Reason to upgrade?

[Pretorien]

Mid 2014 MBpro 16 G Ram, 500G SSD running El Capitan

Relatively few non-native programs - Parallels, Carbon Copy, Photoshop, Thunderbird, Firefox

Everything is running smoothly

1. Any compelling reason(s) to upgrade OS?

2. If "Yes" - best way to preserve existing data and app files on a clean install or can I get away with a simple "over the current" upgrade?

Thanks

 

[jbarley]

SECURITY!
El Capitan is no longer receiving security updates from Apple, so there is a possibility that your system could get compromised.
This would depend on the main usage of the system (online banking etc.) and can be mitigated somewhat by using a good secure updated web browser such as FireFox.
My opinion only.

 

[Isamilis]

I am very satisified with El Capitan. I stayed in El Capitan and didnt see real benefit upgrade to Sierra/High Sierra. It's fast and already matured OS. Until I know dark theme in Mojave. Now, I am using Mojave, and very satisfied with dark theme (which relax my eyes and make picture/video looks better). The GUI is also a bit more responsive compared to El Capitan (due to Metal 2?). However overall application open and system boot is slower than El Capitan. There is also battery drain issue (even during sleep) which need some tweaks here and there until stable release Mojave. Look at this thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/34206366

Backup TM, clean install Mojave, restore Documents from backup. Don't restore user profile.