Update confusion. I have Monterey now and the update says Ventura. Do I update? does the name just mean its a new version of the iOS operating system? New user

Flamingojojo wrote:

There are so many operating update names. (Big Sur, Catalina, Monterey) What do the names mean?

Ventura is the latest macOS available. Monterey is the previous macOS, Big Sur was before that, and so on. when you see a new macOS name, that is an upgrade over the previous macOS. OS upgrades typically come out each fall. versus an update from Monterey 12.0 to Monterey 12.1 (for example) and so on. updates come out more frequently and throughout the year.

Should I always update to the new version?

I always recommend running the most up to date macOS that the machine is compatible with. but you should ALWAYS make a backup before upgrading macOS. and you will also want to check your apps' compatibility with a given macOS.

Just make sure to verify all your third party apps are compatible with the new major OS upgrade before upgrading to a new major version of the OS like Ventura. While many apps will work without issue on the new OS, some apps may take much longer to become compatible with the new OS (sometimes just weeks, others may take months). Sometimes Apple will change their own apps so depending on how you leverage certain Apple built-in apps, you may want to read a good review of the changes to the new OS to make sure it won't break your current workflow so that you can prepare yourself for the changes. People who have the most issues are the ones who rush to upgrade without verifying their third party software and hardware are compatible, or don't update their third party software.

Generally speaking the minor point release updates are to patch bugs & security issues in the current major version of the OS and generally should not break anything, although Apple has proven every rule has its exceptions as shown by multiple macOS 12.x Monterey minor point release updates causing compatibility issues with both software and hardware -- usually temporary, but annoying and unexpected.

You generally want to keep macOS updated with the minor point release updates since some features/apps (especially Apple centric features such as Air Drop, and others) may depend on the OS being fully up to date with all its minor point release updates, or those features may not work.

As the others have already mentioned make sure to have a good backup before performing a major OS upgrade (like to Ventura) just in case something goes wrong.

You should always have frequent and regular backups of your computer and all external media (including the cloud) which contains important & unique data.

Ventura is the newest version of the operating system. Monterey was the last one. Whether or not you upgrade to the newest version is up to you. Some people like to wait a couple of months to see how things shake out. Other people update right away. As best I can tell from the posts here, for the average user, updating to Ventura has been uneventful. It was certainly not a problem for me.

See the chart in this article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS_version_history

I've been running Ventura since the first Beta version was released. At the present version I find it to be quite fast and stable. Others have reported a variety of issues but not a lot on any one issue.

The one issue with Ventura is the System Preference (now called Settings) app. It's more like the iPhone/iPad Settings app. I find it difficult to navigate to what I wan and use the search field quite a bit. If you're comfortable with the iPhone version you shouldn't have problems with it.

If you do decide to upgrade to Ventura be sure to remove any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus or VPN apps on your Mac according to the developer's instructions. They are not needed and can impart performance and functionality.

I would advise upgrading. Ventura adds many new features, not to mention the security patches.