I thought I'd try to give this new Apple ecosystem a try.  Of course, I've got a back-up, so it's just annoying, but upgrading OSX seems to be trouble every time I do it.

Trusty developer credentials in hand, I decided to download and install the new OSX Yosemite on my trusty MacBook Pro. Getting the installer was simple (although slow) enough. While it downloaded, and for some time after, I made my TimeMachine do a good back-up and I copied a bunch of stuff to other network file systems. When all was in order, and I had what I thought would be enough time to sit and watch installation slideshows (or whatever), I set out to do the install.

My preference would be to do a full wipe and install of the OS, but that never really gets offered in the installation. Maybe it's to do with the partitioning of my MBP (one big slice), where on my Ubuntu machines I've got /home and probably /var or /opt or maybe others on different partitions or even physical devices. I've done other in-place OS upgrades, and usually they work fine, but sometimes you miss out on some of the new magic as it drags old cruft along. There probably are ways to get the installer (which seems to come from a more-or-less special place once the system reboots) to wipe the drive, but it isn't apparent when you run through it.

Running through the installer the first time ran into a failure. Evidently I skipped a step where I should have run the Disk Utilities and checked for and repaired errors. Running through that during the cycle of reboots showed that a giant file (an ISO used for a VM) had the wrong number of blocks. However, repairing the disk kept failint to repair. I even tried booting from my TimeMachine, so that the hard drive wouldn't be mounted, but it couldn't repair.

I tried making a bootable USB from the Yosemite image, but either the one it copied from the install app folder had an issue, or they made it so you couldn't make bootable USB from the file nestled deep in the install app. Ultimately I ended up running the Disk Utilities while booting from my TimeMachine to repartition the evidently irreparable partition that existed, and then installing the OS offered from there. Oddly it was OSX Lion (not even Mountain Lion), instead of the previous Mavericks; it must have had to do with when I started using the TimeMachine, but pin in that I need to figure out how to keep that up to date.

I thought to do everything this time with the company-related AppleID (since its that which I'm using for the developer access, and it's their MBP), but apparently that AppleID isn't a licensee of Lion. I used my personal AppleID, did the install, signing in as (and therein licensing through) my company AppleID. I left it installing over night.

I was then able to hit the iTunes installation of my previously licensed copy of the OSX Yosemite installer. This time it went through and installed cleanly. Granted, this is still atop a previous installation, but as I hadn't even accepted the first of the Lion updates, I figure the cruft is pretty minimal if not non-existant.

OSX Yosemite has some eye-candy differences. So far the eye-candy is "meh," with a lot of translucency that I've had on my Ubuntu boxes for ages, and some squeezed font stuff. They seemed to have gone for a much flatter style, with an almost blue on grey vibe all over. Everything's where it's expected to be, except the apps I need or like.

I quick threw my mail info into Mail, and after a couple of rounds to get an app-specific password to work, my e-mail and contacts imported cleanly. I poked at a few of the other things, like the new notifications area and other apps I tend to work with but not think about. A few eye-candy improvements, some small glitches.

For example, in the notifications area, there's a bit of overlap when there are collisions. There are a few places that the font quirks like that. In another instance I was able to get the System Preferences to have remnants from different tabs in the Network preferences just by clicking more quickly than it wanted me to.

It is a beta, and I forgive all of these kinds of things.  Heck, I forgive a lot of these kinds of things all over the place, as sometimes the most careful of layouts or designs meets with unruly word lengths or style collisions.

The first new thing I added was the new XCode; most of the reason for doing this is to get in on he new Swift, iOS, and OSX features. The next thing I tried to do was add some of the other software I wanted to use. I prefer iTerm2 to the provided Terminal. I also do a slew of Java development, so I need to add the JDK. Hitting the iTerm2 page allowed downloading the application, but I couldn't the run downloaded app it from the Finder (as has been the case for a while).  I did go into the "Security & Privacy" settings and saw that there was an offer for the one application, instead of forcing me to set the "allow apps from anywhere," but I'd hoped there would be an offer on the denial dialog to just allow me to say "trust me, I trust this application."

I opened the JDK archive when it finished and tried to run that package installer, only to be told that the installer works on "10.7 and above," but that my "10.10" wasn't "above."

I'll get these ironed out and move on, but for now, no JDK, which also means no Java IDE.

I also want to get my iPad to have the new iOS 8 beta, but since I use that a lot more regularly than I use this MBP (I have other desktops and a Mac Mini for personal work, and client-provided MBP that I use for daily client work), I think I'll wait for some feedback from others I know who have said they're going to give it a go. Also, I've got to get some Swift or other Objective-C done before I have anything to try to contribute.