My wife has a Mac laptop from 2015 running OS Sierra. How can we tell if it can run a newer Mac OS? When we run updates, it says fully updated. So I’d imagine we can’t but I thought I’d ask on her behalf.
Here’s one reliable table of OS support per device type and year. I think any 2015 should be able to go several versions past Sierra, so something might be wrong with the update checker.
From the Apple support site:
Looks like 2015 should be able to run Monterey. There’s also links for identifying exactly which model you have if that’s helpful.
Thank you both @cornchip and @ReptileHouse – this is exactly what I was looking for! Time to research the model number…
I looked at a few Apple support cases. If system update won’t provide you with the OS, you’ll be updating through the App Store. Here’s one Apple-recommended answer along those lines.
@tylertoo, how’s the quest going? I’m surprised the auto-update isn’t working for you, but @cornchip’s suggestion is a good one for reconciling.
I think auto update is working to the extent that we have the latest (last) version of Sierra. It is not trying to auto update to a more recent OS, however, and perhaps that’s because this laptop is too old. I haven’t had time to research that question, but will this weekend. Thanks for checking.
There are also unofficial patchers to go above what’s officially supported.
Thanks to the info provided by you folks on this thread I determined that the latest version of PhotoShop (which she needs) requires Big Sur. I then determined that Big Sur could be installed on my wife’s laptop (not so for any OS beyond that).
So, with that in mind, I backed up her laptop both to a cloud service (Backblaze) and to an external hard drive. Then I installed Big Sur. It took a few hours, but seemed to be installing fine, until it got to “Less than a minute remaining…”
It has remained stuck on that message for nearly an hour. I’ve googled this and plenty of people seem to have had this problem:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=big+sur+install+less+than+a+minute+remaining
I suppose at this point I should shut down the lappie and then try rebooting?
UPDATE : as soon as I posted this it started moving again… that message is gone and some further install is happening… fingers crossed!
Honestly, I’d let it run for a while, even overnight. Those estimates are… not super reliable. In particular, if you have a large amount of user data that needs to be migrated, that can take longer than the estimator knows how to handle.
edit: cross-post! Glad it’s rolling again. Sounds like things are working.
Thanks, I’ll be patient. Definite progress now!
Holy shit — success!
Thanks everyone, I should be good to go. So glad I didn’t reboot when it appeared to be hung.
Woohoo! Victory tastes sweet.