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Anyone on Catalina today planning to skip Big Sur upgrade?

C

cfm56d7b

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 14, 2020
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My 2020 MBPro 13" 16 Gb 2.3 Ghz has been rock solid with Catalina 10.15.7. My software is always up to date.

One of my favorite utilities is SuperDuper! for bootable, full volume backups. It does not work as explained in https://www.shirt-pocket.com/blog/. I hope Apple and utility vendors will find a satisfactory solution. Security which leads to zero productivity isn't security anymore.

I am inclined skip Big Sure upgrade all together. There are just far too many issues which - understandably - do not affect everyone's configuration but do not inspire confidence because many of these issues, even if minor, points to a lack of rigorous regression testing at Apple.

Anyone else skipping Big Sur upgrade?
 
I only have 2 machines on Catalina. The rest of my aging fleet of Macs I've left on High Sierra. Its very stable and have no slowdown or compatibility issues.
One machine was updated to Big Sur and I reverted it to Catalina after a weekend. Just too visually jarring for me.
In the summer, if the new 14 and 16" M1 MBPs come out, I'll be buying one of each which means I'll have to deal with big sur...
 
cfm56d7b said:
My 2020 MBPro 13" 16 Gb 2.3 Ghz has been rock solid with Catalina 10.15.7. My software is always up to date.

One of my favorite utilities is SuperDuper! for bootable, full volume backups. It does not work as explained in https://www.shirt-pocket.com/blog/. I hope Apple and utility vendors will find a satisfactory solution. Security which leads to zero productivity isn't security anymore.

I am inclined skip Big Sure upgrade all together. There are just far too many issues which - understandably - do not affect everyone's configuration but do not inspire confidence because many of these issues, even if minor, points to a lack of rigorous regression testing at Apple.

Anyone else skipping Big Sur upgrade?
Click to expand...
Wish I had. Upgrade to BigSur absolutely destroyed my mail setup.
 
I guess the question must be what you would be skipping it for - you would be betting that the next release would be significantly better in terms of stability , which you may not feel is the case if you have concerns about Apple testing quality now as the next release will be in dev now.
I'm holding off Big Sur as there's no features I need in that release and my personal experience of OS releases on older machines is that it's normally the software that tips you in to replacement rather than the hardware, so I'm leaving my perfectly functional 2017 machine alone.
 
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JonaM said:
I guess the question must be what you would be skipping it for - you would be betting that the next release would be significantly better in terms of stability , which you may not feel is the case if you have concerns about Apple testing quality now as the next release will be in dev now.
I'm holding off Big Sur as there's no features I need in that release and my personal experience of OS releases on older machines is that it's normally the software that tips you in to replacement rather than the hardware, so I'm leaving my perfectly functional 2017 machine alone.
Click to expand...
That's actually another concern. The pressure to deliver the next Mac OS by October 2021 will leave Big Sir in half baked state. We can only wait, assess, and decide at a later date.
 
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im staying on Mojave, then will downgrade to Mountain Lion when i feel  wont support my iPad anymore.
3 times a month i exchange ssds and use older scanners and printers for art work on the MacBook air while using MtLion and Snow leopard- which is very responsive and clean even today!
 
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I run Mojave on my 2017 iMac. I have no plans to change it to Big Sur (or Big Sure :p). Why? The biggest reason is I rely on several 32-bit programs. As well, my machine's current setup is stable and I don't want to make a lot of changes to my workflows because of Apple designers' whims.
 
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I’m staying on Mojave for as long as possible I have no reason to upgrade to Big Sur. The UI is simply just horrible to look at, and being forced to look at Wifi trying to connect when I don’t even use it, is just Apple having found a way to piss me off.

I might (I say might) upgrade to Catalina as I was forced to upgrade my work computer to Catalina, juts to keep thing aligned.

I installed Ubuntu Desktop on an old Macbook Air 11” and was pleased by the UI ... if only Adobe could figure out how to compile their stuff for Linux ....
 
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I think for my purposes, there is no reason to upgrade to Big Sur from Catalina. In the past I always have upgraded, but there maybe some compatibility issues with some of the odd ball apps I might still be using. Actually not sure, but if it's not broken, why fix it?
 
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I am on Catalina on my 2017 MBP. It works fine and has been stable. I initially upgraded to Big Sur early on and ran into some issues with bugs/compatibility and I didn't like how they changed the font rendering. I rolled back to Catalina and stayed.
 
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||\|| said:
I am skipping Catalina and Big Sur. My Intel Macs are staying on Mojave, unless Apple presents something astonishingly useful (unlikely). If you can't articulate a specific reason to update, don't.
Click to expand...
Here's one... security updates for Mojave are going to end soon.
 
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||\|| said:
I am not terribly concerned about that. Internet security is mostly user competency. The patches are nice, but not a necessity.
Click to expand...
Yes, remote execution vulnerabilities are certainly all about *user* competency. </sarcasm>
 
posguy99 said:
Yes, remote execution vulnerabilities are certainly all about *user* competency. </sarcasm>
Click to expand...
An up to date browser and common sense can block most security isssue anyways and a lot of it is fear mongering from dying anti virus companies preying on those who know no better. Plus there’s stuff like MRT and other built in technologies like SIP.

I have an UNPATCHED (but isolated) Windows XP VM connected to the internet for the last decade. Still waiting for my ~*VIRUS*~. Anytime now. Come on. where is it

Disclaimer: this is not to say being on older OS is ideal but when the new one glitches for your set of tasks, it’s not the end of the world to wait it out a bit
 
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Tried for three days to get room on my 128G Macbook pro to discover that Big Sur requires 32G or something. Maybe this is common knowledge and this has already been posted but:
www.macworld.co.uk

Don't bother trying to update to Big Sur if you have a 128GB Mac

Big Sur is too big - you'll need 35GB at least free to install it, good luck if you have a 128GB Mac
www.macworld.co.uk www.macworld.co.uk
Not what Steve Jobs would've OKed I don't think. What a mess for older and smaller MBP folks.
 
Would rather pole vault over Big Sur to Monterey on my 2013/2014 machines; BS still has bigtime problems with certain 4K / USB C setups and can still be considered a work in progress, even 11.4.

I believe that eventually Big Sur will achieve the level of stability that Catalina currently enjoys, but it's not going to do so until either 11.5 or 11.6. Whatever they did to the display stack that ****ed over Big Sur past 11.0.1 for 4K displays had better not be an issue in Monterey.

And as was mentioned earlier, I'm betting Apple won't resolve the worst of the issues in Big Sur anyway and just fold whatever fixes there need to be into Monterey.
 
Somewhat wish I'd stayed on Mojave until the end of it's security run, Big Sur has been noticeably more problematic on my 2015 MBP than any previous OS version. Mainly just minor glitches and annoyances, but it makes the software seem of poorer quality. I get that the computer is getting on a bit now, and I can't expect it to run as new, but even my brief stint on Catalina, which was meant to be the problematic one, just felt more like what I expect of a Mac than this.
 
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I'm also still on Catty... Although I hate how Apple makes it useless for an iOS dev. You have to use the newest Xcode to debug on a new iOS version.. and guess what the newest Xcode requires...yeah, right: Big Sur.

Big Sur just gives me ton of issues. Like every now and then, it doesn't detect my external screen in clamshell mode. Then I have to re-plug the TB3 dock. 2 our of 3 times it will cause it to kernel panic (some fault in the AMD GPU driver). Catty is at least stable enough to work with. Yeah it also has some issues. But at least it doesn't kernel panic for me and detects a display properly.

Or like that it sometimes ignores the color profile for the screen and just reverts back to the default one instead of the calibrated one.

And I'm not even talking about the awful design that makes everything hard to read and wastes a lot of screen space due to big borders and rounded corners.

I don't need a fancy OS. I need one that works. Reliably.
 
It's official for me. Will stay on Catalina, skip Big Sur and consider installing Monterey at .5 level at least.

Even Apple's quality engineering budgets are not big (Sur ...) enough. Apple will undoubtedly correct acute Big Sur problems in Monterey instead.
 
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