Apple announced today that macOS High Sierra (10.13) will be released on September 25th. There are some potential issues with migrating to High Sierra, including the rare move—the last change was in 1998—to a new file system (APFS). In light of this, ISC continues to articulate a strategy for users of macOS 10.11 or earlier to download macOS 10.12 (Sierra) now if they have concerns about the upcoming macOS 10.13. If what’s past is prologue, they won’t be able to upgrade to anything but the newest operating system from the App Store shortly after High Sierra releases.
There are several approaches to this strategy:
- Individual users can download the current Sierra installer (10.12.6) and choose either to install it or just to keep it in their Applications folder.
- Support providers can store Sierra installers on jump drives and other storage devices.
Securing Sierra installers now ensures that University constituents can move to the “latest and greatest” version of macOS when it is appropriate for them, and not necessarily at the 13.0.0 or 13.0.1 releases. At the same time, Sierra is expected to remain supported and patched by Apple for about two years, allowing some flexibility going forward.