Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Is upgrading to High Sierra still a bad idea?

T

tpcollins

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 17, 2012
171
19
I believe I have a 13" MacBook Pro mid- 2011. Once I upgraded from Maverick to Yosemeti and hated it, went back to the Apple store and had Maverick reloaded.

I keep getting alerts to upgrade to High Sierra but I call seeing a post on here that indicated most people didn't like HS - slow loading was one issue. Has that upgrade improved at all or is it still a pita?

Just wondering if I should wait until the next big thing come out? Thanks.
 
High Sierra is stable. It's on all three of my Macs, one of which is a 2010 MacBook Pro. I'd go for it.
 
I am running High Sierra since the early developer preview on my production machine and never had any issues. Your or someone else experience might wary. And I am sure there are people who have problems with it, there are people who have problems with everything. Mavericks is a very old OS for modern standards and I wouldn't run it on a computer that contains your private data.
 
  • Like
Reactions: chabig
I've had zero problems with HS. I have it on my 2012 cMBP and my Mac Mini.

They both run just fine for me.
 
  • Like
Reactions: chabig
No problems here with a late 2013 rMBP 15". I'll be putting it in one of the bays of my Mac Pro 5,1 as soon as a new SSD gets here. HS is optimized for use with SSDs.
 
leman said:
I am running High Sierra since the early developer preview on my production machine and never had any issues. Your or someone else experience might wary. And I am sure there are people who have problems with it, there are people who have problems with everything. Mavericks is a very old OS for modern standards and I wouldn't run it on a computer that contains your private data.
Click to expand...

I often wonder how much more secure the latest OS is over previous versions.

Since you seem informed, how is HS more secure than Mavericks? Could you explain the difference between a "very old" OS and a modern one? In all honesty I'd like to learn the differences.

How would my private data be at risk on Mavericks?

Thank in advance for the help.
 
Not experiencing any problems on a 2011 13"MBP, a 2012 15" rMBP (this units has some hardware problems, but the it handles High Sierra fine) and a 2017 15" tbMBP
 
bopajuice said:
Since you seem informed, how is HS more secure than Mavericks? Could you explain the difference between a "very old" OS and a modern one? In all honesty I'd like to learn the differences.
Click to expand...

I am not a security researcher and I can't give you any concrete information, but Mavericks stopped getting security updates around two years ago. Which means that are many potential exploits and malware that a mavericks system won't be able to withstand. Just think about the recent Meltdown/Spectre debacle. Do your really want to run an unpatched browser on your system knowing that there is a way for a website on the internet to read contents of you privileged memory and potentially get access to your passwords etc?
 
NO issues with HS and my 2012 Mini and 2013 rMBP. I noticed no speed difference with Sierra at all really. Even going to APFS.
 
No ..don't do it..my IMac is slower now, I dual boot with El Captain..
 
Last edited:
I downgraded back to Sierra - not because of any performance issues - High Sierra seemed to work great on my 2015 rMBP - BUT - i have 3 or 4 apps that did not work on HS and did not want to pay to update them right now.

Also I have a ton of pictures and music - and have camped out at iTunes 12.6.3.6 (to manage iOS apps) and also am wary of upgrading to Photos 3 library for all my photos (Photos 2 seems to still work on High SIerra)

Then there is the file system changes and I have a lot of older drives back up and older macs that I am not sure how they would be affected with the new file system.

I guess I have changed from an early adopter to a laggard
 
imo HS is a great success and the best OS so far, before SL was my favorite.
you could make a partition/backup and try it out first tho
 
leman said:
I am not a security researcher and I can't give you any concrete information, but Mavericks stopped getting security updates around two years ago. Which means that are many potential exploits and malware that a mavericks system won't be able to withstand. Just think about the recent Meltdown/Spectre debacle. Do your really want to run an unpatched browser on your system knowing that there is a way for a website on the internet to read contents of you privileged memory and potentially get access to your passwords etc?
Click to expand...

Meltdown/Spectre has nothing to do with a browser or an OS. It can be patched via software but affects all os's.

Speculative execution. Its related to a processor vulnerability. Nothing to do with the OS. Correct me if I'm wrong.
 
bopajuice said:
Meltdown/Spectre has nothing to do with a browser or an OS. It can be patched via software but affects all os's.

Speculative execution. Its related to a processor vulnerability. Nothing to do with the OS. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Click to expand...

Meltdown relies on the OS mapping privileged kernel memory into user-space, which most systems do (or at least used to) as an optimisation. Read the paper. Spectre is more complex and does not require OS "support", but since both of them rely on a cache side-channel attack, software patches can make it very unlikely to carry the attack out via JavaScript in a browser. Again, not a security expert, so I don't know exactly how they do it, but I assume its about reducing precision of timers and similar.
 
leman said:
Meltdown relies on the OS mapping privileged kernel memory into user-space, which most systems do (or at least used to) as an optimisation. Read the paper. Spectre is more complex and does not require OS "support", but since both of them rely on a cache side-channel attack, software patches can make it very unlikely to carry the attack out via JavaScript in a browser. Again, not a security expert, so I don't know exactly how they do it, but I assume its about reducing precision of timers and similar.
Click to expand...

Good information. But my original question still remains. Is Mavericks more at risk than High Sierra from meltdown/Spectre?

Also, As far as I can recall I haven't run Java since Mountain Lion. Makes me wonder what sort of added security makes an OS a modern OS vs an "old" OS.

I am trying to understand why someone would be told not to use an OS based on vulnerabilities but not cite those vulnerabilities. Java can be disabled on various versions of Mac OS or not installed at all, and Spectre affects all Intel and I believe AMD computers regardless of OS. If Apple stopped all support for Mavericks and did not issue any patches then it makes sense.
 
Last edited:
bopajuice said:
Also, As far as I can recall I haven't run Java since Mountain Lion. Makes me wonder what sort of added security makes an OS a modern OS vs an "old" OS.
Click to expand...

We are not talking about Java, we are talking about JavaScript (what your browser runs and every single modern website on the internet relies upon). A common source confusion and one more reason to stop calling it "Java" script.
 
Still on Sierra with my Early 2015 MBP 13' and I plan on sticking with it. I don't have any immediate benefit to gain from upgrading to High Sierra. Also, my Adobe CS6, Office 365 and everything else works fine. Maybe when macOS 10.14 is released, I will download a backup copy of 10.13 just in case I need to be more current in order to get security updates.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back