Mac Yosemite Upgrade?

[Jan Anne]

I kind of became less sensitive over the years of always having the latest and coolest.

Now I prefer things to be simple and that they do what I want them to do, usually these go hand in hand.

And yes a ten year younger me would shake his head slowly in disbelieve

[Jørgen Ramskov]

Jan Anne: Good question. Unless there's some feature you really want/like, there's no particular reason to upgrade other than at some point Apple will stop supplying patches. With Yosemite I can answer my phone on my MBP and I use that quite frequently. OTOH, I find iMessage to a mess that works so badly I have disabled it

Given your line of work, you are of course fully aware of that

[Andrea B.]

Thanks everyone for the good info and comments.

Two reasons for considering an upgrade from Mountain Lion:

• New apps or features which may be useful and do not run on old OS.

• Existing app upgrades may no longer run on old OS.

The second thing has happened bigtime with my iPad which is the original version and which is no longer supported with iOS upgrades. So gradually some of my iPad apps have stopped working. One silly game I have (Scramble for Friends) forced an upgrade by disabling the current version. But the upgrade won't run on the old iPad iOS. That was very mean-spirited of them. Oh well, it's not like I need to be playing games on my iPad anyway !! 

I just read a good review of an iMac with a 27" monitor, so now my head has been turned in that new & shiny direction. So maybe I'll just keep the MacBook Pro on Mountain Lion and use it for internet/email stuff. And set up a better photo work station on an iMac. A big monitor would be so cool to have.
Here is the link if anyone would like to check it out:  http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/blog_index.html

[chris dees]

With operating systems I always upgrade. Mostly after a few weeks when the dust is settled and it's clear if there're mayor bugs.
I don't have any exotic programs so that's never an issue.
Most of the time I don't care about the new features of an upgraded operating system, it's more about the existing features.
Under the hood there're always a lot of changes and most of the time to the better. Faster, more reliable, etc.
And hey, the upgrades are for free.

[Mike G]

Andrea, as a user of an iMac 27" for some time now I can tell y please remember that a new27" iMac will come with OS El Capitan depending as to when you get one!

I would recommend you consider a retina screen version!( fantastic screen resolution)

[Jørgen Ramskov]

I agree with Mike in regards to retina, just a fair warning: it's no fun to use a non retina display thereafter. You should also be aware that apps might not be optimised for the high res display. I'm pretty sure Photo Ninja isn't and IMHO, it looks awful on a retina display.

[Eddie Draaisma]

The retina iMac screens are magnificent indeed. Like Jørgen said, some photo apps like PhotoNinja do not support it properly yet, they operate as if the screen has half the resolution for displaying the picture. There is however a workaround for that by putting the screen in its true native resolution mode. Yes the user controls then become very small, but the picture pixels are now properly 1:1 mapped. To enable true native resolution mode, you will need an utility. There are various ones available.

[Anthony]

I have the iMac retina, and have no problem working in Photo Ninja.  If you can run to the retina model then I highly recommend it.  I agree with Mike about El Capitan - I would wait until this is available, then you have a machine which is fully up to date from the factory.

[Eddie Draaisma]

Well I have the retina iMac too, and I have a problem with PhotoNinja not properly supporting the highres screen.It is just plain ugly, every picture pixel mapped to 4 screen pixels.  Hopefully they will support it in the next PhotoNinja release, might that come someday...

The utility I use for the native screen resolution fix is called ResolutionTab, available from the App Store. It allows easy screen resolution switching between normal and native mode by means of a hotkey.

[Andrea B.]

My MacBook Pro has a Retina screen and Photo Ninja runs well and looks good on it. So I'm not sure what the problem is with the iMac Retina screen ?? My Display setting is set to "Best for Retina". But thanks for the warning!

Jøergen, Eddie and others -- Have you written to the Picturecode support team and asked about the problem with the Retina when using Photo Ninja? I have found the Photo Ninja team to be responsive - sometimes busy, but they will respond.

I had not realized El Capitan was on the horizon. So I will wait and see where that goes before deciding about any upgrades - or expensive new purchases. 

[Eddie Draaisma]

Andrea, in order to understand the PhotoNinja retina issue I suggest you make a comparison with Capture NX2 that does support retina screens properly. Just open a same file in both PhotoNinja and Capture NX2 and display it in both at 100% magnification. You will see that the result in PN is twice as large, because PN maps  one picture pixel to four (2x2) screen pixels.
The "best for retina" screen setting is imho the preferred one for displaying pictures; it is the only one in which retina-compliant programs map a picture pixel to exactly one screen pixel (at 100% display).

A 12MP picture file properly displayed at 100% just fully fits inside the iMac retina screen; pixel peeping has gotten a completely different meaning now 

[Andrea B.]

I've been trying to figure out why the Photo Ninja 1:4 mapping hasn't been bothering me? I'm not really sure -- but perhaps it is because I'm in & out of PN so quickly?? I tend to linger over the photos and do comparisons in the Photo Mechanic app which does not chunk map. Or maybe the PN 1:4 doesn't bother me because I don't usually work on the photo at 100% size in PN??

As an experiment I bumped the res up to 1920 x 1200 and then viewed the photo at 50% in Ninja and 100% in NX2. That also works to equalize the sizes.

Well, anyway....it's all neither here nor there 'cause we are stuck with PN being the way it is for now. "-)

Maybe the PicCode guys will fix this in the release they are working on so hard. That would be nice.
I've been begging them for a detail slider brush because detail works wonders on everything except backgrounds where it wreaks great havoc. So I hope that appears too.  "-)

Thanks again everyone for all the good input, comment and advice. I'm going to be on the lookout for El Capitan.

[If Apple is naming new OSes after California places, I do hope they skip Death Valley !!!!! Can you imagine upgrading to Death Valley ??  ]

[Anthony]

I am with Andrea on this.  I acquired ResolutionTab, and it works as Eddie describes.  However, I do not think the improvement is worth the smaller controls and the inconvenience of switching between resolutions and screen size.  As I do not make fine adjustments in PN I will stick with it as it is and await the upgrade.

Interesting discussion and experience, thanks for this.

[Eddie Draaisma]

I sent an email to PictureCode asking them to consider supporting retina screens...

[Eddie Draaisma]

And I got a quick reply: "We'll support UHD and 4k displays (that includes Apple) in our next release"