2017 retina 21" iMac on 10.14, what OS to upgrade to?

[kiwidesign]

Hello everyone!
Just prefacing that I'm a techie and I've been using macs for more than 15 years! (currently on a fantastic M1 Pro MBP)

My parents are still rocking a 2017 iMac that a couple years ago I upgraded from the OG HDD to an external 1TB SanDisk Extreme SSD drive. Performances with the SSD are really good, but the software (still on 10.14 Mojave) is starting to show its age.

When upgrading the drive I decided to leave it on 10.14 because of 32bit compatibility, and because they don't do much other than web browsing (3rd party browsers are up to date) so they didn't need any of the newer stuff introduced by later OS (they really don't use iCloud services/ecosystem a lot). However a lot of newer software, including said browsers, are starting to leave 10.14 compatibility behind.

I'm going to update the iMac next time I have the chance: I just checked and I see that this machine supports up to Sonoma, but I'm wondering if it's worth going all the way to the last OS or to stop somewhere half-way like Big Sur; They DEFINITELY don't need any of the newer features introduced in the last 5 years, I'm just upgrading for security and 3rd party software compatibility but I don't want to turn this thing into a brick. What would you do?

Thanks!

 

[Fishrrman]

Monterey...

 

[kiwidesign]

Monterey...

Hi and thanks for the reply!
may I ask why 12.x in particular? is it because of some feature/API in particular, or because Big Sur is gonna be deprecated soon?

 

[FreakinEurekan]

2017 iMac won't support Sonoma; it's capped at Ventura (without using 3rd party tools to force it higher, at least). I had no trouble with Ventura; I'd just update it to that & call it a day.

 

[kiwidesign]

2017 iMac won't support Sonoma; it's capped at Ventura (without using 3rd party tools to force it higher, at least). I had no trouble with Ventura; I'd just update it to that & call it a day.

Hmmm it appears you're correct. I was sure I checked compatibility, but probably I was checking another version of the OS and misremembered. Are you running Venura on a 2017 machine?

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Hmmm it appears you're correct. I was sure I checked compatibility, but probably I was checking another version of the OS and misremembered. Are you running Venura on a 2017 machine?

No... I did run it on a 2019 MacBook Pro that I've since updated to M1 Max.

The main issue I've seen with Ventura is with spinning boot disks. Since you've upgraded your boot disk to SSD, I wouldn't expect any problems from it.

 

[Andrey84]

2017 iMac won't support Sonoma; it's capped at Ventura (without using 3rd party tools to force it higher, at least). I had no trouble with Ventura; I'd just update it to that & call it a day.

This.