Apple Releases macOS 12 Monterey with iOS 15.1, iPadOS 15.1, watchOS 8.1, tvOS 15.1, and HomePod Software 15.1

Maybe so…but at least in my case the firmware update didn’t come along with Monterey…it was with Big Sur somewhere along the line…so when I installed the original SSD back in the MBP while waiting on OWC to send me the replacement one (did the install via Recovery) it was installed then so Monterey didn’t complain.

1 TB drive
2.3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5
8 GB 2133 MHz DDR4
2 Memory slots with 4GB in each

It is slow to launch apps. I do not use any apps that require processing grunt so probably upgrading RAM is pointless.

So that would make it an iMac18,1 (21.5-inch, 2017) that cannot be upgraded with additional RAM by the user. Slow to launch apps is a sign of low RAM, but using apps that don’t “require processing grunt” has practically nothing to do with RAM. That would be something your 2.3GHz CPU would effect. Is that 1TB drive an HDD or Fusion Drive? Those are also limiting factors. And I still don’t know what macOS you are currently running, so can’t really predict what moving to Monterey would cause.

The way to judge whether you currently have enough RAM is to open Activity Monitor for a bit to the Memory tab and observe the MEMORY PRESSURE gauge in the lower left corner for a time while you are using your Mac in a normal manner. If it stays green most of the time, then you are alright. If it spends most of the time in the RED, you don’t have enough RAM. And since you can’t upgrade that model, it would probably be worse under Monterey, but there may be others factors that would favor an upgrade, such as running an unsupported macOS (Mojave and earlier).

I bet you have a HDD or Fusion drive. Slow app launch is usually related to that. If you really want to hold on to that 2017 iMac, get a NVMe SSD and put it in a serious TB case. Use that as a boot drive. That will speed things up considerably, espeically if you also upgrade to 16 GB RAM. That’s not a cheap build out, but it will get the job done. Again, really only if you need to hang on to that iMac. Personally, I’d save all that money and instead put it towards a new M1-based iMac (Pro).

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I checked the activity monitor and it was showing a small amount of green which increased when I switched Firefox off. I have a HDD and am running the latest version of Big Sur. I don’t do anything like video or photo editing, am not a gamer so essentially use my computers for internet, word processing etc. From what you seem to be indicating it probably would not be advantageous to upgrade to Monterey taking into consideration the RAM limitations I have.
I do not want to spend money on upgrading the computer and would prefer to put money to buying something more sophisticated a year or so down the track.

Anyway thanks for your responses, greatly appreciated!

Your suggestion about saving my dough and putting it towards a new machine in the not too distant future is a sound one. The computer does essentially what I need at present and I have just purchased a new iPad which I am using in conjunction with the iMac.
Regards

Now that I know that, I would say your probably OK to upgrade to Monterey, but I wouldn’t do it quite yet. Give it some time for others who have similar setups and use to jump in and report back. I anticipate that Monterey may well end up being more stable than Big Sur has been and might give you a feature or two that you will find useful.

Apple has released tvOS 15.1.1 without any release notes.

That’s always been my opinion. Early adoption of any major release should only be done on sacrificial computers - that is, those where you can afford to take the time to fix problems that may occur. If it’s a computer you need every day and can’t afford to be without, then wait and learn from everybody else’s experience.

Regarding Monterey, some reasons for waiting, include:

We don’t yet know the cause of these problems, nor do we know how widespread they are. But I’m certain that if you wait a few weeks, we will know and if they are due to OS/installer bugs, Apple will release updates.

Or as I’m fond of saying: Let’s see how it scrambles your molecules first:

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It is worth reading the comments on that Macrumours article. People are reporting problems with Homekit after the tvOS 15 update and neither 15.1 nor 15.1.1 have fixed it.
As it happens I disabled my ATV as a Homekit hub a while ago. A Homepod acts as the hub so I never encountered problems with tvOS 15.

Release notes can be found here: About Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD software updates - Apple Support.

I can’t tell from the complaints what macOS they are updating from, but most all of the bricked Macs I’m familiar with were updating from Mojave or Catalina and some smart Enterprise IT’s figured out why. Apple believes that they now know the root cause and will be fixing things in a future Monterey version update. They reportedly were not able to react in time to include it with 12.0.1 or 11.6.1.

I suspect that most, if not all of the quoted users would not have bricked their Macs if they had simply waited for a black screen to go away and allow the update to continue, but they hit the power-off button, instead. Some have reported such delays taking an hour or so.

There have been a very few users report of different issues with updates from Big Sur, but at this time they don’t appear to be the same issue.

… as I would expect. Hence my advice to wait and see. For now, I think waiting for 12.0.2 (or 12.1, however they plan on numbering it) would be good advice.

Nothing about Monterey in this respect is any different than in past major macOS updates. It’s prudent to wait until at least the update to the update, so typically something like 12.1.1.

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Thanks for the reminder to be patient.
While I had no troubles installing Monterey Betas,
I can easily imagine being tempted to fiddle with keys when it appeared to be stalled, or simply checking in on progress. I also installed on a separate partition, I don’t know if that would have been a protection factor on this issue.

On a slightly different aspect: IMHO, I would prefer Apple separate, if possible, Firmware upgrades from whole-system installs.
I would be more comfortable following the strategy: Before upgrading to Mac OS X-ity-X Please install Firmware v. xyz. make sure not to power off during firmware updating

Mac OS installs now, routinely engage in numerous iterations of pauses, restarts and long stints of Black Screen

My wife and I recently updated our iPhone 12 minis and iPad minis (5th gen) from iOS/iPadOS 15.0 to 15.1, and so far we have not noticed any issues. One welcome improvement though is that our recurring wifi connectivity problem appears to have been sorted. Previously, our devices would spontaneously lose the connection after a few hours and refuse to reconnect until I had rebooted the BT mesh system providing the network.

I note that 15.1 is said to fix the bug, “Wi-Fi networks not being detected”, but in our case the devices detected the network but refused to connect. Either way, I’m glad our problem has apparently been solved; rebooting the network at least once a day was getting tedious!

I’m also a simple end user. I’m keeping 14.8.1 and waiting to see what the verdict will be 15.1.

Hey MM Talker, My friend told me that the iphone update was easy. I did try it going from 14.8.1. No problem. Took about an hour. I like one device updated if possible.

Both of my iOS devices (iPhone 13 mini and 7th gen iPod Touch) are running the latest iOS (15.1). Installation took a bit of time (much longer on the iPod than on the phone), but it all just worked for me.

Thanks, Hester and Shamimo! I’ll start the upgrades beforeI go to sleep tonight.