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

Hooray first iMac (late 2013)! Upgrade it to Sierra?

firecrasher

firecrasher

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 15, 2008
61
0
Baltimore
Hi everyone, I picked up my first Mac (late 2013 iMac, 2.9ghz, core i5, 1TB HDD) as an impulse buy since it was a floor model for a crazy low price. It came with Yosemite. Do you think it's worth it to upgrade the Mac to Sierra, or will it slow it down too much? I'll be using the iMac for Adobe CC, possibly Ableton/Pro Tools 10 etc., and I'd like to pick up a Magic Trackpad 2, which I believe requires El Capitan. The iMac's bluetooth is kinda wonky as well.

Thanks for your advice! So cool to hear the Mac startup chime in my studio (which has previously been PC land)!
 
Yosemite to Sierra, I say go for it. Sierra shouldn't be a performance downgrade. That being said, if you want to improve the performance of either OS, I highly recommend getting an external SSD to use for OS & applications.
 
  • Like
Reactions: estabya
redheeler said:
Yosemite to Sierra, I say go for it. Sierra shouldn't be a performance downgrade. That being said, if you want to improve the performance of either OS, I highly recommend getting an external SSD to use for OS & applications.
Click to expand...

Exactly this. I don't think jumping to Sierra will hurt your performance now, but add a $100-120 external SSD and it will feel like a whole new computer.
 
I'm running Sierra on my 2010 (12Gb ram, ssd). Bluetooth is also a little flaky.
 
estabya said:
Exactly this. I don't think jumping to Sierra will hurt your performance now, but add a $100-120 external SSD and it will feel like a whole new computer.
Click to expand...

Thanks! Any SSDs that you particularly recommend? I'd probably go for 512GB. Samsung T3?

FYI - I don't have an external for Time Machine or any of that stuff yet. I'd probably want to back it all up before I upgraded to Sierra.
 
The T3 is a great choice. I personally prefer Thunderbolt (I have this drive) over USB3 because theoretically latency and bandwidth are better. I have also read of people having issues like freezing and problems booting with USB3, but they seem to be few and far between.
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
firecrasher said:
Thanks! Any SSDs that you particularly recommend? I'd probably go for 512GB. Samsung T3?

FYI - I don't have an external for Time Machine or any of that stuff yet. I'd probably want to back it all up before I upgraded to Sierra.
Click to expand...

I've only heard great things about the T3 but no personal experience. However Samsung SSD's are my preferred brand since they are typically the fastest and available in the highest capacities (model depending). That said, I can't feel a difference between SATA3 SSDs from the slowest I have (WD Blue) to the fastest I have (Samsung 850 Pro). I'm sure with specific task its there though, they are just so much faster then networked attached storage and HDDs the couple of second differences moving large files is irrelevant to me.

I'm going to put my flame suit on but I don't use a USB boot drive on MacOS because it doesn't support TRIM over USB. MANY people here do and do not have or notice any slow downs or wear issues (there is space allotted for dead blocks on SSDs). Its just a personal preference of mine from seeing the amount of blocks trimmed in less than a weeks time from using Linux. That said even a terribly performing SSD will easily outperform your internal HDD so its not like its a "bad" idea or anything.

Yosemite to Sierra is an upgrade IMO. My 2013 iMac came with Mountain Lion which I immediately upgraded to Mavericks which was great, Yosemite felt like a downgrade, and El Capitan and Sierra "feel" better although maybe not as good as Mavericks albeit minute differences. That is my subjective experience though.

I wouldn't bother with a TM backup if you are just upgrading and don't have anything on the system. You can recover if something goes wrong.
 
I also have the same iMac as you do but with a 1TB fusion drive instead and it has been downgraded from Sierra to Yosemite 10.10.5 since last year and the performance with Yosemite is much better than with Sierra which would give graphical glitches and slow app loading. I don't recommend updating unless you care a lot about security although Yosemite is still receiving security updates.
 
apppen1 said:
I also have the same iMac as you do but with a 1TB fusion drive instead and it has been downgraded from Sierra to Yosemite 10.10.5 since last year and the performance with Yosemite is much better than with Sierra which would give graphical glitches and slow app loading. I don't recommend updating unless you care a lot about security although Yosemite is still receiving security updates.
Click to expand...

I'm mostly interested in being able to use the Magic Trackpad 2. Is there a way to upgrade to El Capitan? Seems like one option could be to upgrade to El Capitan now and then Sierra if/when I decide to boot from an SSD.

I found this link for upgrading to El Capitan but it seems like it's for older Macs: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206886
 
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