Upgrade from El Capitain to High Sierra or Mojave Advice?

[MeisterEckhardt]

Hi Dear Community,
I've been on here a long time and grateful for the host James and Cohosts who are solidly here to help when I need them as well as you various nerds out there haha. Thank you!

I have a well running Mac Mini Late 2012 2.6 Ghz i7 with 16 GB of RAM and I am about to drop two 1 TB SSD's into it from Crucial (MX500 series SSD).

My Mac runs perfect on El Capitan. I am very conservative about upgrading.
It runs exceptionally well with DP 10.11. I have so much CPU bandwidth that I don't need more more more and the latest MacOS, and the CPU bandwidth is barely taxed the way I write and track. SO I love the setup.

However, going over to SSD internally, I think it's probably best that I use an OS higher than El Capitan. For one thing, I wonder if the TRIM command that you gotta enable in El Capitan for SSD management is not as good as Apple's new SSD format APFS. I am willing to bet that APFS is better than invoking the TRIM command in El Capitan's Unix shell. Opinions? Am I correct?



Second, I want to add to my setup on Mac Mini Final Cut Pro X. Apple will only let me buy it if I have Mojave or newer. So it looks like I am going to try to upgrade my main boot disk to Mojave. Then APFS has been around for a while, since maybe High Sierra? I get better compatibility and usefulness with my iOS devices like iPad and iPhone under Mojave, Safari is newer and more useful in Mojave, and then I can buy Final Cut Pro X and install it on Mojave.

Questions:
-Does DP 10.11 work perfect with Mojave?
-Do you think High Sierra is good with DP 10.11?
-If you were to choose, which one is better?

Mojave will cripple my 32 bit apps, right? I put Mojave on my 2012 Macbook Pro SSD laptop and Mojave won't run Omni Outliner. I understand I can always have another boot drive, keeping El Capitan on a removable drive if I want legacy software to run. So I am not scared of moving to Mojave as my main boot disk on the Mac Mini.

So I am asking if you think my Mac Mini Late 2012 will be fine with Mojave and I will still love the performance of DP 10.11 on my old perfect machine, or will it be slower, because Mojave is several (I think, 2GB) larger? I am a little worried about slowing down my Mac Mini when El Capitan is svelte and fast.

Thanks for any feedback you can provide. Gratitude!
-Meister

[mikehalloran]

I wonder if the TRIM command that you gotta enable in El Capitan for SSD management is not as good as Apple's new SSD format APFS

One has nothing to do with the other. Way too many threads on the subject. TRIM is part of the Mac OS. Enable it. Erasing a full SATA III SSD to allow it to accept new data takes 12–24 hours with TRIM enabled; 24–48 hours without. You'll never do this on a System drive unless you had to do a full Time Machine restore but when reorganizing a VI drive, you might run into this. I ran into this recently when reinstalling Komplete The installer needs about 75GB free on your system drive which I didn't have. Even though the installer erases the downloads on installation, until TRIM freed up my drive space, it could not download new libraries. One of the reasons I bought a new iMac Pro with 4TB onboard was to give myself more space for such things.

Why two 1TB SSDs and not a 2TB or a pair? The way that SSDs work, having it all on the same drive is more efficient. The old saw about two drives being better died with the EIDE bus in the G4.

DP from 9.5 is optimized to run over High Sierra or newer. According to MOTU, you can lower your buffer 50% which many of us found to be true.

All MacOS get security updates for three years. High Sierra's runs out in November 2020. Mojave 2021, Catalina 2022, Big Sur 2023. Likewise, you have free phone support for anything OS related — trust me, everything is OS related and once the techs call you, they don't care if it isn't.

Mojave is rock solid with DP. I have a couple of minor issues with DP 10.13 over Catalina on my iMP but not my 2012 MacBook Pro. I'll be getting MOTU and Apple involved as needed but the issues are minor and the workarounds easy.

[Kenny B]

Maybe I'm the only one to report a problem like this but ever since I upgraded from El Capitan to Mojave, then Catalina, I've had a problem with my bounce to disk (BTD) pausing several times during the BTD. It is very frustrating and after several hours debugging with MOTU's technical help... nothing has been fixed. So during these times, I usually spend it surfing the internet while I wait for the BTD to complete. (As I'm doing right now).

To describe the problem, I set up a BTD and it will start, then pause (maybe 10-30 seconds); then continue for a little more, then pause... etc. etc. etc. Takes forever to complete but I've never found a problem with the file once it is done. No glitches in the final sound of the file.

Nobody seems to know why this happens under Mojave or Catalina, but not under El Capitan.

[mikehalloran]

To describe the problem, I set up a BTD and it will start, then pause (maybe 10-30 seconds); then continue for a little more, then pause... etc. etc. etc. Takes forever to complete but I've never found a problem with the file once it is done. No glitches in the final sound of the file.

Only happens to me if the project is on one of my external drives. Never on my system drive where I keep my active projects.

[HCMarkus]

Mojave will not cripple your 32 bit apps... that happens with Catalina.

I'm running Mojave successfully now, but if Trim is your only concern and your current OS is working well, I'd question making the move to Mojave. IIRC, you can use Trim Enabler by Cindori to enable trim under El Capitan, and there is no quality difference in trim between OS versions.

Might I suggest experimenting with the new OS before wiping your current boot drive? You could clone your current startup drive to one of your new SSDs and install Mojave on the other. Compare and contrast, then decide based on your experiences with each.

Although I have no data support it, my gut feeling is that macOS continually adds new features (that many of us don't use) and that may actually slow down our computers for DAW use. You have a chance to develop empirical evidence in this regard. If you do conduct tests, I'd appreciate if you let us know your results!

[stubbsonic]

I'm on a 2012 MBP i7 w 16GB RAM.

My shift to Mojave has been relatively painless. Some things are a bit more stable. I notice fewer problems with connected USB devices (like thumb drives, card readers and my media player).

DP 9.52 seems more stable.

When I play podcasts on iTunes and broadcast to Airplay, my entire system locks up occasionally during playback. Audio stops and I go in, and the entire system is non-responsive (but the curser does still move). Have to hard-restart. That's the only new issue with Mojave. Otherwise, all good here.

One thing that was entirely unexpected was that the Mojave installer reformatted my drive to APFS without my realizing or authorizing it (nothing was lost). Ultimately, I don't mind. Things seem good.

[mikehalloran]

IIRC, you can use Trim Enabler by Cindori to enable trim under El Capitan

Cindori is not needed unless on Yosemite 10.10.3 or earlier. For 10.10.4 and later, run the following in Terminal then hit <return>

sudo trimforce enable

You will be asked if you are certain and be given opportunities to cancel. Enable TRIM. It's part of the MacOS since 10.7 (officially) but was enabled in 10.6.8. It's part of Windows and LINUX, too.

Apple never shipped a Mac with a 2.5" SATA SSD. Those are the only SSDs where TRIM is not enabled automatically. Even the SATA III blade used in some 2012 iMacs supports it automatically.

Although you can boot most Macs from a USB external, TRIM cannot be enabled over USB on a Mac.

Unlike HDDs, SSDs do not overwrite data. The cells must be emptied and prepared to accept new data. That's why the firmware utility is called Garbage Collection.

TRIM's sole function is to communicate with your SSD to prepare the cells to receive new data. It does much faster than Garbage Collection.

OWC did everyone a disservice with a lot of false information on this subject before OS 10.10.4 came out. The big lie: Their SSDs had a special utility that made TRIM unnecessary. It was Garbage Collection like all SATA SSDs have—Intel wasn't doing anything special on the OWC drives. Their walkback after the release of OS 10.10.4 was worthy of the most jaded politician. Eventually they had to admit that TRIM worked alongside of GC without conflict, that it was faster and that GC was a product of the firmware.

Again, it's rarely an issue but you can run into it if you erase a large chunk of data and wish to overwrite with new. Unless you have the free space, this will not be possible right away. Up to 24 hours with TRIM enabled; up to 48 without.

I have screen shots from when I re-purposed a 2TB MX500 a few weeks ago. It's possible to see this in Get Info if you know what to look for.

[mikehalloran]

DP 9.52 seems more stable.

Not my experience.

[HCMarkus]

DP 9.52 seems more stable.

Not my experience.

I'll second Mike's take on stability... DP10.11 (and now 10.13) has been very solid for me. The only issue I've had were occasional issues opening older projects under 10.11, which has reportedly been resolved in 10.13 (as I have confirmed on one project to date).

[HCMarkus]

DP 9.52 seems more stable.

Not my experience.

I'll second Mike's take on stability... DP10.11 (and now 10.13) has been very solid for me. The only issue I've had were occasional issues opening older projects under 10.11, which has reportedly been resolved in 10.13 (as I have confirmed on one project to date).

[stubbsonic]

I meant that my DP 9.52 crashes less in Mojave than it did in El Cap, not that it is more stable than the newer version of DP which I have not tried. DP still crashes though-- fact of life, here.