Hi, I own an iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015) with a 4GHz Quad-Core Intel i7 processor, 16GB of 1867 MHz DDR3 memory, and an AMD Radeon R9 M395X 4GB graphics card. It's currently running macOS Monterey Version 12.7.1. Despite the system's solid performance, matching its first day, I'm unable to find any software updates under the Software Update section. This limitation hinders not just the operating system's upgrade but also affects other applications' compatibility, such as MySQL Workbench, which demands a more recent OS version.
Is there a specific reason why my iMac can't be updated to newer macOS versions? More importantly, is there a workaround to this issue?
Your iMac’s identifier is iMac17,1. And you are right, the maximum level of Monterey that it is rated for is version 12.7.4. See if you can use Terminal (located in the Utilities folder, in case you didn’t know) with this command:
softwareupdate --list-full-installers
You should get a list of macOS installers, including…
* Title: macOS Monterey, Version: 12.7.4, Size: 12117810KiB, Build: 21H1123, Deferred: NO
If you indeed got this output, and it should be the first one on the list, enter this command,
sudo softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 12.7.4
Enter your admin password and press return. You should get the process feedback and when it’s done, you should find the installer file located in your Applications folder. I suggest restarting in Safe Mode (after making sure you have a fresh Time Machine back up). Launch the installer app after, I suggest making a copy to another location (for future use).
If you didn’t get any of these responses, see if you have some kind of firewall blocking network input, which could also explain why Software Update was not allowing you to perform a standard update procedure.
