Apple MacOS software (Big Sur)

[john new]

Has anyone else loaded Big Sur yet? 

 

I have updated my desktop Mac but not the laptop. Initial observations on the (Big) Mac are it may be running things slightly faster, which is good, however, conversely it has radically  changed the look and feel of my desktop, but not in a good way for me as the default is garish colours etc..

 

What are the supposed technical benefits?

Edited November 16, 2020 by john new

[JJGraphics]

macOS 11 Big Sur brings an improvement to the performance of most Macs which can accept the installation, but user the actual experience will vary depending on the age, model and configuration of the machine.

 

My new Apple Silicon M1 MacBook Air (base specification) is significantly faster than my one year old Intel iMac which is well-specified with RAM, an SSD and a high-performance video card for my use with photography and graphics.  Both are running macOS 11 Big Sur.

 

You can change the colouring and appearance of the Big Sur interface significantly to suit your taste. You certainly don't have to have the garish default "wallpaper". I suggest that you spend a little time exploring the new System Preferences controls and I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

 

There are a lot of technical changes which will not be apparent to the average user, especially in the area of security but, in particular, the new OS paves the way for the transition from the current use of Intel processors to the new Apple M-series processors, which bring astonishing performance increases and greatly increased battery life to the Mac laptops.

 

John

[john new]

My initial annoyance is the change in things that don't need changing which worked well on the previous versions I have used dating back several years since I first used a Mac regullarly at Uni in 2013.  Yes, I can live with most of the cosmetic changes, but why do software houses do this? Example - the pop-up notification of a new email - it used to be one click to delete the known spam, now the delete button is inside options so two clicks to delete from there. Yes it is a trivial point, but an unnecessary change as what was there before worked well.

 

I wasted the first hour and a half this morning simply fixing things like screen sizes that worked fine yesterday (Catalina) but didn't today.  I will get used to it, but the cosmetic changes are a backward step. Luckily the job I am on currently was not urgent, mind you if it had been I wouldn't have risked a major update!

 

On a positive note though, speed better and the screen looks slightly sharper. Drawing a comparison to a car - as @JJGraphics said the technical side (the hidden engine) seems to be an improvement it is the bodywork they've regressed on.

 

Edited November 16, 2020 by john new
Typos corrected

[jonny777]

I'm still plodding on with my 10 year old MacBook Pro, which is not compatible with Big Sur. I feel disinclined to cough up the best part of £1500 for a new version which might be faster, but has no DVD drive for watching archive railway footage, no Firewire port for my film scanner, and has less storage space than my current machine, because of the switch to SSD from the internal HDD. 

 

I just hope my 'old faithful' has a few more years left in it. 

 

In the past I was very pro-Apple, until they started telling me what I didn't want in my laptop, which boiled down to what *they* didn't want to include in their race to create a computer as thin as a sheet of paper. My enthusiasm has dried up rapidly. 

 

 

[john new]

3 minutes ago, jonny777 said:

I'm still plodding on with my 10 year old MacBook Pro, which is not compatible with Big Sur. I feel disinclined to cough up the best part of £1500 for a new version which might be faster, but has no DVD drive for watching archive railway footage, no Firewire port for my film scanner, and has less storage space than my current machine, because of the switch to SSD from the internal HDD. 

 

I just hope my 'old faithful' has a few more years left in it. 

 

In the past I was very pro-Apple, until they started telling me what I didn't want in my laptop, which boiled down to what *they* didn't want to include in their race to create a computer as thin as a sheet of paper. My enthusiasm has dried up rapidly. 

 

 

 

Agree, Apple seemed to change direction a year or two ago - the old it just works aspect seemed to be dropped. 

[Oldddudders]

Downloading a 12GB update is a big issue when your Internet arrives on a roadside pole-route! It takes about 10 hours. I found the 2019 iMac swallowed installation easily, but the 2020 MacBook Pro (2.0 Ghz, 16GB, 512GB) seemed to have repeated indigestion. I quickly swapped the garish desktop for one akin to the former Catalina picture. I have yet to notice any real changes, other than trying to flog me some sort of music package. Safari still works fine, my 100+ GB of pics are still in the Cloud, and those are my main uses. 

[Guest]

37 minutes ago, jonny777 said:

 and has less storage space than my current machine, because of the switch to SSD from the internal HDD. 

 

The quite insane prices Apple charge for more storage on the non-upgradeable SSD is the reason I still have a 2012 Mac with a 1TB drive I fitted myself for £80 at the time.

[franciswilliamwebb]

Imagine my horror when I found my 1980s cassette tape drive isn’t supported 

[chris p bacon]

22 minutes ago, franciswilliamwebb said:

Imagine my horror when I found my 1980s cassette tape drive isn’t supported 

Your storage on the iShelf should be unlimited though....

 

I'm running High Sierra (still) and haven't seen anything about an upgrade. I always like to check first before agreeing to change. 

[Kylestrome]

I'm feeling like a dinosaur. I'm making my 2008 Mac Pro (El Capitan & Snow Leopard) and 2013 MacBook Air (Mojave) last until they die!

 

PS. It's nice to see some Guinea pigs early adopters on here.

Edited November 16, 2020 by Kylestrome

[jonny777]

My wife refuses to upgrade her iPhone, because she has just bought new earphones (cabled) for it, but all the most recent iPhones (7 upwards) don't have a socket, which means she would have to buy a wireless set. 

 

She seems completely unimpressed by the scramble to have as many camera lenses on the back of the phone as possible. 

[4630]

I'm holding off updating this time round.

 

Although my MacBook Pro is just over 3 years old and capable of supporting the latest OS, there have been reports from users with laptops of just a bit older vintage that have been 'bricked' following the upgrade - see link below.

 

I'm not prepared to take the risk when Catalina runs happily enough for me and all my existing software and drives are supported.

 

Subject to no major failure with my laptop, I imagine what will force the issue for me is when some of the other non-Apple software that I routinely use becomes  'Apple Silicon' only and 'Intel versions' are no longer supported by its developers.  Hopefully that'll be at least a couple of years away, but who knows.

 

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/15/macos-big-sur-update-bricking-some-macbook-pros/

 

 

Edited November 16, 2020 by 4630
To add a link.

[Tankerman]

14 minutes ago, jonny777 said:

My wife refuses to upgrade her iPhone, because she has just bought new earphones (cabled) for it, but all the most recent iPhones (7 upwards) don't have a socket, which means she would have to buy a wireless set. 

 

She seems completely unimpressed by the scramble to have as many camera lenses on the back of the phone as possible. 

 

You can get a very short adaptor lead which has a headphone socket on one end and the lightning  connector on the other.

 

[jonny777]

Thanks. I had no idea such items were available. I will convey this excellent information and see how things progress. 

[john new]

After spending most of today on the Mac compiling a very large Word document from individual files it is clear the new Big Sur has improved the speed of my desktop Mac and the screen display also seems sharper (on what was already good) as I posted earlier.

 

The downside is that I have yet to crack some of the niggling changes to formatting. I mentioned one earlier, another is that I have twin screens so my emails thro' Apple Mail are on screen 2.  Up until yesterday all worked fine, today when I open the email the header boxes disappear off the top of the screen. I am sure I will eventually find the setting that fixes that, but it is an example of the minor things that crop up with upgrades.

[JJGraphics]

3 hours ago, jonny777 said:

My wife refuses to upgrade her iPhone, because she has just bought new earphones (cabled) for it, but all the most recent iPhones (7 upwards) don't have a socket, which means she would have to buy a wireless set. 

 

She seems completely unimpressed by the scramble to have as many camera lenses on the back of the phone as possible. 

 

I have not seen many people with cabled headphones recently.

 

The current iPhones do have a socket, you just need an adaptor to connect the cabled headphones to the lightning port.

[JJGraphics]

3 hours ago, 4630 said:

what will force the issue for me is when some of the other non-Apple software that I routinely use becomes  'Apple Silicon' only and 'Intel versions' are no longer supported by its developers.  Hopefully that'll be at least a couple of years away, but who knows.

 

Some developers are good at supporting older software; some are not. I suspect that the ASi-only situation is at least three or maybe four years away.

 

[jonny777]

3 minutes ago, JJGraphics said:

 

I have not seen many people with cabled headphones recently.

 

 

Yes, well being completely out of date is one of SWMBO's favourite pastimes. I'm surprised she hasn't reverted to her Sony Walkman for listening to music. 

 

[Izzy]

Am I correct in thinking the latest iPhones to arrive now have remote charging and no sockets at all? 
 

Me, I’m annoyed that support for my iPod classic - which I still use daily as my music centre - was dropped from newer iTunes versions and you can’t run two different ones on the same machine, the latest being needed for my iPhone/iPad (iOS 14.1 currently).

 

Izzy

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, Izzy said:

Am I correct in thinking the latest iPhones to arrive now have remote charging and no sockets at all? 

 

They still have the Lightning port. Maybe the next one won't.

[JJGraphics]

6 hours ago, 30801 said:

 

The quite insane prices Apple charge for more storage on the non-upgradeable SSD is the reason I still have a 2012 Mac with a 1TB drive I fitted myself for £80 at the time.

 

Its a lot cheaper and perfectly effective to use a good-quality external SSD to expand your storage.

 

John

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, JJGraphics said:

 

Its a lot cheaper and perfectly effective to use a good-quality external SSD to expand your storage.

On a laptop?

Makes it a bit awkward to carry around.

[JJGraphics]

7 minutes ago, 30801 said:

On a laptop?

Makes it a bit awkward to carry around.

 

Modern SSDs are so small they can tuck into a pocket . . .

 

John

[Guest]

1 minute ago, JJGraphics said:

Modern SSDs are so small they can tuck into a pocket . . .

 

You are seriously suggesting an external USB drive as a practical proposition?

[Oldddudders]

USB 3.1. Which is really quite quick. And a Samsung T7 drive with up to 2TB storage - who needs more on the move? - weighs less than 60 grams, is 85 x 57 x7 mm. Much smaller than a fag packet.