Monterey 12.4 stable on M1 MBA? Got 4 M1 MBA's in the home

[OSXphoto]

Hey all,
Would you recommend upgrading our 4 family M1 MBA's from Big Sur to Monterey 12.4? My wife and 3 teenagers have been using these M1's with Big Sur since dec 2020 with zero issues. Big Sur proved to be rock solid. Count my blessings and stay on Big Sur?

Now that Ventura is approaching I am debating catching one of the final Monterey releases or just skipping Monterey altogether.

There is not a single feature in Monterey that my wife and kids could not do without. And introducing new issues would mean new tasks for the system administrator (me).

I'm asking 12.4 experience on M1 specifically. I have Monterey 12.4 running on a 2017 MBA 8GB unit and it's so-so. Not bad, but certainly not as stable as Big Sur.

Any opinions very welcome!

Thanks, Pete

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

What do you consider stable? I can’t remember the last time any of my Mac’s regardless of chip or OS had any real issues from normal daily stuff. Maybe some bugs here and there but nothing a restart or update didn’t fix.

 

[OSXphoto]

Good question. Let me put it this way: You and me would know how to solve most issues. However, my teenage children were totally inexperienced Mac users but still they use their M1 MBA's daily for school without issues. This means no intervention needed from my part. That would define stable in this case.

 

[mi7chy]

If it ain't broke why change it? I would only upgrade from Big Sur to Monterey if a piece of software requires it or least upgrade one, pass it around for QA before upgrading the others otherwise four laptops could be potentially several days of work to revert back. One annoying thing I'm facing on Monterey with MBA M1 is downloads stop when screen goes to sleep on battery. Thinking of reverting back to Big Sur to see if it did that before but it'll be wasting another half business day.

 

[rm5]

There are two issues I have with Monterey.

1. when I unplug my external monitor (an old Cinema Display I got for free, but that's another story...), I regularly have to run killall Dock for it to recognize that the monitor is disconnected. Tried to film it but of course problems don't happen on camera
2. (more of an annoyance than an issue) - in the Displays section of Control Center, if you click on the top like you'd normally do to exit, it doesn't work - have to click the actual icon.

You are an IT administrator it sounds like, so you would know better than I do about the cause of these issues, etc., but I think it is a problem with Monterey.

Otherwise, Monterey is perfectly stable and should work flawlessly. I use it in production (writing out lead sheets, composing film scores, editing video, etc.) and it works just fine, with the exception of the two issues above.

The bottom line = if you are worried, why would you upgrade?

 

[rm5]

Deleted.

 

[darngooddesign]

Upgrade when you want/need a new feature(s).

 

[MajorFubar]

I'm running Monterey on an M1 Air and a Studio Max with, as far as your uses are probably concerned, no issues.
However I'm running it only because both machines came with it.
I tend to stick to old OS's until they are either no longer supported or unless new OS's provide some functionality which will improve my workflows, or which fix an unaddressed bug.

EDIT: also consider the fact that each new generation of MacOS slows the machine down compared to the earlier version, because each update, they just get more bloated. You may not notice with one iteration but it mounts up by the time you're more than 2 or 3 OS's away from the OS it came with. Before I upgraded my old 2011 iMac to an SSD, I was running High Sierra from a HDD. The recovery mode installed Snow Leopard to the SSD by default, which was its original OS. Honestly the thing was like a lightning bolt. Not so much by the time I'd got as far as upgrading it back to High Sierra.

 

[fivenotrump]

Monterey is running splendidly on my M1 MBA. Reasons I upgraded from Big Sur include Shortcuts app, Quick Notes, improved password management, Low Power Mode, Universal Control, ...

 

[chrfr]

I have dozens of M1 Macs here at work all running Monterey with no widespread issues at all. I personally find Monterey to work better than Big Sur, and I like the new features that Monterey brought.

 

[OSXphoto]

Thank you all for your input. Highly appreciated.

I am not a system administrator by profession, but I manage all family IT devices. Among those are 7 Macbooks, 8 iPhones, 4 iPads, two appleTV's and my UniFi network + pfSense firewall/router.

Regarding the wish to upgrade or not: I also have an iPhone that I keep on the latest iOS versions and more often than not some features that share data between Mac and iphone (e.g. Notes) require the Mac to upgrade macOS when the phone goes up an iOS version.
I could, of course, not upgrade my iphone too but at some point we have to move forward anyway.

At least your replies generally indicate that there is no imminent reason to stay away from or skip Monterey. I just asked because upon first release there seem to have been more issues, some serious ones, with Monterey than there were with Big Sur when it first came out.

Thanks again!