Okay, let me tell you about my experience moving over to macOS Sierra. This was back around late 2016, maybe early 2017. My old MacBook Pro, the one I had used for ages, was starting to feel a bit slow on El Capitan. Plus, Apple kept pushing Sierra, talking about Siri on the Mac, which sounded kinda cool, maybe useful. So, I decided it was time to make the jump.
Getting Ready – The Backup Dance
First thing’s first, always. Backup everything! Seriously, don’t skip this. I learned that lesson the hard way a long time ago. So, I grabbed my external hard drive, plugged it in, and fired up Time Machine. I just let it run, took a few hours, maybe more. Didn’t want to risk losing any photos or old project files, you know? Better safe than sorry.
Downloading and Installing
Once the backup finished, I went straight to the App Store. Found macOS Sierra pretty easily, it was being featured everywhere. Hit that big ‘Download’ button. And then, the waiting game began. Those OS downloads were huge back then, took forever on my internet connection. Probably made a few cups of tea while watching the progress bar crawl.
Finally, it downloaded. Got the notification asking if I wanted to install. Took a deep breath, closed all my apps, and clicked ‘Install’. The machine rebooted, showed the Apple logo and that progress bar. You just sit there and watch it, hoping nothing goes wrong. It restarted a couple of times. There was one scary moment where the progress bar just stalled for like, five solid minutes. My stomach dropped, thought I’d messed it up. But then, suddenly, it lurched forward and kept going. Big relief!
First Look and Feel
After what felt like ages, but was probably under an hour, the new login screen popped up. Looked a bit different, cleaner maybe. Logged in, and boom, Sierra desktop. It felt pretty snappy compared to the old system, which was nice. The first thing I did? Tried out Siri. Clicked the icon in the Dock, asked it to open an app, tell me the weather. It was a bit clunky compared to Siri on the phone, but hey, it was new!
Spent the next hour just poking around. Checked out the new Photos app features, looked at the storage optimization stuff they added. Mostly, I just wanted to make sure my important stuff still worked.
Checking My Stuff
This was the important part. Had to see if the apps I relied on were okay. I opened up:
- My coding editor
- The photo management tool I used
- My browser with all the tabs
- A couple of old utility apps
Most things worked just fine. Found one or two little apps that acted weirdly, probably needed an update for Sierra. But the main things, the stuff I needed for daily work, they seemed stable enough. That was the main hurdle passed.
Was It Worth It?
Yeah, looking back, the Sierra upgrade was pretty smooth overall. A bit of waiting, a moment of panic during the install, but that’s kinda normal for big OS updates, right? Getting Siri on the desktop was novel, even if I didn’t end up using it that much. The system felt a bit faster, and it kept my old Mac feeling relevant for another year or two. So yeah, it was a decent step up at the time.
