macOS Catalina, Big Sur, and Monterey – difficult choices for supporting older Macs

Many of you are using older Macs.

Some of you have faced the issue of upgrading an older Mac to a newer operating system (macOS). There are two main issues that come up when upgrading: do you have a solid state drive (SSD) fast enough for the new macOS; and, are you using older programs that won't run on Catalina, Big Sur, or the current macOS, Monterey? These three macOS versions, and the previous, Mojave, to a certain extent, improve your overall speed if you have an SSD. Conversely, if you are using a spinning-platter hard drive, your speed can suffer enormously – enough to make the computer almost unusable.

For many years, macOS (and OS X) supported both 32- and 64-bit applications. Beginning with Catalina, there was no longer any support for the 32-bit programs. They don't just work poorly, they simply don't work at all. So upgrading past Mojave can have serious implications.

To complicate things further, older operating systems are now considered security threats, and have their access cut off from many websites. The following (10.7 through 10.11) need to be upgraded to access all websites:
LION > MOUNTAIN LION > MAVERICKS > YOSEMITE > EL CAPITAN

Apple has stopped providing security updates those, as well as (10.12 through 10.14):
SIERRA > HIGH SIERRA > MOJAVE

There are now clear trade-offs when you are running an older macOS and want to (or need to) upgrade. Please call if you have questions about upgrading your macOS. We can schedule a remote session during which I can go over the implications for your particular Mac.