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Am I able to upgrade my Mac to macOS Catalina?

i want to upgrade my mac os from X to Catlina .



my machine is imac14 with i5 and 8 gb ram


[Re-Titled by Moderator]

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Oct 3, 2023 5:40 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 5, 2023 11:33 AM

MacTracker turns up three models that match "imac14". Two are 21.5" models:

  • 21.5" Late 2013 (iMac14,1 or iMac14,3) – Can run the latest version of Catalina, but nothing higher.
  • 21.5" Mid 2014 (iMac14,4) – Can run the latest version of Big Sur, but nothing higher.


To determine which of these you have, select About This Mac in the Apple () menu and look at the model year / time of year in the model name.


I'm not sure what version of the operating system you mean by "X". Apple used the term "Mac OS X" for all of the operating systems from Mac OS X 10.0 ("Cheetah") through Mac OS X 10.11 ("El Captain"). They kept using "10.*" version names up through macOS 10.5 ("Catalina").


The iMacs in question shipped with assorted versions of Mountain Lion and Mavericks. Those are pretty old and if you are still using them, it is possible that you might have trouble using the App Store links to upgrade your Mac to Catalina or Big Sur. If you are in this boat and you do run into that sort of trouble, you might want to do the update in two steps – first upgrading to Sierra (the highest version of the OS available in the form of a simple .DMG), then using the versions of Safari and the App Store in Sierra to upgrade to the desired OS.

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Oct 5, 2023 11:33 AM in response to jogeshwar

MacTracker turns up three models that match "imac14". Two are 21.5" models:

  • 21.5" Late 2013 (iMac14,1 or iMac14,3) – Can run the latest version of Catalina, but nothing higher.
  • 21.5" Mid 2014 (iMac14,4) – Can run the latest version of Big Sur, but nothing higher.


To determine which of these you have, select About This Mac in the Apple () menu and look at the model year / time of year in the model name.


I'm not sure what version of the operating system you mean by "X". Apple used the term "Mac OS X" for all of the operating systems from Mac OS X 10.0 ("Cheetah") through Mac OS X 10.11 ("El Captain"). They kept using "10.*" version names up through macOS 10.5 ("Catalina").


The iMacs in question shipped with assorted versions of Mountain Lion and Mavericks. Those are pretty old and if you are still using them, it is possible that you might have trouble using the App Store links to upgrade your Mac to Catalina or Big Sur. If you are in this boat and you do run into that sort of trouble, you might want to do the update in two steps – first upgrading to Sierra (the highest version of the OS available in the form of a simple .DMG), then using the versions of Safari and the App Store in Sierra to upgrade to the desired OS.

Am I able to upgrade my Mac to macOS Catalina?

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