Going to login window in 10.15.6 very slow - 2020 Intel MBP - upgrade to Big Sur?

[Quackington]

Hi everyone,

Last September I bought a 13" Intel MBP i7 with maxed out RAM. Prior to that, I was using an 11" MBA from 2011 on High Sierra (i7, 4GB RAM). Some things have been bothering me lately:

- is it normal for the newer MBP to have a much longer start-up time compared to my near 10-year-old MBA? My old MBA starts up much quicker than the MBP.
- when I click on my name on the top right of the menu bar to go to the login window (e.g. to switch users or just lock the machine), it takes anything like 6-8 seconds on the MBP to go there but on the only MBA it's literally 1-2 seconds (I'm not kidding).

It's not like I have a lot of things running when I'm going to the login window, and I don't have a whole lot installed at the moment (Office, Firefox, Filezilla and a few other apps).

I'm wondering if this may be related to Catalina and I should upgrade to Big Sur, or could there be other issues. Alternatively...it could be normal?

Also, I'm not one that usually upgrades to the new OS early on. Is there any reason I should consider keeping Catalina instead of moving to Big Sur yet? Any useful features etc. I might miss out on, e.g. removed from Big Sur? Would be good to know about things like any permission rights that Apple may have removed.

Thanks.

 

[cmaier]

Hi everyone,

Last September I bought a 13" Intel MBP i7 with maxed out RAM. Prior to that, I was using an 11" MBA from 2011 on High Sierra (i7, 4GB RAM). Some things have been bothering me lately:

- is it normal for the newer MBP to have a much longer start-up time compared to my near 10-year-old MBA? My old MBA starts up much quicker than the MBP.
- when I click on my name on the top right of the menu bar to go to the login window (e.g. to switch users or just lock the machine), it takes anything like 6-8 seconds on the MBP to go there but on the only MBA it's literally 1-2 seconds (I'm not kidding).

It's not like I have a lot of things running when I'm going to the login window, and I don't have a whole lot installed at the moment (Office, Firefox, Filezilla and a few other apps).

I'm wondering if this may be related to Catalina and I should upgrade to Big Sur, or could there be other issues. Alternatively...it could be normal?

Also, I'm not one that usually upgrades to the new OS early on. Is there any reason I should consider keeping Catalina instead of moving to Big Sur yet? Any useful features etc. I might miss out on, e.g. removed from Big Sur? Would be good to know about things like any permission rights that Apple may have removed.

Thanks.

I recommend Big Sur over Catalina - Big Sur fixes a bunch of stuff that Catalina broke (e.g. connecting to NAS drives, etc).

Not normal for that machine to take that long to start up.

 

[Quackington]

I recommend Big Sur over Catalina - Big Sur fixes a bunch of stuff that Catalina broke (e.g. connecting to NAS drives, etc).

Not normal for that machine to take that long to start up.

Thanks for responding. Any advice on downsides for upgrading, e.g. anything I might lose from moving from Catalina to Big Sur?

Edit: the other thing I'm concerned about is that I'm due to buy a printer soon, and concerned that since Big Sur is relatively new, the right drivers won't be available.

 

[cmaier]

Thanks for responding. Any advice on downsides for upgrading, e.g. anything I might lose from moving from Catalina to Big Sur?

Edit: the other thing I'm concerned about is that I'm due to buy a printer soon, and concerned that since Big Sur is relatively new, the right drivers won't be available.

I can‘t think of anything that was lost - I upgraded four machines to Big Sur and all that happened is that some things that were NOT working (e.g. random problems with itunes home sharing, NAS issues, etc.) work now.

Any Catalina print drivers should work fine in Big Sur.

 

[Quackington]

I can‘t think of anything that was lost - I upgraded four machines to Big Sur and all that happened is that some things that were NOT working (e.g. random problems with itunes home sharing, NAS issues, etc.) work now.

Any Catalina print drivers should work fine in Big Sur.

Thanks a lot. I'm doing a Time Machine back-up now and will then upgrade.