Although I had upgraded my Mac computer (a 2012 Macbook Pro, at the time) to OS 10.14 (Mojave) from 10.13 a few months after it was released in September, 2018, I did so out of trepidation over losing some software's functionality (such as the integrity of the GUI of Altiverb 7), and mainly for the sake of belated systemwide Dark Mode. When the battery in that computer exploded due to the summer heat in Texas, I migrated that system drive to a 2015 Macbook Pro (whose main benefit over the 2015 was the video RAM that would run the latest version of Photoshop). When that computer's battery exploded in the summer of 2022, I cloned its back-up drive to a 2017 iMac. Not only did I benefit from its larger screen, it had no volatile lithium cake to imperil its existence. (I've had three Macbooks die similarly, thanks to the sweatbox that my apartment is for three to four months out of each year.)
I make a point of buying Mac computers that are five or six years old, since their trailing-edge hardware is more economical, and feasibly so with the fact that I tend to "upgrade" the operating system when it becomes absolutely warranted to do so and I stand to deprecate as little software as possible in the process. Yesterday, it became apparent that I should crank the OS up to 13, named "Ventura." The decision was practically made for me as I realized that some significant software that I use has been updated to include some significant new features that I should employ, and after weighing this against the tolerably-minimal collateral damage of deprecated software. Altiverb 7 didn't make the cut, this time. The king of reverb plug-ins – I just seldom ever have used it.
My iMac and the Macbook Pro that I'd gotten for free (long story) are both 2017 models, the oldest on which Ventura will run, so I figured that I should stay ahead of the curve while on the trailing edge, since developers probably won't be bothering to code for both Intel and Silicon (or is it "ARM?") processors for much longer. I'd been through such a transition not long after I'd started using Macs, when the migration from PowerPC to Intel was underway. The years-long, vaguely-gradual transition from 32-bit to 64-bit software effectively ended with or after Mojave. This is an inevitability whose impact I've learned to gracefully mitigate. It's time to pivot my future strategy toward an used M1 Mac in a few years, when they're cheap and still have a few years of viability left in them.
As for the Ventura OS itself, I surprisingly appreciate the "iPhone-y" interface of the System Settings, which is a huge improvement over the long-archaic controls as I'd known them in Mojave. The performance of the OS is refreshingly zippy on my relatively-old computer. I like that I can customize the outline of the cursor from white, which gets lost on a page or in the UI of some applications, to my preference ("hazard" yellow). The update of the OS meant that I could update Logic Pro X to its most recent version, which has some interesting new loops, instruments and effects included. The design of the control bar across the top of the new LPX looks stupid and is harder to relate to; if they were going to render the controls "flat," they could at least enable the user to adjust the weight of their outlines. Overall, though, the timing of this change seemed right, and it feels like an advancement for me.