How's the performance of Catalina on a 2012 Mini? Is it about the same as Mojave or is it a little slower in startup and general operation? I have 8GB on my base 2012 Mini with the stock drive.
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Catalina vs Mojave?
- Thread starter Heat_Fan89
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As of the current beta, Mojave is outperforming Catalina by a lot imo. However YMMV
If by "stock drive", you mean the original, spinning hard drive - then I suggest that upgrading macOS will continue to be draggy and slow.
Upgrading to an SSD is absolutely the best performance boost you can do, particularly on your 2012 mini (I have two of those minis)
Upgrading to an SSD is absolutely the best performance boost you can do, particularly on your 2012 mini (I have two of those minis)
Not much difference on a MBP mid 2012 - running mojave vs catalina
can't tell the difference
can't tell the difference
I don't think it's wise to compare a fully matured operating system to a beta operating system. It's in beta for a reason.
I'm using Catalina on my Late 2013 MBP and it runs pretty much the same as Mojave did.
So far, it seems to me that Catalina is running great...The only real drawback that I feel a couple times a week is the loss of Quicktime Pro 7. It was so much easier to trim a video in there. The QuickTime Pro X is less intuitive, as the "selection" is what gets trimmed to. I like to select, and press delete to remove parts of a clip, in my case, normally at the beginning and end. I have not found anything to really replace it. I with apple would make QuickTime Pro X more like the old one.]
Thanks everyone for the replies. I really have NO problems with Mojave on my 2012 Mini once it's at the desktop. With the original spinner HDD yep 5400 RPM's it boots in a little over a minute, High Sierra took a little less than a minute. But once it's at the desktop all the stock OS apps load fairly quick with minimal beachballs, if any because even with the original drive I rarely get beachballs. So really nothing to complain about.
I'll try Catalina and if it's about the same speed as Mojave or slightly worse then i'll determine whether an internal SSD might be the way to go. As of now Mojave has not pushed me towards an SSD purchase.
I'll try Catalina and if it's about the same speed as Mojave or slightly worse then i'll determine whether an internal SSD might be the way to go. As of now Mojave has not pushed me towards an SSD purchase.
Upgrade to an SSD, no question, you will not regret it.
I'd rather put that money towards a new Mac Mini. I'll have to see first how Catalina performs on my 2012 Mini before I decide if I want to replace the HDD or go with a 2018 base Mini.
A new Mac is always nice, but if keeping the old one, definitely SSD. I had an early 2011 MBP, the SSD added years of usable life to it. Sadly it, like all other 2011 had the GPU issues, that became unbearable to work around.
I find that there's little point in upgrading to a new MacOS until it hits at least 10.1x.4. Give it time to mature. People are too upgrade trigger-happy these days.
You can get a 240GB SSD at Best Buy for ~$40. I bought one for my late 2008 MBP and it halved my boot times, for example.
I bought a WD Blue 250GB SSD on Amazon. It should arrive this week. I've been wanting to buy a new Mini but the soldered storage keeps holding me back and by the time my 2012 Mini is no longer getting any updates which should be around 4 years, the new Mini's should hopefully be refreshed.
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Mojave isn't too bad on my 2012 Mini. It takes a little over a minute to boot to desktop from the power button and once it's running it's not too bad performance wise. I don't get a whole lot of beach balls but I don't do a lot of multitasking and I have 8GB of RAM.
After you install that new SSD and use your mini for a bit, you'll wonder why you waited so long to do that upgrade.
As others have said here, there is simply no other upgrade that comes even close to the bang for the buck of swapping out a spinning drive with an SSD. EVERYTHING will seem faster.
I could not agree more, it’s a real pain to trimm using QT Pro X. This is one of the two reasons I will be staying on Mojave. I also want to point out that it’s not the first time Apple destroyed something beautifully simple. When I think of iMovie I feel lile weeping. Once upon a time it was a pleasure to use, now it’s a nightmare.
I am really of thinking about waiting for awhile to update to the round of updates, iOS 12 and mOS 14.6 are super stable and working great for me right now. I have been reading about a lot of bugs and don't feel like breaking what I have right now. I will definitely go to Catalina on a few hackintoshs for the thrill of it tho. Main machines are staying on 10.14.6 until 2020.
I’ve installed it to an external SSD so I can see if my audio stuff works with it before I install it to the internal drive.
This way I can mess with new features like Sidecar too. It is quite cool.
@Heat_Fan89 or anyone Have you tried Catalina vs Mojave on the 2012 Mac mini? I'm interested, because reading comments like "it runs just fine" doesn't really help. Is it slower, more beachballs etc. in any respect?
Cheers!
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yes me too, anyone? i am on high sierra which runs great on my mini 2012 with ssd and this year it will stop security updates so i am thinking of updating, so should i try mojave or catalina?
