According to MacWorld the update should be out for BigSur pretty soon: https://www.macworld.com/article/630407/macos-big-sur-11-6-6-security-updates.html
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Apple Fixed Two Actively Exploited Vulnerabilities in macOS 12.3.1 Monterey, But Hasn't Released Updates for Big Sur or Catalina
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It won't do. Apple need you to keep buying new computers every 5-6 years in order to fund the annual MacOS upgrades, which have been 'free'* since 2013
*I tend to look at it from the perspective that they're not free, you basically pre-pay for them when you buy a new machine. You essentially buy 5-6 years of upgrades and support.
I see no reason to believe that they will.
Exactly. Their software is free or cheap (in the case of e.g. Final Cut Pro) because it's subsidized through hardware purchases.
Personally, I preferred when their stuff came at a fee, but that's tricky to do in practice. People were extremely unhappy when iPod touch software updates were $10. Which I've always found silly. $10 for a major update to the entire OS? That doesn't seem very pricey.
Likewise, iWork used to be $79 (or $49, maybe?). Again, that was apparently too expensive for people to buy it, so instead, Apple subsidizes its development.
I'd much rather take Apple's approach of subsidizing through hardware than the far more common one these days: subsidizing through ads and PII.
That article is premature. 11.6.6 is in “release candidate“ status and will likely ship when 12.4 does.
I was one of the (rare?) customers happy to pay for the updates to both my OS and my apps. I didn't expect something for free like modern consumers do, and as a result of the change in focus IMO the solidity of recent releases of the OS and apps has suffered. Ten / fifteen years ago when we paid for OS upgrades we didn't need to wait for the third or fourth 'dot' patch before it was fundamentally usable.
Yup.
I don't think so, unless 12.4 is much further along than I expect. I suspect 12.4 is weeks out, whereas 11.6.6 is just days out.
But, agreed: that article makes quite a few assumptions. Maybe the author is confused because they're rolled into a beta program and the UI doesn't make it clear that it's not a final release (because it is an RC, i.e. intended to be identical to the final release).
I don't know if that's true, though. Tiger went all the way through 10.4.11, Snow Leopard through 10.6.8, etc. Maybe overall quality was better, and maybe longer release cycles were a cause of that, but I think it's very hard to quantify.
Yeah they still updated them, to fix odd bugs and introduce minor new features, but 10.4 and 10.6 fundamentally worked on launch. Some of the major headline features of MacOS12 weren't even working at launch. Apple even knew that in advance. That IMO is a half-finished product, that they couldn't have got away with launching back in the day when it all came on a CD or DVD.
The huge problem was the new Swift language because third parties had made Windows compilers to make an Mac version of their software, heck there was even an open source version for Linux users! Now here in 2022 we have many developers only use Windows machines to make software! Meanwhile Mac OS put out X-Code to help developers write OS X software compiler! That’s what I mean about so many Intel versions of software/shareware is Still Intel only versions! This is starting to rub me wrong toward these developers!
Mac users are a very tiny minority, except in certain specialist workspaces like audio, photography and video editing. When it was a ten minute job (ok not literally) for a developer to recompile a Windows app to run on a Mac in order to please, what, 10% of their potential clients, it wasn't a huge ask. Now it is.
Yea so as Linux or Windows user come to Mac site to complain all the time?
Indeed — in the world of physical software media, that wouldn't have been acceptable.
My interpretation is that the features announced at WWDC are increasingly a "roadmap" for the year to come. Many of them ship in the .0, but some of them are spread throughout the coming 12 months. I think the intent was to ship Universal Control a little sooner (it's still in beta, after all), but I also don't really think of that as a big issue. It would've been a much bigger issue if they had shipped it in fall with the .0, and then people would've found that it was buggy. Instead, they were conservative, delayed even the beta, and when the beta did arrive, still labeled it as such. People can try it, and in my personal experience, it already works quite well — but there are some minor glitches, still.
I don't really understand what you're saying here.
Swift is open-source. Xcode is not. However, the toolchain used by Xcode, including its compiler, largely is.
Windows isn't really relevant here. If you're gonna write a Mac app, you're probably gonna do it on a Mac, regardless of whether you write it in Objective-C or Swift. If you use Electron, sure, but then Objective-C or Swift makes no difference.
Also, what does any of this have to do with the article?
I wouldn't say those are very specialist.
Software development is another. 25% of all developers and 30% of professional developers primarily use macOS.
Even Linux users have the upper hand that their system runs on x86 processors (and ARM, and a truckload of others).
Agree re. coders. But I do think audio / photograph / video are pretty specialist. They're not what your average PC owner bought their computer for.
Right.
As far as people who buy their own desktops go, I would agree that Macs are quite niche.
A lot of Macs in professional use, though, really just use a bunch of web apps (some enterprise CRM and ERP) and cross-platform apps (Teams, Slack, Office). The architecture switch isn't a big deal there, but the price floor certainly is — if most of your staff can do with a $300 laptop, that's what your staff may end up getting, and Macs aren't an option. But if $1500 per seat is an option, then some will buy from Dell, and others will buy from Apple.
Big players like Epson, Canon, and Nikon have dropped official support for several of their high end products post-32-bit removal and they have no intention of updating them. There are alternatives like Silverfast which is a big MAYBE as it seems people are having issues with it on M1 and of course there is the very watered down Vuescan.
Printers? Grab a Windows machine and you're fine.
Good to see your plotter is working but for something a bit more technical, Windows is the way to go.
Do you have some kind of magic gift that can predict when a hardware manufacturer will go out of business, change focus, or simply decide to no longer support an old piece of equipment? Because I'm sure there are procurement specialists all over the globe who would pay you some very, very good money.
People, of course, don't habitually buy peripherals from companies that won't update their drivers. Not knowingly, anyway.
Because they offer really good hardware?
Let me ask you, why should any pro support your scanners and printers if they can’t be bothered to make 64-bit drivers?
Ok, so yeah, if you want to run abandoned hardware, Windows is the way to go.
I don’t mean this ironically, really - if backwards compatibility is important, you have this option. macOS is not for everyone.
But why should it fall on a computer manufacturer with a small slice of the market to support legacy peripherals from third-party companies at-large that can't, won't, or are not longer in business? With Apple you get 5 - 6 years of current OS support and usually more than a decade of core technology support. If you have device drivers that are breaking version to version and not surviving major updates, then I would question the vendor's commitment to the platform and to you as a customer. Apple gives every developer access to the tools and knowledge to move their stuff forward. Usually years before the current systems and libraries are deprecated. If these companies don't see a financial incentive in doing so, I don't see why the burden should fall on Apple.
any reason why my peripherals do not connect after updating my Mac mini?! Now I can't log into my computer.
With the release of macOS Monterey 12.3.1 on Thursday, March 31, Apple addressed two critical vulnerabilities that may have been actively exploited in the wild, but as Intego pointed out this week, Apple left macOS Big Sur and macOS Catalina users vulnerable.
The macOS Monterey 12.3.1 update fixed a pair of security flaws, including an AppleAVD issue that could allow an application to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges and an Intel Graphics Driver issue that could allow an application to read kernel memory. Apple said that it was aware of reports that these vulnerabilities "may have been actively exploited," aka there are attacks that use these specific security holes.
Apple often provides security updates for macOS Catalina and macOS Big Sur users alongside macOS Monterey updates to make sure that Mac users who continue to run older operating systems remain protected. Apple has not done so in this case, and there are no security fixes for macOS 11 Big Sur or macOS 10.15 Catalina.
macOS Big Sur and macOS Catalina are still being supported with updates for notable vulnerabilities, so it is not clear why security fixes have not been released. According to Intego, this is the first time that Apple has not released simultaneous security patches for Big Sur and Catalina alongside fixes provided for macOS Monterey.
Big Sur remains vulnerable to CVE-2022-22675 (the AppleAVD bug), while CVE-2022-22674 (an Intel Graphics Driver bug) likely impacts both Big Sur and Catalina, based on research conducted by Intego.
There are some Mac users who choose to remain on Big Sur or Catalina who could install Monterey to get security fixes, but other Mac users have older hardware that is not able to be updated to Monterey, and these users have no way to address the security flaws that are now publicized.
Intego estimates that around 35 percent of Macs in use today could be affected by one or both vulnerabilities, and Apple has not responded to the site's request for an update on when security fixes might come out for Big Sur and Catalina.
Article Link: Apple Fixed Two Actively Exploited Vulnerabilities in macOS 12.3.1 Monterey, But Hasn't Released Updates for Big Sur or Catalina
