Do you remember the movie, "How The West Was Won"? I am like Linus Rawlins (Jimmy Stewart) and always have to go, "..see the bear in the cave." So I installed the Yosemite Open Beta on a partition of an external drive. So I thought i would share some of my observations so far.

• The current open beta is VERY stable. I have not had any OS crashes or problems since installation.
• I have encountered a boot problem described in this post
• The only outright failure I have encountered is in the driver for the Dymo Labelwriter 450 Turbo which reliably crashes. Dymo says they are working on it. in this post[/url] But Ira's similar problem leads me to think this may be unrelated to Yosemite.
• Java 7 Run Time Environment will work in Yosemite, but according to Oracle Java 8 is required.
• The new iCloud features are there and according to Apple you can use Yosemite to store anything you want in iCloud but it may or may not be accessible at any given piont in time as they are still making frequent changes to the iCloud server software.
• I would be very reluctant to use OnyX, TinkerTool System, Cocktail, MacPilot or any similar software until the developer has a Yosemite certified release.
• Some have criticized the new UI graphics as "cartoonish" and I suppose they are to a certain extent. But to my eyes the UI graphics are much crisper and far easier to pick up in a quick scan of the screen. I often find myself wearing reading glasses in Mavericks, but I take them off when I switch to Yosemite.
• I haven't had a real chance to test Dictation which supposedly is enhanced and as far as I can tell is working well.
• I haven't got a chance to look at it in detail but so far I really like the changes and upgrades in the new iTunes that comes with Yosemite.
• in general I like Yosemite. In fact I like it enough that I am seriously considering installing it as my primary OS in stead of a alternate. It is it's that stable and that good. My only hesitation is what else might change and/or break between between now and the final release.

My next chore will be to go get the list of all the advertised enhancements and new features in Yosemite and simply go down the list testing each one and seeing hoe it works and how well it works etc.. Full testing via cloud of bull of course have to wait until IOS 8 is available.

If there're any other early adopters out there I would be interested to see and hear what your experiences been and what your comments are. If my experience so far is any guideline this is going to be a very easy and painless upgrade. Particular if you are scrupulous about keeping your applications, drivers, etc. up to date.

Very exciting to hear. Thanks.

I have so far logged 4 Yosemite issues with Apple

1. The previously mentioned boot partition switching issue
2. The Labelwriter driver issue
3. Cursor disappearing in an app -- this is reliably repeatable
4. An issue trying to synch my iPad and iPhone.

and 3 with third party developers.

1. Dropbox desktop and Finder functions do not work in Yosemite -- a known issue
2. Dropbox won't launch in Yosemite. Fails with a message that Dropbox is out of date and needs updating.
3. Checkmate test routines crash on launch

Still that is not too bad for a beta product

The cursor disappearing problem seems to have its roots in Mavericks; I keep having this happen to me in 10.9.4. It's annoying but not a huge deal; it happens 2-3 times a day to me. I take it that's worse in Yosemite?

I don't know that it worse, but when it happens it is harder to make the cursor reappear

When I've seen this effect in Mavericks 10.9.4, it's almost always been while watching online videos in multiple tabs on Firefox.....and the cursor appears to disappear BEHIND the active window in the browser....I recover to have the cursor appear on top of the active window again by moving the cursor (in the blind) over to the far right of my screen where the dock hides. Once the dock pops up, the cursor is back where it's s'posed to be again -- until the next event.

Perhaps it's related to the browser? or to the video player? or........?

I'm normally an early (first day) adapter, ergo your post will be of great help, especially if/when the remaining bugs (re)surface.

Thanks for the post!

Beta 3 is up and running, No hard data, but it feels faster and smoother. I solved my boot problem. It turns out it would not boot because Yosemite was not in the first partition on the test drive. Some other minor glitches have also disappeared so all that is good. I am working my way through the reports I have submitted to see which are still there and which are gone, but I am read to make this my default OS if only I can get the Label Printer to work.

Found a new problem that appears to be related to some old problems. Two mornings now I have come in and logged into my sleeping Mac running Yosemite. I get the normal request for password and after I log in there is a window on the screen informing me that HueyPro has crashed. I attempt to re-launch but no cursor. I try the Touchpad off and on routine to no avail and then discover nothing is responding to the keyboard either. The system is completely frozen and there is a LOT of activity on the HD. So far the only recovery I have found is the power switch on the Mac mini. Since HueyPRO runs through a USB port,I am guessing this is somehow related to USB. Tonight I am going to try plugging an old corded mouse in and see if that prevents the hangup. Other than that and my Dymo LabelPrinter issue Beta 3 is very stable and I like it.

The visual differences in the GUI between Lion/MountainLion/Mavericks and Yosemite are subtle, but I find the screen a lot easier to read. Enough so that I am very reluctant to boot back into Mavericks even though Mavericks is faster by virtue of its being installed on a Fusion drive as opposed to the ancient Firewire 800 DeskStar Yosemite is installed on.

The DeskStar has a drive activity light and that has made me aware there is almost continuous disk I/O activity going on in Yosemite. I have no clue what that is about. Activity monitor shows 15.97 GB out of 16 GB Physical memory used (which is expected) and 0 Bytes of swap file usage. Memory pressure is negligible.

Swedish hacker finds 'serious' vulnerability in OS X Yosemite

When i first installed Yosemite on a second hard drive for development purposes, I wasn't a fan of the GUI changes. I felt they made the interface look too flat and too cartooney. But now, when I boot into Yosemite and then go back to Mavericks, the Mavericks interface feels...overdone and gaudy.

I will be interested to see what this 'rootpipe' vulnerability is. With most privilege escalation issues, an attacker must either have physical access to the machine, or trick the user into executing a malicious application.

Apple clearly recognizes the value of colored visual cues, à la tags, etc. and is indeed sensitive to the needs of visually impaired. Yet, they have withdrawn the benefit of such in Sidebars (though XtraFinder "fixes" the issue in Finder). But AFAIK, in Mail, Safari, iTunes, & iPhoto, there is not even a third party fix.

While this is not new with Yosemite, I fear the future is clear. If such is right for the Sidebars, why not for the Applications folder?

Apple should, IMNHO, at least offer the option (preference) of colored sidebars or B & W.

End of rant...

Check out this posting on MacInTouch. It may have some relevance to your situation with the external hard drive.

Thanks for the link but since that posting i Have

• Installed the release version of Yosemite on the internal drive
• Discovered that Huey Pro has been abandoned and I removed it from the system
• Searching for a new screen color calibration tool

Since making the changes I have had no further morning hangs and I have been able to disconnect the wired mouse that was preventing the "lost cursor" problems.

In fact the release version of Yosemite has been remarkably trouble free. That may be because of all the software updates and upgrades I made to get the Yosemite beta running smoothly, but so far the only significant issue I have had is with a few Java applications (installers and printer configuration tools) that refused to recognize Java 8 update 25, the version that is compatible with Yosemite, and keep insisting on wanting to install Java 6. I finally solved that by installing the Java Development Kit which the problematic Java applications recognized. That solution was pure luck and not because of any particular knowledge on my part.