What OSX for 2012 MacBook Air?

[Queen of Spades]

My sister's computer recently broke so I bought her a 2012 MacBook Air until she has a bit more money. It has 8GB of RAM and 256 SSD, otherwise stock specs. What OS X should I install on it for her? I'm a little out of the loop on older machines as I've been on a cycle of buying/selling every two years for my own laptop and I run whatever the latest OS X is.

I would like her machine to perform as smoothly as possible.

Thank you for the help!

 

[Ruskes]

High Sierra
do not recommend Mojave at this time

 

[TMRJIJ]

The latest version of macOS right now is Mojave however this particular MBA is older and nearing the end of the OS/software support life cycle. I would recommend finding a copy of High Sierra if your daughter is fine with not having the new bells and whistles this year. Apple typically alternates between Performance and feature focus upgrades and Mojave is feature focused.

 

[Queen of Spades]

Perfect, exactly the info I was looking for. I'll go with High Sierra. Thanks guys!

 

[verpeiler]

My 2012 MBA has Mojave on it and runs perfectly fine and smooth. There's no need to run an older version of MacOS.

 

[Macdctr]

Perfect, exactly the info I was looking for. I'll go with High Sierra. Thanks guys!

When you install HS you will have a firmware update to the 2012 MBA. With that firmware update you will be able to install Mojave and will have another firmware update if you choose to install Mojave.

The advantages of staying with HS is that you can run all your 32-bit apps whereas with the latest Mojave update you will discover some, not all will still run under Mojave.

I went ahead and did the update to Mojave on my 11inch MBA and have not had any issues since all the apps I want to run on it are compatible with Mojave. Been on the new OS for a few weeks and no issues so far...