2011 MBP 16gb, 1 tb ssd El Capitan - Should I upgrade to newest OS?

[JCMiller23]

Noob to the site, a bit tech saavy, but not particularly knowledgable. I understand that newer OS's added features like Siri, features I don't need, features that would just slow my computer down, so I haven't updated the OS past El Capitan.

Fast forward years later, I bought an iphone SE 2020 and it won't connect to my mac without a newer OS. I can use some third party apps, but those kind of suck in one way or another.

Mac is a 2011 15" MBP, I've got 16 gigs of ram I put in and a 1 tb ssd, (most of the time connected to an external monitor via thunderbolt if that matters). I'm fairly sure my mbp can handle the newest OS, but I wonder how much it will slow down. There's no obvious answer to this I'm sure, the best bet is probably to figure out a way that I can downgrade back to El Cap if needed (is this possible?) Can I shut off features I won't use like Siri? Can I disable graphical features to improve performance? I don't run any big memory hogs except for Logic Pro X... if I upgraded my OS (the version I have def won't work on 10.14 or 10.15) then downgraded back, would it still work?

Maybe I'm overreacting here by making this post, but I just remember decades okay back when I used PCs upgrading my Windows and having nothing work because it used so many system resources.

I looked for some benchmarks and googled about this problem for 20+ minutes and didn't find much to help. Should I upgrade? Any opinions, data, sites, articles, benchmarks or other resources would be appreciated. Thank you!

P.S. Is this the right forum for this or should I post this in the OS forum?

 

[mwidjaya]

Nothing wrong with some research before jumping in.

1. Don't expect too much - it is a 9 yr old machine. No wifi-ac, no usb3, no bluetooth LE.
You will miss out on great features from Continuity.

Continuity features and requirements for Apple devices – Apple Support (AU)

Continuity features make it seamless to move between your Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV and Apple Vision Pro devices that meet the system requirements.

support.apple.com

I bought an iphone SE 2020 and it won't connect to my mac without a newer OS

2. iPhones can operate independently. Don't have to connect to a Mac.

I haven't updated the OS past El Capitan.

3. Official supported OS for MacBookPro8,2 is High Sierra 10.13.6
Suggest you update to this point first. Especially if this is your only computer and you need it to be running smoothly.

4. Next step is to patch it to run Mojave 10.14.x

macOS Mojave Patcher

It is a good patch and should be stable enough. Of course need some fiddling to start with in applying the patch.

5. Going further to Catalina comes with even more fiddling and not necessarily will be smooth running.

6. Going next to Big Sur is not recommended. You would run into "no graphics acceleration" terrible slowness.

Proceed at your own comfort level.