Mac OS IMAGE

[BillG]

i am new to MACs. Recently laid off I am updating my skills since a lot of employers now ask for MAC skills. I have bought a 3 or 4 year old mac book pro....or older, not really old. Has High Sierra is running on it. so what i would like to know is:
1. where do you get Mac OS images from?
2. do you need a running MAC to get the image?
3. how to image a MAC

-thanks

 

[Lufbrarunner]

The latest MacOS (Big Sur) will be available on the app store. You can get an older MacOS from HERE

 

[sgage]

I have a mid-2014 MacBook Pro (originally with Mavericks), and though the hardware was nominally upgradable to Catalina, the experience was unacceptable - very high CPU usage and overheating, and very fast battery draw down. I would not even consider trying Big Sur. Other people have experienced various issues with various updates on various hardware, so you might want to poke around this forum and review some threads regarding update issues. I rolled back to High Sierra.

For what it's worth, I have found High Sierra to be the sweet spot for this machine. What year is yours? ('About this Mac' in the Apple menu) If you just want to practice/experience the upgrade process, maybe just take it up a version or two instead of going all the way to Big Sur. Also, Catalina and on do not support 32-bit applications, so if you have any, they will cease working.