Apple has released the golden master version of the Yosemite Developer Preview, in addition to the fourth Public Beta to its various testing communities. These being the golden master builds suggests they are going to be the final versions for public release, provided no major bugs are found.
Generally Apple has made the golden master build available to the public within a few days of its announcement, so Yosemite should be available very soon.
As with the most recent releases of OS X, Yosemite is going to be a free upgrade available from the Apple Store, so if you have a Mac that supports Yosemite and are considering upgrading, then be sure to prepare your Mac first. At a minimum, be sure you have a full backup of your Mac using Time Machine or a system cloning utility before running the Yosemite installer; however, you might look over a few additional preparation suggestions to ensure you can reinstall quickly if a problem occurs, and even take steps to test Yosemite before replacing your primary OS installation.
Even though waiting on upgrading might be a good idea for those not running Yosemite, If you are currently testing the public beta or developer builds, then be sure to install the golden master as soon as possible, as this will ensure any known bugs with the build you are running will be dealt with.
I installed the beta update today. It’s been running well.
Installed the GM 1 this AM (10 /01/14) and two things were evident from start to close:
1. On first boot in Dev. or Public, the Prefs panel would open, then close as the icons marched across the menu bar. Today, after quitting, opening 10.6.8, the re-opening 10.10 in Dev. version, no loading of the prefs panel.
2. Shutting down is much faster. Took a l-o-n-g time before.
Have not installed the latest Public Beta – anxious to see if they have reconciled the different graphic representations of the hard drives/drive partitions.
I have been checking out the public beta and will install this update shortly. But I will not rush to install the final release on my production system. I agree that waiting a few days, or even weeks, is a good idea. Testing it is one thing, going all in is something else again.
If history is any guide, though, many people won’t heed your advice or be cautious on their own. We will soon be seeing a spate of problem reports from people who couldn’t resist the upgrade and were too foolish to prepare properly or back up their extant systems first. I have a hard time sympathizing with such people. They make a mess in their own beds and then look for someone else to blame for their own carelessness. In my not so humble opinion they deserve every bit of trouble they bring on themselves.
At the same time many millions of people will upgrade to Yosemite with little or no trouble. They will either take precautions ahead of time or, more likely, just be lucky.
Note that this is a Golden Master CANDIDATE, so it may or may not be the build that is actually released. It could be several more weeks.
I guess that means that all the flaws in Mavericks will never be fixed. Thanks, Yosemite. And for those wondering, I am the one oddball in the crowd of zillions who says the emperor has no clothes – that Yosemite is a step down with regard to the Mac experience. Flat, cheap looking (labeled as “simplicity” by Ive – a man who should stick with hardware – not software), and loaded with features only geeks would appreciate. I don’t care about “passing off” my messages from my phone to my Mac. I mean really. Has that request been flooding the suggestion boxes at Apple? How about putting up a decent dialogue box for handling a “file exists” condition? Even Windows 95 had a better system than OS X has ever had. It’s a shame that when my Macs die, I will have to buy a new Mac – complete with soldered RAM and non-removable hard drives (thanks again, Ive) – with Yosemite on it. I think I’ll look at Windows again.
Please detail your experience with Yosimite. I find that it is faster and far more accommodating than Mavericks. I will acknowledge that the Developer versions look a bit different from the Beta releases. For example, the generic hard drive icon in Developer / GM looks like it does in older OSs, while the icon in Beta looks like a slab of cheese with a drawer front.
Seems the biggest change visually is to icons of programs in the Prefs panel.
Perhaps you should return to that better world of Windows — Windows 10 will be out next year and that should appeal to you. Seems there won’t be a Windows 9. Making a big jump, pretty much like Apple.