upgrade to Sierra?

[minibill]

I am running El Capitan on my Mac-mini. Would like to upgrade to Sierra but can't find it anymore in the Apple store. Only High Sierra. Is it too late to go to Sierra? Not interested in High Sierra at this time. I'am too new to Apple to make that jump. A search brings up High Sierra all the time.

 

[chscag]

Your Mini can run High Sierra without a problem. What's wrong with upgrading to that? And yes... Sierra is no longer available from the Mac App Store.

 

[Slydude]

Recently Apple began a somewhat annoying policy. When a new OS is released previous versions are removed from the App Store unless they have already been downloaded. Your Mini should run High Sierra OK. I don't think you will be shocked by the transition. Here is what I would do.

1. Make sure that you have a bootable clone of your current setup. I recommend either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper. Demos are available for both apps so choose the one you prefer. Boot from the clone to make sure things are working. A Time Machine backup will also work.

2. Download and install High Sierra and try it. If you do not like it you would be able to boot from your clone and return to El Capitan.

 

[iluvatar1981]

macOS Sierra is still available. You can find it here

 

[badshoehabit]

High Sierra is just a tweaked version of Sierra. Haven't noticed any difference in day-to-day running.

 

[toMACsh]

I'm still waiting for the pixels to settle. Maybe .3 when it's out of beta, or maybe .4 will be the one.

 

[MacInWin]

I'm running HS, and I think it is a tick faster than Sierra, but then my MBP has an SSD so the APFS may be the reason.

 

[Slydude]

APFS was a good bit faster on many tasks but I'm still on HFS+ until they resolve the issue of APFS not being fully supported on fusion drives.

@toMACsh What kinds of things are you waiting to settle? If Apple follows the pattern that they have recently bets will continue until shortly before the next OS is released.

 

[minibill]

macOS Sierra is still available. You can find it here

Thanks for the link. Looks like what I was looking for.

 

[minibill]

APFS was a good bit faster on many tasks but I'm still on HFS+ until they resolve the issue of APFS not being fully supported on fusion drives.

Sorry, I don't know what APFS and HFS+ mean.

 

[MacInWin]

APFS is the new Apple File system and HFS+ is the older apple file system. It is how the drive is organized for efficiency. APFS is tuned for SSDs, HFS+ was older and tuned for spinner hard drives. But High Sierra, although implementing APFS on SSD drives, works with spinner HFS+ drives just fine.

 

[minibill]

APFS is the new Apple File system and HFS+ is the older apple file system. It is how the drive is organized for efficiency. APFS is tuned for SSDs, HFS+ was older and tuned for spinner hard drives. But High Sierra, although implementing APFS on SSD drives, works with spinner HFS+ drives just fine.

Thanks!

 

[toMACsh]

@toMACsh What kinds of things are you waiting to settle? If Apple follows the pattern that they have recently bets will continue until shortly before the next OS is released.

That would be the number of threads here and on MacRumours reporting problems with HS.

 

[Slydude]

I've run HS from the first public beta all the way through the current release. I did skip the initial final release because I did not have time to revert my fusion drive to HFS+. I've not had nearly the number of problems that some have reported. I did report a couple of bugs in the early stages. I don't remember what they were but I think the problems were cosmetic.

I think a lot of the problems have related to confusion about various aspects of making the transition to APFS.

 

[MacInWin]

+1 to what Sly said. I moved to HS about a week after it came out, have had no problems. And like him, most of the threads I have read about problems have to do with confusion over AFPS. From my perspective, AFPS has improved the performance of my SSD and MBP. Unlike him, I haven't noticed any bugs, cosmetic or otherwise.

 

[Slydude]

The bugs I noticed were in the earliest public beta. After that the only problems I had seem to be tied to APFS not being supported on Fusion drives.

 

[badshoehabit]

I waited until the end of November. No issues.

 

[toMACsh]

I think a lot of the problems have related to confusion about various aspects of making the transition to APFS.

Ok, here's some info about my Mac:

Mac mini (Late 2014) 2.6 GHz Intel Core i5

Macintosh HD:

Available: 921.63 GB (921,626,820,608 bytes)
Capacity: 980.31 GB (980,311,449,600 bytes)
Mount Point: /
File System: Journaled HFS+
Writable: Yes
Ignore Ownership: No
BSD Name: disk1
Volume UUID: C15ECEE1-39D7-3B89-9A72-74F9DE6CAE8E

Does the fact that it says the file system is HFS+ mean that I will have issues with HS and AFPS?

 

[chscag]

Does the fact that it says the file system is HFS+ mean that I will have issues with HS and AFPS?

No, not at all. (Excuse the double negative.) The hard drive in your 2014 Mini is a spindle type drive which means that the update to High Sierra will not reformat it to APFS. There might be a time in the future where Apple will convert all drives to APFS but that will not likely happen this year. Apple will, however, issue an update to APFS so that Fusion drives can be reformatted to the new file system. At that time, Apple may allow spindle type drives to likewise be reformatted to APFS as an option.

Of course all of the above is speculation since no one really knows what or when Apple will do something. It should be noted that if your Mac has pure flash storage (SSD or Fast PCIe) it will be converted to APFS. Of that there is no choice. Also, all iOS devices that run iOS 10 or later have already been converted to APFS.

 

[toMACsh]

Well I made the leap to High Sierra. It took a long time, had me nervous. Installation probably took longer than downloading. But, I've opened a file, edited it, and saved it. All seems well so far...