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asus389

macrumors 6502
Sep 11, 2019
341
236
USA
Catalina was a mess too from memory. For 3 or 4 major updates it couldn't even sync an iPhone.
It’s pretty stable now. I have it on my 2017 MacBook Pro and it works great. My attempts to update to Big Sur and Monterey haven’t worked well. So I’ll leave the 2017 machine on Catalina.
 

pshufd

macrumors G4
Oct 24, 2013
10,133
14,565
New Hampshire
It’s pretty stable now. I have it on my 2017 MacBook Pro and it works great. My attempts to update to Big Sur and Monterey haven’t worked well. So I’ll leave the 2017 machine on Catalina.

I have two systems on Big Sur as they came that way. Big Sur is getting better. I think that another maintenance release or two should mean that it's stable. I find that macOS isn't stable until the following summer after release. My favorite for stability is Mojave. I've never run Catalina outside of testing it out on external SSDs.
 
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firelighter487

macrumors 6502
Apr 30, 2014
385
238
The Netherlands
I find Windows to already be pretty solid in terms of bugs and performance, it's the UI and features where I find it sorely lacking and if Windows 11 is anything to go by, I am not hopeful for significant improvement.
a great thing i read a few days ago is "everything that does something in Windows 11 looks like it from the 90's"
 

Mr Screech

macrumors 6502
Mar 2, 2018
260
264
Everyone has their specific reasons, for me it went downhill after High Sierra. No more support for nvidia and losing the superior(microsoft) font smoothing for non-retina screens. It's embarrassing how apple is dealing with macos, considering the limited amount of hardware configurations it should be rock solid every single release. As for Monterey, it's stable here and that's what counts, I hate the looks though.
 

phrehdd

macrumors 601
Oct 25, 2008
4,477
1,432
Everyone has their specific reasons, for me it went downhill after High Sierra. No more support for nvidia and losing the superior(microsoft) font smoothing for non-retina screens. It's embarrassing how apple is dealing with macos, considering the limited amount of hardware configurations it should be rock solid every single release. As for Monterey, it's stable here and that's what counts, I hate the looks though.
Your point about the limited hardware is a good one. It is even more ironic since, of course, Apple is the maker of that hardware or at least, knows the measures of the parts that make the whole. Candidly, it is sad that Apple went the way of Microsoft with releases with blatant issues that should have never gone to the public.
 
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lysingur

macrumors 6502a
Dec 30, 2013
746
1,171
Waiting for the next MacOS release to upgrade to previous has definitely become rule of the thumb, if you do any serious work. That's sad, but it's just like that.

Well, sometimes even two releases behind, if you're -for instance- in audio production and rely on some specific AU/VSTs.
It's no coincidence that Logi Options+ just came out of beta. Logitech has been timing its software release with macOS for a while. People in the know realize a long time ago that macOS only becomes stable right before WWDC (.4 or .5) and developers play the waiting game rather than playing catch up. Users who do serious work on their Macs should do the same—upgrade your macOS when summer rolls around.
 

StudioMacs

macrumors 65816
Apr 7, 2022
1,133
2,269
It's no coincidence that Logi Options+ just came out of beta. Logitech has been timing its software release with macOS for a while. People in the know realize a long time ago that macOS only becomes stable right before WWDC (.4 or .5) and developers play the waiting game rather than playing catch up. Users who do serious work on their Macs should do the same—upgrade your macOS when summer rolls around.
I only jumped to Monterey before this year’s WWDC because my Mac Studio won’t run anything older, but that’s been my pattern with macOS for several years now.
 

fisherking

macrumors G4
Jul 16, 2010
11,251
5,561
ny somewhere
Users who do serious work on their Macs should do the same—upgrade your macOS when summer rolls around.
why can't 'users who do serious work' do what they want? update when they want (or not update)? all these 'absolute' statements ('wait for the .3 update') etc, are just personal opinions, nothing more (or less).

use your mac as you choose. if need be, deal with the consequences (like those of us who choose to run the betas do).
 
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cyberstudio

macrumors member
Jan 10, 2020
62
40
I have the feeling that people may look back and say High Sierra was the high point of the Intel era.

I didn't actually think the subsequent OS'es went downhill from there. Rather, it was a change in direction, one of convergence. Metal and APFS became mandatory in Mojave, and gone are Target Display Mode and sub-pixel antialiasing. You had to have a retina display from that point, and no more spinning drives. Catalina added Catalyst and killed 32-bit. All these had been paving the road for M1.
 

pshufd

macrumors G4
Oct 24, 2013
10,133
14,565
New Hampshire
I have the feeling that people may look back and say High Sierra was the high point of the Intel era.

I didn't actually think the subsequent OS'es went downhill from there. Rather, it was a change in direction, one of convergence. Metal and APFS became mandatory in Mojave, and gone are Target Display Mode and sub-pixel antialiasing. You had to have a retina display from that point, and no more spinning drives. Catalina added Catalyst and killed 32-bit. All these had been paving the road for M1.

High Sierra is super stable but you miss out on features. I think that Mojave is the best combination of features vs stability for the versions after HS. That said, I have been running Monterey 12.4 for over a week and I have not run into the two remaining bugs that bothered me: a particular memory leak and a networking problem. The latter usually showed up in my MacBook Pro around a week in uptime.

These two problems were apparently backported to Big Sur but I'm hoping that 11.6.6 fixes them there as well. My main systems will run Big Sur and Monterey and my backup systems run High Sierra and Mojave. If that's the case, then I will be fine with Big Sur and Monterey. Especially with Apple Silicon hardware. My current plans are not to update anything to Mammoth until summer 2023 at the earliest. I will, of course, test it out on an external SSD.

I do wish that Target Display Mode was available in 5k iMacs.
 
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StudioMacs

macrumors 65816
Apr 7, 2022
1,133
2,269
I have the feeling that people may look back and say High Sierra was the high point of the Intel era.

I didn't actually think the subsequent OS'es went downhill from there. Rather, it was a change in direction, one of convergence. Metal and APFS became mandatory in Mojave, and gone are Target Display Mode and sub-pixel antialiasing. You had to have a retina display from that point, and no more spinning drives. Catalina added Catalyst and killed 32-bit. All these had been paving the road for M1.
High Sierra was also the last version of macOS with CUDA support for NVIDIA, which helped my 2013 iMac (the last with an NVDIA GPU) keep up with the 2013 Mac Pro and 5K iMacs until around 2019.

I appreciate High Sierra as being the last intel/NVIDIA focused version of macOS, and it was certainly better for me than Mojave, Catalina and Big Sur.

I’m fine with Mojave, and don’t really experience many of the bugs people complain about, or at least none that haven’t been easily resolved so far.
 
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navaira

macrumors 68040
May 28, 2015
3,934
5,161
Amsterdam, Netherlands
My MBA M1 just rebooted while in sleep mode overnight, AGAIN, I had documents open etc, lucky I got in the paranoid habit of saving every 2 minutes otherwise all would be lost.

I find outrageous that they charge for iCloud Drive 200GB and it doesn't even sync.
Those two problems are exactly why I want to downgrade. Big Sur's only problem was disconnecting my backup USB-C drive. Monterey requires a reboot to upload an e-book to iCloud.
 

Ifti

macrumors 601
Dec 14, 2010
4,023
2,597
UK
I 'upgraded' Big Sur to Monterey on my Intel i9 MacBook and ended up going back to Big Sur via a CCC Clone I had created prior to the upgrade.
I'm now only on Monterey because it came preinstalled on my MacBook (M1 Max) that has finally just been delivered.

I am of the opinion now that I will always leave the OS that has come pre-installed on any system for as long as I possibly can. A yearly upgrade cycle for a major OS is too much IMO, especially since Apple cannot seem to iron out bugs and ensure the release is stable prior to launch. Sorry to say, but Microsoft has it right whereby they release periodic updates (albeit some large), but only upgrade the entire OS to its next release after a few years.

Hence I will stick to the OS that came with my MacBook for as long as I can, or until there is such a feature that I really do feel I absolutely need, before I 'upgrade' again.

In other words, Safari feels pretty 'snappy' to me at the moment! lol 🤣🤣
 

pshufd

macrumors G4
Oct 24, 2013
10,133
14,565
New Hampshire
I 'upgraded' Big Sur to Monterey on my Intel i9 MacBook and ended up going back to Big Sur via a CCC Clone I had created prior to the upgrade.
I'm now only on Monterey because it came preinstalled on my MacBook (M1 Max) that has finally just been delivered.

I am of the opinion now that I will always leave the OS that has come pre-installed on any system for as long as I possibly can. A yearly upgrade cycle for a major OS is too much IMO, especially since Apple cannot seem to iron out bugs and ensure the release is stable prior to launch. Sorry to say, but Microsoft has it right whereby they release periodic updates (albeit some large), but only upgrade the entire OS to its next release after a few years.

Hence I will stick to the OS that came with my MacBook for as long as I can, or until there is such a feature that I really do feel I absolutely need, before I 'upgrade' again.

In other words, Safari feels pretty 'snappy' to me at the moment! lol 🤣🤣

This is what I have done. My 2021 MacBook Pro is on Monterey while my 2020 Mac mini is on Big Sur. I have other Macs that I could upgrade to Monterey but I prefer them on Mojave or Big Sur.
 
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mxrider88

macrumors 6502a
Mar 8, 2019
812
1,009
Sydney, AU
Those two problems are exactly why I want to downgrade. Big Sur's only problem was disconnecting my backup USB-C drive. Monterey requires a reboot to upload an e-book to iCloud.
Yeah, don’t even fire me up again.
Let’s see this week what abortion they introduce.
My partner has a windows laptop that costs probably half of my MacBook Air, looks the same and it is working reliably. She got it from work, running windows 10.

I am seriously thinking it’s time to switch.
 

phrehdd

macrumors 601
Oct 25, 2008
4,477
1,432
Yeah, don’t even fire me up again.
Let’s see this week what abortion they introduce.
My partner has a windows laptop that costs probably half of my MacBook Air, looks the same and it is working reliably. She got it from work, running windows 10.

I am seriously thinking it’s time to switch.
Might be time to switch but then again, wait a bit and you can run Windows in a VM on your ARM based macBook Air. I have ran Windows for years on Macs due to a couple of specific applications. I am not a fan of how Apple's OS seems to have taken on Microsoft aspects of releasing too soon but it is what it is ... bugs and all. For me, I would rather use MacOS or a Linux distro than Windows as the main OS at home.
 

navaira

macrumors 68040
May 28, 2015
3,934
5,161
Amsterdam, Netherlands
I am seriously thinking it’s time to switch.
I bought a Lenovo Yoga C930 after breaking five MBP 2017 keyboards within three months and Windows 10 was such a pit of despair I hackintoshed the thing. Scaling was the problem that really killed me, some apps (including Adobe CC… but only SOME Adobe CC ones) didn't recognise a 4k screen and some did. Then there were Useful Adjustments that required digging in the registry every time a smallest update arrived to switch them off. I'll keep Monterey. (I won't, once I find time to downgrade…)
 

thadoggfather

macrumors P6
Oct 1, 2007
16,110
17,030
I have come to expect little from one macOS to the next so I wouldn't consider myself disappointed

hardly noticed a difference BS->Monterrey though
 
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fisherking

macrumors G4
Jul 16, 2010
11,251
5,561
ny somewhere
will be fun to (soon) move to the ventura forum, and see the same people, posting the same things; ie monterey haters who now think that monterey is in fact better than ventura; people who haven't even installed the new OS but don't like it; and people who install beta 1, then complain that "some things don't work" (not understanding the 'beta' concept).

plus of course, the why can't it be like snow leopard' people.

it's a yearly event on the macrumors forums! personally, am looking forward to it (the OS, and the fun threads)...
 
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StudioMacs

macrumors 65816
Apr 7, 2022
1,133
2,269
will be fun to (soon) move to the ventura forum, and see the same people, posting the same things; ie monterey haters who now think that monterey is in fact better than ventura; people who haven't even installed the new OS but don't like it; and people who install beta 1, then complain that "some things don't work" (not understanding the 'beta' concept).

plus of course, the why can't it be like snow leopard' people.

it's a yearly event on the macrumors forums! personally, am looking forward to it (the OS, and the fun threads)...
When I started reading the Monterey forums after getting my Mac Studio I thought you were being too harsh with some of your comments, but I’m getting a bit tired of the generic complaints from people who seem incapable or unwilling to perform basic troubleshooting to diagnose and fix issues. I think you probably echo a lot of the thoughts of some of us here.
 
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fisherking

macrumors G4
Jul 16, 2010
11,251
5,561
ny somewhere
When I started reading the Monterey forums after getting my Mac Studio I thought you were being too harsh with some of your comments, but I’m getting a bit tired of the generic complaints from people who seem incapable or unwilling to perform basic troubleshooting to diagnose and fix issues. I think you probably echo a lot of the thoughts of some of us here.
to be fair, i've probably said the exact same things on the big sur, catalina, etc forums... 🤣
 
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