Incremental OS upgrades from 10.8 or not?

[CooperBox]

I have a MacBook Pro 10,1 (A1398) which is the mid 2012 15" Retina model. I've rarely used it, and OS 10.8.5 Mountain Lion is still installed. I wish to upgrade to Mojave in order to eventually sell it, and have prepared a bootable USB Mojave thumbdrive.
My question is: Can I directly perform a clean install of Mojave, or must I do incremental upgrades, Mavericks/Yosemite/El Capitan etc?

 

[DeltaMac]

If you are just upgrading from 10.8 to 10.14, and will continue to use your MBPro, then I would suggest upgrading through some intermediate version, such as 10.11
But, even that is probably not necessary for a system upgrade. Just go straight to Mojave.

But to directly answer your question - There is absolutely no reason to install incremental upgrades (to 10.9, then 10.10, then 10.11, on and on to 10.14)
Just boot to your bootable Mojave installer.
Erase the drive.
Install Mojave.
If you are preparing it to sell, then just shut off when you get to the new user setup. Leave that for the new owner.

 

[CooperBox]

Many thanks for the feedback.
Any particular reason you recommended El Capitan as an intermediate version? I presume there was no firmware changes with that or other OS's that made them essential for later Sierra/Hi Sierra or Mojave?

 

[chrfr]

I have a MacBook Pro 10,1 (A1398) which is the mid 2012 15" Retina model. I've rarely used it, and OS 10.8.5 Mountain Lion is still installed. I wish to upgrade to Mojave in order to eventually sell it, and have prepared a bootable USB Mojave thumbdrive.
My question is: Can I directly perform a clean install of Mojave, or must I do incremental upgrades, Mavericks/Yosemite/El Capitan etc?

There's absolutely no need to go through versions in between. Just download Mojave and install it. It'd be good to have a backup in the event of problems, however. (This is always true anyway.)

 

[DeltaMac]

The only reason that I suggested an intermediate OS X version, was that 10.8 to 10.14 may have issues, or maybe no issues at all. It will depend on what apps you may rely on for day to day use, such as an older version of Adobe software.
One stop on an intermediate version is just what I would do, and remains my opinion. I suggested El Capitan because it was somewhere in the middle of system versions, but no particular reason for El Capitan over some other version.
But, as chrfr said, there's no absolute need for the intermediate stop, especially if you are not going to continue to use your old MBPro, and preparing that for sale.
If there are any firmware updates, the erase and full install of Mojave would take care of that, without any need to do intermediate updates to prepare for Mojave.

 

[CooperBox]

Ok, thank you both for your clear answers.