MBP 17" / high sierra

I have one from Late 2009 running El Capitan. 2010 versions will run High Sierra.

How to download macOS High Sierra

Upgrading to El Capitan

You can upgrade to El Capitan from Lion or Later or directly from Snow Leopard. El Capitan can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for FREE.

To upgrade to El Capitan you must have Snow Leopard 10.6.8 or Lion installed. Download El Capitan from the App Store. Sign in using your Apple ID. El Capitan is free. The file is quite large, over 5 GBs, so allow some time to download. It would be preferable to use Ethernet because it is nearly four times faster than wireless.

Macs that can be upgraded to OS X El Capitan

1. iMac (Mid 2007 or newer) - Model Identifier 7,1 or later

2. MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer) - Model Identifier 5,1 or later

3. MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later

4. MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer) - Model Identifier 2,1 or later

5. Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later

6. Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later

7. Xserve (Early 2009) - Model Identifier 3,1 or later

To find the model identifier open System Profiler in the Utilities' folder. It's displayed in the panel on the right.

Are my applications compatible? See App Compatibility Table - RoaringApps.

Yes, you are stuck with 8GB of RAM. If you install High Sierra, it will detect your internal SSD and attempt to force its formatting to the new APFS file system. El Capitan won't. It will convert your drive from HFS+ to APFS seamlessly unless it has an issue with a third-party SSD. The High Sierra installation will take longer than what you are accustomed too partly due to this drive format conversion, and it is a larger installation than Mavericks.

Be certain to check that your printer/scanner/other hardware vendor drivers are available for the operating system that you choose to upgrade to beyond Mavericks. You can check application compatibility via Roaringapps.

You might want to run an Etrecheck of your existing Mavericks installation to see what third-party drivers, etc. are installed, and their age, as these could wreak havoc on a new installation. I would even recommend downloading and running the free version of Malwarebytes application to do a spot check for any subtle malware invasion. If you choose, you can remove Malwarebytes from its Help menu.

As always, I would recommend booting into Recovery (cmd+R) and running Disk Utility on your boot drive to ensure that you have a green bill of health before any upgrade. The last thing you should do is a Time Machine, or other reliable backup before the upgrade.

I expect it will run High Sierra just fine, but never do such a big upgrade without a full backup. You could test by first installing on an external drive, but putting the OS on a USB2 connected hard drive will perform rather poorly.

As long as you have a full clone of your system to fall back on in case of need, I’d say go ahead.

Even if you don’t want to install right now I strongly recommend you download High Sierra. Mojave is coming soon and typically Apple does not make it easy to download older versions unless you have “bought” them before.

somewhitechick1 wrote:

What I am looking for are folks who are still hanging on to older MBP 17"machines who have or have not upgraded their OSX and any advice they might offer about Sierra or High Sierra.

Thanks for any input or advice. Always appreciated.

FWIW, Sierra is no longer available.