Upgrading to the new MacOS is not always a pleasing experience. It is very important to understand about the compatibility of your existing applications. A lot of people suffer with incompatibility issues after a major OS upgrade.

This is going to be quite some hassle after the upgrade couples and you encounter issues with your existing applications. In a Mac computer, operating system (OS) is not reversible.

Sometimes, some application vendors are quite proactive hence issues will not last. They will rollout the fixes with a quick application update. But some others, who are not quite active in development, might not even notice what is going on. When such is the case, you will be in a deep distress.

Still Upgrading? Make sure you doing it right.

What exactly may happen if you did not consider doing research about your existing applications compatibility. What happens if you complete the upgrade and see some of the major applications are not launching?

  1. The first and foremost thing to understand is that upgrade is non-reversible. Hence you got in a trap.
  2. It is likely that you will lose applications and their databases if you are not a Mac avid and have not backed up appropriately.
  3. You are likely to reinstall the earlier OS. How would you get that one? You are in a trouble. There are ways but it’s time taking.
  4. You might end up formatting the drive in distress since you can not install earlier version of OS over to the latest one. (It’s wise to create a backup and then format the drive and reinstall the earlier or the most compatible/stable version of OS.)
  5. You need to reinstall those applications and activate them if they are from third party vendors.
  6. You may have to restore contents from the backup and which will be time consuming depending on your content size.

There are more hassles:

  1. Some of the data intense activities might not get saved or be in place as expected which will create more frustration later on.
  2. Freshly installed OS should have to update to the latest update rollouts (not upgrade) to patch up vulnerabilities.
  3. Some applications carry their own application libraries and databases in a different way than others (such as keeping them in a shared folder rather than library plists) that must be manually ported from your backup. Failing to understand such will be quite bothersome and a greater loss.
  4. In some situations, your backup may fail to port library and its contents or databases. Well, it is going to be a big mess and may result to a data recovery.
  5. Finally, the process, whatsoever it can be, may consume a lot of time and attention. And which will again be too much to pay for just upgrading to a new OS.

And, upgrading a Mac system is not always a healthy and rewarding experience as mentioned earlier. Many times, it is too painful and disruptive. Therefore, pay attention to what you are trying to accomplish. Understand why you are rushing to upgrade to the new OS. Do some research and find out what other people are encountering after upgrading to the latest OS. Or, any issue they are discussing about the OS you are intending to upgrade? Check your application vendors’ support forums and check if they are aware of the issues and are woking on to fix.

These few steps will save you from those ten likely ouches. If you are having some issues while doing something similar to the cases here, I can help. Ask Anything.