SimplyLola wrote:
I have a 2017 13" Macbook Air running Sierra version OS 10.12.6
I have about 30GB of storage available. That includes 5GB of purgeable.
I have received update notices that the Monterey version is available. I'm not sure if it's the 12.0 or 12.3.
I'm concerned that some of my programs may not work if I upgrade or I'll have other updating problems.
Would it be better to first update to an older OS version like High Sierra?
As others have already indicated, you should prepare for this by understanding which applications will need to be upgraded or replaced for Monterey (versus Sierra). In addition, it is best to have plenty of free space available, not just what might be the bare minimum. A good rule of thumb is 20% free space -- the Mac will use disk space for paging when memory is fully utilized and if the disk space is mostly gone, the computer slows down to a crawl. If this happens during a MacOS update, it may appear to be hung or run "forever."
Other posters have already explained more details on the above. What I can explain is how I upgraded my wife's iMac 2016 from Sierra to Monterey. I did it in incremental steps:
(1) Sierra to High Sierra (10.13)
(2) High Sierra to Mojave (10.14)
(3) Mojave to Catalina (10.15)
(4) Catalina to Monterey (12.4)
Note that I skipped Big Sur, which normally comes after Catalina. I skipped it because I had gone directly from Catalina to Monterey on other Macs previously and knew it goes smoothly. But to be consistent I should have done Catalina => Big Sur => Monterey.
In principle, going directly from Sierra to Monterey should work, but doing it stepwise almost ensures no complications. Note that along the way, your internal drive will convert from HFS+ to AFPS, and also one or more firmware updates will be applied; during the firmware updates the Mac may have a black screen and appear to be powered off for 2-3 minutes (which is a long time when you are watching).
Another advantage of doing the upgrade stepwise is that the requirements for free disk space are significantly lower at each incremental step than doing the whole thing in one step.
As for software, the only thing we needed to replace was her old 2011 MS-OFFICE with a new version. We have her now on the family plan for Office 365 so now she always has the latest version.