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Ambrosia7177

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Feb 6, 2016
2,049
394
Am looking to upgrade my ancient rMBP to a new M3 Max.

Someone I know warned me about Sonoma, and I see there are some long threads on here calling Sonoma "the worst OS ever!"

It seems to me that a lot of the people who hate Sonoma are the same people who have older hardware, and maybe that is the issue more so than Sonoma not being as good as Ventura or Moneterey.

Because of how Apple does things, you're sort of stuck with the marriage between hardware/software, but before I go drop $5,000 I want to make sure I know what I am getting into!

Also, some people - who hate Sonoma - might recommend buying OLDER hardware - even if it is still new.

Since I am buying this new laptop to do video-editing in DaVinci Resolve, I personally cannot see how it would be a good idea to buy brand new hardware that is, well, NOT brand new?!

Even brand new, top-of-the-line hardware will be outdated in 3-4 years, so why buy something that is already behind the curve, right?

Anyways, what do you all think?
 

Kotsos81

macrumors member
Dec 26, 2023
40
31
I have M3 Pro, my wife has M2 Pro, both with Sonoma, no complains at all. Runs smoothly, no noticeable bugs in our experience (with heavy use from my side), and if anything better in some aspects than it's predecessors IMHO.
 

gilby101

macrumors 68030
Mar 17, 2010
2,946
1,630
Tasmania
It seems to me that a lot of the people who hate Sonoma are the same people who have older hardware, and maybe that is the issue more so than Sonoma not being as good as Ventura or Moneterey.
More likely, it is the same people who hated Ventura, who were the same people who hated Monterey, who were... .... who like to spread fear and despondency.

Sonoma is fine. I agree with @Kotsos81 that Sonoma is better than recent versions. (I still like High Sierra).
 

tstafford

macrumors 6502a
Sep 13, 2022
989
908
More likely, it is the same people who hated Ventura, who were the same people who hated Monterey, who were... .... who like to spread fear and despondency.

Sonoma is fine. I agree with @Kotsos81 that Sonoma is better than recent versions. (I still like High Sierra).
I wonder if the folks who don't like Sonoma/Ventura/etc. are using a lot of non-Apple hardware. The only thing that has troubled me with these OS's is how they deal with my Dell monitor. Other than that, they are flawless for my usage.
 

Ben J.

macrumors 65816
Aug 29, 2019
1,064
623
Oslo
I tried Sonoma 14.3 for two weeks in december. I had just gotten the M2 Pro in my signature, it came with Ventura, and I migrated my user account to it from previous mini/ventura, and then upgraded to Sonoma. Two serious issues were immediately obvious; App store app was unable to connect, and the search function in System Settings was not working. A few other minor things also, but these two were pretty essential.

After a couple of weeks, I found no solution to my issues, and I didn't really find that Sonoma offered anything that I couldn't live without, so I rolled back to Ventura.

(Curious thing was that I also upgraded my bootable backup to the same sonoma version, and when booted from that, the two serious issues weren't there. Strange, because they should be pretty much identical.)

I could never find anyone with a similar experience to mine, so I'm guessing it had to do with the migration, maybe migration of kernel extesions. But then, why wouldn't my 'identical' bootable backup clone show the same symptoms?

I'm happy w/Ventura, and I'm not missing the extra emojis.
 
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heretiq

Contributor
Jan 31, 2014
1,021
1,654
Denver, CO
Am looking to upgrade my ancient rMBP to a new M3 Max.

Someone I know warned me about Sonoma, and I see there are some long threads on here calling Sonoma "the worst OS ever!"

It seems to me that a lot of the people who hate Sonoma are the same people who have older hardware, and maybe that is the issue more so than Sonoma not being as good as Ventura or Moneterey.

Because of how Apple does things, you're sort of stuck with the marriage between hardware/software, but before I go drop $5,000 I want to make sure I know what I am getting into!

Also, some people - who hate Sonoma - might recommend buying OLDER hardware - even if it is still new.

Since I am buying this new laptop to do video-editing in DaVinci Resolve, I personally cannot see how it would be a good idea to buy brand new hardware that is, well, NOT brand new?!

Even brand new, top-of-the-line hardware will be outdated in 3-4 years, so why buy something that is already behind the curve, right?

Anyways, what do you all think?
I’m running Sonoma on an M1 Max / 32GB RAM / 1TB MacBook Pro. It’s not perfect (biggest issues for me are: 1. occasional issue with external web cam connected via integrated USB hub in my Dell Monitor requiring me to unplug the monitor and re-plug it to allow Microsoft Teams to detect the camera, and 2. buttons on some Finder windows occasionally go inactive requiring me to switch away then back to the window to refresh it and activate the buttons), but no issues that would qualify it as the worst OS ever or even recommend anyone with modern hardware from using it. I‘ve never thought of switching back to Ventura or Monterey.
 
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SnoFlo

macrumors regular
Feb 5, 2010
221
193
M3 Max here. Had some external drive mounting issues with 14.4, however Apple pushed out a patch with 14.4.1 which fixed the issue. No other issues with Sonoma.
 
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HDFan

Contributor
Jun 30, 2007
7,290
3,339
There is an on-going issue with slow Finder operations for some users:

 
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