27" iMac late 2015, 1TB SSD drive, 16GB ram, 2 TB time machine.... latest version of OS?

[Papa Goose]

Hello Mac Guru's

The spec's of my iMac are in the title, and I'm running on Monterrey V 12.7.6. I've started getting the dreaded "this software will shortly be unsupported" pop up, and as far as Apple Support are concerned this is the latest available version of macOS my machine will run. I haven't encountered any apps that won't run, and only MS 365 won't update anylonger on Monterey, but word etc all work.

As far as folks on google are concerned the spec's of my machine will allow it to run Sequoia, but Apple say not? The machine runs fine as it is so I don't want to change it, but would like to get a supported version of macOS. I'm not the most tech savvy fella in the room, and this group has given me fanastic and well explained information in the past, so hopefully someone will be able to offer advice on this.

Thanks in advance😉

 

[jms_uk]

Monterey is the last macOS that will run natively on it.

If you use OLCP, you can get the newer ones.

We've had few 2015 27" iMacs (albeit 4GHz i7 with 4GB graphic cards) and they were running Sonoma fine.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

OCLP can be a little fiddly, and depending on what graphics card you have you might not want to upgrade past Ventura/macOS 13 so it might only buy you a year or so. Read the FAQ carefully. But longer-term, start thinking about what you’ll replace the iMac with.

 

[Papa Goose]

OCLP can be a little fiddly, and depending on what graphics card you have you might not want to upgrade past Ventura/macOS 13 so it might only buy you a year or so. Read the FAQ carefully. But longer-term, start thinking about what you’ll replace the iMac with.

Uuurgh... don't fancy replacing something that working. I checked and it's the Quad-Core Intel i5 3.2GHz, with an AMD Radeon R9 M380 graphics card, if that helps identify how far up the OS food chain I could take this iMac. No heavy gaming or video, just normal browsing, and word/excel stuff.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

I've never bothered with OCLP myself, just helped a few people who wanted to extend the life on older hardware.

If 27" display is a must-have, I'd look at Mac mini. But the current iMacs are actually REALLY nice, and a lot of people have adapted to the 24" with no significant problems.