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How stable is Montery 12.0 vs the latest Big Sur?

Mr. 123

Mr. 123

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 20, 2016
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Hey,
I am currently on Mojave still on an iMac 2017 and am thinking about upgrading. How stable is Montery in comparison to the latest Big Sur version? I read somewhere that Montery is a bit like a stability fix for Big Sur without that many new features, is this correct?

Thanks in advance for any reports!

Regards
 
Mr. 123 said:
Hey,
I am currently on Mojave still on an iMac 2017 and am thinking about upgrading. How stable is Montery in comparison to the latest Big Sur version? I read somewhere that Montery is a bit like a stability fix for Big Sur without that many new features, is this correct?

Thanks in advance for any reports!

Regards
Click to expand...
Stable but sloooow on my m1 ...
 
From my perspective it can't be stable, because work-critical soft doesn't launch or crashes (microsoft RDP, Citrix Workspace, omnifocus, etc.). Ye, you can say - it's not OS. But does it matter?
 
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Looks like they've fixed a bug that caused windowserver crashes for those with AMD Vega video cards - I say it's a huge improvement in stability.
 
Thanks for the replies! I use a lot of audio applications for composing so I usually wait a long time before upgrading but thought this might be different as Montery is a smaller update, but maybe it's safest to wait a few months anyway for application support and possible bugs.

I mean I am still on Mojave :D
 
Mr. 123 said:
Thanks for the replies! I use a lot of audio applications for composing so I usually wait a long time before upgrading but thought this might be different as Montery is a smaller update, but maybe it's safest to wait a few months anyway for application support and possible bugs.

I mean I am still on Mojave :D
Click to expand...
I'm also using a 2017 iMac and still on High Sierra (lol), but I had tried Mojave, Catalina & Big Sur, and each of those brought their own problems for me with my setup, so I kept with High Sierra - until yesterday that is. I Carbon Copy Cloned an external SSD with my High Sierra stuff and just upgraded that drive to Monterey. So far, each and every app that I use is running swimmingly. It's nice to have updated versions of Final Cut Pro, Lightroom, etc. I know many prefer a clean install, but I wanted to test out just an upgrade and all is well so far. Good luck to you. :)
 
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jayling7 said:
I'm also using a 2017 iMac and still on High Sierra (lol), but I had tried Mojave, Catalina & Big Sur, and each of those brought their own problems for me with my setup, so I kept with High Sierra - until yesterday that is. I Carbon Copy Cloned an external SSD with my High Sierra stuff and just upgraded that drive to Monterey. So far, each and every app that I use is running swimmingly. It's nice to have updated versions of Final Cut Pro, Lightroom, etc. I know many prefer a clean install, but I wanted to test out just an upgrade and all is well so far. Good luck to you. :)
Click to expand...
That's nice, congrats on the upgrade! So you're not noticing the iMac being any slower or less smooth on Montery with basic UI tasks like opening finder window or apps etc? Which processor do you have? I have the i5 3.8.

I could of course try updating, as I have a time machine backup.
 
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Already upgraded to final release.
12.0.1.png
 
Mr. 123 said:
That's nice, congrats on the upgrade! So you're not noticing the iMac being any slower or less smooth on Montery with basic UI tasks like opening finder window or apps etc? Which processor do you have? I have the i5 3.8.

I could of course try updating, as I have a time machine backup.
Click to expand...
So far everything is running quickly and quite smoothly. Every app, finder, preference pane, etc is working without a hitch which is very nice since I did an upgrade instead of a clean install. The new Final Cut Pro seems to work faster along with Lightroom also. The external Glyph SSD I'm using is very fast, nearly as fast as my internal drive so that may help with speed too. Oh, I'm on the 2017 i5 iMac, 3.5GHz with Radeon Pro 575 4GB and 64GB of user installed Ram. If all continues so well, I may Clone this over to my internal soon.
 
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Mr. 123 said:
Thanks for the replies! I use a lot of audio applications for composing so I usually wait a long time before upgrading but thought this might be different as Montery is a smaller update, but maybe it's safest to wait a few months anyway for application support and possible bugs.

I mean I am still on Mojave :D
Click to expand...
Listen to others' opinion, but make your own too. Don't upgrade directly; make a clone backup first (not just time machine) so it's effortless to restore and takes you just half an hour to be back to where you were.

After you make the Carbon Copy Cloner clone, it depends how much storage space you have: if you have more than half your disk space free, then:
1) Create an additional volume on your internal drive
2) Clone your current boot volume onto that new volume, and upgrate that clone to Monterey. If it doesn't work out for you, just delete that (be very careful to delete the right one, maybe make another clone before) and go back to your Mojave volume.

If you don't have enough internal space:
1) Just create a clone on an external drive as backup. Boot into it to make sure it works. Then upgrade your main boot drive to Monterey, and see. If it doesn't work, wipe the internal drive and restore the clone.
 
I've been running Monterey since July. Stability has never been an issue for me. Some features and issues have been fixed during it's gestation period, but now all seems fine. 12.0.1, build #(21A559) is really pretty trouble free?

Lou
 
Monterey has been remarkable stable and mature for a new release.

There's been a couple of minor sound and graphics bugs that appeared a couple of times very briefly.

The only bug that has reoccured for me is the bottom hot corners temporarily didn't work. They started working again after I used the top hot corners.
 
I have had one MBP on Monterey since Beta 1 and it has been 100% stable through all the updates, other than an occasional mouse problem in Safari. Last week I upgraded my M1 MBP on release day. It too is stable other than I have the magic mouse scrolling issue and have to turn the mouse on and off usually 1-2 times per day. Yesterday I finally upgraded my "main" Mac Pro 6,1 and it has been perfect for a day now.

All in all Monterey seems like a good, stable upgrade. I mostly just run Apple software these days so I guess that should be expected.
 
as is typicaly good practise, wait for first or second point release. On 2018 macbook pro 15' it works fine. 12.0.1 release. (except 'improved' Preview that has removed export as pdf option for pdf with password)
 
No spanking brand new OS is ever stable. Compared to a stable OS like BS...year right.
 
^^^^Tell that to my NcMP. It wont believe you since it never crashes?

Right now I'm on Monterey Beta 12.1.

Lou
 
Monterey is better than Big Sur on my MBA M1. Big Sur would occasionally slow down and then freeze when trying to restart, haven't seen the same with Monterey.
 
It's better for me. Good performance, and apart from minor inconveniences it's pretty great. One thing I'm seeing improvements is in the WindowServer process. It's using significantly less memory than with Big Sur, and that's using an external 4K display with scaled resolution.

Swap usage is also improved. After 5 days of usage I'm seeing about 15 MB used (this is on a 16GB M1 Air)
 
Monterey is OK on my Intel MacBook Pro 2015. Performance is at least as good as Big Sur. No memory leaks. However, I don't make a TM backup, I use CCC. And I don't use an USB hub. I know there are complaints of memory leaks, Time Machine and USB hubs. And I know there was a problem with the EFI firmware on Intel Macs with T2 chips, but the upgrade on my Mac went flawlessly. I guess I was lucky.
 
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