Upgrade Options for High Sierra

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I have an iMAC running High Sierra. The major user of this machine – not me – is happy with High Sierra and has no desire to upgrade to either Mojave or the about to be released Catalina.

My understanding of the Apple support policy is that they don’t have one in writing, but typically support a given OS version for 3 years.

So here are my questions:

1) Am I correct about the Apple support policy? Most importantly, after 3 years will there be no support at all for High Sierra?

2) Is it possible – or perhaps permissible is a better word – to ‘leapfrog’ an OS version?

3) In terms of chances for successful, no drama upgrades would it be better to upgrade to Mojave now, and then upgrade to Catalina later, or just run High Sierra for a while and go directly to Catalina, skipping Mojave (assuming a ‘leapfrog’ is possible)

I currently have a MacBook Air running Mojave, and frankly, I don’t see any advantages to Mojave over High Sierra. That being the case, and since I’m currently suffering from patch overload on Windows machines, I find I’m having a lot of trouble generating any enthusiasm for updating from High Sierra right now.

Anyway, I’d be interested in any answers to the above questions anyone would provide, and also any upgrading insights folks might have.

Thanks.

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I have been on Macs since 2011. Currently, I have:
13″ MacBook Pro (the one with the slot DVD player), Ivy Bridge dual core (4 threads) i7
15″ MacBook Pro, Haswell quad-core i7
21.5″ iMac Ivy Bridge i7
MacMini, Ivy Bridge quad-core i7
21.2″ IMac quad-core Kaby Lake i7

I think the older ones started with Mountain Lion, and I have upgraded each year (not always the first day or week, I wait a while)
All are running Mojave now. Upgrade from High Sierra was effortless on all – not like Windows (any version these days)
All are running Parallels with Windows VMs (14 among them: 2-XP, 4-Win7, 4-Win8.1, Win10 1803, 1809, 1903 and Insider).
The Macs are a piece of cake. It’s the VMs that cause the gray hair. But, if the latter go south, I just copy the last backup of the VM file back and I ready to go.
I don’t worry about all the new features, I just use the machines. I think the later versions give you more security though.

To answer you question about versions, you can skip versions. I think when the third version down the line comes out you need to upgrade or lose support. So you are good for three years on your last version after the hardware is not eligible for a newer version.

3 users thanked author for this post.

Nathan Parker, OscarCP, DrBonzo

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I have a MacBook Pro that came out in mid-2015, so it will run out of hardware support sometime in the middle of next year. At present it is running Mojave. If, early next year,possibly  I upgrade to Catalina (after waiting a few months after it first came out, as usual), that should give me some 2.5 years of OS support until late (possibly October) 2023, if I’ve understood correctly PKCano’s explanation.

What happens after that? My computers have lasted, on average, more than six years before they become a poor fit to the way I did things with them, or the way things became different and too much for the old machines to work properly. For example, the first computer that was actually mine, a Toshiba bought in 1998 and running Windows 98, with 6 GB hard disk, become unable to cope properly with the rise of high resolution streaming, and the increasing “bloat” of needed applications, such as printers’ software. But I did not really have to buy a new machine with Windows XP until mid-2005, well after six years of its continuous use serving well my actual needs.

So, this is my question now: Is there some way to continue to upgrade the OS after early 2023, when Catalina should run out of support and my laptop’s hardware will be already out of support as well?

 

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Just an FYI – my Ivy Bridge Macs are early 2012 vintage. They are on Mojave. I suspect the iMac and the 13″ MacBook Pro will not ve included for Catalina. The MacMini may survive another round.
The Haswell MacBook Pro is 2013 vintage and it also may survive.

That means I will have security updates but no version updates until almost the end of 2021 (the hardware will most certainly last that long). That close to 10 years of use.

If I had Windows machines, I probably would have replaced them three times by now. I am well satisfied with the service.

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OscarCP

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I bought my Mac laptop in mid-2017, but it was already an older model that had come out in mid-2015. I choose it (Apple was still selling them) custom-configured, because it still had those larger USB 2/3 ports, as well as an HDMI port and actual function keys, no that touchy-freely “Magic Toolbar”. So it runs out of hardware support in the middle of next year. If I upgrade from Mojave to Catalina early next year, the Mac runs out of OS support around October 2021.

That will be just over four years after I bought this machine that, although an older model, was still factory-fresh at the time. And is still going strong and likely to continue to be this way for quite a while yet.

So, if Apple policies stay the same and regardless of the machine’s condition, when late 2021 brings a new version of macOS, the one after Catalina, will that mean the total and permanent end of all of Apple’s software support for my Mac? Will it become for ever impossible to upgrade to a newer version of macOs? It will not be the end of my using this Mac, of course, but it is something worth knowing for certain, all the same.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Hardware support is not the same thing as OS upgrades. My 2012 machines ran out of hardware support several years ago, but they have been eligible for OS upgrades through Mojave.
Why would your 2015 laptop not get OS upgrades when my 2012 get them?
And you get secutiry updates for two years after your hardware is not elegible for OS version upgrades.

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OscarCP

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DrBonzo wrote:

1) Am I correct about the Apple support policy? Most importantly, after 3 years will there be no support at all for High Sierra?

That does seem to be the pattern.  Point updates through the first year, then security updates for the following two years after that.

DrBonzo wrote:

2) Is it possible – or perhaps permissible is a better word – to ‘leapfrog’ an OS version?

Yes.  Apple will tell you if you need to install a newer version than you currently have installed before you then upgrade to the newest.  I had a 2010 Macbook, that had Lion on it.  Had to upgrade to El Capitan first before I could upgrade to High Sierra.

I prefer clean installs when I upgrade.  Doing that one can go forward or back as long as the hardware supports the version you want to install.  You will need to have the full dmg file to do that.

I have a late 2013 iMac that has Sierra on it, Apple is offering me Mojave.

DrBonzo wrote:

3) In terms of chances for successful, no drama upgrades would it be better to upgrade to Mojave now, and then upgrade to Catalina later, or just run High Sierra for a while and go directly to Catalina, skipping Mojave (assuming a ‘leapfrog’ is possible)

If everything is running correctly, stay on High Sierra for another year.  Then make a decision.  I have Mojave on my mid 2012 Mac Book Pro and my late 2012 iMac.  Mojave has been really stable for me.  So has Sierra for that matter.  I unfortunately can’t say the same for High Sierra.

I would download the dmg file now for Mojave while it is still being offered and just save it.  Better to have and not need, than to need and not have.

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Nathan Parker, DrBonzo

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DrBonzo: I upgraded directly from Sierra (the OS my MacBook Pro came with) to Mojave, skipping High Sierra, early this year. Is that what you mean by “leapfrogging?”. Same as PKCano, I always wait a while after a system upgrade comes out before installing it, to give the developers, at Apple in this case, time to find and fix the worst bugs, iron the biggest wrinkles, etc.

That was my first time upgrading macOS and it turned out to be easy to do and without complications. I believe you have patched High Sierra recently. If you did that, installing a new version of the OS is pretty much the same story. In fact, I couldn’t tell the macOS patchings I made from the system upgrades: these have all looked and felt much the same and taken about as long to get done.

One thing to keep in mind is that the three years’ support of a version of OS start counting from the time it first comes out. That seems to be around October of each year.

Support for Mojave ends when that for the successor to Catalina (with some California-themed name, I would imagine) finally ends, about two years from now. I am not sure what happens if one has still using an OS version out of support and then wants to make a late upgrade to the latest version (assuming there are no hardware limitations to doing so). For my part, I would like to know. Someone here might be kind enough to explain that.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

2 users thanked author for this post.

Nathan Parker, DrBonzo

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More with what looks like information on the fraught question of software support for Macs and their operating systems. An issue that turns out to be more confusing than it should, the reason, it seems, being that Apple does not have an upfront, read-all-about-it-here, end-of-life of software support policy. That is no the same as not having a policy: it does have one. The links below give hints and clues as to what that policy might be and, judging by PKCano’s experience, they might even be correct:

https://www.howtogeek.com/350901/which-releases-of-macos-are-supported-with-security-updates/

https://forums.appleinsider.com/discussion/207623/apple-diagnostics-software-blocks-third-party-repairs-of-2018-macbook-pro-and-imac-pro   (A conspiracy theory?)

https://www.quora.com/What-re-the-average-lifespans-of-a-Windows-laptop-and-a-MacBook

In particular, according to the “Quora” article: “Apple’s macOS Mojave – Technical Specifications page states that only mid-2012 and later laptops are supported. Mojave was released in September 2018. If you bought a Mac laptop in May 2012, then you got new operating system features for about six years, and you’ll get about 2 more years of High Sierra security updates. Big companies like Microsoft and Autodesk also generally support their desktop productivity software [Office for Macs, etc.] for about 3 years after the release of a version of macOS.”

May the Force be with us? I think I really need that now.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Today I wanted to use a program I wrote some time ago to download, decompress, combine and reformat the contents of a large number of files in a way I am able to use those contents. The program first creates a script that governs the actual Internet connection to the archival site where those files are kept, as well as the retrieval of those files and then runs the script. The script instructions include a fair bit of ftp ones, because the site where those files are kept is designed to use ftp connections.

The program failed to retrieve anything at first. After some cursory inspection, became pretty clear why: ftp is not available in Mojave!

I looked into this further and found out that it is not available in High Sierra either. Apple decided, when launching High Sierra, not to include ftp in new macOS releases, from then on, leaving only sftp and other more secure protocols available to users. And yes, those are more secure, but there are places, such as the data archive I was trying to download the data from, that still use ftp. No point in arguing what is that they should be doing instead, because they use it and that is that. And since I need their data, regardless of their choice of protocol…

This article explains how to get ft installed. And not just ftp, but a number of other useful tools as well:

http://osxdaily.com/2018/08/07/get-install-ftp-mac-os/

If one has the user-friendly utility software download tool Homebrew already installed in the Mac, then all it takes is opening a Terminal app’s window and typing there:

brew install inetutils

Then hit return and wait several minutes while Homebrew does its magic and during which nothing happens that one can see, until it suddenly happens, and quite a bit, in the form of reams of text scrolling and scrolling on the screen. When that stops, it is done.

If one does not have Homebrew installed, the article above has a link to another article that explains how to do this. It is another very simple procedure also started from the command line in Terminal’s window. (One can tell fairly quickly if something is not installed, because typing a command that includes the name of the item in question, or just typing its name alone (let’s say the name is xxxx and with type just that) will usually do. Doing that, we get either “xxxx command not found” if it is not installed, or if it is, then one gets something like “xxxx missing input file… followed by a list of other items missing from a proper line-command for invoking xxxx.

I am pretty sure that not many people are going to need to install ftp any time soon, but Homebrew and inetutils are useful things to have in a Mac for many different reasons.

 

 

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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For FTP I use Transmit.

Nathan Parker

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Nathan: “Transmit” is a very powerful tool that can be used to…  transmit data using a number of different protocols, including ftp:

https://download.cnet.com/Transmit/3000-2160_4-31895.html

(Warning: turn the sound off when you use this link, as there is this really loud and annoying voice of someone explaining something unrelated to the article in a video that starts automatically when one opens this page and that I quickly clicked off.)

My problem was that I have this long script I put a good deal of time and effort writing, with ftp line- commands written all over it numerous times in numerous places, so I’d much rather not change it. Instead, in this case, it was much easier for me to install ftp (along with a good many other potentially useful tools) by installing the collection of tools “inetutils” that includes ftp.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Nathan Parker

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By the way, I did confirm from Apple that you can go from OS X Mountain Lion 10.8 all the way directly to macOS Mojave 10.14 in-place.

Nathan Parker

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DrBonzo

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That’s a pretty big jump! Although I suppose when you get right down to it, not much bigger than Win 7 to Win 10. Hopefully, though, Mojave is working better than Win 10 seems to be.

When you say you confirmed you can go directly from 10.8 to 10.14, do you mean you actually did that on one of your Macs or was it just that Apple told you it can be done?

I’ve decided to go one more year with High Sierra on my iMAC and then go to either Mojave or Catalina.

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Nathan, This is really interesting, in my case particularly for this reason:

I believe that it is not possible to install a recent version of macOS on a machine declared, already being five years since its model was first sent to market, as “obsolete” by Apple. If that is correct, that would make impossible to go from Mountain Lion to Mojave with a machine that is, I’d imagine, at least as old as Mountain Lion. So, assuming I am right (and that is what I really want to know) then I would wonder how can one install Mojave on an old, “obsolete” machine still running that old version of the system.

So: what am I missing here?

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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There’s a list of Mojave compatible hardware here:

https://everymac.com/mac-answers/macos-mojave-faq/macos-mojave-1014-compatible-macs-system-requirements.html

I’ve also seen such lists on the Apple Support pages.

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OscarCP

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Thank you, DrBonzo: that Web page has exactly what I needed to know, and I have saved it already in my Mac against the day when I may need to look it up to remind myself of how things work with Apple system’s updates (as long as Apple does not change its policy on them).

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Here’s the list of compatible hardware from the official Apple Support site, where it also says you can update to Mojave from Mountain Lion or later.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201475

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Nathan Parker

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