#Can i upgrade mac 10.7.5 to 10.11 install#
#Can i upgrade mac 10.7.5 to 10.11 update#
#Can i upgrade mac 10.7.5 to 10.11 full#
#Can i upgrade mac 10.7.5 to 10.11 download#

#Can i upgrade mac 10.7.5 to 10.11 full#

(I am one of those people.) My gut feeling is that there’s a devoted (but small) subset of Mac users who love using Mission Control (formerly Exposé) to arrange their windows and workspaces, or frequently use Full Screen mode for apps. We all use our Macs in different ways-and even the same person can use a giant 5K iMac in a different way than they use an 11-inch MacBook Air.

#Can i upgrade mac 10.7.5 to 10.11 update#

(It’s just that some of them may need an update first.)īottom line: I’ve found El Capitan to be a stable update, but you should always back up your system and check with the makers of your most important apps about compatibility before installing it. You can turn off System Integrity Protection if you absolutely need to, but it seems like most apps will be able to function just fine with it turned on. This is a good thing-but a few apps, including Default Folder X and SuperDuper, relied on that same vector to do their jobs. One of the security improvements in El Capitan is a feature called System Integrity Protection, which clamps down on the ability of malware to hijack your Mac by masquerading as a user with system-administration privileges. Several of the apps I use, including SuperDuper and Default Folder X didn’t work properly with El Capitan, but SuperDuper has already been updated to regain compatibility and Default Folder X has a new version on the way (and a workaround in the meantime). Most major OS X upgrades feature a lot of under-the-hood security improvements, which is a good reason to stay up to date, but some of those changes can also break software. If you find there are any problems with the install, you also have a USB hard drive with a bootable clone of your disk as it existed before you installed Lion, which you can always boot from and use to restore your Mac.In the case of El Capitan, a few of the apps and utilities I rely on weren’t initially compatible, but most have already been updated as a result of Apple’s summer-long testing period.

#Can i upgrade mac 10.7.5 to 10.11 install#

Once the install is completed, your Mac will reboot and you should see either the new Lion login interface, or, if you are the only user on your Mac, a short animation about the new scrolling behavior in Lion, like so:Ĭongratulations! You’ve installed Lion while simultaneously making sure that your machine is as clean and compatible as possible. For us, it took about thirty minutes for Lion to fully install. The Lion install process is just stupidly simple: you aren’t called upon to do anything but wait. When it’s finished downloading and the statusbar goes disappears, close all your running programs, open the Lion install file, accept Apple’s EULA and then click “Install.” Your machine will restart, and the Lion install process will begin.įrom here, everything’s easy. Be patient: this file is 3.4GB, and takes a while to download.

#Can i upgrade mac 10.7.5 to 10.11 download#

Once you buy Lion, an install file will open up in your dock, complete with a download status bar. Alternatively, you can just click this link. Just open the App Store under Applications and do a search for Lion. Pop the installer in, power down your Macintosh and unplug your backup drive, it would be a cryin’ shame if you accidentally installed over your backup. Make sure everything boots up, poke around a bit, make sure everything seems to be working. Once CCC is done, reboot your Mac with your external drive still connected, holding down the option key to boot from the backup drive. Now, depending on the size of your hard drive, you’ve got a chance to watch either the standard, or extended version of Lord of the Rings.

Just remember to make your backup drive bootable, you will have to completely wipe your destination drive. To create a bootable backup of your main drive there is only one totally free, easy-to-use choice, Carbon Copy Cloner, and it’s push one button simple. Upgrading to Lion through the App Store is uncharted territory, and while it’s unlikely anything will go wrong, why take chances? Let’s make a bootable backup of your main drive just in case. Just be careful to know what you’re deleting.

Give it a whirl, and you may be just as surprised as we were to learn that your ‘Downloads’ directory is taking up half your hard drive. Fortunately, our friends at Omni Group have a utility just for that. Our hard drives always seem to be shrinking, and it’s often hard to tell where most of that space goes. After you’ve cleaned up all your redundant files, now it’s time to ‘sweep’ your disk.