The Big Leap

[scooter]

I'm think of going from OS 10.8.5 to wherever we're at right now, OS 10.12??
Is this a mistake? Any opinions?

Thanks,

scooter

[Shooshie]

It's a huge mistake which you will make right over time with lots of money. Time and more upgrades heals all big leaps.

[mikehalloran]

Since 10.5, there have been two big leaps. The first was making it past 10.8.2 — you made that one already. The next one is past 10.11. Some old apps might not make the cut but most will.

Do not plan on a clean install. Many old apps work fine if the OS is updated but will no longer install.

[daniel.sneed]

Of course, you'll want to have an escape lane. That is to say a clone of your previous boot HD OS on an external, or internal, disk
In this situation, Carbon Copy Cloner has always done fine for me.

[HCMarkus]

I liked Mountain Lion a lot, but made the move to Sierra late last year so I could use a current GPU (AMD RX460) and go 4k on my video monitor. Sierra has been mostly good for me, and I am enjoying the connectivity the studio machine now shares with my other Macs, phone and iPad. There are a few issues with the latest build of DP, but they do not appear to be OS-related.

Is your Mac a 2010 or newer? If it is a 2009, you can do the EFI firmware update that makes it compatible with Sierra and (apparently) the forthcoming High Sierra. If earlier than 2009, there are other approaches you can take to get Sierra installed, but I believe they are more involved.

[Babz]

After years and years as a Mountain Lion holdout, I recently did the "big leap" to El Capitan (the 2nd most recent OS X, not the current, which is Sierra), and, after much dread and hemming and hawing, it was surprisingly painless!

The thing I miss the most is Labels (which was replaced by Apple with the much inferior "tags" many years ago at this point). Also, it seems like when I first open a folder with a lot of items, it takes a little longer to draw, after a fresh reboot. But is normal for every subsequent opening of the folder after that. That's about it! Really pretty seamless!


I also had to update my MOTU driver for my 828mk3 and my UAD driver to the latest. This is on a Quadcore Mac Mini w/ 16 GB RAM.

Again, I don't know about Sierra, but I imagine it's probably not that much of a leap from where I'm at to that. I have no need for anything Sierra offers over El Cap, so see no point in doing it in my case.

If you're going to do it, I would definitely recommend doing it before High Sierra hits, since it will probably take a while for all companies to catch up with support for that.

Hope this helps a little...

Best,
Babz

P.S. Oh and as someone who is increasingly using my iPad more and more as a synth and sound module, I discovered a nice unexpected benefit with the update. Apple now supports audio streaming between the iPad and OS X w/ the standard iPad cable, thus eliminating the need for extra software or interfaces. The iPad now shows up as an Audio Device in Audio MIDI Setup. Hopefully, they will add MIDI support too someday.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

There are three things we have to do alone in life.

Be born.

Die.

Update the OS.

[scooter]

There are three things we have to do alone in life.

Be born.

Die.

Update the OS.

Hilarious! I noticed you left out paying taxes. Thanks for the advice, I decided to just stay with 10.8.5

scooter

[HCMarkus]

10.8 is great... Just stay away from the Internet (or be VERY careful when browsing!)