I recently made
an assertion in an article thread over on Ars Technica, which I believe to be reasonable -- but I nonetheless find myself wondering about the views of other Mac users on the matter.
As a Mac user with an aging computer, and assuming that you don't have the financial means to outright replace it quite yet: would you choose to continue to run a no-longer-supported version of macOS, or would you switch your Mac over to running a current-and-supported alternative operating system?
How old, and what do you want to do with your computer? That's an important question before one can really make a decision. A patched more recent macOS version is also an option for some.
I have a 2010 iMac, and I choose to run it on High Sierra, which is the last version it officially supports. Why? Most of our desired apps work on it, and specifically, the latest major browsers (aside from Safari) still officially support High Sierra. Others have patched Monterey to run on it, but by most accounts, it's somewhat glitchy, so until High Sierra loses more software support, I'll stick with it.
I have some even older machines that can't run any recent macOS well, and don't have modern browser support with officially supported OS X versions. So, I installed CloudReady Chrome OS (now Chrome OS Flex) and it was pretty janky. The main stuff worked, and it was fast, but there were too many niggling issues that just made it annoying to use. I then tried Ubuntu Linux, and it was annoying to use too for various reasons. Plus it got really hot. Now they just sits on my shelf unused.
For my 2008 aluminum MacBook though, I patched that to run High Sierra, and my son uses it. It's slow, but it works with the latest version of the Chrome browser, so he's happy. He would be less happy with Chrome OS Flex for the reasons I've mentioned.
As for Windows, for machines that can actually support it well, it's often not half bad, mainly because the peripheral and software support for consumers is much more robust than both Chrome and Linux. However, it's got its own issues, which again often make the experience sub par.
Overall in my household:
If it can run High Sierra or later well, then I stick with OS X / macOS.
If it can't run High Sierra or later well, then I don't run it at all, but would consider Windows if I was stuck with only that machine.
BTW, I will admit one of the issues I've encountered is somewhat unique to my household. I have a quasi-mesh multi-AirPort 802.11ac setup here. It's not a true mesh WiFi network but it basically functions as one, with any Apple devices, including iOS/iPadOS, macOS, and WatchOS, etc. I can walk around the house with these devices and they won't lose the WiFi connection. It may sometimes hang onto a slower connection longer than it should, but never to the extent it becomes a significant problem. However, in contrast, this just doesn't work on Windows or Chrome or Linux, even if it's on a Mac. If I walk around the house with the device, it will usually just lose the signal, and I'll have to manually reconnect. It's really frustrating. But like I said, it's somewhat unique to my household, because of my multi-AirPort setup.
