Hey guys, so I have a 2015 13" Macbook Pro still running on El Capitan and so far it's pretty fast and I have no complaints, apart from a few non-compatible apps, but should I update to a newer version? What's the fastest one around? I've been told Mojave is fast but does the battery life/speed get worse?
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Fastest macOS for 13" 2015 Macbook Pro
- Thread starter whocares07
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I, too, have a 2015 MBP 13".
And, like you, I still use El Cap, the OS it shipped with.
I also have a 2nd partition on the internal drive, with Low Sierra on it. But I boot to that one rarely.
If I was going to "upgrade", I'd consider Mojave, and nothing further. Be aware that before you upgrade to Mojave you'll need to erase the internal drive to APFS and do a completely fresh install, and then restore your data from your backup afterwards.
The easiest upgrade would be to Low Sierra. It will run fine under HFS+ (it's the last OS to run completely in HFS+).
WARNING:
Before you attempt to do any upgrade, I'd get an external USB3 drive.
Then, I'd use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to create a bootable clone of the internal El Cap install.
Both of the above are FREE to download and use for 30 days.
WHY I'd recommend this:
If you upgrade, and find that you don't like it, having a bootable cloned backup makes it "child's play" to "get back, get back, get back to where you once belonged".
If you DON'T have a bootable backup, you can still get back, but it's NOT going to easy.
And, like you, I still use El Cap, the OS it shipped with.
I also have a 2nd partition on the internal drive, with Low Sierra on it. But I boot to that one rarely.
If I was going to "upgrade", I'd consider Mojave, and nothing further. Be aware that before you upgrade to Mojave you'll need to erase the internal drive to APFS and do a completely fresh install, and then restore your data from your backup afterwards.
The easiest upgrade would be to Low Sierra. It will run fine under HFS+ (it's the last OS to run completely in HFS+).
WARNING:
Before you attempt to do any upgrade, I'd get an external USB3 drive.
Then, I'd use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to create a bootable clone of the internal El Cap install.
Both of the above are FREE to download and use for 30 days.
WHY I'd recommend this:
If you upgrade, and find that you don't like it, having a bootable cloned backup makes it "child's play" to "get back, get back, get back to where you once belonged".
If you DON'T have a bootable backup, you can still get back, but it's NOT going to easy.
I never understood why people bothered with this.
I have a Late-2013 MacBook Pro 15. It shipped with Mountain Lion I think or Mavericks, one or the other. The laptop is nearly 7 years old.
And I always clean reinstall the OS when 10.x.1 is released.
I never suffered from any slow down, or I never felt one OS was slower than the previous one (except Yosemite which was a disaster).
Same goes for my girlfriend's 2014 MacBook Air which has far lower spec than my MBP. Catalina still feel as speedy as Mavericks 6 years after.
Running Catalina perfectly well and I benefit from having the latest security updates and apps versions. Just install Catalina from a USB boot drive, completely erase your internal SSD and reimport back your documents from a backup.
I have a Late-2013 MacBook Pro 15. It shipped with Mountain Lion I think or Mavericks, one or the other. The laptop is nearly 7 years old.
And I always clean reinstall the OS when 10.x.1 is released.
I never suffered from any slow down, or I never felt one OS was slower than the previous one (except Yosemite which was a disaster).
Same goes for my girlfriend's 2014 MacBook Air which has far lower spec than my MBP. Catalina still feel as speedy as Mavericks 6 years after.
Running Catalina perfectly well and I benefit from having the latest security updates and apps versions. Just install Catalina from a USB boot drive, completely erase your internal SSD and reimport back your documents from a backup.
@Fishrrman thanks for the heads-up, I'm gonna give Mojave a chance then but I was gonna format with HFS+, but after quick researching APFS it does seem to be faster as it is made for SSD which is my case so definitely going with that. As for the backup I don't have that much stuff so I'll probably save my docs to the cloud and do a fresh install of Mojave from USB
APFS is definitively better than HFS+ especially on SSD.
I never had a bug with Catalina since 10.15.3. I'd upgrade to latest Catalina 10.15.5 if I was you or wait until the final 10.15.6 release which is currently in beta.
I never had a bug with Catalina since 10.15.3. I'd upgrade to latest Catalina 10.15.5 if I was you or wait until the final 10.15.6 release which is currently in beta.
Would you say Catalina is too much for a 2015 MBP? Apart from the fact that it takes more space, there has to be a point where it's not as fast as before, or that probably happens on iPhones and iOS, but if you say so then will definitely upgrade
They're no Apple OS that is "too much" for a 2015 MBP lol.
It's going to be as fast as any other previous OS.
It's going to be as fast as any other previous OS.
I am running the latest 10.15.5 on a 2015 13” MacBook Pro. It runs fine on it. I don’t notice any sort of slow down. Just beware that if you are currently running any 32-bit apps they won’t run under Catalina. My suggestion is to do a clean install since you are currently running El-Capitan. Create a bootable USB of Catalina installer. Migrate your user data from Your backup.
Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support
You can use a USB flash drive or other secondary volume as a startup disk from which to install the Mac operating system. These steps are primarily for system administrators and other experienced users who are familiar with entering commands in Terminal.
Thanks guys, so I followed your thoughts and installed Catalina from scratch, formatted with APFS (the only option in Cat) and so far so good. Didn't notice any slow down so far
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There is.
fast forward few months and we got Big Sur that noticeably slows down 2015 Macs.sluggish and laggy.
I'm running 11.1 on my 2014 MBP 15" (i7, 16GiB RAM). I haven't even bothered to do fresh reinstalls, just upgraded the system. I feel like it is just as fast as with 10.9. The only downside to running 11.x or 10.15.x is the loss of 32 bit support. It that is not a problem for you, there really is no downside to upgrading.
Edit: I guess I should clarify that I'm not really pushing the limits of my MBP, I don't edit video and only occasionally work with photos. Most of my time is spent in nvim through iTerm/tmux/ssh. Some JetBrains tools and Xcode as well. The most demanding software I use daily is probably Firefox with a bunch of addons.
Edit: I guess I should clarify that I'm not really pushing the limits of my MBP, I don't edit video and only occasionally work with photos. Most of my time is spent in nvim through iTerm/tmux/ssh. Some JetBrains tools and Xcode as well. The most demanding software I use daily is probably Firefox with a bunch of addons.
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Big Sur is OK here - 16GB RAM. I don't think it is any slower and likely faster than Catalina. However a chap on here (with the 2014 13" MBP) recently upgraded after some discussion in which I was involved and thought it was very slow and clean installed Mojave again.
An advantage of upgrading to a currently supported Mac OS version (at the time of writing Mojave, Catalina or Big Sur) is that you get current bootrom updates. If you ever decide to put a 3rd party NVMe SSD in your Mac there have been recent compatibility improvements including fixes to hibernation problems with a recent boot rom update. Once the boot rom is updated it will still remain if you later go back to an older version of Mac OS.
how is that possible?
my Late 2015 with SSD has noticeably slow down,small noticeable lag and bootup takes twice the time with Big Sur.
I think you are simply not aware and don’t remember the speed prior to Big Sur.I use mine heavily everyday and the slowdown and lag is really noticeable.
I always cleanly reinstall the OS when the .1 is released. Never upgraded.
I haven’t noticed slowdowns from Catalina. And as far as I can remember, it was as fast as the previous versions. Maybe I gradually got used to it over versions of macOS...! But Big Sur is quite noticeably lighter I find than Catalina. The only thing is the GPU seems to suffer a bit more due to increased transparency across the GUI.
16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, i7 2.4 GHz, 750M.
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I dunno,Big Sur was sluggish and laggy for me,just formated my drive and installed Mojave,super fast and no lag.job done.
Hi, sorry for free riding this thread, I just got an old 2014 mac mini (for cheap). I now learned I should have probably gone for a 2012 quad core, things I tend to learn bit too late 
next time will do more research.
Anyway it's a:
Mac mini 2014,
2.6 dual core i5,
8 gb ram,
1 TB hard disk
formatted all as I got it and installed...
- Mac OS Big Sur which is running very slow, cannot really use it not even for reading emails and web browsing.
- bootcamp with Windows 10... running smoothly instead, I can even game on that.
so I wonder whether I should clean all and reinstall an older mac OS, maybe El capitan or mojave ?
Really appreciate any suggestions,
thank you very much!
next time will do more research.Anyway it's a:
Mac mini 2014,
2.6 dual core i5,
8 gb ram,
1 TB hard disk
formatted all as I got it and installed...
- Mac OS Big Sur which is running very slow, cannot really use it not even for reading emails and web browsing.
- bootcamp with Windows 10... running smoothly instead, I can even game on that.
so I wonder whether I should clean all and reinstall an older mac OS, maybe El capitan or mojave ?
Really appreciate any suggestions,
thank you very much!
macOS 11 shouldn't be that slow on such a machine, do you have anything else installed as well? (Chrome is known for slowing machines down)
As for running an older system, it really depends on what software you intend to run. My only requirement would be a system using APFS and not HFS+ (ie 10.13 or above). Homebrew doesn't work well on older systems, but MacPorts does.
Edit: I looked up your machine, and it seems it uses a slow mechanical hard drive. You could upgrade to a fast SSD for significant speed increase.
ospeand wrote:
"so I wonder whether I should clean all and reinstall an older mac OS, maybe El capitan or mojave ?
Really appreciate any suggestions"
The problem is not the OS.
The problem IS that you probably have a platter-based hard drive inside, right?
That is NEVER going to run at any speed other than "slow" with modern versions of the Mac OS.
The "fix" is to replace it, or add (there's room for a second drive) a "blade SSD" above the original drive (with the Mini turned upside-down and the bottom cover off).
There are threads in the Mini sub-forum on how to do this, what parts are recommended, etc.
It's a relatively easy job. But be sure to get the right tools and the right parts.
THAT'S what you need to do.
Once done, the 2014 Mini will perform quite well, MUCH better than now...
"so I wonder whether I should clean all and reinstall an older mac OS, maybe El capitan or mojave ?
Really appreciate any suggestions"
The problem is not the OS.
The problem IS that you probably have a platter-based hard drive inside, right?
That is NEVER going to run at any speed other than "slow" with modern versions of the Mac OS.
The "fix" is to replace it, or add (there's room for a second drive) a "blade SSD" above the original drive (with the Mini turned upside-down and the bottom cover off).
There are threads in the Mini sub-forum on how to do this, what parts are recommended, etc.
It's a relatively easy job. But be sure to get the right tools and the right parts.
THAT'S what you need to do.
Once done, the 2014 Mini will perform quite well, MUCH better than now...
thanks all,
so I got rid of chrome as suggested and yes I have seen an improvement, just unfortunately still far from usable.
so I do understand I need to replace or add an ssd, i see there are guides on how to do that and it may be even fun to do, my only problem is to keep all to budget, will need to see how much money I would need to pour into this machine to make it workable. I saw also that some forums are suggesting using an external ssd connected through tunderbolt as the main drive could be an option, I am confident could be more expensive but at least would have a drive that can be reused if I change machine; does anyone has experience/suggestion with this?
thank you very much
so I got rid of chrome as suggested and yes I have seen an improvement, just unfortunately still far from usable.
so I do understand I need to replace or add an ssd, i see there are guides on how to do that and it may be even fun to do, my only problem is to keep all to budget, will need to see how much money I would need to pour into this machine to make it workable. I saw also that some forums are suggesting using an external ssd connected through tunderbolt as the main drive could be an option, I am confident could be more expensive but at least would have a drive that can be reused if I change machine; does anyone has experience/suggestion with this?
thank you very much