after that...since OS X came out, I've never had a problem with upgrades. Windows has required a clean install for me with each version...I've never just updated.

 

Short answer: They should be easy, for the most part.

Unlike Windows, where personally I still prefer to always format and install clean.

 

Like others have said, it should be without issue.

I've had the same install since I had my old SR mbp which came with 10.4

I've gone through multiple harddrives, logicboards, each "servicepack", 10.5 and 10.6, and recently into a whole new mbp. Never once had an issue, and havn't had to reformat since.

(As a sidenote, I realize I'm probably losing some performance with so much from 10.4, but it's so small I don't notice it at all in daily operation.)