MBP late 2011 w/ new SSD and RAM, Which OS?

[sjuktstarkgrogg]

Hello everyone, so I've ordered a Samsung 850 EVO 250Gb and 8Gb RAM from Corsair to revive a family members' MacBook Pro 13" late 2011.

It's a known fact in my field of work that Apple computers get slower with (major)updates. Therefore some of the workstations we use still run on Mountain Lion and even Snow Leopard for stability and performance reasons. Some color correcting stations run hardware upgraded MacPros (the aluminum ones that came before the latest 'trashcan' design) with El Capitan.

I've done a lot of reading on different forums before deciding to go here to ask my question since the member base here at Mac Rumors seems more educated and therefore more 'critical' against the Apple products instead of the standard 'whatever-Apple-says-I-do-and-they're-always-right' -attitude that is found almost everywhere if you google your problem.

Myself for example, I have an MBPr mid 2012 that I downgraded back to Mountain Lion because of Mavericks bad impacts on the computer ; the battery drained extremely quick, the computer heated up ridiculosly much running easy programs, crashes became more common and it became generally much slower.

I'm curious if the latter OS X versions actually hve some performance advantages on the MBP that's currently running Lion..

So, which macOS/OS X should I install for the MacBook Pro 13" late 2011 ?
I've the possibility to install: • Lion • Mountain Lion • Yosemite • El Capitan • macOS sierra
I'm more thinking towards El Capitan than macOS sierra, is that a good idea?

Please share your experiences!

 

[komatsu]

I would probably go with Sierra.

Stay well clear of El Captian.

 

[sjuktstarkgrogg]

Thanks for your answer, but could you maybe elaborate?

 

[tomviolence]

I can testify for Yosemite. It runs smooth on a 13-inch MBP (Early 2011) with 8GB RAM and Samsung 850 EVO 512 GB. Sierra: not so much, though acceptable.

 

[BittenApple]

Latest and greatest will have no problem and you'll have all the latest security patches.

 

[MBP_187]

Hello everyone, so I've ordered a Samsung 850 EVO 250Gb and 8Gb RAM from Corsair to revive a family members' MacBook Pro 13" late 2011.

It's a known fact in my field of work that Apple computers get slower with (major)updates. Therefore some of the workstations we use still run on Mountain Lion and even Snow Leopard for stability and performance reasons. Some color correcting stations run hardware upgraded MacPros (the aluminum ones that came before the latest 'trashcan' design) with El Capitan.

I've done a lot of reading on different forums before deciding to go here to ask my question since the member base here at Mac Rumors seems more educated and therefore more 'critical' against the Apple products instead of the standard 'whatever-Apple-says-I-do-and-they're-always-right' -attitude that is found almost everywhere if you google your problem.

Myself for example, I have an MBPr mid 2012 that I downgraded back to Mountain Lion because of Mavericks bad impacts on the computer ; the battery drained extremely quick, the computer heated up ridiculosly much running easy programs, crashes became more common and it became generally much slower.

I'm curious if the latter OS X versions actually hve some performance advantages on the MBP that's currently running Lion..

So, which macOS/OS X should I install for the MacBook Pro 13" late 2011 ?
I've the possibility to install: • Lion • Mountain Lion • Yosemite • El Capitan • macOS sierra
I'm more thinking towards El Capitan than macOS sierra, is that a good idea?

Please share your experiences!

Thank you for your thread. I'm using a late 2011 MBP, 4 Gb RAM, 512Gb SSD. Running Yosemite currently with no isuess. I intend to increase the RAM to 16 Gb soon and then might consider upgrading OS. I am not upgrading OS now since I am a MBP newbie and still learning/reading up about them.
I am following your thread, thanks for asking this Q.

 

[sjuktstarkgrogg]

Thanks everyone for sharing your experiences. In the beginning I was also thinking that Yosemite would be a good idea since it was a major leap from Mavericks to Yosemite and therefore I also thought it would come with some performance optimization. If you read my first post, when I went from Mountain Lion to Mavericks on my MPBr, NOTHING became better. I thought it was kind of like with windows OS cycles: Xp: Good, Vista: Bad, Win7: Good, Win8: Bad, Win10: Good.

So my first thought was actually to just go for Yosemite (on the MBP 2011), but then I read around on several forums that it was really making a lot of Macs sluggish and I actually read here on Mac rumors some users saying that they experienced a performance boost on their older machines when they went to El Capitan. So therefore I'm thinking, hmm maybe just go straight for El Capitan.

Please let me know what you have to say and I appreciate all input and all opinions I can get!

So far it seems like Yosemite and Sierra are the most recommended ones.

I found some interesting reading regarding this:
http://www.macg.co/os-x/2015/10/os-x-el-capitan-le-point-sur-les-performances-91318

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...k-pro-early-2011.1998985/page-2#post-23559905

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/battery-life-on-el-capitan.1924608/page-3

 

[Fishrrman]

I see no reason to "steer clear" of El Capitan.

It runs fine for me on my 2012 Mac Mini and 2015 MacBook Pro.

I'll be sticking with it for a while.

 

[sjuktstarkgrogg]

I see no reason to "steer clear" of El Capitan.

It runs fine for me on my 2012 Mac Mini and 2015 MacBook Pro.

I'll be sticking with it for a while.

Thank you for sharing, how do you experience the general feel and flow of El Capitan compared to the other macOS/OS X versions you've used?
I've read a long thread here at the forum claiming that El Capitan drained much more battery than previous OS X versions, have you also experienced that or do you find it good?

 

[Fishrrman]

"I've read a long thread here at the forum claiming that El Capitan drained much more battery than previous OS X versions, have you also experienced that or do you find it good?"

I'm currently using El Capitan on a brand-new 2015 MacBook Pro 13".
Battery life seems excellent, although my usage of it (so far) is just for web browsing and email.

Also run ElCap on my 2012 Mac Mini, runs fast and smooth.

No complaints from me.

 

[sjuktstarkgrogg]

"I've read a long thread here at the forum claiming that El Capitan drained much more battery than previous OS X versions, have you also experienced that or do you find it good?"

I'm currently using El Capitan on a brand-new 2015 MacBook Pro 13".
Battery life seems excellent, although my usage of it (so far) is just for web browsing and email.

Also run ElCap on my 2012 Mac Mini, runs fast and smooth.

No complaints from me.

Thanks for your reply.

It would be great if someone with the same kind of MBP from around 2010 - 2012 could share their experience of the battery life comparing the latest three OS:s or just Yosemite against El Capitan. Correct me if I'm wrong, but usually when a MBP draw more battery, it also heats up more and therefore stresses the hardware more which equals a decrease in the macs' lifetime.

I had also a question regarding trimforce and Trim Enabler, which one would be best for the SSD and are those available in El Capitan and Sierra as well?

I can testify for Yosemite. It runs smooth on a 13-inch MBP (Early 2011) with 8GB RAM and Samsung 850 EVO 512 GB. Sierra: not so much, though acceptable.

What is your experience of El Capitan against Yosemite ? What is the main reason for why you chose to stay at Yosemite and not update to El Capitan ?

 

[simon lefisch]

I'm running El Capitan on my late 2011 15" MBP with 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD. Runs pretty well for me. No complaints. I'd recommend either Yosemite or El Cap. Not upgrading to Sierra til 10.11.3 or later comes out for stability reasons.

 

[SuperKerem]

El Capitan running flawlessly on a 2008 Unibody MacBook with an SSD + 4GB RAM.

Would install Sierra but it isn't supported on that Mac. Use Sierra, there's no reason not to.

 

[MBP_187]

curious what OS you finally used...?
Thanks

 

[hollandog]

Running Sierra on my late 2011 13" MBP no problem with 16gb ram and 240gb Samsung 840 pro.

 

[sjuktstarkgrogg]

curious what OS you finally used...?
Thanks

So, I installed the final version of El Capitan and then downloaded and installed all the latest security updates.
It runs really fast! I'm impressed by how snappy it became. In some cases I could go as far as to say that it feels quicker than my 15 inch MBPr mid 2012.. But I guess that's mainly because of the lower screen resolution on the 13 inch late MBP. I ran the "trimforce enable" command in the terminal immediately after booting up the computer to make sure that the SSD works properly right of the bat! One thing I noticed though is that the battery seemed to drain around 8-12% over night when the lid was closed. I checked coconut battery just when SSD, RAM and El Capitan were in place and the battery capacity was surprisingly at 90% ! The MBP late 2011 has been running OS X Lion since the day of purchase and it's gonna be interesting to see if El Capitan is drastically gonna wear down the battery capacity after a couple of months.. I really hope it doesn't!

Here's some relevant and interesting reading related to this thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/is-macos-sierra-worth-installing-on-late-2011-mbp.2000517/
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...k-pro-early-2011.1998985/page-2#post-23559905

 

[torelie]

Just sharing my story also.

I have a 15 MBP Early 2011, upgraded to SSD and 16GB RAM. I've had Yosemite on it before, and I think everything then worked pretty well. Nothing to complain about.

Installed MacOS Sierra and got the following problems:
- Facetime Camera stopped working. Now at 10.12.3 it is working again.
- Formatting SD-cards does not work anymore. Just get an error.
- SMB/CIFS connections to Synology NAS is problematic. Sometimes when my Mac have been in sleep mode and I try to connect again, it says it can't find the folders on the NAS. Then I have to restart the Mac to fix it.
- Seems like Sierra runs hotter

But otherwise than this it feels fast and good. But I plan to go for a downgrade because of this. Not decided if it will be Yosemite again or El Capitan. Maybe try a clean install of both first, and test startup time and benchmarks.

 

[MBP_187]

Just sharing my story also.

I have a 15 MBP Early 2011, upgraded to SSD and 16GB RAM. I've had Yosemite on it before, and I think everything then worked pretty well. Nothing to complain about.

Installed MacOS Sierra and got the following problems:
- Facetime Camera stopped working. Now at 10.12.3 it is working again.
- Formatting SD-cards does not work anymore. Just get an error.
- SMB/CIFS connections to Synology NAS is problematic. Sometimes when my Mac have been in sleep mode and I try to connect again, it says it can't find the folders on the NAS. Then I have to restart the Mac to fix it.
- Seems like Sierra runs hotter

But otherwise than this it feels fast and good. But I plan to go for a downgrade because of this. Not decided if it will be Yosemite again or El Capitan. Maybe try a clean install of both first, and test startup time and benchmarks.

Thank you for sharing.

Late 2011 MBP here, 512 Gb SSD, 16 Gb RAM. Im running Yosemite. New to OS X. I like it and have not upgraded.

I'm a light user; browsing, music, videos etc. some light image editing. Yosemite is working well for me so far. I am in the process of installing Windows 10 through VirtualBox, since i need to use MS Excel on a daily basis for work.

I would like to ask you your reasons for upgrading from Yosemite.

Thanks in advance for your reply.

 

[torelie]

My MBP cam with Lion as I remember. I did a clean install with Mountain Lion, and an upgrade to Yosemite when it was released. Wanted to do a clean install again, and thought I would give Sierra a go. Mostly I would think that the latest OS would be the best, as long as it support your Mac, but I am not sure anymore