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Comment by Overtonwindow | Hacker News Reader

I have a Macbook that still runs Mavericks and I'm quite happy with it. I know it sounds conspiratorial but I've never been able to shake the forced obsolescence tag when it comes to Apple. I have a laptop. It works very well. I don't feel the need to upgrade or update the software, because I don't want to lose functionality that works really well for me.

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Anecdote time: I skipped Yosemite altogether (had a feeling it wasn't quite ready, and the discoveryd, wifi issues etc. had me vindicated), but El Capitan was really smooth (rose tinted glasses maybe, but I remember it beating my Snow Leopard experience) and Sierra has been great from point 0.

I can't say it's going to work for your Macbook, but if it has an SSD (or you can put one in it) I really recommend trying out 10.12.6. Revert to a backup if things go awry.

I'm really sensitive to graphics issues. You never know if it's a bug or your GPU is going out. I'm not touching HS for a while.

Thank you for your suggestion. My next upgrade will be an SSD. With 8 gigs of memory it runs surprisingly well for a 5yo laptop :-)

El Capitan here on a Mac that won't install anything higher, everything still runs great

Same here. Though El Capitan is the end of the (official) line for me (mid-2009 15" MBP). As its EOL is next year, I'll probably then install ubuntu.

I must say that I'm quite pleased that Apple still support a >8 year old machine. At least with software anyway -- asking at an Apple store last year about a replacement battery did not result in success!

On the same machine here. Still chugging along. Grab a battery from OWC/Macsales.com

The same, my rMBP still runs Mavericks and still looks beautiful (unlike the OK look of post-Mavericks OS X). My hackintoshes run El Captain/Sierra though and iOS is up to date.

Then you are missing years of security patches. Your call there but... seems like a risk

Which is better: vulnerable and usable or less vulnerable and less usable?

There's one element there that might be missing: Vigilance. Vulnerable, sure, but with great care it can be managed.

I do update the security updates. Some years ago apple decoupled those from the OS updates.

My mid 2013 MBA has gone through multiple upgrades and now running High Sierra. It has i3 Core and 4GB of ram. I was afraid with each upgrade that it would run like crap. I'm pleasantly surprised that it runs HS without any perceivable drop in performance

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