Hello everyone. I'm using High Sierra on my IMack 2015 (Late). I need to upgrade my OS (minimum) to Catalina... but maybe Monterey if - if it wount slow down my iMack . Need advise go Catalina, or straight ahead to Monterey ???
iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.13
I think the performance under Catalina versus Monterey will likely be equally bad with an HDD. It might not be slower than what you have right now, but it might be. This is because both Catalina and Monterey will insist on configuring your internal drive to APFS, which is very slow with HDDs. If your internal drive is already APFS (try get info on the HDD) then what you get now may be similar to what you will get with Catalina or Monterey.
You have three options since it sounds like you will be advancing one way or another to Catalina or Monterey:
(1) Keep using your internal HDD. If the performance for what you use it for is acceptable, that should be ok.
(2) See this post by Jack19, Use an external SSD as your startup disk … - Apple Community This is a well known and imminently acceptable solution which entails purchasing an external SSD and using it as a boot drive. This will likely improve your Mac's performance by a factor of 5x-10x.
(3) You can also do what I did with my 2015 iMac, which is take it to a neighborhood Apple Authorized Service Center (these are Apple-certified shops, they are usually willing to work on older Macs, Apple will not do this kind of work on a Mac as old as yours) and they installed a new internal SSD to my iMac. They also returned it to me with Monterey installed so I simply migrated from a Time Machine backup and was back in business immediately. The cost for this was about $75 (I had already purchased the internal SSD myself, 1 TB for about $100). The total for this came out to about the same as getting an external SSD would have cost. I recommend having an Apple-certified technician do this on an iMac because of their special tools and experience, but ordinary users have done this type of work themselves if they are savvy about it and have some experience.
I think the performance under Catalina versus Monterey will likely be equally bad with an HDD. It might not be slower than what you have right now, but it might be. This is because both Catalina and Monterey will insist on configuring your internal drive to APFS, which is very slow with HDDs. If your internal drive is already APFS (try get info on the HDD) then what you get now may be similar to what you will get with Catalina or Monterey.
You have three options since it sounds like you will be advancing one way or another to Catalina or Monterey:
(1) Keep using your internal HDD. If the performance for what you use it for is acceptable, that should be ok.
(2) See this post by Jack19, Use an external SSD as your startup disk … - Apple Community This is a well known and imminently acceptable solution which entails purchasing an external SSD and using it as a boot drive. This will likely improve your Mac's performance by a factor of 5x-10x.
(3) You can also do what I did with my 2015 iMac, which is take it to a neighborhood Apple Authorized Service Center (these are Apple-certified shops, they are usually willing to work on older Macs, Apple will not do this kind of work on a Mac as old as yours) and they installed a new internal SSD to my iMac. They also returned it to me with Monterey installed so I simply migrated from a Time Machine backup and was back in business immediately. The cost for this was about $75 (I had already purchased the internal SSD myself, 1 TB for about $100). The total for this came out to about the same as getting an external SSD would have cost. I recommend having an Apple-certified technician do this on an iMac because of their special tools and experience, but ordinary users have done this type of work themselves if they are savvy about it and have some experience.
I have a late 2015 iMac and it is on Monterey highest version it can take. It runs very well and that version of Monterey is fairly mature, bugs have been fixed. But -- important -- if you don't have an internal SSD, and instead have a mechanical (HDD) which is much slower, I am not sure I would go to Monterey. Normally I would say go to the highest MacOS version you can, but APFS architecture with an HDD on these higher MacOS versions can be very slow.
That said, I'm not sure there is much difference between Catalina and Monterey in that respect, so I would go to Monterey if I were you.
I agree with steve626 but remember to be sure any 32bit apps are removed or upgraded to 64 bit.
I have HDD ... So better Catalina ? I use mac in music making - dont need to make my Mac slower and stuck...
Not sure it will matter that much.
Installing Monterey or Catalina
