If MacOS Sonoma 14.0 is running slow on your computer, read this before you try to downgrade
I have a 3.6 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9 Mac. I upgraded to Sonoma 14.0 last week and immediately, all programs on the computer slowed down dramatically. Out of desperation, I used the Restore function to downgrade back to the previous OS version, the system downloaded Mojave 10.14, an OS that was released approximately 5 years ago. This turned out to be incompatible with many of the programs I was using and I tried to upgrade back up to Ventura 13.6. The system hung up during the upgrade process, which I attempted multiple times. I finally tried to find the root cause of a disk error the upgrade process was reporting and ended up having to erase the Mac hard drive, upgrade using the web-based option and load my files back using the Time Machine backup. This process took me approximately 3 days, about 10 calls to Apple support and lots of frustration. I want to leave you with two root causes that I discussed with the Apple support folks:
- The Mojave OS may have corrupted the boot files because of it's vintage - thus explaining the problems with upgrading back
- An iMac of the vintage I have (2019) struggles with the demands of the Sonoma OS 14.0 thus explaining the initial slowness when I upgraded
It's not clear if these two conclusions are necessarily correct but I will use them as starting points in the future if I want to downgrade the OS or to buy a new computer
I remain a big Apple fan in spite of these problems because they have happened so rarely in the 20 years I have used these products
iMac (2017 – 2020)