Apple Releases Eighth Beta of macOS Big Sur to Developers [Update: Public Beta Now Available]

[chrfr]

Anyone having an issue with Microsoft Teams, the notifications show a blank pop-up. Makes the notifcations somewhat useless.

Interestingly a co-worker on a 13" MBP isn't having the issue, I am on the MPB 16". Not sure if its a video card issue or what..

I've seen this happen before Big Sur if the "Disable GPU hardware acceleration" option was checked.

 

[skveezer]

Anyone able to unlock Mac with Apple Watch? still unable too in Beta 8

No problems incurred in any of the betas thru time.

 

[Sheppard]

How’s the battery life on this beta? Sold my 2017 MBP who would usually be my guinea pig! I’ve always found in recent years that there’s a notable improvement in battery life, the stability of transitions/effects are much cleaner in the same release. Must be how the graphics are handled more effectively.

 

[teagh12]

Beta 8 seems very unstable. The Teams notification issue, very sluggish performance on a new Macbook Air. Went back to 20A5364e

 

[strangeengine]

My 2018 13" MBP had "Service Battery" under Catalina but Battery Condition: Normal under Big Sur PB.

Wonder what they are measuring differently.

 

[atomic.flip]

Can someone with a MBP 16 with the i9 report back if Big Sur resolves the iGPU issues where everything just stutters and lags when not using the dGPU? I had the base MBP 16 (i9, 16GB of RAM, 5500m 4GB GPU) and found it very frustrating to use when not using the dGPU only and leaving MacOS to decide which GPU to use. That led me to cancel my order for a fully spec'd out MBP 16 with the 5600m GPU because the issues would still persist if I were to use the iGPU.

Just trying to see if Big Sur changed the way the iGPU is throttled up/down.

Thanks!

were you having this problem exclusively with beta 7 or other versions of the OS?

I noticed a significant graphical performance impact on 7 that was not present in any prior builds. I’m hoping that 8 addresses this.

And I’ve tested this on two fully loaded 16” i9s (with the latest top shelf AMD card).

Oddly in my case performance suffers in dGPU mode as well. Idk

 

[mariusfanu]

Wonder if Apple will also give 1 day notice for macOS to be released, to freak developers 😅

 

[jeffjank33]

I've seen this happen before Big Sur if the "Disable GPU hardware acceleration" option was checked.

Damn, was hoping I had it checked.. I dont have it checked. I just got a new 4K monitor and upgraded to beta 8 on the same day. So not sure if its one or the other or neither or both causing the issue.

I didn't have the Disable GPU checked though.. Thanks though, this gives me ideas to try to continue to troubleshoot.

 

[jeffjank33]

Are you both on the same version of MS Teams?

good question, trying to find out. but it could also be me on an external monitor and given he's on a 13" mbp.. thinking it could be the discrete graphics causing the issue..

 

[jeffjank33]

were you having this problem exclusively with beta 7 or other versions of the OS?

I noticed a significant graphical performance impact on 7 that was not present in any prior builds. I’m hoping that 8 addresses this.

And I’ve tested this on two fully loaded 16” i9s (with the latest top shelf AMD card).

Oddly in my case performance suffers in dGPU mode as well. Idk

Interesting.. I had some video conferences via Teams last week on beta 7, and the video kept freezing at times. The audio kept going by both my video and the other persons stopped.

 

[sdf]

Pretty sure it's a 50% bonus.

I can't find the original, but if so that's one of the worst summaries I've seen on MacRumors.

 

[brianbwords]

Is anyone else having issues with Zoom taking almost 100% CPU usage after using a virtual background for maybe 3-5 minutes? It brings my computer to a screeching halt the longer I keep doing a virtual background. It's almost as though it keeps processing the same thing in a series of loops until the computer can't handle it. Once I turn it off, my computer is fine.

I tried reinstalling Zoom, removing its preferences, plists, and other hidden files related to Zoom, etc. I even tried downgrading. This issue didn't happen until Big Sur and when Zoom added the Filters. I also tried disabling the Filters feature in Zoom global preferences. I also submitted this to the Feedback Assistant, but Apple hasn't picked it up as an issue, hence why I'm seeing what others think here.

For a reference, I'm on a MacBook Pro 13in 2Ghz i5 10th generation with 32GB of RAM. I would think this is sufficient to run with virtual backgrounds without a problem. Am I wrong? Are virtual backgrounds really that resource intensive, now? Any ideas to help or things to check? Kind of frustrated to not be able to use this feature anymore. Thank you in advance for any suggestions/help or perspective on this.

 

[dumiku]

If i download and install the beta do i need to do anything different when the final general release gets released ? Like remove myself from the beta program ?

Nope but, You will still receive the subsequent beta updates like 11.1 beta 1, etc you can exit after installing the GM by following these steps Exit apple Beta Program

 

[dumiku]

Safari has been laggy for me on beta 7 and takes a while to launch especially when connected to the internet, I this beta address the issue as that my day to day browser and only use firefox for development

 

[strangeengine]

Time Machine backups are WAAAAAAAAY faster on Big Sur Public Beta than they ever were under Catalina. Nice.

So far this latest PB has been super stable for me.

 

[hagjohn]

Hey... my album art showed back up in Music app... well most of it. Artist pic is still missing.

 

[IAMDAVE1969]

Mcafee is dead with iOS 11 public beta 8, but everything else works awesome.

Super Solid release for me on a MacBook Pro 16". Worth downloading. Only issue was with McAfee due to Legacy Extension issues. Everything else works flawlessly for me.

 

[MacinMan]

Hey guys, got a question: I've been toying with the latest public beta on a late 2013 MBP 13" that iv'e dedicated as a test machine. I was curious if anyone has experienced the following:

If you zoom into the screen, and back out the intended magnification level isn't saved. So when zooming back in, it zooms in my at a less level of magnification. If I reboot, and turn zoom on, my saved level returns, but only for the first time. I'm still able to hit command+option -/+ to change it, but I'm used to the level staying set.

Beyond this everything else seems to have ironed out. FYI, this only seems to have happened with one of the latest betas, it wasn't a problem initially.

Beyond this, everything else seems to work, I haven't tried Fusion 12 on this machine though, but people have said it works in beta 8, which I assume this PB is equivalent to.

If someone could please provide some feedback, that would be great!.

 

[projecthelloworld]

Beta 8 unstable, cannot run avd on Android Studio and can't read external storage on emulator

 

[sdf]

Beta 8 unstable, cannot run avd on Android Studio and can't read external storage on emulator

That's not "unstable," that's Android Studio defaulting to a feature Big Sur doesn't support (nested virtualization, I believe). It's probably on Android Studio to update.