Upgrading a 2015 MBA from High Sierra to Big Sur? Worried about performance hit.

[benyben123]

Hi all.

Still running High Sierra as a student. Does the job. Getting great battery life actually.

Thinking about Big Sur but not sure if there's a reason to upgrade. Mostly care about performance. Should I assume Big Sur is a heavier OS and so will hurt the speediness of the Mac?

Thx for the advice!

 

[xboxbml]

Hi all.

Still running High Sierra as a student. Does the job. Getting great battery life actually.

Thinking about Big Sur but not sure if there's a reason to upgrade. Mostly care about performance. Should I assume Big Sur is a heavier OS and so will hurt the speediness of the Mac?

Thx for the advice!

If what you have works for what you need, and you don't need any new features that newer OS's have, I wouldn't update if I were you. I wouldn't go past Mojave if you can help it. 10.14.2 is what I think I had on my original 128gb SSD before I bought an Apple 512gb and put it in this shortly after I bought it used. Somewhere around 10.14.4 or so I noticed a battery usage issue. It was still there on Catalina up thru now-10.15.7. This is with everything still set at defaults. I had to do some finagling around with power settings in terminal and shut off bluetooth if I'm not using it, to not drop battery overnight around 10-20%. I also got a new battery. It's all in what you want, and want to mess with. Sucks to have to disable or limit new features, just to keep decent battery life. More features mean it eats more battery. Don't get me wrong, Mojave was good. Catalina is decent for me at 10.15.7 with some defaults averted. I just updated my original 128gb SSD just now to Big Sur with a bootable macOS installer of Big Sur. It looks nice. Basically just like iOS 14 on iPhone. Icons are same with rounded corners. I didn't stay on it but for a few minutes. I only wanted to see it for a minute, and have it update my bootrom. It was a bit slow but that's because I'm sure it was indexing the drive and that's why it was like that. I restored my backup of 10.14.2 on the 128gb and put my Catalina 2tb drive back in. I do not think I will be updating to Big Sur. Apple is taking away freedom with every release. If you don't care about that, that's fine. It's like iOS now. You pretty much can't load anything on it that doesn't come from the App Store. Catalina makes your drive 2 volumes, one with the read only OS and one with your data. So, you can't mess with the OS. Of course, neither can anything else really. It's a security thing, which can be good. But also takes away freedom. So, like I said, if you don't need any newer features of the newer OS's, stay put, as long as it does what you need. You might want to look into a battery at some point. If you look at system report and look at your battery cycles and capacity, that should tell you. They're supposed to be good for about 1000 cycles. Mine had almost 500 and was about 82% design capacity I think. I got a new one anyway, 3rd party. It's better. Anyway, I'll quit going on. Good luck.

 

[Cave Man]

I'm running it on a 2014 MBA 17 (6,2) and it's perfectly fine. Of course, the danger you face is that some apps will break (i.e., 32-bit). I had to mod Aperture and iTunes to get them to work, but that was very easy.

 

[Ybersetzer]

I upgraded my 2015 MBA (8 GB RAM, base model CPU) from Mojave to Big Sur. Progress bar got stuck for a loooong time, first time I've ever had a problem upgrading/updating my machine. However, when i finally did a longpress on the power button, it loaded into to the Big Sur login screen.
Also: I had almost 40 GB space available and still had to temporarily make room (a couple of GB) more. After the upgrade though I again had about 40 GB available.

Performance: is good, as good or better as before. It SEEMS to me that the load average (top -u in terminal) is slightly lower than before.

I did experience CPU and fan spikes that were quite annoying for a couple of days: the process windowserver would spike and fire up the fan, this happened even when I was literally doing nothing. But this problem has disappeared, and now everything is fine.

One thing I like: with Big Sur you can switch Timemachine to APFS.

All in all: quite frankly, apart from improved Timemachine, I can't say it makes a big difference. So if everything is working for you, no need to change. But if you want to, I can tell you from my experience that the MBA 2015 can handle it.

 

[benyben123]

I appreciate everyone's response! Thanks so much for the information!!!

 

[Erehy Dobon]

Install Big Sur on a "disposable" external SSD.

This is how I evaluate all new versions of macOS. I did this for an entire year with macOS Catalina and I decided that it displayed no convincing argument for me to upgrade my Mojave system to that OS.

I am currently evaluating Big Sur with the same "disposable" external SSD. My guess is that I will upgrade my internal ("production") system drive to Big Sur sometime in Q2 2021.

Apple couldn't pay me to upgrade to Big Sur today. As far as I'm concerned it is still beta software.

 

[ght56]

Install Big Sur on a "disposable" external SSD.

This is how I evaluate all new versions of macOS. I did this for an entire year with macOS Catalina and I decided that it displayed no convincing argument for me to upgrade my Mojave system to that OS.

I am currently evaluating Big Sur with the same "disposable" external SSD. My guess is that I will upgrade my internal ("production") system drive to Big Sur sometime in Q2 2021.

Apple couldn't pay me to upgrade to Big Sur today. As far as I'm concerned it is still beta software.

This. This. A thousand times this.

Definitely do an install on an external SSD before upgrading the internal. You could even use CCC to make a clone of the internal SSD to an external and then upgrade on the external (some apps won't work correctly if licensing is tied to the hard drive but most will.) This is even more important if you are an early adopter as new OS releases tend to have more quirks and issues.

Catalina only recently became reasonably stable. Big Sur is extremely new. I do not personally recommend upgrading to it at this point.

 

[NewUsername]

I upgraded my 2015 MBA (8 GB RAM, base model CPU) from Mojave to Big Sur. Progress bar got stuck for a loooong time, first time I've ever had a problem upgrading/updating my machine. However, when i finally did a longpress on the power button, it loaded into to the Big Sur login screen.
Also: I had almost 40 GB space available and still had to temporarily make room (a couple of GB) more. After the upgrade though I again had about 40 GB available.

Performance: is good, as good or better as before. It SEEMS to me that the load average (top -u in terminal) is slightly lower than before.

I did experience CPU and fan spikes that were quite annoying for a couple of days: the process windowserver would spike and fire up the fan, this happened even when I was literally doing nothing. But this problem has disappeared, and now everything is fine.

One thing I like: with Big Sur you can switch Timemachine to APFS.

All in all: quite frankly, apart from improved Timemachine, I can't say it makes a big difference. So if everything is working for you, no need to change. But if you want to, I can tell you from my experience that the MBA 2015 can handle it.

Interesting, I had exactly the same issue installing macOS Big Sur on the same model! While the update worked eventually by force rebooting it, to be sure I did a clean install anyway (I have everything on iCloud so it’s very easy for me).

I would say performance is mostly identical. The first few hours it was a bit sluggish because of all the background tasks, but that’s normal. Afterwards, it worked just fine.

So first check if your apps are compatible, 32-bit apps won't work so you should check it in About this Mac -> System Report -> Applications. If app compatibility isn’t a problem, make a backup and upgrade.

High Sierra doesn’t get security updates anymore (only Big Sur, Catalina and Mojave do, i.e. the latest three versions). So it’s a good idea to upgrade.

 

[shenfrey]

Hi all.

Still running High Sierra as a student. Does the job. Getting great battery life actually.

Thinking about Big Sur but not sure if there's a reason to upgrade. Mostly care about performance. Should I assume Big Sur is a heavier OS and so will hurt the speediness of the Mac?

Thx for the advice!

The only lag I notice is when customising widgets. And I am on a 2020 Pre M1.

 

[Jack Neill]

Apple is taking away freedom with every release. If you don't care about that, that's fine. It's like iOS now. You pretty much can't load anything on it that doesn't come from the App Store.

Huh? What...?

Install Big Sur on a "disposable" external SSD.

Or if your using APFS setup another container and install it to see if you like it. Dual booting can be safe, productive and its really quite a fun way to spend a Sunday morning.

 

[xboxbml]

Huh? What...?



Or if your using APFS setup another container and install it to see if you like it. Dual booting can be safe, productive and its really quite a fun way to spend a Sunday morning.

If it's not vetted by Apple and they get their cut of the dev money, it won't be allowed on..

 

[circatee]

To confirm, I have an Early 2015 MBA, 8GB, 256GB PCIE drive.
A friend of mine let me borrow her MBA, so I could learn Mac OS. Last week, after I powered on the device for the first time, I upgraded to Big Sur; since it prompted me to. LOL

After a week or so, I have to say, the device seems to work well, and battery life seems fine, too.
I will add, when opening Outlook for the first time in a day, it take 7-8 bumps of the icon, to open. So, not sure if that is classified as good or bad.

Hopefully a more experience Mac user can share their experience...