Misery - a virus

Where do I start with a useless update whose sole function appears to be to cause misery and chaos?

Like most Apple ‘upgrades’ this has all the aspects of a virus. It spreads from machine to machine wreaking havoc as it goes. You may argue that we are ‘willing’ transmitters of this virus, but Apple makes this update virtually mandatory as they frog march us to the next generation whether we want it or not.

We purchased a couple of new Macs in the office. Since some existing machines already had El Capitan already installed; and people wanted to move to their newer models, we had to put El Capitan on the new machines. 4 of them. Scorecard: 1 iMac installed without hitch, one Mac Mini took two days and was a total nightmare, 1 iMac never installed, and screwed up the disk in the process and is now back at Apple where we expect its replacement in “a week or 2”. The 4th was my new MacBook Pro that finally installed after 2 agonising days but now crashes several times a day.

Worst of all was the case of one staff member who moved from his Mac Mini to my “Old” MacBook which was running Yosemite (I not wanting to face the nightmare of an upgrade of dubious usefullness). Now oddly enough I used MY Apple ID on MY laptop, now he wants to use HIS Apple ID on HIS ‘new’ laptop. Yes in it’s infinite wisdom Apple does not permit an upgrade on a different Apple ID. Words cannot express my disgust at this insane policy (am I the first person to sell/transfer his Mac?)
We are told he will have to do a fresh install; but of course the new Macs don’t come with installation media so it is off to a dodgy download.

This is all pissing into the wind, as you cannot, ultimately, choose NOT to upgrade, and there is no hope of Apple actually listening to those of us on the ground (I a devoted Apple user since 1982) with practical problems with no obvious solutions and terrrible terrible terrible customer support but in the final analysis I hope someone there has enough nous to recognise that the terrible rating of this OS on their own store is indicative not just of the software itself but the deep frustrations they perpetrate on us in trying to be good Apple users.
-gordon

Gordon1707 about OS X El Capitan