I've wasted an entire day trying to upgrade to Org 8 under OS X :( I'm using a modified version of Emacs, with ESS pre-installed. I've also downloaded the latest 24.3.1 Emacs for OS X and tried with that.
In both cases, I am able to install Org 8 (20140730 now) via ELPA. It installs to a local directory. However, when I restart Emacs and enter 'org-version', I am shown: "Org-mode version 7.9.3f (release_7.9.3f-17-g7524ef @ /Users/macbookair/.emacs.d/elpa/org-20140730/)" It looks like the pre-installed version is taking precedence, but it is showing the folder of the new version. I tried deleting the pre-installed version of Org from the /Applications/... folder, but then Emacs generates an error on start-up about not being able to locate the org-latex file. I did manage to install both the latest Org and ESS into the latest Emacs 24.3.1, but then Emacs was not able to open Bazaar VC files -- it could not find the 'bzr' file (Bazaar is, of course, installed; the ESS-modified Emacs can open Bazaar VC files). As it stands now, I'm back to using the ESS-modified version of Emacs (as it has ESS and bzr working) and have Org 8 installed via ELPA, but not working. *Sigh*
