Apple Seeds Fifth Beta of macOS Big Sur 11.3 to Developers [Update: Public Beta Available]

[posguy99]

So, still no reason to bother with Big Sur, then. Good. Will be interesting to see how much more they screw things up for WWDC.

 

[SFjohn]

It’s a good fix to the previous beta where all drop down menus everywhere (in dark mode) were blank.

 

[tywebb13]

For many hours that was the build number. I got this on one mac. But many hours later I installed it onto another mac and the build is now 20E5217a. I think that was the intended build number. I think it is a mistake on apple's part - but not a serious one. I think there has been a re-release with the correct build number (unless they are now randomly releasing 2 slightly different simultaneous betas - but that is unlikely).

I think that there is going to be no major difference between 20E217a and 20E5217a and so won't bother trying to "update" the mac with 20E217a to 20E5217a.

However there will probably soon be a full installer. There isn't one yet. There hasn't always been - so don't be too hopeful. Nevertheless apple are getting much better at providing full installers for betas lately.

So going forward the build to look for for the full installer will be 20E5217a, not 20E217a - if there is going to be one.View attachment 1748456

Indeed there is now a full installer for 20E5217a (not 20E217a):

 

[srbNYC]

Has anyone noticed anything really new or fixed in this beta? No one has said anything about the software. I'm using it, everything seems fine—although I still have the bugs I've had (e.g., f4, f5, and f6 still don't activate Spotlight, dictation, and DND).

Is there ever a "Bug Fixes, Changes, and Improvements" thread for MacOS as there always is for iOS?

 

[hagar]

I must be missing why you aren't still running Catalina.

Because for 16 years I upgraded to the latest version of macOS without any issues. So I also upgraded this year not knowing Apple dropped the ball this time. Yes, I can downgrade, but I haven’t found that time yet.

 

[theapplehead]

How is this beta performing compared to Catalina? Is performance anywhere as good yet or should I wait till 11.4?

 

[swrobel]

Indeed there is now a full installer for 20E5217a (not 20E217a):

View attachment 1748833

How do I get the full installer? Not sure where that screenshot is from...

Edit: found it: MDS (Mac Deploy Stick)

 

[tywebb13]

How do I get the full installer? Not sure where that screenshot is from...

Edit: found it: MDS (Mac Deploy Stick)

Not quite.

Yes it is from MDS - but not from that link. That's the official one. But I used a beta of MDS which seems to do a better job with mac os betas. You can get the betas of MDS here: https://bitbucket.org/twocanoes/macdeploystick/downloads/