Simply speaking - are you enjoying Big Sur?

[dogslobber]

I wouldn’t feel sorry. If your system is too old to support Big Sur, it might not run well on that hardware to begin with. It’s a tricky game, designing software that supports old and new hardware. At some point in time, support for older hardware, slower CPUs and GPUs and systems with far less RAM than we use nowadays has to be sacrificed. Of course, there are people who still try...

Systems from over 10 years ago run Big Sur fine. Apple simply forces obsolence arbitrarily so that it no longer works on certain classes of machine. That practice is reprehensible.

 

[nickdalzell1]

I beg to differ. When I installed High Sierra on my 2012 MBP, it ended up lagging and eventually the hard disk self destructed. The only time I ever saw a kernel panic other than on a botched Linux install attempt. It obviously couldn't handle it despite being supported (albeit on its last release)

I think it would have served customers better had Apple cut support earlier than they do, given all the complaints of iOS 7 on iPhone 4's, among others.

 

[Cyprusian]

I beg to differ. When I installed High Sierra on my 2012 MBP, it ended up lagging and eventually the hard disk self destructed. The only time I ever saw a kernel panic other than on a botched Linux install attempt. It obviously couldn't handle it despite being supported (albeit on its last release)

I think it would have served customers better had Apple cut support earlier than they do, given all the complaints of iOS 7 on iPhone 4's, among others.

I beg to differ too .... High Sierra runs perfectly on my late 2009 27" Core 2 Duo iMac - albeit with a 1TB SSD in lieu of the original HDD. I upgraded the original 4GB of RAM to 8GB just after I bought the machine in early 2010, then a few months ago I pushed up the RAM to 16GB just for the heck of it (it was cheap), not because I needed to.

I also have a mid 2014 13" Retina Core i5 MBP with 8GB RAM and 512GB SSD, which runs Catalina issue-free, so I think I'm in a good position to ride out the inevitable transition bumps with my old Macs during the initial releases of new Apple Silicon powered Macs over the next couple of years.

 

[nobackup]

Systems from over 10 years ago run Big Sur fine. Apple simply forces obsolence arbitrarily so that it no longer works on certain classes of machine. That practice is reprehensible.

Wow 10 Years .. and complaining ... try any other product .. dropped after 2 years .. Apple really does well in supporting nothing can be said ... look at M$, Google or any other Supplier ...

 

[billgr0248]

Sorry...but yes...much more so than the previous beta (10). 2017 MBP 2.9 I7 15"/16Gb/1Tb SSD

 

[dogslobber]

Wow 10 Years .. and complaining ... try any other product .. dropped after 2 years .. Apple really does well in supporting nothing can be said ... look at M$, Google or any other Supplier ...

That’s not the point. There’s no justification for neutering perfectly capable machines. Windows 10 works on these older machines while hackers easily manage to get new OS versions to run. This is a shameful practice.

 

[planteater]

I can’t get past the thick menu bars and spacing that is too wide. The lack of contrast is annoying. The icons are too iOS for me.

 

[nobackup]

That’s not the point. There’s no justification for neutering perfectly capable machines. Windows 10 works on these older machines while hackers easily manage to get new OS versions to run. This is a shameful practice.

So hackers are your measure of needs to be ... well there is a separate thread here just for that ... and im sure that these old devices still operate on the last "Officially" support OS really well ... I'm pissed off that my 2001 iMac PowerPc can't run 10.9 but that's another story .. and nothing shameful in it at all !

 

[Hunter5117]

That’s not the point. There’s no justification for neutering perfectly capable machines. Windows 10 works on these older machines while hackers easily manage to get new OS versions to run. This is a shameful practice.

Not shameful or wrong. If supported then Apple has to provide resources and staff who keep current on those old machines possibly at the option of less support on the new systems. Perfectly reasonable to remove them from the list even if the community figures out how to get around the restrictions and keep them running. I hated pulling my 2012 cMP from being my daily driver, but continued compatibility with my 16" MBP and my iPad Pros was more important than relying on a hack to keep it running.

 

[nobackup]

Not shameful or wrong. If supported then Apple has to provide resources and staff who keep current on those old machines possibly at the option of less support on the new systems. Perfectly reasonable to remove them from the list even if the community figures out how to get around the restrictions and keep them running. I hated pulling my 2012 cMP from being my daily driver, but continued compatibility with my 16" MBP and my iPad Pros was more important than relying on a hack to keep it running.

Well said

 

[richmond62]

Frankly: I installed the first public beta and the machine seems neither better nor worse: all slightly disappointing really.

 

[nickdalzell1]

I stand by my position. They should cut support earlier. Windows 10 can run on a single-core WinXP system from 2008. I said run but not run well.

I am not satisfied with running updated releases if it makes the experience horrible. Does anyone think an iPhone 4 running iOS 7 was a good idea? It lagged like crazy.

My current 2019 MBP will likely never see an update beyond Big Sur (by my own choice) after the experiences I had with later versions of Mac OS on my 2012 unit. It ran perfectly on Mountain Lion, but Mavericks slowed logins down, Yosemite overall performance was reduced, it ran hotter, and Sierra it required daily reboots because it'd freeze and beachball. High Sierra up and ate the hard disk.

 

[andyngo]

Anxiously waiting for PB5. Spotlight and Alfred decided to stop working in PB4, tried rebuilding file index but it doesn't seem to be working.

So weird.

 

[Hunter5117]

y current 2019 MBP will likely never see an update beyond Big Sur (by my own choice) after the experiences I had with later versions of Mac OS on my 2012 unit. It ran perfectly on Mountain Lion, but Mavericks slowed logins down, Yosemite overall performance was reduced, it ran hotter, and Sierra it required daily reboots because it'd freeze and beachball. High Sierra up and ate the hard disk.

That seems to be very unusual experience vs the community at large. My late 2013 MBP ran very nicely with all the updates including Catalina, I have not had any of the slowdowns or issues mentioned. Since I now have a 16" MBP for my main laptop, I updated the 2013 with Big Sur and it is basically running fine, a couple of apps crash now and then so I will wait for the full release before updating my daily drivers. None of the previous OS versions ran slow or crashed unexpectedly on my 2013.

 

[Peadogie]

That seems to be very unusual experience vs the community at large. My late 2013 MBP ran very nicely with all the updates including Catalina, I have not had any of the slowdowns or issues mentioned. Since I now have a 16" MBP for my main laptop, I updated the 2013 with Big Sur and it is basically running fine, a couple of apps crash now and then so I will wait for the full release before updating my daily drivers. None of the previous OS versions ran slow or crashed unexpectedly on my 2013.

This has been my experience. My 2012 nMBP runs as well on Catalina as it has on any previous version.

 

[Spacetime Anomaly]

That seems to be very unusual experience vs the community at large. My late 2013 MBP ran very nicely with all the updates including Catalina, I have not had any of the slowdowns or issues mentioned. Since I now have a 16" MBP for my main laptop, I updated the 2013 with Big Sur and it is basically running fine, a couple of apps crash now and then so I will wait for the full release before updating my daily drivers. None of the previous OS versions ran slow or crashed unexpectedly on my 2013.

This has been my experience. My 2012 nMBP runs as well on Catalina as it has on any previous version.

Mine too.

On a 2013 Macbook Air, Catalina performed as well as any previous OS for me. No slow-downs or crashes. I'm now running the Beta of Big Sur on it without any performance issues (so far). In fact, it seems to run even better.

 

[thadoggfather]

just dual booted PB1 on my 2020 Air and some basic observations:

I don't mind the new transparency UI and more 'congealed' window appearance. Heck, don't even mind new icons on the dock, new CC, or the iOS 14 like widgets instead of NC. The rounded corners I almost don't notice, unlike on X iPhones where I always find it a bit too intense (but nothing can be done about that)

I think there's too much forehead and deadspace on Safari window header, but hopefully that gets fixed.

Didn't like the spacing on iStat by default even though its 3rd party, but was fixed toggling Combined option to enabled

Overall: not bad

Also, at the same time not seeing a huge feature set difference from Catalina for the couple hours I've been tinkering (though Safari 14.0 having tracker detection built in is pretty nifty) and haven't given messages a thorough rundown, to warrant the 11.0 name but but yeah. I guess Apple silicone supported OS is what will 'pave the way' for the 'future of Mac' (ok where's my paycheck now, Craig and Tim?)

Its a little thing but I like the keyboard brightness slider in CC 🙂 Gives us non-touchbar users a little slide action

The graphics driver at least in relation to my model Mac seems a bit regressive from Catalina, the minimize window animation at time lags, but I've experienced this before with beta OS'es. Just hope it gets ironed out by public release. But it's also not terrible, I've experienced worse regressive graphics drivers in years past.

 

[MacGizmo]

People have different definitions of "it runs fine on..." - I personally don't think any OS "runs fine" on any computer older than 5-7 years. Runs, yes. Runs "fine," mehhhh, not so much.

 

[minifridge1138]

On a 2013 Macbook Air, Catalina performed as well as any previous OS for me. No slow-downs or crashes. I'm now running the Beta of Big Sur on it without any performance issues (so far). In fact, it seems to run even better.

I have the same experience on my 2013 MacBook Air. It runs fine (the install was a little bumpy). I'm sure it would be snappier on newer/faster hardware. I actually like it quite a lot.

I do have a few complaints:
- All of the dead space in menus.
- It's less obvious what's a button and what's a label.
- The transparent menu bar (although transparency can be toggled off).

 

[sgtaylor5]

I’m really loving it. Despite the performance being horrible on my MacBook Pro (13” Late 2013), it runs better and more stable than Cataclisma. I’m looking forward to see how it runs on the new Apple Silicon Macs

In what way is the performance horrible? And how does Big Sur run better than Catalina? You can PM me if you want.

I'd like to know, because I have an 13" i5/8GB/256GB late 2013 laptop running Mojave. I might upgrade to Big Sur if I can afford upgrading my copy of QuickBooks Pro for Mac 2016.

 

[srbNYC]

I'm still finding Mail laggy and sluggish--scrolling through Inboxes, sometimes opening new messages--but I asked about this very early in Big Sur beta, and folks reporting it was fine for them. Tried rebuilding mailboxes etc., and it hasn't really improved with subsequent betas. Confusing.

Also still wish the menu bars was a little less transparent/invisible. When I have multiple app windows open, I like to be able to spot them easily to grab or select.

 

[fisherking]

I'm still finding Mail laggy and sluggish--scrolling through Inboxes, sometimes opening new messages--but I asked about this very early in Big Sur beta, and folks reporting it was fine for them. Tried rebuilding mailboxes etc., and it hasn't really improved with subsequent betas. Confusing.

Also still wish the menu bars was a little less transparent/invisible. When I have multiple app windows open, I like to be able to spot them easily to grab or select.

hmm, mail is fine here. have you tried booting into safe mode, and opening mail there? then rebooting normally..

how does the menubar affect you seeing multiple open windows? the text & icons are perfectly visible on the menubar; perhaps try a different wallpaper? just a thought...

 

[Peadogie]

...Also still wish the menu bars was a little less transparent/invisible. When I have multiple app windows open, I like to be able to spot them easily to grab or select.

Hmm..This is much better in PB2 than it was in PB1for me. Not for you?

 

[Marzel]

Honestly, it's a very minor update. It's not really an overall OS design overhaul but a glorified skin. I do enjoy Safari though.

 

[srbNYC]

hmm, mail is fine here. have you tried booting into safe mode, and opening mail there? then rebooting normally..
Thanks! Tried that, seems the same. Somehow it feels like there's a lag after every keystroke, especially when using the arrow keys just to select items in the Message List. 2019 MacBook Air, seemed fine before Big Sur. Not the end of the world, but disappointing. Just not snappy like before.
how does the menubar affect you seeing multiple open windows? the text & icons are perfectly visible on the menubar; perhaps try a different wallpaper? just a thought...

It seems to improve with each beta. Just would like a bit more distinction. Feels like design-style was over-priortized a bit over ease of use.
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Hmm..This is much better in PB2 than it was in PB1for me. Not for you?

Better for sure; just wishing for another 20%, I guess.