My alternative title to this piece was "What the heck has happened to Apple?". The reason for such a negative title is that sometimes I can't believe that the Apple of today resembles the original Apple at all. In the past couple of years, I've fought with Mac OS X updates and iOS updates that are only on a scale that could be described as "Windows-esque". And I'm not happy about it. I waited for a few weeks before updating to Yosemite. Why? Because of "special features" that seem to plague early adopters of any Microsoft update. Yes, I'm tainted. Yes, I'm jaded. But what I shouldn't be is surprised.

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Yes, you're reading it correctly. I'm mixing Apple and Microsoft updates into the same hideous lump. I'm not sure what has gone wrong in Apple's soup, but I think someone needs to rethink the recipe.

I'm thinking about Coca Cola's New Coke and Coke Classic here. If you're old enough to remember that debacle, you understand the comparison. If you aren't, get ready for a historical repeat.

Bear with me for a moment in this comparison, analogy, or whatever you want to call it.

Apple is Coca Cola—the original recipe, Steve Jobs, quality, insane attention to detail, extreme quality control, innovation, design, excellence, and a true standard of the very best.

"New" Apple (Tim Cook's version), like New Coke, is a failure.

Sorry to identify spades here, but that's my job.

Tim Cook's Apple is a fail.

Apple needs to reboot, clear its memory registers, reinitialize, POST, and nudge itself back to the Jobs days of excellence.

For example, Steve Jobs would never have released the iPhone 6. The iPhone 6 is so bad that my oldest son, who's in college, refused one and chose the iPhone 5S instead. He had the option of either or something totally different. Like me, he hates Android phones, and he'd never consider a Windows phone at all. His only choice was an iPhone. He looked at all of his options and chose the 5S. It was his best option, albeit not a great one at that.

I also don't think he would have released two iPad versions in the same year.

All I have to say to Apple at this point is, "Wow".

OK, now that this bit is out of the way, let me describe my Yosemite upgrade experience to you.

It went smoothly enough, but I was apprehensive about doing it. After the initial reboot into Yosemite, I was impressed with the cooler looking icons. But, my excitement was soon subdued by the lackluster ('lackluster' is being kind) performance. I rebooted again after about an hour to be sure it wasn't just me. I rebooted and it was still the same.

I went into one of those Yosemite Sam (fitting, huh?) cursing rants—feeling that I'd been duped again into updating when I really shouldn't have. During one of my intelligible and publishable dialogs, I actually said, "Steve Jobs would have never let this happen! I might as well be using @#$% Windows!" OK, so it was almost publishable, hence my cartoonish cursing to preserve your innocence and my integrity as a highly regarded technology journalist.

Earlier today I was saved by an internal posting by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes who wrote of the Yosemite 10.10.1 update. I was thrilled at the possibility of what it might resolve. I asked Adrian about Yosemite's performance problems and if this update resolved them.

<side note> I always trust Adrian Kingsley-Hughes' word on stuff like this because he has one of those hyphenated last names. You know, because people with hyphenated last names are really smart and often rich. I mean seriously, who would you trust more, a guy named Percy Blythe-Farthington or Bob Jones? Well, obviously Blythe-Farthington by a country mile. Not that Bob isn't competent, but the name plus that British accent makes Percy the "Go To" guy for whatever it is that you need to know.</side note>

Adrian didn't answer my question about 10.10.1 fixing my performance problem, but he did confirm that people have experienced performance problems after updating to Yosemite.

I decided to try the update.

It worked.

My awesome Mac mini is awesome again.

I went from slogging through mud to ice skating again. I'm very happy with the 10.10.1 update. So, if you're having performance issues with Yosemite (10.10), hit the App Store and click Updates, which you might have to do more than once for it to appear. Download and install it. You'll be very happy that you did.

You see, my Mac mini has 4GB RAM and a Micron (Crucial) M500 disk in it and it should perform very well—and did before my fateful upgrade to Yosemite. Now that I've applied this update, my system is back. In fact, it might be faster than before Yosemite. I'll have to run a benchmark or two to test it, but I'm pretty sure that I can feel an improvement.

Everything is as it should be.

But the lesson here is to never jump on an update before the bugs are worked out. I should have known that. After all, I lived through Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 2 and Vista.

The definition of insanity is to apply any update before the first patch is available. And only then after allowing the early adopterati to vet it.

And now for the obligatory, but appropriately related Star Trek quote:

Guardian of Forever: TIME HAS RESUMED ITS SHAPE. ALL IS AS IT WAS BEFORE. MANY SUCH JOURNEYS ARE POSSIBLE. LET ME BE YOUR GATEWAY.