Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Which OS should I use for 2012 Mac mini?

Which OS should I use for 2012 Mac mini?

  • High Sierra

    Votes: 1 5.0%

  • Mojave

    Votes: 10 50.0%

  • Catalina

    Votes: 9 45.0%
  • Total voters
    20
I

ian87w

macrumors G3
Original poster
Feb 22, 2020
8,704
12,638
Indonesia
Simple polling.
I have a 2012 Mac mini. I upgraded the RAM to 8GB, and changed the hard drive to SSD. Currently the Mac is running on High Sierra. Although it’s fast and stable, I am now itching to upgrade the OS to try new features. For example, OneDrive on Mojave and higher can act like the Windows version, where it lists all your files in the cloud and only download it when I need it. That feature is not available in High Sierra.

Obviously Big Sur is out since it dropped support for 2012 mini. So the choice is Catalina, Mojave, or keeping it on High Sierra. What do you guys think and have experienced? My priority would be stability and system responsiveness, while hoping to be at least on a still-supported-OS. I’ll be using it for basic computing and work, like mainly MS Office and productivity stuff. Do share the pluses and minuses of each OS as I don’t really have experience with Mojave nor Catalina.
 
I have a 2012 Mini with 16g/1T SSD and upgraded to Catalina. It's been very stable and performs well. Of course it's slowing with age and will be replaced with the next M? mini that comes out.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ian87w
Heh. @mdgm - you beat me to it! :)

forums.macrumors.com

macOS 11 Big Sur on Unsupported Macs Thread

This thread will be used to discuss advancements in getting macOS 11.0 Big Sur running on unsupported Macs. --- Compatibility List: --- FAQ: Q: What does unsupported mean for my old Mac? A: Three problems: Apple locks you out from running the stock installer of Big Sur and as...
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com

Honestly, can't recommend the efforts of dosdude1 and others highly enough. They kept my 2008 MacBook Pro on current MacOS for several years. :) (though I replaced the bluetooth/network card in it, increased the ram and installed SSD) - yes, it was one of those MacBooks that you could open up yourself...if you had a little manual dexterity.

If you have any technical skill at all, I'd highly recommend you jump to Big Sur (and maybe bump up your RAM) :) Really depends on what you're doing with it - I was doing a lot of office work with mine - you start doing anything with Photoshop and you'll find 8GB very limiting. :)
 
mdgm said:
Incorrect assumption. There's a long thread on macrumors about running Big Sur on unsupported Macs such as yours.
Click to expand...
Thanks, but this is going to be a productivity machine and I cannot afford the time to tinker around with it. :) Besides, Bug Sur seems to share a lot of its own bugs.
Would you vote for Catalina or Mojave?
 
Mojave will end security updates this fall. At this point you’re better off installing Catalina– it’ll have another year of security updates and will keep compatibility with app updates for longer.
 
  • Like
Reactions: fischersd
I use 10.12 Low Sierra on my 2012 Mini. Still runs fine.

If I wanted "something newer", I'd use Mojave.
 
  • Like
Reactions: opeter
I have a 16gb 2.6ghz quad-core Mini that ran low Sierra until a year ago. At that point I replaced it with a 2018 Mini and turned the 2012 into a file/time machine server running Catalina. It has been fine, but I don't use it interactively, it's just a server. I suppose I'd use Catalina if I was still using the 2012 Mini for daily tasks, however I'd be certain to have two or more clones of the current working version before ugrading.

Another thought is that you could install Catalina on an external SSD such as a Samsung T5 or similar. With the 2012 Mini, it will run almost as fast from an external SSD as it does from an internal SSD. My 2012 has an original Apple 256gb internal SSD and I left Mountain Lion on that but booted it from a 1TB Samsung T3 for several years. This worked great with demanding software like Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. The internal SSD is ~500MB/sec and an external is about 400MB/sec. The only time I noticed a difference was that it took longer to boot from the external.

chabig said:
The last officially supported OS for that machine was Mountain Lion.
Click to expand...

No idea what you mean by that. Mountain Lion was pre-installed on my 2012 Mini. However Catalina is "officially supported", as per Apple's support document here

macOS Catalina is compatible with these computers - Apple Support

You can install macOS Catalina on any of these Mac models.
support.apple.com support.apple.com
 
If you stay on Mojave, you can at least run 32-bit apps, if needs be. I'd recommend that over Catalina.

TBH, I would have maxed the RAM to 16Gb.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ian87w
I'd vote for Catalina, with a caveat. I run Mojave on my iTunes server (2014 2.8ghz/8gb Mini) because it's the last version that supports iTunes. The new Music and Video apps seem to have lots of issues and I want to stick with iTunes. I know there's a hack to run iTunes in newer version of MacOS, but I don't want to mess with that. And that machine is just a media server, so not terribly worried about security updates. Mojave is also the last version that will run 32-bit apps. That doesn't help me because my legacy apps are so old they won't run on Mojave anyway. :) I use Mountain Lion and Sierra virtual machines to run legacy apps on my 2018 Mini.

Anyway, unless you have some reason to need Mojave I think it makes more sense to go with Catalina and get longer support with security updates.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ian87w
Ignoring other things like 32-bit support, between Mojave and Catalina, which one has better performance?
 
I’m using Catalina on a 2012 Mac mini. Currently bypassing the Fusion Drive with a USB SSD, which is just a little slower than an internal SSD.

Overall, performance is fine for most tasks (even while having Folding@Home running at Low continuously). Occasionally, I’ll see some lag, for example, when selecting the Recent Items submenu — though I do have it set to display the last 50 apps and documents, which I probably don’t need to. I’ll also mention the mini has 16GB of RAM, so it can cache a few GB of files. With Safari, Mail, Messages, and a few other background apps, menulings (e.g., Air Video HD server, 1Password) memory usage (excluding caching) is ~7.5 GB.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ian87w
The OP has not told us *which* Mini he has. I have a 2012 quad-core 2.6ghz i7 Mini Server. If the OP has the base model dual-core 2.5ghz i5 Mini, then they will need to be more concerned about performance.
 
To be honest, I upgraded my 2014 Mac mini (which has a 2.6 GHz Intel i5 dual core CPU) last year from Sierra (10.12) to Mojave, and don't really see degradation in speed.

I also have a 250 GB SATA in there from 2 years ago. I had to swap the internal 1 TB HDD, because it had many bad sectors.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ian87w
ian87w said:
How is it compared to Catalina? I wonder if eliminating the 32bit stuff helps with performance.
Click to expand...
Catalina runs without any performance problems on any model of 2012 Mini with an SSD. Any difference in speed is imperceptible.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ian87w
Boyd01 said:
The OP has not told us *which* Mini he has. I have a 2012 quad-core 2.6ghz i7 Mini Server. If the OP has the base model dual-core 2.5ghz i5 Mini, then they will need to be more concerned about performance.
Click to expand...
Whoops, sorry about that.
It’s the base i5 model. I bought it used, and I upgraded the RAM to 8GB and the internal drive to a SATA SSD.

As for usage, it will be mostly productivity/Office stuff. I don’t do video editing nor photoshop on it. :D So far high Sierra is working fine. But there are features in Mojave/Catalina that will help productivity a lot (eg. The OneDrive feature I mentioned)
 
Since this is an important machine for you, consider whether you want to go to the trouble of updating to Mojave in light of the fact that security updates are likely to end this fall. I don't think Apple has specifically said this, but many people are making that assumption.

"SCS Computing Facilities (SCSCF) has placed Mojave macOS 10.14 in containment and will remove software support for computers still running Mojave on November 30, 2021. In November 2020, Apple released their current operating system macOS 11 Big Sur. In keeping with Apple's release cycle, we anticipate, macOS 10.14 Mojave will no longer receive security updates starting in November 2021."

macOS 10.14 Mojave - End of Life - SCS Computing Facilities - Carnegie Mellon University

eol, mac, macos, el, mojave, 10.14, end, of, life, support, scs, scscf, apple
computing.cs.cmu.edu computing.cs.cmu.edu
 
  • Like
Reactions: ian87w
Boyd01 said:
Since this is an important machine for you, consider whether you want to go to the trouble of updating to Mojave in light of the fact that security updates are likely to end this fall. I don't think Apple has specifically said this, but many people are making that assumption.

"SCS Computing Facilities (SCSCF) has placed Mojave macOS 10.14 in containment and will remove software support for computers still running Mojave on November 30, 2021. In November 2020, Apple released their current operating system macOS 11 Big Sur. In keeping with Apple's release cycle, we anticipate, macOS 10.14 Mojave will no longer receive security updates starting in November 2021."

macOS 10.14 Mojave - End of Life - SCS Computing Facilities - Carnegie Mellon University

eol, mac, macos, el, mojave, 10.14, end, of, life, support, scs, scscf, apple
computing.cs.cmu.edu computing.cs.cmu.edu
Click to expand...
I see. So Catalina is the best choice then?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back