Upgrade from Sierra to High Sierra now?

[Nubben]

Hi all,

Would there be any benefit of upgrading to High Sierra now rather than wait until Mojave comes out?

I have always been a bit concerned with this new file system of Apple's and how it would affect my iMac and also my external Thunderbolt drives.

Many thanks

Nubben

 

[casperes1996]

What exactly is your drive setup?

High Sierra has been perfect for me after the beta period.
And that's both on APFS and HFS+

 

[Nubben]

Hi casperes1996!

Have an iMac with Sierra and three Western Digital enclosures with two drives in each connected to the iMac with thunderbolt. No raid or anything - justs separate drives.

Will upgrading to High Sierra conver the file system on the external drives with potential data loss as a consequence?

Many thanks!

 

[casperes1996]

Hi casperes1996!

Have an iMac with Sierra and three Western Digital enclosures with two drives in each connected to the iMac with thunderbolt. No raid or anything - justs separate drives.

Will upgrading to High Sierra conver the file system on the external drives with potential data loss as a consequence?

Many thanks!

Well, first off; High Sierra only converts SSDs. It also only converts internal disks automatically. (Or rather, OS install volumes). To convert your external setup you'll have to do it manually with disk utility or Terminal. (AFAIK anyway).

Second; APFS works well for me and the conversion on my laptop went fine. My iMac did not get converted yet though, since it runs a Fusion Drive. It will in Mojave though, and I have no issue with that.

 

[Nubben]

Ok, thanks casperes1996!

 

[casperes1996]

Ok, thanks casperes1996!

You're welcome

 

[baas]

I'm wondering the same. I've got a 2011 13" Macbook Pro with 8gb ram and an ssd. I'm not having any issues now and was planning on skipping High Sierra altogether, but unfortunately my MBP doesn't support Mojave. So sooner or later I'll have to upgrade to High Sierra to receive security updates. How do you find HS running on older machines with the latest release? Would I see any performance benefit from going to APFS?

 

[MSastre]

I'm wondering the same. I've got a 2011 13" Macbook Pro with 8gb ram and an ssd. I'm not having any issues now and was planning on skipping High Sierra altogether, but unfortunately my MBP doesn't support Mojave. So sooner or later I'll have to upgrade to High Sierra to receive security updates. How do you find HS running on older machines with the latest release? Would I see any performance benefit from going to APFS?

I'm on a 2013 rMBP and it runs great, no problems, but I did a clean instal on it when I upgraded. Also have HS on a 2010 Mac Pro 5,1, again clean installed drive.

 

[baas]

Yes clean install is a good idea. Did you use Time Machine to copy back your data or did you do it manually? I might wait for 10.13.6 either way..

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

How is the current bug situation on High Sierra? When you randomly read about it in threads on this forum, people don't seem to like it very much.

 

[294307]

How is the current bug situation on High Sierra? When you randomly read about it in threads on this forum, people don't seem to like it very much.

You'll see more complaints than compliments. People get on with their lives when things work well – they don't make threads about it. High Sierra has been very stable for me as with millions of others.

If you monitor the frequency of security updates for older macOS releases (https://support.apple.com/HT201222), you should be able to get an indication whether or not Apple have discontinued security updates for a given macOS release. In general – and this is not guaranteed – Apple tend to support macOS releases for about three years at a time. OS X El Capitan, released in September 2015, last released a security update at the same time as macOS Sierra and macOS High Sierra on 1st June 2018. This is getting close to the presumed three year support period for OS X El Capitan, so it might be the last security update we see.

macOS Sierra was released in September 2016, so it's possible it might continue to receive security updates into next year. This isn't guaranteed, because Apple does not announce when it has discontinued support for older releases, so you'll need to make a judgement call for yourself based on which operating system versions the most recent security updates are available for.

 

[casperes1996]

I'm wondering the same. I've got a 2011 13" Macbook Pro with 8gb ram and an ssd. I'm not having any issues now and was planning on skipping High Sierra altogether, but unfortunately my MBP doesn't support Mojave. So sooner or later I'll have to upgrade to High Sierra to receive security updates. How do you find HS running on older machines with the latest release? Would I see any performance benefit from going to APFS?

To be honest, I don't think performance is really that different to Sierra. APFS will speed up very very specific operations on SSDs, but generally won't change performance. It's only very specific operations like file cloning that's faster. Though they are substantially faster do to copy-on-write.

How is the current bug situation on High Sierra? When you randomly read about it in threads on this forum, people don't seem to like it very much.

Probably more stable than Sierra - Or at least the same. For the past very long while, the only noticeable error I've had is a glitch with OpenGL in Thief that Feral claim is on the OS side, but it only occurs in Thief, so it's a very specific situation that causes it. Aside from that, at this point, I've not experienced a single bug that wasn't also there in older OSes.

 

[Eithanius]

Aside from that, at this point, I've not experienced a single bug that wasn't also there in older OSes.

Dashboard has multiple cursors on each widgets when set as Overlay. Sometimes when I wanna use Calculator, I ended up doing it on Stickies instead because all widgets are active all the time.

Finder under List view column width reverts itself on new window when opened from Desktop.

These two were present on HS but absent on Sierra.

I guess you use macOS to only play games...?

 

[Fishrrman]

"Would there be any benefit of upgrading to High Sierra now rather than wait until Mojave comes out?
I have always been a bit concerned with this new file system of Apple's and how it would affect my iMac and also my external Thunderbolt drives."

My opinion only.

Stay"where you are if "where you are" is working good for you now.

You might want to go to High Sierra in the future (after it's "fully matured" with the last incremental updates), but do you "really have the need" for it now?

Also -- you can stick with HFS+ in High Sierra if you want.
You are not "compelled" to update to APFS.
Doing so seems to cause problems for some folks.

One of the most important "facts of Mac life" I've learned in 31 years of being a Mac user:
One doesn't need to "upgrade" just because Apple wants you to.
I use older software that still works for me.
I don't worry about "security".
Really, I don't.
I've had a total of ONE "adware infection" in 31 years, and it was when I WAS USING "up to date" software, anyway!

 

[casperes1996]

Dashboard has multiple cursors on each widgets when set as Overlay. Sometimes when I wanna use Calculator, I ended up doing it on Stickies instead because all widgets are active all the time.

I use Dashboard as a space, so haven't seen that one.

Finder under List view column width reverts itself on new window when opened from Desktop.

I don't think I've closed a Finder window the past year - It's always open in its own space, so haven't seen that either

These two were present on HS but absent on Sierra.

I guess you use macOS to only play games...?

Well, I consider those pretty minor, and for the reasons above, I haven't seen them. I do play games on my Mac, but it's definitely not the reason I use macOS. In fact, I have a Windows partition for games, although I prefer to play on macOS when i can.

I use macOS for.... Well, everything. - GarageBand and iMovie were what first drew me to macOS, many years ago, and now I'm among the biggest proponents of Final Cut. I use Xcode to learn app development, the Terminal is where I spend most of my days (and I ain't moving in with my aunt and uncle in Bell Air), I use Affinity Photo for photo editing, Motion for Motion Graphics, iWork for my studies, etc.
And I've got Macs running OS 9, Tiger, Leopard and soon, Panther - For collection purposes #GeekCred

 

[MSastre]

Yes clean install is a good idea. Did you use Time Machine to copy back your data or did you do it manually? I might wait for 10.13.6 either way..

I don't used Time Machine, I migrated files and settings from a fresh clone, then downloaded the applications from the App store or migrated from the clone manually if needed. I waited until 10.13.4 to upgrade and now run 10.13.5 with no problems.

 

[Lioness~]

Maybe it's time to try on High Sierra now. Been hesitating because of my fusion drive, and heard bad stories.
Maybe it's safer now, a bit into the upgrades.
And I so want the newer emojis, NOT really
But maybe a clean install and migrate stuff after may be a safer way.
Will see in the coming weeks....gotta have time to sit with it anyway.

Will probably stay at HS for awhile. Some 32-bits apps in my use are not up to date.
Once they either are, or I've found alternatives, Mojave it is.
My iMac (2013) will go with it, thankfully.

 

[casperes1996]

Maybe it's time to try on High Sierra now. Been hesitating because of my fusion drive, and heard bad stories.
Maybe it's safer now, a bit into the upgrades.
And I so want the newer emojis, NOT really
But maybe a clean install and migrate stuff after may be a safer way.
Will see in the coming weeks....gotta have time to sit with it anyway.

Will probably stay at HS for awhile. Some 32-bits apps in my use are not up to date.
Once they either are, or I've found alternatives, Mojave it is.
My iMac (2013) will go with it, thankfully.

A) What should the issue be with Fusion Drive? Fusion Drives aren't converted to APFS. If it were the beta version of HS, I could see the issue, since that did convert and it ruined performance.
My iMac has a Fusion and it works just as well as my MacBook Pro with HS.

Mojave does not kill 32-bit support. It just warns the same way HS does. 10.15 will kill 32-bit

 

[Lioness~]

A) What should the issue be with Fusion Drive? Fusion Drives aren't converted to APFS. If it were the beta version of HS, I could see the issue, since that did convert and it ruined performance.
My iMac has a Fusion and it works just as well as my MacBook Pro with HS.

Mojave does not kill 32-bit support. It just warns the same way HS does. 10.15 will kill 32-bit

OK, great!
I just heard stories, and wasn't too eager to upgrade as Sierra works just fine.
But HS is probably safer at 13.5.04 that I just dowloaded comparing to the earlier versions.

Ah, So Mojave will support 32-bits. It makes me happy. Looking forward to the dark-mode
Already have some of the wallpapers at some desktops. Very nice.
At 10.15 maybe it's time to upgrade the iMac too. To hopefully something that even looks newer, if Apple makes it.

 

[casperes1996]

I just heard stories, and wasn't too eager to upgrade as Sierra works just fine.
But HS is probably safer at 13.5.04 that I just dowloaded comparing to the earlier versions.

Well, for me at least all the glitches are at the very least minor, but I also think relatively uncommon

Ah, So Mojave will support 32-bits. It makes me happy. Looking forward to the dark-mode
Already have some of the wallpapers at some desktops. Very nice.
At 10.15 maybe it's time to upgrade the iMac too. To hopefully something that even looks newer, if Apple makes it.

Yep, Mojave still runs 32-bit software just fine. It's only after Mojave it'll start getting killed. And so far, Mojave is incredibly bug-free and stable (for a beta). I'm not saying I haven't found issues, because I have indeed, but relative to my prior experiences with macOS (and iOS for that matter) betas, it's brilliantly stable at beta 1.

I don't think you should bet on a new iMac design before 2020. That's my guess at least

 

[Lioness~]

I don't think you should bet on a new iMac design before 2020. That's my guess at least

I don't expect it to come any new iMacs earlier either. They are busy with Oprah and new emojis
But Mojave doesn't come sharp version until fall 2018, right?
So it will probably be good until next 'scenery' version will come...or at least close.
My iMac 2013 still works absolutely fine for my needs.

 

[casperes1996]

I don't expect it to come any new iMacs earlier either. They are busy with Oprah and new emojis
But Mojave doesn't come sharp version until fall 2018, right?
So it will probably be good until next 'scenery' version will come...or at least close.
My iMac 2013 still works absolutely fine for my needs.

Well, I do think there' be a spec bump late 2018 or early 2019, but not a new design.

Mojave's final release is scheduled for the Fall, yes

 

[TokMok3]

Hi all,

Would there be any benefit of upgrading to High Sierra now rather than wait until Mojave comes out?

I have always been a bit concerned with this new file system of Apple's and how it would affect my iMac and also my external Thunderbolt drives.

Many thanks

Nubben

I always do clean installs.

Don't upgrade, stay on Sierra. If your system is running with out any problems, just stay on Sierra. I use virtual machines on my MacBook Pro (mid)2015 16GB, after the upgrade to High Sierra the VM don't run as fast as when they were running on Sierra. I installed High Sierra on a MacBook Air (mid) 2013 8GB and the SSD write speed were 82, I reinstalled Sierra on that MacBook Air and the write speed increased to 310. So, something is really wrong with Sierra.

Xcode is the only thing that keeps my MacBook Pro 2015 in High Sierra. As I said, the VM are slower on High Sierra than Sierra.

 

[SoCalReviews]

Hi all,

Would there be any benefit of upgrading to High Sierra now rather than wait until Mojave comes out?

I have always been a bit concerned with this new file system of Apple's and how it would affect my iMac and also my external Thunderbolt drives.

Many thanks

Nubben

Apple will be cutting back or removing 32bit application support starting with releases of 10.14.x. If you have any critical applications you run that are not updated to 64bit versions then you might want to be running HS 10.13.x so that you have a longer time for MacOS to be supported before having to update or purchase your applications for 64bit. Otherwise you could roll the dice and run out the support clock with 10.12.x before your next MacOS upgrade after 10.14 released.

 

[Lioness~]

Apple will be cutting back or removing 32bit application support starting with releases of 10.14.x. If you have any critical applications you run that are not updated to 64bit versions then you might want to be running HS 10.13.x so that you have a longer time for MacOS to be supported before having to update or purchase your applications for 64bit. Otherwise you could roll the dice and run out the support clock with 10.12.x before your next MacOS upgrade after 10.14 released.

Yep, Mojave still runs 32-bit software just fine. It's only after Mojave it'll start getting killed. And so far, Mojave is incredibly bug-free and stable (for a beta). I'm not saying I haven't found issues, because I have indeed, but relative to my prior experiences with macOS (and iOS for that matter) betas, it's brilliantly stable at beta 1.

I don't think you should bet on a new iMac design before 2020. That's my guess at least

Uhmmm, think I believe casperes who seem to be involved in the beta testning of Mojave over some guy who posts very random here concerning 32-bits software on Mojave.
But I agree, it'a better to be on HS then Sierra if you would stay there and not upgrade to Mojave and the new APFS filesystem.