How to update from 10.7.5?

[Camarillo Brillo]

Hello,

I have a 2012 MacBook Pro that is stuck on 10.7.5. Last time I tried to update the OS I was lost because there was no way to download the file for the next update, and I couldn't get past it to the subsequent updates without that stepping stone. Does anybody know if there is an easy update path from 10.7.5 now? The apple site is telling me that to get to Catalina from Lion I have to first upgrade to El Capitan, so I'm going to give that a try and skip the last step, lol no interest in Catalina.

But I was wondering.. can I bypass all of this and just use a clone of another MacBook Pro on high Sierra or Mojave to clone the system drive and run it as that system? Or is this a bad idea?

mods if you want to move this to an OSX forum that’s fine

Edit- Looks like going from Lion to El Capitan to High Sierra worked great. I don't know why I was unable to update before - maybe it was before El Capitan came out? Maybe apple noticed this problem and created an update path for Lion users? Not sure but glad it worked.

 

[Fishrrman]

If you have High Sierra running ok, I'd stick with it, unless you want to try Mojave (which is excellent).
I WOULD NOT try Catalina.

You haven't told us whether the 2012 you have is retina or non-retina (with the DVD/CD drive).
If it's a NON-retina, and if it still has the platter-based hard drive inside, I would recommend that you change it to an SSD. This is cheap and so easy that ANYONE can do it in about 15 minutes. Use something like CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to clone the contents of the old drive to the new one, and it's "ready to go".

 

[Camarillo Brillo]

Thanks, yeah I think I’ll stick with high Sierra, seems to be working great
I did the ssd and ram upgrades on my 2011 MacBook Pro, made a huge difference. This one I’m updating for a friend who isn’t so computer savvy, I’ll definitely recommend it.