Some early Intel Macs released in 2006 are stuck with Snow Leopard (10.6), which hasn’t received security updates since the release of Mavericks three years ago.īeing stuck on an old version of macOS is not something you can safely ignore.įor one thing, running an old operating system means you won’t receive critical security updates from Apple. Some Mac models, such as 20 iMacs, are being left behind with El Capitan as their maximum OS version.Ĭertain older Mac models are still limited to Lion (10.7), which has not been getting security patches since Yosemite was released two years ago. In other words, just because your Mac was compatible with El Capitan (OS X 10.11), Yosemite (10.10), Mavericks (10.9), or Mountain Lion (10.8) may not necessarily mean that you’ll be able to upgrade to Sierra. With the release of Sierra, Apple decided to drop support for some Mac models that were supported by several previous releases of the Mac operating system. High Sierra’s system requirements are the same, except that High Sierra now requires 14.3 GB of available disk space, and a minimum of OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) to do a direct-upgrade installation.Īpple recently released a new version of its Mac operating system, macOS Sierra (version 10.12). Note: Although this article was written for macOS Sierra (10.12), much of it still applies to macOS High Sierra (10.13) which was released in September 2017. Apple + How To + Recommended What to Do if Your Mac Can’t Run macOS Sierra

Os x yosemite vs el capitan vs sierra