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Moving on from Yosemite: pros/cons for Sierra, High Sierra, or Mojave for 2014 i7 13" MBA 8gb?

Tozovac

Tozovac

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jun 12, 2014
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I did search to see if this existed already.

For a 2014-era 13" MBA with 8gb RAM, what are the main pros/cons for the OSX's after Mavericks? I much prefer the non-dumbed-down-look of Mavericks but since it appears I could at least replace the dumbed-down stoplight buttons with lickable buttons thanks to other threads, I'm going to take the plunge. But I'm completely unsure if there are any "fatal flaws" to strongly consider, regarding upgrading my particular era of MBA.

Thanks in advance for any pointers to existing threads or advice below !
 
First check the apps you have and their compatibility with Mojave. It installed and ran on my 2013 loaded air. The problem was some of my apps.

Can’t help you any more than that. I sold it last week and am using a 2018 loaded Air. That’s why I installed Mojave on the older Air. What problems I would have before I took the plunge.
 
My wife has a 2014 MBA with lesser specs than yours - only 4GB of RAM and an i5 and it runs Mojave no problem. I can't see any cons.

Before it died on me in the summer, I was using an identical machine on High Sierra and it run just fine. No fatal flaws to speak of.
 
peckerhead said:
My wife has a 2014 MBA with lesser specs than yours - only 4GB of RAM and an i5 and it runs Mojave no problem. I can't see any cons.

Before it died on me in the summer, I was using an identical machine on High Sierra and it run just fine. No fatal flaws to speak of.
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Thanks! Going to jump to Mojave then, just need an evening to dedicate to it. Going to carbon copy my current SSD elsewhere, do a clean install of Mohave, then just start copying/porting over and necessary files.

And if anybody reading this has some lessons learned or recommendations for when doing this, please let me know. Every time I’ve done this, I’ve run into some issue or another, as far as capturing importing over the correct/needed files from the carbon copied image, so any suggestions are welcome.
 
I am running Sierra on my 2013 11" i7 8gb MBA. Works very well. Not very interested in upgrading this machine further, I have a lot of legacy software and each new version of MacOS breaks more of it.
 
IMO Sierra is the best modern version of macOS. I'm running it on my MacBook and it's surprisingly stable. OFC you already know my opinion on the current flat design of macOS but it works okay with my software.
 
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Boyd01 said:
I am running Sierra on my 2013 11" i7 8gb MBA. Works very well. Not very interested in upgrading this machine further, I have a lot of legacy software and each new version of MacOS breaks more of it.
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This is a very good point. Unless you have more than one Mac this is something that needs to be taken into account depending on what software apps you want to run on your Mac.
 
I also have a 2012 quad core Mini Server that normally boots into Sierra from an external 1TB SSD. However, I left MacOS 10.8.5 on the original internal 256gb SSD. So I can boot into that when I need the really old stuff. It would cost me over $5000 to upgrade all my legacy CAD and 3d software that I used before retiring. Don't need it too often anymore, but it still works fine when I do. :)
 
Yosemite expanded iOS connectivity/handoff, but also introduced general bloat over Mavericks and had a controversial UI redesign. Skip.

El Capitian was a general improvement over Yosemite with optimization shifts towards SSDs and Fusion drives. A win for your Air, a loss for 5400rpm HDDs users.

Sierra was a general improvement over El Cap for 2010 and newer systems, and is one of my personal favorite best-of-era MacOS versions.

High Sierra was mostly incremental beta development for key Mojave features. Also the security enhancements to protect users from themselves occasionally caused me trouble when running applications from an external drive.

My first impression of Mojave is that all the features introduced in High Sierra now feel more polished, but I'm still annoyed by the occasional application that only runs on the internal boot drive. Also everything feels child-proofed, and I'm constantly pressing the option key to check for hidden advanced options in menus.
 
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Tozovac said:
like adobe CS6 suite
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I successfully installed cs6 master suite onto my 2009 Mac Pro running Mojave. The install DVD was a little wonky, and didn't work on the original SuperDrive - could be the drive of the media). But it did install from an external USB drive. Works as expected, and nice to use dark mode apps in a dark mode environment.
 
Sierra hands down -- faster than El Cap/Yosemite.
HS had performance issues on older machines, and Mojave wrecked text rendering (fixed now?)
 
asv56kx3088 said:
Sierra hands down -- faster than El Cap/Yosemite.
HS had performance issues on older machines, and Mojave wrecked text rendering (fixed now?)
Click to expand...
Thanks. Moved to Sierra 2 days ago. So far so OK...EXCEPT all of my iMessage conversations were shortened to just hte latest/last message. I see no option for selecting, say, duration of time for keeping messages or deleting them within the Preferences. Any advice as to how this happened and how to bring them back? Not finding any guidance online yet.

Also I really dislike how when you swipe up and see all the available workspaces up top (Mission Control? Spaces?), now you don't instantly see a visual representation of all your desktop spaces but rather, you see Desktop 1, Desktop 2, etc. and you have to take the additional action to move your mouse up to the top just to see a visual representation of the spaces. I constantly use multiple desktops and find this added 2nd action for what used to take one action rather aggravating, with (following typical Apple fashion when making such arbitrary changes) seemingly no option to pick the preference of having instant-show of the desktops after one swipe up like before.

Does anyone have any advice how to rescue/reshow the missing imessages, and any advice how to show a visual representation of every desktop like before?
 
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AustinIllini said:
Go to Mojave. It's never worth farting around with an old OS unless you're certain there is a specific app which Mojave does not support.
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Too many. Logic Express 9, Photoshop CS3 Suite, etc. Sierra was an intentional choice. Too much $ for newer software and I don’t like the current MBA/MBP offerings.
 
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Sierra is doing something really strange with iMessages. The iMessages program has not worked correctly for me since day one of Sierra. Sometimes only a few conversations show. On days that all conversations show, only a day’s worth of messages appears. Has anybody else seen something wonky like this?
 
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