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Which is your preferred macOS?
- Thread starter Ambrosia7177
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What issues? Because there is a ton of help that we can give on these forums if you wanted to extend its life a little longer. I think it's better to use something you're familiar and happy with for as long as possible.
What year is your MBP?
snow leopard—the last release where it feels like they had a grasp on the idea of fixing bugs and refining features rather than stacking them on top of each other like a sky-high Jenga tower
Given Apple's new policy, of only guaranteeing support for the current OS, you'll want as new a one as you can afford so you have the longest usage out of it. I absolutely would suggest an M1, as intel support is likely to fall off sometime in the next few years.
Monterey broke the USB subsystem, so a lot of older USB hubs no longer work properly, and Ventura hasn't fixed that. But other than that, Ventura has been remarkably solid. Not snow-leopard solid, but pretty darn good. Again though, even Monterey isn't guaranteed to get security patches, and there are definitely ones that have not been backported to both it, and Big Sur.
Aside from the OS, the M1 machines blow away the recent intel ones, both in terms of performance and battery life, but also design and usability. Unless you have intel specific workloads like virtual machines, there's no reason to hesitate on getting one. I used to chase performance and upgrade every year or two, but now? My M1 is so darn fast and usable, that I don't see much reason to upgrade before and M3 or M4. Certainly not an M2.
Also the last MacOS that lasted more than a year before being replaced. I think the one-year OS update cycle has caused a lot of this chaos.
I miss the simplicity of earlier releases. I'd honestly pay money again if the OS updates were worth it.
Apple makes new features that I use, I upgrade. Somehow, my M1 MacBook Air with Ventura is still running really well!
The settings is a good change, and makes me actually know where stuff is!
And I like consistency across my devices. Since I like iOS 16, I like macOS 13 as well.
My favorite probably has to be Big Sur because it makes macOS look more like iOS>
The settings is a good change, and makes me actually know where stuff is!
And I like consistency across my devices. Since I like iOS 16, I like macOS 13 as well.
My favorite probably has to be Big Sur because it makes macOS look more like iOS>
Snow Leopard was (and still is) my favourite OS.
1. Reliability - In my experience, I've never had any system-wide glitches and/or bugs on Snow Leopard, and everything just worked. No screwing around with memory leaks and Bluetooth issues...
2. Speed - Snow Leopard is fast! I feel that it is the last OS X/macOS release that can be comfortably used on a mechanical drive. The best Snow Leopard experience you can get is with either a Westmere or Sandy Bridge machine. Everything feels that slight bit snappier compared to a Penryn/Core 2 based machine.
3. Customisation - Snow Leopard is the last release that could truly be tinkered with. Theme-ing was common, with apps like ThemePark, LiteIcon and Candybar. Had a vibrant community too over on MacThemes.net. My personal favourite themes are Aqua Inspirat and SnowTunes.
I find Lion to be an alright OS, had quite a lot of small bugs at release compared to Snow Leopard, and yes the iOS features were half-baked to start off with, but the UI refresh was nice. Mountain Lion is where all of the Lion bugs were fixed, and the iOS features were fixed. Honestly I liked the Linen look, sure it was a huge departure from the "simpler" look of Leopard/Snow Leopard but at least it's better than this monstrosity:
Although I am loving Ventura on my rMBP, I do feel that less care is being taken to iron out bugs. For example, 13.3 introduced a bug where almost all icons in System Settings disappear. Not a dealbreaker obviously, but feels like you're running a beta, rather than a public release that has been out for 6 months.
1. Reliability - In my experience, I've never had any system-wide glitches and/or bugs on Snow Leopard, and everything just worked. No screwing around with memory leaks and Bluetooth issues...
2. Speed - Snow Leopard is fast! I feel that it is the last OS X/macOS release that can be comfortably used on a mechanical drive. The best Snow Leopard experience you can get is with either a Westmere or Sandy Bridge machine. Everything feels that slight bit snappier compared to a Penryn/Core 2 based machine.
3. Customisation - Snow Leopard is the last release that could truly be tinkered with. Theme-ing was common, with apps like ThemePark, LiteIcon and Candybar. Had a vibrant community too over on MacThemes.net. My personal favourite themes are Aqua Inspirat and SnowTunes.
I find Lion to be an alright OS, had quite a lot of small bugs at release compared to Snow Leopard, and yes the iOS features were half-baked to start off with, but the UI refresh was nice. Mountain Lion is where all of the Lion bugs were fixed, and the iOS features were fixed. Honestly I liked the Linen look, sure it was a huge departure from the "simpler" look of Leopard/Snow Leopard but at least it's better than this monstrosity:
Although I am loving Ventura on my rMBP, I do feel that less care is being taken to iron out bugs. For example, 13.3 introduced a bug where almost all icons in System Settings disappear. Not a dealbreaker obviously, but feels like you're running a beta, rather than a public release that has been out for 6 months.
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Ventura will be fantastic on your new Mac because it was designed with your new Mac in mind. My Mac's support ended at Catalina, so while I can get Ventura running on it via 3rd party solutions, it will never be a fully supported and smooth experience that I would get by buying a new Mac. For the sake of playing along, I miss the app icons of Catalina. I don't like the iOS look of Ventura. The System Preferences menus look absolutely terrible now.
If I had to pick one, it would be macOS Mojave. Only because it was able to support 32 bit apps. It’s unfortunate but some apps will never be updated so after that they died.
My second favorite would be macOS Monterey. This is before all the changes to settings. I’m not crazy about them or the touch friendly interface, but I know a touchscreen is going to happen whether I want it to or not so it’s just the way it is.
All this being said, I would not use a Mac for every day purposes, without either the latest OS or the one prior. While older operating systems get some security updates, but they are not going to be as secure as the current version. I usually wait to the .1 release and then update.
I feel like the Mac community and the Windows community are similar with how they want to hold onto older operating systems, even though they’re not as secure. Just mention Windows XP or Windows 7 and people get all nostalgic. I will say that at least Apple, unlike Microsoft provides some security updates for older operating systems. If you’re running Windows 7, you’re not getting anything.
My second favorite would be macOS Monterey. This is before all the changes to settings. I’m not crazy about them or the touch friendly interface, but I know a touchscreen is going to happen whether I want it to or not so it’s just the way it is.
All this being said, I would not use a Mac for every day purposes, without either the latest OS or the one prior. While older operating systems get some security updates, but they are not going to be as secure as the current version. I usually wait to the .1 release and then update.
I feel like the Mac community and the Windows community are similar with how they want to hold onto older operating systems, even though they’re not as secure. Just mention Windows XP or Windows 7 and people get all nostalgic. I will say that at least Apple, unlike Microsoft provides some security updates for older operating systems. If you’re running Windows 7, you’re not getting anything.
Snow Leopard, It fixed many bugs and is a very stable OS.
I remember buying a Snow Leopard CD (DVD?) at the Apple store. It was for my 13 inch MacBook Pro. I still have it somewhere, but probably can’t login because I would have no clue of the password.
It seemed after that, the smaller MacBook Pros went downhill and I didn’t buy another small MacBook till Apple Silicon came out.
If you are buying a new MBP you would end up with the current public release or previous increment. So it's not something that you can just install any MacOS people like from the past. Obviously AS platform Macs have benefited from the Big Sur -> Monterey -> Ventura progression where somethings weren't implemented initially the best. You'll also see the OS more and more optimized for use with updated native AS platform apps rather than using Rosetta2.
Speaking of bugs
My personal "favorite" bug of recent MacOS releases has been when the battery dies all the way on my 2017 MacBook Pro, after I plug in the charger and when I get back into MacOS, I have to re-login to my Gmail account in Mail pretty much every single time. It's been doing that for quite a few releases, through multiple reinstalls.
My second "favorite" bug was on my 2012 MacBook Pro, after Catalina released. When I upgraded via a clean install the Wifi stopped working. It would recognize there's a Wifi card, but would refuse to let me connect or even scan for networks. The only way to fix this was to get the wireless Kext's from an older release, I think it was Mojave and copy them over. The MacBook Pro 2012 was fully supported by Catalina, so I don't know why this was happening. Every time a Catalina release or security update was released, I'd have to redo this process. It was to the point where I'd have both files and a text document with all the commands I'd need to run to properly copy over the files. Kind of silly to be honest. Ironically enough, if I installed Monterey with OpenCore Legacy Patcher, I didn't have to worry about this issue.
Really wish Apple would focus more on QAing their software, and/or getting rid of these yearly OS releases.
My personal "favorite" bug of recent MacOS releases has been when the battery dies all the way on my 2017 MacBook Pro, after I plug in the charger and when I get back into MacOS, I have to re-login to my Gmail account in Mail pretty much every single time. It's been doing that for quite a few releases, through multiple reinstalls.
My second "favorite" bug was on my 2012 MacBook Pro, after Catalina released. When I upgraded via a clean install the Wifi stopped working. It would recognize there's a Wifi card, but would refuse to let me connect or even scan for networks. The only way to fix this was to get the wireless Kext's from an older release, I think it was Mojave and copy them over. The MacBook Pro 2012 was fully supported by Catalina, so I don't know why this was happening. Every time a Catalina release or security update was released, I'd have to redo this process. It was to the point where I'd have both files and a text document with all the commands I'd need to run to properly copy over the files. Kind of silly to be honest. Ironically enough, if I installed Monterey with OpenCore Legacy Patcher, I didn't have to worry about this issue.
Really wish Apple would focus more on QAing their software, and/or getting rid of these yearly OS releases.
Any change in the hardware is not backported to an older OS. Even back in system 7 days they had "Enablers" that had to be there to run newer hardware on the current OS version.
My favorite MacOS is still Tiger. Alas, software support is no more and its lack of ExFAT support is a problem. I have Mohave still running on a 2010 Mac Pro for 32 bit support if I need it, Everything else (two Minis, and the M1 Macbook Air) is Monterey. Oh, and the Mac Pro has a Monterey install too. It runs really well though it took some finagling.
I’ve only used MacOS for a few months now, on my M1 air, and I have so far used Monterey and Ventura, and I’ll say they are pretty equal to each other, other than some features like continuity camera or stage manager, which may not matter that much in some scenarios. I would recommend Ventura since it is the latest release, but Monterey and likely Big Sur would still work well.
going to make people upset with this one, but I will always have a soft spot for Mac OS X Mavericks. First OS on my first MacBook. Any time I erased it (I tinkered a lot) I’d enjoy spending a few hours installing Mavericks from Internet Recovery and playing with it. Was a big fan of the old designs.
10.12 was my favorite to date, super stable and worked without issue. I use Big Sur and Monterrey right now on my 2015 13 MBP and M1 MBP respectively right now. They are ok, but there is a Wi-Fi bug whenever you wake each from sleep. I understand this has been fixed only in Ventura, strange! I wonder why?
Snow Leopard was clean and fast without any iDevice influences and great skeuomorphic interface, though I didn't get to experience it until last year on a 2009 MBP. Feels faster than current macOS on my 2017 MBP, especially booting up.
Mavericks was my first encounter with OS X but I don't remember how it looked. Didn't use it for too long before getting into the Yosemite beta program.
Catalina because it was the last version with the old UI.
Mavericks was my first encounter with OS X but I don't remember how it looked. Didn't use it for too long before getting into the Yosemite beta program.
Catalina because it was the last version with the old UI.
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Mojave. So incredibly rock-solid stable, I’m determined to keep my Mac Pro running with Mojave for as long as possible. I’ve even got an entire spare set of internals for it.
I can only think of one single bug I’ve run into in Mojave, and that’s starting the Notes app if it was previously closed while minimizes, the window pops up and then disappears. Have to restart the app to get it visible again.
None of the later macOS releases come anywhere near the trouble-free experience of Mojave for me. They’re riddled with UI bugs, basic functionality bugs, etc etc etc. Mojave is the last remains of the dependable Apple of yore.
I can only think of one single bug I’ve run into in Mojave, and that’s starting the Notes app if it was previously closed while minimizes, the window pops up and then disappears. Have to restart the app to get it visible again.
None of the later macOS releases come anywhere near the trouble-free experience of Mojave for me. They’re riddled with UI bugs, basic functionality bugs, etc etc etc. Mojave is the last remains of the dependable Apple of yore.
I started to notice more and more bugs after Snow Leopard, especially since the existence of iCloud.
For me, every macOS version was kind of all the same after that. Always preferred having a bit more skeuomorphism interfaces though. Good old times.
I wish the next macOS would focus on stability, as well as finally finding better ways to manage windows (no, Stage Manager was absolutely not what I was looking for - maybe something like Windows Aero would be a good beginning), and coming to feature parity with iOS (same apps with same features I mean).
For me, every macOS version was kind of all the same after that. Always preferred having a bit more skeuomorphism interfaces though. Good old times.
I wish the next macOS would focus on stability, as well as finally finding better ways to manage windows (no, Stage Manager was absolutely not what I was looking for - maybe something like Windows Aero would be a good beginning), and coming to feature parity with iOS (same apps with same features I mean).
Tiger and Snow Leopard were really good, but Ventura is my favourite: whizzing along on Apple Silicon machines.
It has been more or less forever that there is a OS update to enable the latest machine to function. It follows that the new machine therefore cannot run on any older OS.
Definitely Snow Leopard and Catalina. I'm not a fan of the new look since Big Sur.