Need upgrading from Mavericks, but...

[macstatic]

I've been running 10.9.5 Mavericks for years and it's worked fine for me, and I've seen no need to go through the hassle of constantly upgrading OSX (I was actually very happy with 10.6 Snow Leopard but eventually had to give in because of software demanding a newer OS).
However, having just received a new iPad with IOS 13.2.3 I was shocked to see that I couldn't sync it with iTunes (12.6.2.20) via USB as I've always done with my older iPad 😮
A scenario I hadn't considered, or I might not have bought that iPad.
Since I use my iPad all the time and constantly sync it with the Mac I might be forced into upgrading to a newer OSX/MacOS, but I know this isn't without its issues....

I have two Macs, both running 10.9.5 Mavericks: Mac Pro (mid-2010) and a Macbook Pro (mid-2012). According to OWC's MacOS compatibility guide the latest I can use with the Mac Pro to 10.14 (Mojave) on the Mac Pro (but "No handoff support (Bluetooth 4.0)" whatever that means -that I will lose my existing Bluetooth, or just that a newer Bluetooth version isn't available?
The MacBook Pro however will run everything including OSX 10.15 (Catalina).

Now comes the challenge: finding an OS which allows me to still run my old software and hardware while still allowing iTunes to work with the IOS 13-based iPad. I'm more or less ruling out OSX 10.15 (Catalina) because I want to retain compatibility between both Macs and the loss of 32-bit support probably means that a whole lot of apps can no longer be used (or have to be expensively upgraded). The Digiloyd Mac peformance guide also warns against upgrading to Catalina, and in the past that site has proven to be a goldmine of useful info.

Regarding old software I'm mostly concerned about Adobe CS4, mostly Photoshop CS4. I also use Adobe Lightroom 6. As far as I know I can definitely rule them out for 10.15 Catalina because of the loss of 32-bit support. That leaves OSX (or is it MacOS again now?) 10.10 (Yosemite) up to 10.14 (Mojave).
Coming from 10.9 Mavericks, what would you recommend I go for, and why? What are the main differences between these versions? Will I lose the "classic OSX" appearance with all of them (the 3D-like expand/minimize/close window buttons etc.) in favour of a more "flat" look? And is each successive OSX version further "dumbed down" in terms of useful features and replacing them with more "consumer/entertainment" type features?

I suppose I need to spend some time testing all of this before actually replacing my OSX 10.9.5 setup: I do have a drive in my Mac Pro I can reformat and use for this. If I install the new OS on that drive, create a new user and test all my apps one by one I should be fine, allowing me to reboot back into OSX 10.9.5 again without the apps (and supporting files) being messed up, right?

 

[maverick28]

Hi,
First of all, I'd definitely would encourage you to follow my example and not install any new OS by ditching the old one for good: in fact Mac OS X gives you the option of running several OS X on several partitions across all of the mounted drives – internal and external ones. I assume you know the process of creating and formatting partitions using Disk Utility (every partition is treated as a separate drive aka 'filesystem' in macOS, anyway). I still have Lion on the internal drive, while I run Mavericks and High Sierra off the external drive. From my signature you will see that I have exactly the same MBP model as you do. I also urge you to use SSD for any bootable drive, and you should max out RAM as much as it's technically possible for your device.

I will attempt answer your question one by one, singling them out on a basis of the topic each of them belongs to.

1) Appearance: the answer is pretty straightforward. All post-Mavericks OSes sport the flat UI that you can Google by typing the code-name of any macOS from Yosemite onwards. While I find it degrading and simplistic by any standards it looks so-so on non-Retina screens: overexposed whites (backgrounds), washed out greys (ribbons and strips), oversaturated blues (buttons, folder icons, tiny progress/status bars), aliased lines, arrows, borders etc. despite anti-aliasing on. On 1440 x 900 (the standard screen of the MacBookPro 2012) it's bearable while on lower resolution displays its tonal range is bleak and it definitely shows up.

2) Performance: you'll be surprised but generally it's as good as when your MBP was new brand sealed. It doesn't mean it's without its quirks and annoyances, though, which is probably due to Metal 2 framework introduced in High Sierra and animations-wise performance seems a little bit worse than that in Mavericks and – especially – Lion which tops every other OS I've been running. Window transitions between full screen and normal screen are sometimes jerky and stuttering but there're reasons to believe this has nothing to do with hardware (similar reports from owners of 2016, 2017, 2018 machines). That applies to High Sierra, however I noticed that things in Mojave and Catalina that I have tested briefly run considerably better and smoother on 6-7 y.o. machines and here's one more thing I can't pass by mentioning: High Sierra was the 1st OS X to bring the new Apple's APFS filesystem by default, however if you installed HS on a separate partition of the drive that contained another partition formatted as HFS (doesn't matter, bootable or not) HS would install as HFS too: you shouldn't be wary of this but a small warning could be not to format the partition you're going to put High Sierra onto as APFS. Serious issues reported (reboot loops, degraded performance on some machines). I presume that if you install on a blank SSD these problems aren't likely to manifest – in this case HS formats the drive as APFS.
Preview is butchered since Mavericks and for PDF's I use FoxitReader Adobe Acrobat in Mavericks, and PDFExpert on High Sierra. I also do a lot of AppleScript scripting and performance-wise it's the same in all of the 3 OSes except that some commands in Mavericks and High Sierra are broken while functioning as expected in Lion. Unix utilities are snappier in Mavericks and High Sierra (faster) than in Lion,and between Mavericks and HS you won't notice any difference.
FCPX's behaviour in Lion and Mavericks is more fluid than the latest releases – 10.4.6 is the last one for HS, 10.4.7 requires Mojave and later but is more versatile and mature compared to 10.0 and 10.1.

3) Features: that depends on your usage, so I'll speak from my perspective. It seems Apples been committed to hiding certain UI elements behind textual representation of what used to be visual objects, these are now "commands" invoked from menu items. This is the main reason of why users get often confused over "the lack of this and that feature". However, Apple remove some things actually since they deem it unworthy for "the majority of users": Network diagnostics in "Network Preferences" and "First Aid" in Keychain Access are no more. Quicktime since Mavericks no longer lets you choose a location to save movies. iMovie in its current shape is improvement over the early iterations of iMovie 10 but I still find iMovie 9 better in every respect. iWork is also significant improvement in that they reinstated some features the removal of which caused the outcry in 2013 with the release of the new iWork, though I still use iWork' 09 because 32-bit apps are supported all the way up to Mojave. With iCloud Drive you can even continue to work in iWork' 09 if you get used to it so much and save to it, so your docs are available on every devices you own: they are converted to newer versions when you open them on your iOS device leaving the old copy intact.

If you used Jabber accounts then the first signs of deterioration is in how you add you Hangout contacts to Messages: in HS there's a clunky workaround , however beginning with Mojave Apple removed the option to chat with your Gtalk/Hangouts/Jabber contacts cutting down to Apple-only services which is very limiting and dumb (compare that to the old iChat were you could connect to anything and everything: now wallengardens everywhere – is this "progress"?).

Also, if you're keen on using social integration then I have to upset you because as of this day sharing to Facebook finally gone away in every macOS: sharing to FB died a little more than a year ago – just with the release of Mojave – and push notifications ceased the last month. I was able to get push notifications for Messenger, comments, events and do click-to-action with notifications banners as late as month ago: no more. Just day before yesterday I signed out of FB in Internet Accounts and wasn't able to get back ("Unable to verify your account and password"). LinkedIn pulled the plug too. Twitter is OK, it's just you can only send but not receive notifications.

If you're a user of Dashboard (like me) then say goodbye to it in Catalina, however such widgets as Weather, Flight Tracker, a couple of others requiring the external connection don't work anymore (I use plenty of others that do, including Prowler – push any text (incl. URLs) to iPhone with Prowl installed).

UPDATE. You now can use Weather widget in all its entirety because one MR forums user made it work again in all macOSes that have Dashboard (from as old as Tiger). Go to https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/i-fixed-apples-broken-weather-dashboard-widget.2225715/ for more.

Mojave is the last OS to support Aperture and iPhoto and I can tell that concerning slideshows these two apps as well as iWork' 09 Keynote rendered useless - they won't play your fancy Keynote '09 slideshows in Keynote09 from as early as High Sierra, you have to use the newer Keynote iterations only and some other image manipulation tool instead of Aperture, and Photos or another 3rd part app instead of iPhoto. I don't use Photos as it looks ugly to me. In High Sierra Aperture and iPhoto is OK, everything there works as expected.

As for syncing between devices, I know that you're able to sync iTunes 12.6 and 12.8 with iOS 12, however iOS 13 requires 12.8 or later (if you chose to run High Sierra or Mojave), and Apple expects you to use Finder instead of iTunes in Catalina for iOS 13. iTunes 12.6 is compatible with Mavericks, and to run 12.8 you need Yosemite and later, I believe. I object to installing iTunes 12 in Mavericks, so the only iTunes 12 I have is the one that came with High Sierra. In iTunes 12.7 and later iTunes Store is nixed which is a great inconvenience for me, but I know there're workarounds to get 12.6 or install a special version version of iTunes with App Store that Apple provided for businesses that have to manage deployment of iOS apps en-masse.


My advise would to be to install either High Sierra or Mojave simply because they're newer and better than Yosemite and allow running more applications of those releases that are newer and keep Mavericks: you can still run lots of useful apps in it and some of those are still made compatible by the developers. In terms of combining new and old High Sierra is a cross-point: beginning with Mojave you're going to miss what you had prior to it if you had relied on those features.

 

[retta283]

Just make a partition using Disk Utility and install Mojave on it. Most of your apps should work fine, and if they don't just boot into Mavericks for them. Mojave is fairly stable at this point, probably more so than Mavericks with its RAM and storage caching issues I've run into.

I'd assume that your MBP is a non-Retina. If that is the case, then max out the RAM and SSD, the speed will be better than anything you had on Mavericks with an HDD.

That Handoff bluetooth message just means that the Bluetooth spec in your MP is too old to support Handoff with iOS devices, it doesn't affect anything you are doing now.

 

[macstatic]

First of all, I'd definitely would encourage you to follow my example and not install any new OS by ditching the old one for good: in fact Mac OS X gives you the option of running several OS X on several partitions across all of the mounted drives – internal and external ones.

Wow! Thanks for taking the time to explaining all this. Much appreciated

Yes, I agree not to go the quick route and overwrite my existing setup and hope things just work out (which they seldom do IMHO).
I have multiple physical drives in my Mac Pro (this is one of the things I love about it compared to other Macs), and my existing OSX 10.9.5 and apps are all installed on a 128 GB SSD. Likewise I have an identical SSD which I've used for Lightroom catalogs and its cache. I figure this drive would be a good candidate for installing and testing out the new OS, so I've spent a while today moving all my Lightroom catalogs over to my user's drive, and remapping the file paths so it all works there, along with reconfiguring my backup system for the new paths. Phew!

I've also figured out where and how to download the various older OSX versions from Apple's site and the App store, ending up with OSX 10.11 up to 10.14, and also downloaded Diskmaker X version 6 which allows creating an installer-USB stick. I should be good to go, I think.

I agree about using SSDs and maxing out the RAM. I did all that a few years back and my quad-core 2.8 GHz now has 24 GB of RAM. I haven't bothered upgrading the processor yet as some people do, but might look into that later some time.

1) Appearance: the answer is pretty straightforward. All post-Mavericks OSes sport the flat UI that you can Google by typing the code-name of any macOS from Yosemite onwards.

Not exactly my cup of tea, but I can live with that. For Mavericks I missed the old style colour labels for marking files (they're just a coloured dot in Mavericks and I assume onwards) but regained that feature with XtraFinder. I haven't looked into all of its features since this was really the visual feature I missed, but perhaps it (or some other utility) will allow for the old style user interface look? If not, then that's probably just "progress" I'll have to live with I guess.

2) Performance: you'll be surprised but generally it's as good as when your MBP was new brand sealed. It doesn't mean it's without its quirks and annoyances, though, which is probably due to Metal 2 framework introduced in High Sierra

That sounds good!
Apparently a Metal capable GPU is needed for 10.14 Mojave and as far as I know mine isn't (ATI Radeon 4870). Does that rule out Mojave for my Mac Pro 5,1 or does it just mean that I can't use the GPU in the instances I could before (Photoshop, Lightroom etc. as far as I know)?

a small warning could be not to format the partition you're going to put High Sierra onto as HFS. Serious issues reported (reboot loops, degraded performance on some machines). I presume that if you install on a blank SSD these problems aren't likely to manifest – in this case HS formats the drive as APFS.

I'll be trying out the new OS by installing it from scratch using a USB-stick installaton (created with Diskmaker X) and I assume the installer will take care of formatting the drive correctly.
You're referring to the drive where the OS is to be, right? Or are you saying that all my file-storage drives (I have a separate drive for users), my backup drives etc. all have to be reformatted to be used with the new OS?

Preview is butchered since Mavericks and for PDF's I use FoxitReader, and PDFExpert on High Sierra.

That's a downer indeed as I use Preview all the time. I usually Quick-Look a file, then "Open with..." whatever app it says on the top (often "Preview" as I use PDF a lot) in order to view it full size, markup etc. I assume they've made a change and not completely removed a very useful functionality, but you never know with Apple these days...

3) Features: that depends on your usage, so I'll speak from my perspective. It seems Apples been committed to hiding certain UI elements behind textual representation of what used to be visual objects, these are now "commands" invoked from menu items.

I'm not sure what you mean. Are you saying that most of the "pro" OSX features are still there, but on the surface it's all been "dumbed down" (for the consumer/entertainment market) while you can access them hidden, but shown if you say hold down the ALT key while accessing the menus (for instance holding down ALT while accessing the "File" menu of most apps will give you "Save as" just like before)?

Quicktime since Mavericks no longer lets you to choose a location to save movies. iMovie in its current shape is improvement over the early iterations of iMovie 10 but I still find iMovie 9 better in every respect.

I still have iMovie 6 (iMovie HD) which I re-installed using some geeky method IIRC. I also have iMovie 10 which I think was standard with Mavericks but find version 6 more intuitive. Perhaps it's the same with version 9 which I'm not familiar with. Honestly I haven't done much video editing but something I want to get into some day, both editing small video clips and a bunch of Mini DV vacation tapes that I want to edit. It seems quite overwhelming, but Final Cut Pro might still be the way to go.

iWork is also significant improvement in that they reinstated some features the removal of which caused the outcry in 2013 with the release of the new iWork, though I still use iWork' 09 because 32-bit apps are supported all the way up to Mojave.

Ah! That's good to hear because I really want to continue using my old apps such as Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom (perpetual version 6). Do you know if either work with Mojave? Adobe has a guide on how to install CS4 in 10.12 Sierra by using the UNIX terminal to partly bypass the installer but I don't know if this also applies to 10.14 Mojave.

Also, if you're keen on using social integration then I have to upset you because as of this day sharing to Facebook finally gone away in every macOS

No worries as I'm not into social media. Too little time available as it is

If you're a user of Dashboard (like me) then say goodbye to it in Catalina, however such widgets as Weather, Flight Tracker, a couple of others requiring the external connection don't work anymore (I use plenty of others that do, including Prowler – push any text (incl. URLs) to iPhone with Prowl installed).

Do widgets work in 10.14 Mojave? I've been using the "IP widget" a lot because of some networking issues, and it's sometimes handy for other things too. I'd be sorry to see it go.

Mojave is the last OS to support Aperture and iPhoto and I can tell that concerning slideshows these two apps as well as iWork' 09 Keynote rendered useless - they refused to play your fancy Keynote09 slideshows in Keynote09 as early as in High Sierra, you have to use the newer Keynote only and some other image manipulation tool instead of Aperture, and Photos or another 3rd part app instead of iPhoto. I don't use Photo as it looks ugly to me. In High Sierra Aperture and iPhoto is OK, everything there works as expected.

I haven't used Keynote so that's no problem, but I do have several iPhoto libraries. Eventually I hope to be able to transfer most of them over to Lightroom but there are still some books etc. I've made in iPhoto that I would like to keep.

As for syncing between devices, I know that you're able to sync iTunes 12.6 and 12.8 with iOS 12, however iOS 13 requires 12.8 or later (if you chose to run High Sierra or Mojave), but Apple expects you to use Finder instead of iTunes in Catalina for iOS 13. iTunes 12.6 is compatible with Mavericks, and to run 12.8 you need Yosemite and later, I believe.

I can't remember which 12.x IOS version came with the new iPad but it refused to work with my iTunes 12.6.2.20, so I updated the iPad which now has IOS 13.2.3.
Yes, I see from Apple's website that iTunes 12.8 needs 10.10.5 or later, so you're right about needing Yosemite at the minimum.
In other words, for my upgrading needs (the ability to sync the IOS 13 iPad to my Macs) I believe I can choose any OS from 10.10 Yosemite to 10.14 Mojave (or up to 10.13 High Sierra if the "Metal" GPU demands that I can't provide need to be met with Mojave), or up to 10.15 Catalina for the Macbook Pro, right? Choices, choices.

I refuse to run iTunes 12 on Mavericks, I have it only in High Sierra. In iTunes 12.7 and later you won't have iTunes Store which is a great inconvenience for me, but I now there're workarounds to get 12.6 or install a special version version of iTunes with App Store that Apple provided for businesses that have to manage deployment of iOS apps en-masse.

Huh? Does this mean no app store either? I find it very convenient to have all sorts of media in one place (video, TV shows, movies, music, podcasts) as it allows me to build playlists around a specific interest regardless of the media type. The only thing missing for me in iTunes is PDF support, but I can survive without it. I also like that I can download new IOS apps which I organize in iTunes before syncing.
I see that in recent years, in IOS at least and probably on the Mac as well, decided to split up media types into different apps. I'm not for that at all.

Please tell me more about that special version of iTunes -do you have any links for the workarounds/download of the special version?

My advise would to be to install either High Sierra or Mojave simply because they're newer and better than Yosemite and allow running more applications of more releases that are newer and keep Mavericks.

So you're ruling out 10.11 El Capitan and 10.12 Sierra as well?
What's important for me is to allow syncing my IOS 13 iPad Mini (5th gen.) with the Mac (possibly both, but at least with the Mac Pro) while still allowing me to use my older apps (Adobe CS4, Lightroom among others) and hopefully not losing too much of the functionality and features I'm used to and find useful in 10.9.5 Mavericks.

So concluding I see that for the iPad sync issue I can go with OSX 10.10 Yosemite and onwards (up to 10.13 High Sierra or 10.14 Mojave), but I don't know about compatibility with those Adobe apps and other older software...
In this summary OSX 10.12 Sierra is recommended for upgrading. It also says that 10.10 Yosemite is buggy and even more so with 10.13 High Sierra. But this isn't your experience as you suggest 10.13 High Sierra or 10.14 Mojave? There's no mention of 10.14 in the article, but looking up Mac OS at Wikipedia I see it wasn't even around when the posting was written.
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Just make a partition using Disk Utility and install Mojave on it. Most of your apps should work fine, and if they don't just boot into Mavericks for them. Mojave is fairly stable at this point, probably more so than Mavericks with its RAM and storage caching issues I've run into.

As long as I create a new user and using only it when testing the new OS I won't risk getting anything messed up, will I?

I'd assume that your MBP is a non-Retina. If that is the case, then max out the RAM and SSD, the speed will be better than anything you had on Mavericks with an HDD.

Yes, it's the non-Retina version. I'm very happy with it as I believe it's one of the last laptops that allows you to configure and upgrade stuff as well as having the best of both worlds when it comes to interface options (USB 3 along with Firewire etc.) and a DVD-drive. And with it's 13" screen its great to take along as well.
Yup -I upgraded that Mac as well and it now has 16 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD. Very nice!

That Handoff bluetooth message just means that the Bluetooth spec in your MP is too old to support Handoff with iOS devices, it doesn't affect anything you are doing now.

I see. No problem.

 

[maverick28]

That sounds good!
Apparently a Metal capable GPU is needed for 10.14 Mojave and as far as I know mine isn't (ATI Radeon 4870). Does that rule out Mojave for my Mac Pro 5,1 or does it just mean that I can't use the GPU in the instances I could before (Photoshop, Lightroom etc. as far as I know)?

I can't tell without the risk of misleading you. I think you should do your own research on what types of graphic cards work with the OS you wish to go with. I never had any Mac workstation.

I'll be trying out the new OS by installing it from scratch using a USB-stick installaton (created with Diskmaker X) and I assume the installer will take care of formatting the drive correctly.
You're referring to the drive where the OS is to be, right? Or are you saying that all my file-storage drives (I have a separate drive for users), my backup drives etc. all have to be reformatted to be used with the new OS?

Actually, I mistyped that place but updated my reply by correcting it to "APFS". So the sentence should've been "not to format the partition you're going to put High Sierra onto as APFS" (if there's a HFS partition on the same SSD). I also faced a weird issue while testing Mojave when Migration Assistant would fail to transfer all my data from HFS-formatted High Sierra to APFS-formatted Mojave without notice: you look into your /Applications folder in Mojave and you're startled to find that none of your apps are there.

In other words, for my upgrading needs (the ability to sync the IOS 13 iPad to my Macs) I believe I can choose any OS from 10.10 Yosemite to 10.14 Mojave (or up to 10.13 High Sierra if the "Metal" GPU demands that I can't provide need to be met with Mojave), or up to 10.15 Catalina for the Macbook Pro, right? Choices, choices.

If you care not as much about having newest apps as keeping your older ones then you don't necessarily have to run High Sierra or Mojave. If your CS4 and other old software work in Sierra then stay with it.

Please tell me more about that special version of iTunes -do you have any links for the workarounds/download of the special version?

iTunes 12.6.3: https://apple.co/2s4Or24

Apple Support article about installing it (recommended to read beforehand)

https://apple.co/38eKFnp

 

[retta283]

Wow! Thanks for taking the time to explaining all this. Much appreciated

Yes, I agree not to go the quick route and overwrite my existing setup and hope things just work out (which they seldom do IMHO).
I have multiple physical drives in my Mac Pro (this is one of the things I love about it compared to other Macs), and my existing OSX 10.9.5 and apps are all installed on a 128 GB SSD. Likewise I have an identical SSD which I've used for Lightroom catalogs and its cache. I figure this drive would be a good candidate for installing and testing out the new OS, so I've spent a while today moving all my Lightroom catalogs over to my user's drive, and remapping the file paths so it all works there, along with reconfiguring my backup system for the new paths. Phew!

I've also figured out where and how to download the various older OSX versions from Apple's site and the App store, ending up with OSX 10.11 up to 10.14, and also downloaded Diskmaker X version 6 which allows creating an installer-USB stick. I should be good to go, I think.

I agree about using SSDs and maxing out the RAM. I did all that a few years back and my quad-core 2.8 GHz now has 24 GB of RAM. I haven't bothered upgrading the processor yet as some people do, but might look into that later some time.



Not exactly my cup of tea, but I can live with that. For Mavericks I missed the old style colour labels for marking files (they're just a coloured dot in Mavericks and I assume onwards) but regained that feature with XtraFinder. I haven't looked into all of its features since this was really the visual feature I missed, but perhaps it (or some other utility) will allow for the old style user interface look? If not, then that's probably just "progress" I'll have to live with I guess.




That sounds good!
Apparently a Metal capable GPU is needed for 10.14 Mojave and as far as I know mine isn't (ATI Radeon 4870). Does that rule out Mojave for my Mac Pro 5,1 or does it just mean that I can't use the GPU in the instances I could before (Photoshop, Lightroom etc. as far as I know)?




I'll be trying out the new OS by installing it from scratch using a USB-stick installaton (created with Diskmaker X) and I assume the installer will take care of formatting the drive correctly.
You're referring to the drive where the OS is to be, right? Or are you saying that all my file-storage drives (I have a separate drive for users), my backup drives etc. all have to be reformatted to be used with the new OS?





That's a downer indeed as I use Preview all the time. I usually Quick-Look a file, then "Open with..." whatever app it says on the top (often "Preview" as I use PDF a lot) in order to view it full size, markup etc. I assume they've made a change and not completely removed a very useful functionality, but you never know with Apple these days...





I'm not sure what you mean. Are you saying that most of the "pro" OSX features are still there, but on the surface it's all been "dumbed down" (for the consumer/entertainment market) while you can access them hidden, but shown if you say hold down the ALT key while accessing the menus (for instance holding down ALT while accessing the "File" menu of most apps will give you "Save as" just like before)?




I still have iMovie 6 (iMovie HD) which I re-installed using some geeky method IIRC. I also have iMovie 10 which I think was standard with Mavericks but find version 6 more intuitive. Perhaps it's the same with version 9 which I'm not familiar with. Honestly I haven't done much video editing but something I want to get into some day, both editing small video clips and a bunch of Mini DV vacation tapes that I want to edit. It seems quite overwhelming, but Final Cut Pro might still be the way to go.




Ah! That's good to hear because I really want to continue using my old apps such as Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom (perpetual version 6). Do you know if either work with Mojave? Adobe has a guide on how to install CS4 in 10.12 Sierra by using the UNIX terminal to partly bypass the installer but I don't know if this also applies to 10.14 Mojave.




No worries as I'm not into social media. Too little time available as it is




Do widgets work in 10.14 Mojave? I've been using the "IP widget" a lot because of some networking issues, and it's sometimes handy for other things too. I'd be sorry to see it go.




I haven't used Keynote so that's no problem, but I do have several iPhoto libraries. Eventually I hope to be able to transfer most of them over to Lightroom but there are still some books etc. I've made in iPhoto that I would like to keep.




I can't remember which 12.x IOS version came with the new iPad but it refused to work with my iTunes 12.6.2.20, so I updated the iPad which now has IOS 13.2.3.
Yes, I see from Apple's website that iTunes 12.8 needs 10.10.5 or later, so you're right about needing Yosemite at the minimum.
In other words, for my upgrading needs (the ability to sync the IOS 13 iPad to my Macs) I believe I can choose any OS from 10.10 Yosemite to 10.14 Mojave (or up to 10.13 High Sierra if the "Metal" GPU demands that I can't provide need to be met with Mojave), or up to 10.15 Catalina for the Macbook Pro, right? Choices, choices.




Huh? Does this mean no app store either? I find it very convenient to have all sorts of media in one place (video, TV shows, movies, music, podcasts) as it allows me to build playlists around a specific interest regardless of the media type. The only thing missing for me in iTunes is PDF support, but I can survive without it. I also like that I can download new IOS apps which I organize in iTunes before syncing.
I see that in recent years, in IOS at least and probably on the Mac as well, decided to split up media types into different apps. I'm not for that at all.

Please tell me more about that special version of iTunes -do you have any links for the workarounds/download of the special version?




So you're ruling out 10.11 El Capitan and 10.12 Sierra as well?
What's important for me is to allow syncing my IOS 13 iPad Mini (5th gen.) with the Mac (possibly both, but at least with the Mac Pro) while still allowing me to use my older apps (Adobe CS4, Lightroom among others) and hopefully not losing too much of the functionality and features I'm used to and find useful in 10.9.5 Mavericks.

So concluding I see that for the iPad sync issue I can go with OSX 10.10 Yosemite and onwards (up to 10.13 High Sierra or 10.14 Mojave), but I don't know about compatibility with those Adobe apps and other older software...
In this summary OSX 10.12 Sierra is recommended for upgrading. It also says that 10.10 Yosemite is buggy and even more so with 10.13 High Sierra. But this isn't your experience as you suggest 10.13 High Sierra or 10.14 Mojave? There's no mention of 10.14 in the article, but looking up Mac OS at Wikipedia I see it wasn't even around when the posting was written.
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As long as I create a new user and using only it when testing the new OS I won't risk getting anything messed up, will I?



Yes, it's the non-Retina version. I'm very happy with it as I believe it's one of the last laptops that allows you to configure and upgrade stuff as well as having the best of both worlds when it comes to interface options (USB 3 along with Firewire etc.) and a DVD-drive. And with it's 13" screen its great to take along as well.
Yup -I upgraded that Mac as well and it now has 16 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD. Very nice!



I see. No problem.

It's not really a new user, it's kind of like having two hard drives in one. It will show up in Finder as two disks, each with their own OS. As long as you make sure to install the OS on the empty partition, you should be fine.

I actually forgot that the mid-2012 had USB-3 support. Good machines to work on.

 

[ScreenSavers]

It seems like you should just install Mojave on your laptop. Since you’ve upgraded the machine already, it will run fine, and I’d always push for the latest possible version.

As far as the Mac Pro, if you don’t want to replace your GPU you’re stuck with High Sierra so that’s an easy choice.

In my opinion, Yosemite was total garbage, and El Capitan and Sierra are out of date at this point. I wouldn’t consider that an “upgrade.”

 

[retta283]

It seems like you should just install Mojave on your laptop. Since you’ve upgraded the machine already, it will run fine, and I’d always push for the latest possible version.

As far as the Mac Pro, if you don’t want to replace your GPU you’re stuck with High Sierra so that’s an easy choice.

In my opinion, Yosemite was total garbage, and El Capitan and Sierra are out of date at this point. I wouldn’t consider that an “upgrade.”

What made Yosemite bad in your opinion?

I think El Cap was actually a pretty good release but it's old now. Low Sierra has treated me well, I will probably upgrade to Mojave and stay there for a while.

 

[maverick28]

In my opinion, Yosemite was total garbage, and El Capitan and Sierra are out of date at this point. I wouldn’t consider that an “upgrade.”

El Cap and Sierra are an upgrade relative to Yosemite. The OP's main concern is compatibility and performance of some of their old apps they're not willing to sacrifice at this moment. Even in Mojave such applications as Aperture suffer from performance penalties and Aperture is 64-bit with 32-bit components. Naturally, there can be other instances with degrading quality using CS4-6 package programs that, as I read elsewhere, arose after upgrading to Mojave or High Sierra.

 

[panjandrum]

There is little I can add to the advice already given except to give you a slightly different option in terms of your upgrade path, IF you have enough free storage space. The advantage to this method is that you'll end up with a dual-boot system where the OLD OS resides on the last partition on the drive. This makes is easy to remove that last partition later and add that space back to the total usable space in the primary partition, if you decide that you no longer need your archived Mavericks installation. In other words, this method will allow you to very easily reclaim your space, in a single partition, if/when you no longer need that space dedicated to the Maverick's Installation. If you clean install the new OS to the second partition you can't reclaim that space nearly so easily.

I would also suggest that you buy yourself a decent SSD for your MacPro if you don't have one already, and just do the new installation on that, migrating data from the original drive. That'll make things easy and the performance increase is considerable. 2TB SSDs are now quite reasonably priced.

Also, get a Radeon 580x for your MacPro ( https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B06ZZ6FMF8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ) plus the cables you need to hook it up ( https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07J336WY4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ). Reasonable price and good performance. I did a fairly comprehensive test of cards here: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-1.2121594/page-6?post=27474899#post-27474899

1) Have current backups
2) Look at your drives and see how much space you are using
3) Partition your drives so that the second partition is only about 30gb larger than the amount of space USED currently - name them so you understand them (Mavericks HD, for example).
4) You will now have 2 partitions, the second of which is only slightly bigger than it needs to be to hold everything currently on each system.
5) Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the original partition on each machine to the new partition
6) Make sure your systems will boot properly from the new partitions
7) While booted on the new partitions, download whichever OS you wish to upgrade to (You can use DosDude1's patcher to make this quick and easy - it will download the installers for you, even though you technically don't need to use the patches. Just use the download function and put the downloaded OS Installer in your Applications folder)
8) After you know you have your OS Installers downloaded, use Disk Utility to erase the original, larger partition.
9) Clean Install the new OS to the erased partition
10) Use Migration Assistant to migrate EVERYTHING back from your Mavericks partition to the now-updated OS on the original partition.
11) Use both computers for as long as necessary to determine if you will need to keep the Mavericks partitions or if you can remove them. During this time remember to work on documents on your main partition - it may help if you "eject" the Mavericks partition each time you login. It only takes a second. What you don't want to do is belatedly find that you've been opening and saving documents to your "Mavericks" partition.
12) If/when you decide you no longer need the Mavericks partition you can use Disk Utility to delete it - Disk Utility will add that space back to the primary partition for you.

Hopefully I've though of everything there.

 

[ScreenSavers]

What made Yosemite bad in your opinion?

I think El Cap was actually a pretty good release but it's old now. Low Sierra has treated me well, I will probably upgrade to Mojave and stay there for a while.

I guess you didn’t have any Wi-Fi connectivity issues. Oh man! El Capitan was certainly good but it’s nearing the end of usability, mostly thanks to Apple with all their services updates.

 

[retta283]

I guess you didn’t have any Wi-Fi connectivity issues. Oh man! El Capitan was certainly good but it’s nearing the end of usability, mostly thanks to Apple with all their services updates.

I didn't use Yosemite much. I stayed on Mountain Lion until El Cap came out. I did hear about a lot of lag on some machines, and the new font being hard to read.

 

[macstatic]

It's not really a new user, it's kind of like having two hard drives in one. It will show up in Finder as two disks, each with their own OS. As long as you make sure to install the OS on the empty partition, you should be fine.

I actually forgot that the mid-2012 had USB-3 support. Good machines to work on.

Yes indeed!
By creating a new user I meant that for testing the new OS it would be wise not to log into the regular user area which could possible result in supporting files etc. being updated for that new OS, rendering them useless when I reboot back into Mavericks.

Well, after a lot of hassle using Diskmaker X I finally succeeded in getting 10.12 Sierra installed on one partition of a free SSD drive I had in my Mac Pro 5,1 (mid-2010).

Now I'm ready to try out 10.13 High Sierra )on a different partition on that same SSD) but I'm having trouble figuring out how to download the full installer, not just the 20 MB (or thereabouts) "stub" you get when you click on the app store download button using one of Apple's older OSX download links). Diskmaker X doesn't accept that stub and needs the entire installer (around 5 or 6 GB IIRC for Sierra).
I somehow got hold of the full 10.12 Sierra installer but can't remember how (or it was different from the 10.13 and 10.14 installers where I only have that small stub).

 

[ScreenSavers]

I know you can get the full installer by downloading Dosdude’s patcher and clicking download installer from the menu bar. Maybe not the only way but that’s always how I’ve done it. But I work on a lot of older laptops so I use his patcher to make my USB drives as well.

 

[macstatic]

I assume you mean the High Sierra patcher from this site?
I saw he's also got similar patchers for Catalina, Mojave and Sierra. I'll give it a go, then use Diskmaker X to create an installer USB-stick for that second test-partition of mine.

Finally, I'm curious about 10.14 Mojave -but it won't work at all on the Mac Pro (without a Metal-supported GPU)? The screen goes blank or something, or just limited use?

 

[ScreenSavers]

Actually his tool will make a bootable USB. Just don’t do the post install patches. That’s what I always use. That way I can use it on new and old machines.

 

[macstatic]

Cool! I was able to download the full OSX installer using its "Tools"-"Download..." menu.
But I wasn't able to install High Sierra (which I also want to try out, using a separate SSD partition) using a USB-stick. I first tried installing it it on a blank partition, then installed Sierra 10.12 first and trying to upgrade, but no go. It gets to the "firmware update needed" window of the installation where I'm told to click the "restart" button, but from then on nothing happens (and yes, I've been patient waiting).

But I also realized that I was able to download the full installer using the official method of updating OSX: let the app store install the new OSX which will first download it, then present a "start installation" window. At that stage I went to the "Applications" folder where I found the complete and full OSX installer, which I copied over to another drive for safekeeping.

Moving on I continues installing High Sierra the official way (since the USB-stick option didn't work as described above). This time I had no problem updating the firmware and continuing the rest of the installation.
So with High Sierra (10.13), at least in my case I only got to install it this way:

1) install Sierra (10.12) on the blank partition first. I used the USB-stick option and as discussed earlier changed the date (using Terminal: date 080112002019) before proceeding with the actual installation
2) once Sierra was installed (I also added all software updates) and while having booted into Sierra of course I clicked on the download link for High Sierra which opened the App store app, and from then on I just continued installing it the official way (no need to change the date this time -actually it didn't work (date: bind: permission denied).

So now I have 10.9 Mavericks, 10.12 Sierra and 10.13 High Sierra on my Mac Pro which I can reboot between and try out!

By the way, is using the Dosdude apps and Diskmaker X a potential security risk? I mean, could they inject some malware or something into OSX while creating a bootable USB-stick?
I long for the days when OSX came on an installation DVD. No hassle like this, and "it just worked" as everything on the Mac platform did (for the most part).

 

[macstatic]

If you care not as much about having newest apps as keeping your older ones then you don't necessarily have to run High Sierra or Mojave. If your CS4 and other old software work in Sierra then stay with it.

Yes, that's it!
I'm not much concerned about running the latest and greatest (whatever I upgrade to on the Mac Pro will in any case be outdated) -just that I can sync my new IOS 13 iPad and my older apps (CS4 etc.).

But having working setups of both 10.12 and 10.13 I'm curious about which one to go for. At first glance they appear quite similar, and the little testing I've done (surfing the web with Safari, playing around with settings etc.) doesn't reveal much of a difference if any. I haven't gotten round to reinstalling CS and Lightroom yet.
According to this comparison between Sierra and High Sierra the latter seems to be benefitial if only for the improved file system, but also improved speed in Safari and some other nice features. But then this test concerns a beta version of High Sierra, and isn't the loss of 32-bit support in 10.15 Catalina?

I tried gathering more infomation in the 13" MBP 2015:Mojave or Sierra? thread but everybody appears to have different experiences and opinions.
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IF you have enough free storage space. The advantage to this method is that you'll end up with a dual-boot system where the OLD OS resides on the last partition on the drive. This makes is easy to remove that last partition later and add that space back to the total usable space in the primary partition, if you decide that you no longer need your archived Mavericks installation.

That's cool! I've seen that being possible when installing/removing BootCamp.
At the moment however I installed the two new OSes on a separate SSD from my (untouched) Mavericks SSD. It so happens that I put Sierra on the first partition (of three), so if I go for that I can follow your instructions to reclaim the space from the other two.

Also, get a Radeon 580x for your MacPro ( https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B06ZZ6FMF8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ) plus the cables you need to hook it up ( https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07J336WY4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ). Reasonable price and good performance. I did a fairly comprehensive test of cards here: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-1.2121594/page-6?post=27474899#post-27474899

Honestly I hadn't thought of updating at all until I saw I was forced to (because of the incompatible IOS 13 iPad), but while at it I might as well see if a bigger update is worthwhile.
It all depends if I can continue to use my old apps (mostly CS4 and Lightroom), printer (and other hardware) drivers and so on.

A silly "newbie" question: if I do replace my existing ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphic card that came with my 2010 Mac Pro with that card, what difference in practical terms can I expect? Is it a matter of faster screen redraws with graphic software (image editing, video etc.) or an overall different Mac experience?
And is it possible to install Mojave without a Metal capable card, or will the screen just go black or something?

 

[macstatic]

My advise would to be to install either High Sierra or Mojave simply because they're newer and better than Yosemite and allow running more applications of more releases that are newer and keep Mavericks.

I've been using 10.11 El Capitan for a while now, ever since upgrading from 10.9.5 Mavericks and it's all worked fine. No issues I can think of although I'm no big fan of the new user interface.
Now I'm looking into getting a USB 3 PCIe card for my Mac Pro (mid-2010) but hear that support for it is broken in 10.11, and I'm considering upgrading further, now up to 10.12 Sierra. So I've upgraded my previous boot drive to 10.12 (which I've kept at 10.9.5. up to now as a backup in case 10.11 flopped) and my legacy apps (Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom 6) still appear to work as they should.

Your previous comments about the various strengths and weaknesses of the different OSX/MacOS versions were so useful and well explained that I'm wondering what you have to say about 10.12 Sierra? You talked mostly about High Sierra and Mojave, but the the latter means needing to invest in a new graphic card (what's the point besides gaining access to a newer OS?) and I'm pretty sure those legacy apps won't work there, but I have heard they will work with 10.13 (although my initial tests showed the opposite, but there may be some special tricks in order to re-install them), so for now I'm looking into 10.12, but would like to know what to expect in terms of performance, features that I gain or lose etc. compared to 10.11.