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SOOO.. MAcOS Big Sur GM tomorrow?

-BigMac-

-BigMac-

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Apr 15, 2011
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Melbourne, Australia
Hi guys,

Thoughts on a GM being released during the event alongside iOS and WatchOS GMs?

Been holding out on the betas.. hella keen to upgrade xD
 
iOS and watchOS, sure. macOS no. macOS traditionally stays in beta a bit longer than iOS with October releases rather than September releases and honestly Big Sur still has just enough bugs that I wouldn’t say it’s quite ready yet. It’s stable enough that I use it as a daily driver and has almost since day one of the beta program, but I still need to kill the Dock process every now and then two resurrect the menu bar and Metal rendering has some issues right now in basically all games just to mention a few issues keeping it from release candidate status. Some of the other smaller issues could be something they might still release it with but issues like that should go away before release. I expect that from the iOS GM 2-3 more macOS betas will come
 
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Fair enough. I guess here's to hoping you're both wrong and I get my update anyway haha :p

Are you running the Mac beta? Thoughts on the UI changes?
 
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matram said:
Agree, normally VMWare release with the release of the new MacOS version. Is this an indication that the GM is coming today? Maybe with a 11.1 release for the introduction of the Apple Silicon Macs.
Click to expand...
I’ll be so amped if they drop the GM.

It’s been a while since there was a “one more thing” at an Event. Apple Silicon Macbook Air?:cool:
 
-BigMac- said:
Fair enough. I guess here's to hoping you're both wrong and I get my update anyway haha :p

Are you running the Mac beta? Thoughts on the UI changes?
Click to expand...

There you go; Confirmed your GM isn't today :)
Though iOS, watchOS, iPadOS and tvOS final releases tomorrow was a bit unexpected. Guess we're not getting GM warnings, it's just "It's out now!"

In any case, yes I'm running the beta. As for the UI changes, I was sceptical at first before I got it installed, having been a long-time Mac user and loving the classic Mac style; I was never quite happy with what happened after Yosemite honestly, preferring the more skeuomorphic look of the Leopard era.

But I mostly love the look of Big Sur - I have some smaller things here and there I wish were different, but mostly, it's great. - One of my most worried components, the menu bar; I really love. It reminds me of when Steve Jobs called Aqua finger-licking good or "so good you want to lick it" or something like that.
I also very much like the messages icon with the depth under the bubble and wish more of the iconography had more of that depth. Everything being a square icon-wise I'm still not sold on, but I do like the overall feel of the icons aside from the shape-monotonicity. - Some say it feels "touch-centric" or more touch-oriented. I disagree; It still feels like macOS; A pointer-based OS.
I dislike the look of Control Centre sort of, but you can take all the menus from Control Centre and choose to just have them in the menu bar. It kinda works a little like Bartender honestly, as if it's made sort of to hide rarely accessed elements into one menu bar item. But I never touch it since I just extract everything I need to the actual menu bar.

Notification Centre is nicer than before, but I still kinda think they should just make it 2-columns, so the widgets and notifications are both there at the same time in their own space - The UI for adding new widgets almost feels a bit futuristic honestly - Maybe not entirely congruent with the feel of the rest of the UI, but not out of place either - Nice looking but ever so slightly jarring. But also in that Aqua vibe of "so good you could lick it".

It feels just as good on my 27" iMac as on my 15" MacBook Pro, so it seems to scale well with screen size and resolution as well, and not just huge touch tiles or something. Again, still feels like a cursor-oriented interface.

Oh and as for bugs that need to be fixed before release; You still can't change the clock in the menu bar to 12-hour instead of 24-hour. So if you prefer an AM/PM clock, you're out of luck. Such a basic small thing hasn't worked since beta 1 and still doesn't. It's not getting released until that's fixed.
 
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As I have already stated, history has taught us that the first few versions of the mac OS typically have a number of bugs, and in some cases, serious ones. Usually by the .2 version of the OS, most of them are gone.

Also, still plenty of third party software that is not yet compatible with Big Sur. Four "big" ones for me are SuperDuper!, Onyx, LibreOffice, and Tech Tool Pro. But that is usually the case.

And yes, Catalina is definitely working well for me. This has been the case for me for the last several versions of the Mac OS, so I am used to it.
 
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casperes1996 said:
There you go; Confirmed your GM isn't today :)
Though iOS, watchOS, iPadOS and tvOS final releases tomorrow was a bit unexpected. Guess we're not getting GM warnings, it's just "It's out now!"

In any case, yes I'm running the beta. As for the UI changes, I was sceptical at first before I got it installed, having been a long-time Mac user and loving the classic Mac style; I was never quite happy with what happened after Yosemite honestly, preferring the more skeuomorphic look of the Leopard era.

But I mostly love the look of Big Sur - I have some smaller things here and there I wish were different, but mostly, it's great. - One of my most worried components, the menu bar; I really love. It reminds me of when Steve Jobs called Aqua finger-licking good or "so good you want to lick it" or something like that.
I also very much like the messages icon with the depth under the bubble and wish more of the iconography had more of that depth. Everything being a square icon-wise I'm still not sold on, but I do like the overall feel of the icons aside from the shape-monotonicity. - Some say it feels "touch-centric" or more touch-oriented. I disagree; It still feels like macOS; A pointer-based OS.
I dislike the look of Control Centre sort of, but you can take all the menus from Control Centre and choose to just have them in the menu bar. It kinda works a little like Bartender honestly, as if it's made sort of to hide rarely accessed elements into one menu bar item. But I never touch it since I just extract everything I need to the actual menu bar.

Notification Centre is nicer than before, but I still kinda think they should just make it 2-columns, so the widgets and notifications are both there at the same time in their own space - The UI for adding new widgets almost feels a bit futuristic honestly - Maybe not entirely congruent with the feel of the rest of the UI, but not out of place either - Nice looking but ever so slightly jarring. But also in that Aqua vibe of "so good you could lick it".

It feels just as good on my 27" iMac as on my 15" MacBook Pro, so it seems to scale well with screen size and resolution as well, and not just huge touch tiles or something. Again, still feels like a cursor-oriented interface.

Oh and as for bugs that need to be fixed before release; You still can't change the clock in the menu bar to 12-hour instead of 24-hour. So if you prefer an AM/PM clock, you're out of luck. Such a basic small thing hasn't worked since beta 1 and still doesn't. It's not getting released until that's fixed.
Click to expand...
Super Report, and certainly informative. Of course the other big issue is third party software compatibility. Seems that a number of folks do not take that into consideration. Me, it is a requirement.
 
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honestone33 said:
Super Report, and certainly informative. Of course the other big issue is third party software compatibility. Seems that a number of folks do not take that into consideration. Me, it is a requirement.
Click to expand...

Most the software I use works perfectly; Games are completely broken on my iMac and somewhat broken on my laptop, so the Metal rendering is a bit wack for some calls, but aside from that the software I run works well. Or rather, I should say that the compatibility issues I do face, I find workarounds for. I too use OnyX normally, but I make do without it, doing the things I use OnyX for manually instead.
 
casperes1996 said:
Most the software I use works perfectly; Games are completely broken on my iMac and somewhat broken on my laptop, so the Metal rendering is a bit wack for some calls, but aside from that the software I run works well. Or rather, I should say that the compatibility issues I do face, I find workarounds for. I too use OnyX normally, but I make do without it, doing the things I use OnyX for manually instead.
Click to expand...
I suspect that most of the third party software I use would work right now. There are some critical ones, though, that must be compatible before I do the "upgrade" (ie, clean, fresh installation on both of my Macs). They are the ones I listed earlier, along with some others: Thunderbird is the one glaring one, for obvious reasons. Fortunately, I see where VLC, 1Password, and Transmission are fine.

I started a thread yesterday entitled "Status of SuperDuper! and Big Sur" :

forums.macrumors.com

Status of SuperDuper! and Big Sur

I have not been expecting a Big Sur version of SuperDuper! to be released just yet, but here is the latest information from Shirt Pocket Softwrae about all that: https://www.shirt-pocket.com/blog/ Note Dave's excellent advice about mac OS betas.
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com
.

Dave Nanlan mentioned something rather critical:

"At present, it's not possible to make bootable copies of Big Sur, even with asr, Apple's own built-in replication utility. As such, we haven't released a Beta, or even an internal Alpha, because it wouldn't meet our own requirements.

So, for the moment, we're holding back, hoping that Apple will fix the issues and allow 3rd party (or even 1st party, given asr) bootable backups. While asr was failing completely in previous builds, in the most recent one it isn't able to back up because the system volume isn't properly 'sealed' (which is ominous, since why wouldn't a standard install be sealed, and if it's not, why wouldn't you be able to back it up anyway)."

I don't know what an asr is, but obviously it is extremely critical for backups. I suspect this also affects Carbon Copy Cloner.

While one can use manual methods to do the useful things that Onyx does, I use it in combination with Tech Tool Pro, and those programs (along with my own efforts) keep my Macs "lean, mean, and clean", and also running smoothly. Hence, it is mandatory for me that Onyx be compatible.
 
honestone33 said:
I don't know what an asr is, but obviously it is extremely critical for backups. I suspect this also affects Carbon Copy Cloner.
Click to expand...

Asr is Apple Software Restore. A Command Line Program that, in its own words "asr efficiently copies disk images onto volumes, either directly or via multicast network stream. as can also accurately clone volumes without the use of an intermediate disk"
It's a block copying tool and kinda like dd in some ways. And it's received quite a few under the hood modifications throughout macOS Big Sur's beta as well and Apple is likely still tinkering with it, perhaps modifications to a different way of storage access from an Apple Silicon Mac where instead of intermediating with a T2 chip, the main chip itself acts like the T2 as a storage controller, as well as other lower level functionality optimisations for both ARM and Intel copies.
 
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haralds said:
Hesitant to upgrade now that Catalina has become so rock solid for me.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry. I got a 2020 iMac the other day (my first 10.15 machine) and have logged more bugs in a few weeks than I usually do across 2-3 releases (and I still have a handful that I haven't logged yet). I'm not confident that any of them are going to be fixed in OS 11 either...
 
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Nermal said:
I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry. I got a 2020 iMac the other day (my first 10.15 machine) and have logged more bugs in a few weeks than I usually do across 2-3 releases (and I still have a handful that I haven't logged yet). I'm not confident that any of them are going to be fixed in OS 11 either...
Click to expand...

D'you have some examples of some easily reproducible ones, then I can test if they're in the latest beta for you if you want :) - I personally skipped Catalina entirely as a daily driver but am fairly positive of the stability and reliability of Big Sur, though it obviously has issues as well in its beta stage
 
Nermal said:
I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry. I got a 2020 iMac the other day (my first 10.15 machine) and have logged more bugs in a few weeks than I usually do across 2-3 releases (and I still have a handful that I haven't logged yet). I'm not confident that any of them are going to be fixed in OS 11 either...
Click to expand...

Even the initial beta of OS 11 was more stable than the then current release of Catalina - hopefully you have the same experience I did!
 
I still can't mount my Thunderbolt 2 external RAID array (broke with this latest beta), so that's a must fix, for sure.
 
SMB doesn't work unless you enable it manually via Terminal and you can't install anything that contains a kernel. These are the two major issues I'm experiencing with a handful of minor issues.
Definitely not close to GM quality.
 
Big Sur won’t be out till end of October atleast need another 2 betas for sure
 
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