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Best OS for a Macbook 12 2017?

aespana

aespana

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 21, 2020
132
116
Hello guys!

I'm part of this group of people who owns a beautiful Macbook 12. So tiny, lightweight and beautiful. Macbook 12 2017 with 1.2Ghz M3 and 8GB of Ram

Currently on High Sierra I am with a lot of questions about to do an OS update. I have installed Monterrey like 2-3 times and the performance wasn't great but maybe is just that I didn't wait the time to all the "after installation" process like spotlight indexing, iCloud photos indexing, etc.

What do you think is, for you, the best OS to install? Big Sur maybe? Catalina? Mojave?

Please let me know your opinions to see what to do. Stuck with High or update to a modern OS. Thank you!
 
I have basically the same machine (Macbook 12 2017 with 1.3GHz DC i5 and 8GB) and have no problems running Monterey. I use this as my travel/lightweight machine, though, and my main is a 2010 MB Pro running High Sierra, so I'm easily pleased. :rolleyes:
Just waiting for the Mac Mini Pro so I can update that last bit of my hardware.
 
First off, congrats on the 12". I have two of them & love them. Like odblnt, I run Monterey on both of them & haven't run into any issues. FWIW, I do use one of them as my every day machine.
 
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IMO Monterey runs fine on a 2017 m3.

However, yes, in certain spots High Sierra may feel a bit faster if that is what you are comparing against. The jump from High Sierra to Monterey might be more noticeable than for the rest of us who have gone from High Sierra -> Mojave -> Catalina -> Big Sur -> Monterey.

For the record, I backed some old 2008 and 2009 machines from Catalina down to High Sierra and the difference is noticeable. However, they are much, much slower machines. I find the 2017 m3 MacBook quite decent performance-wise even in Monterey and it is my favourite OS for that model so far.
 
Ok guys.

Thank you for your opinions! I will install Monterey and see how it works. I kniw that the jump from High Sierra is big but High Sierra is now 3 Os versions behind.

I'll install Monterey today and see how it moves.

Thank you!
 
I’m running Big Sur, on a fully spec’ed 2917 i7 (16gb/512gb). It runs well enough. Starting up apps is a little slow. I’m waiting a few more months before upgrading to Monterey.
 
I'd stay on Catalina. While I have monterey on my m1 MBA, on desktop I have Catalina and everything is working.
 
I bought the base 2017 model from Costco exactly 2 years ago, just because I wanted to add it to my collection. Turned out it worked pretty well for typing some notes while I was using the iPad Pro for Zoom/Teams. I keep it under Catalina as Apple still provides security and Safari updates for now. However I noticed third party apps or macOS in general were pretty poor during the final year.

Keep in mind that many of the headline features under macOS Monterey are no show on the MacBook, except the upcoming Universal Control.
 
rMB 2017 base model.
I installed Monterey a few days ago and I must say it is a noticable slower on opening apps like Pages, Keynote etc.
I still have Mojave installed as well(dual boot) because I have some 32bit apps I still use every now and then. Could this cause the slow down?
I have plenty of space left on the ssd (160GB).
 
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objektør said:
rMB 2017 base model.
I installed Monterey a few days ago and I must say it is a noticable slower on opening apps like Pages, Keynote etc.
I still have Mojave installed as well(dual boot) because I have some 32bit apps I still use every now and then. Could this cause the slow down?
I have plenty of space left on the ssd (160GB).
Click to expand...
If your Mojave installation feels faster, then Monetery is probably the issue. These are old machines and had limited power already when they were released.
 
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petsk said:
If your Mojave installation feels faster, then Monetery is probably the issue. These are old machines and had limited power already when they were released.
Click to expand...
Yes, is a little sad but is the reality, old machines with limited power.

I think that Catalina could be a sweet spot for these machines. I like High Sierra because is the more faster but is now a really old OS. Mojave should be fine too
 
aespana said:
Yes, is a little sad but is the reality, old machines with limited power.

I think that Catalina could be a sweet spot for these machines. I like High Sierra because is the more faster but is now a really old OS. Mojave should be fine too
Click to expand...
Catalina does not support 32bit apps I think, so Mojave is the latest option for me.
I had Big Sur (and Mojave, dual boot) installed for some time ago and it was faster for opening apps than Monterey. It is not a big issue for me: I just leave those apps open at all time.
I might go back to that combination if Ventura isn't any better than Monterey.
 
objektør said:
Catalina does not support 32bit apps I think, so Mojave is the latest option for me.
I had Big Sur (and Mojave, dual boot) installed for some time ago and it was faster for opening apps than Monterey. It is not a big issue for me: I just leave those apps open at all time.
I might go back to that combination if Ventura isn't any better than Monterey.
Click to expand...
Yes! I totally forgot about 32bit support. Also if you like to use iTunes you should still be in Mojave

The problem with Monterey is that all the system feels slow, not just opening apps but thats me, maybe i'm so related with the performance of High Sierra that any other system feels slow
 
I installed and use Monterey, latest version with no issues. The notebook is not a speed demon, but it never was, it is light and does office work in mobile space just great.
 
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Monterey works fine for me. I read that Ventura will work on the 2017 MB but not on earlier versions.
 
The Last 2 updates of ventura have been giving me kernel panics on wakeups the latest update being the worst almost everytime. Restarting the MacBook stabilizes it but comes bake when you sleep and wake the computer. Downgrading to Monterey in the mean time untill they fix that issue.
 
angemon89 said:
The Last 2 updates of ventura have been giving me kernel panics on wakeups the latest update being the worst almost everytime. Restarting the MacBook stabilizes it but comes bake when you sleep and wake the computer. Downgrading to Monterey in the mean time untill they fix that issue.
Click to expand...
I don’t have this problem with my 2017 m3. I wonder if your machine has hardware problems. Or perhaps a corrupted Ventura install?
 
aespana said:
I have installed Monterrey like 2-3 times and the performance wasn't great but maybe is just that I didn't wait the time to all the "after installation" etc.
Click to expand...

Had MBA 2013 i5. It’s actually a bit slower than your MB 2017 m3. With Big Sur, after all the indexing and synchronization, it was more than performant.

You should install Ventura. Officially the latest supported version.
 
EugW said:
I don’t have this problem with my 2017 m3. I wonder if your machine has hardware problems. Or perhaps a corrupted Ventura install?
Click to expand...
so i have a 2017 m3 256gb 8gb and it was panicking but have been running the latest monterey update the last two days and everything is running smooth...i had originally skipped monterey on this machine and decided to update to ventura....venturas performance is pretty terrible on this machine compared to other macos
 
Ventura is horrible in this machine I also have a 2017 8GB/256GB and no thanks.

Monterrey is not as fast a Catalina (and Big Sur I think) but is a lot faster than Ventura.

It would be interesting to see Sonoma with open patcher working on this machine but I expect a performance in the level of Ventura
 
aespana said:
Ventura is horrible in this machine I also have a 2017 8GB/256GB and no thanks.
Click to expand...
If you tried Ventura without waiting for it to settle (sync, cache, index) isn’t representative of real experience with it. You recognized the issue with Monterey already.
 
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