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hooptyuber

macrumors regular
Jan 21, 2017
234
317
No. The default font size is a little small for my eyes and I have increased that e.g. I have increased the minimum front size in Safari from 9 to 14 and now find the screen more readable and less cluttered. So far , so good. I like it.
I don't know why Apple is obsessed with tiny fonts you need an electron microscope to read. That's one of the major frustrations I've had with Apple for years.
 

LinkRS

macrumors 6502
Oct 16, 2014
402
331
Texas, USA
Not sure if it is just me, but I just got automatically updated to Big Sur 11.01 yesterday on my 2019 16" MacBook Pro, and my Mac seems sluggish now. Things that were fast in Catalina are slow now. I find myself clicking things twice, and getting two copies of programs trying to load. Plus, I found out after, that Unreal Engine Editor 4.25 does not work with Big Sur, complains of a missing MultiTouch driver, and I had to install the beta version of 4.26. I do like the new wallpaper though.
 
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LinkRS

macrumors 6502
Oct 16, 2014
402
331
Texas, USA
Overall, I've noticed a speed boost in most everything on a 2019 16" MBPro (i9 processor, 32 GB RAM, 5500M 8GB video).

Unlike so many people, I LOVE the new UI changes, but then I enjoy change... it keeps things interesting. That being said, a few of the changes I don't care for - like the half-hidden folder names at the top of Finder windows. I see no point in that and it's highly inefficient.

I've only come across one tiny little utility that doesn't seem to work with BigSur - Loremify (a menubar Lorem Ipsum generator), but that app hasn't been updated in a really, really long time and I don't expect it ever will be (unfortunately). Every other app and utility seems to run just fine, for the most part. I say that because Adobe CC apps never run "just fine" on any OS, and the current versions on BigSur are no exception. Nothing earth-shattering, just annoying.

The hand-off feature that supposedly makes switching devices seamless when using AirPods doesn't work very well for me. I have an iPhone, iPad, and a Mac; wearing AirPods Pro and switching to a different device almost always requires me to manually select AirPods from the Bluetooth settings. The feature works great when it works... for me, that just isn't very often.
That's interesting. I have a 2019 16" MacBook Pro with i9, but I only have 16 GBs of RAM, and it is slow for me. I was planning on giving it a few days to finish indexing to see if that helps, but I would expect a computer I have only had since May to work better with this OS. I wonder if Big Sur needs more than 16GBs of RAM to run well?
 

Forti

macrumors regular
Nov 14, 2018
174
282
Gdynia, Poland
MBP 2018 13" 16gb ram.

With catalina everything was super smooth. Now?... ehh even changing size of chrome/firefox is laggy.

a lot of websites (even macrumors) is laggy. like 10fps.

I've checked everything - nothing is running in background, fans are quite, CPU/RAM/HDD usage is low.

I like the UI, but it's crap.
 

Colstan

macrumors 6502
Jul 30, 2020
330
711
Yes, I regret the Big Sur update. I know Apple had the fine folks at Crayola put a lot of effort into the new and improved interface, but it's too cartoony for my liking. Also, the font rendering hasn't improved on non-retina displays and there are some bugs, such as the icons on the menu bar resetting after reboot.

I loaded up Time Machine and went back to Mojave. I'm hoping that the followup to Big Sur will clean up some of the issues. Perhaps that will be closer to a maintenance release, because so much changed with Big Sur, both with supporting Apple Silicon Macs, as well as the interface. I won't have a choice, regardless, because security updates for Mojave will come to an end.
 

LongWayHome

Suspended
Oct 18, 2020
503
1,010
I like the bug fixes from Catalina, not so sure I like some of the design choices. I don't mind the icons, but they do seem to be trying to pull a lot from iOS into Big Sur from a design standpoint and I'm not sure how well that works. Its not awful, but I definitely am a little iffy over it.
 
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SRQrws

macrumors regular
Aug 4, 2020
208
459
I don't regret moving to Big Sur. Change happens and I try to forge ahead and accept it. While I haven't uncovered any significant bugs (other than the day-of-release hassles), I don't care for some of the design choices. I loathe the default desktop wallpaper. It cheapens the look and reminds me of something designed to appeal to a small child. I switched to the 'solar gradients' dynamic desktop and it's okay by me. Some of the design options with Messages and Mail make no sense to me. Why remove the x-to-delete from Messages? And the toolbar layout of Mail is a mess. Icons are grouped and shifted to the right for no apparent reason. Same issue with Finder. I really don't understand what the design goal of the toolbar was. Other than waiting for a few drivers to come out for peripherals, I have no major issues.
 
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doobydoooby

macrumors regular
Oct 17, 2011
240
340
Genève, Switzerland
Very happy. New Mac Pro and it’s noticeably quicker than on Catalina, even the boot up takes half the time it used to. Every single app worked, not one compatibility issue
 

nategold

macrumors newbie
Sep 25, 2018
16
5
They may introduce new "features" but they are never useful. Each OS gets worse and worse. I am happy on Mojave except I already lost Reminders and at some point will lose security features and other things with iOS. I tried Big Sur and printing fails. See https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252038432?answerId=253939811022&login=true and it is not just me but many people with many printers. Apple puts crap out there and doesn't test it. As macdos says, new bugs are always introduced and old ones are not fixed. Also what's up with smaller fonts on Big Sur? Did we really need that? I gave up on testing it on an external SSD when printing failed. Apple's software QA has been horrible for a long time.
 
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uller6

macrumors 65816
May 14, 2010
1,072
1,777
My 2020 13" mbp "feels" snappier. But VMWare is broken (windows XP virtual machines are abysmally slow), streaming HomeKit secure video now makes the fans scream (on Catalina the fans were silent), mail no longer automatically imports calendar invites from gmail, and the super-rounded window corners waste a lot of screen space. I should have waited a couple months.
 

DThompson55

macrumors member
Aug 29, 2018
34
5
Hartford
My 2020 13" mbp "feels" snappier. But VMWare is broken (windows XP virtual machines are abysmally slow), streaming HomeKit secure video now makes the fans scream (on Catalina the fans were silent), mail no longer automatically imports calendar invites from gmail, and the super-rounded window corners waste a lot of screen space. I should have waited a couple months.
Likewise re VMWare - My fans calmed down after a day or two (what was that about?), which made recording audio a non-starter for a while.
 
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Yes, I regret the Big Sur update. I know Apple had the fine folks at Crayola put a lot of effort into the new and improved interface, but it's too cartoony for my liking. Also, the font rendering hasn't improved on non-retina displays and there are some bugs, such as the icons on the menu bar resetting after reboot.

I loaded up Time Machine and went back to Mojave. I'm hoping that the followup to Big Sur will clean up some of the issues. Perhaps that will be closer to a maintenance release, because so much changed with Big Sur, both with supporting Apple Silicon Macs, as well as the interface. I won't have a choice, regardless, because security updates for Mojave will come to an end.
Yes, accurate statement about Mojave.

Have you thought about doing a clean, fresh installation of Bog Sur "at the appropriate time"? By that I mean maybe wait for another version to be released, ie, V11.2.? Even though V11.1 will be released soon, based on prior history, a new Mac OS typically does not become real "stable" (in terms of bugs, issues, etc.) until a .2 version appears.

Also, given that you skipping over Catalina, a clean installation might be better.
 

mrwizardno2

macrumors 6502a
Jun 19, 2007
818
63
Columbus, OH
I'm going to be plugging along on 10.15.7 (19H15) for the foreseeable future. Not about to upgrade again. My 16" 2019 MacBook Pro was dog slow after upgrading and VMWare Fusion wouldn't start my work VM (an encrypted Windows 10 VM) after upgrade. Sadly, I couldn't successfully restore from my Time Machine backup, so I clean installed Catalina and then copied my data back separately. Big Sur is a BIG MESS. Gonna pass for a while - I feel dumb for having wasted the time even trying an upgrade so soon after release!
 
I'm going to be plugging along on 10.15.7 (19H15) for the foreseeable future. Not about to upgrade again. My 16" 2019 MacBook Pro was dog slow after upgrading and VMWare Fusion wouldn't start my work VM (an encrypted Windows 10 VM) after upgrade. Sadly, I couldn't successfully restore from my Time Machine backup, so I clean installed Catalina and then copied my data back separately. Big Sur is a BIG MESS. Gonna pass for a while - I feel dumb for having wasted the time even trying an upgrade so soon after release!
Actually, a good idea about doing a clean, fresh installation of Catalina.

Also, as history has shown, the first few releases of a new Mac OS always contain bugs/issues. And the first, initial release is typically the worst. This year, it was more problematic, as just last week, and a week after the initial release, a beta version of the next release of Big Sur, OS 11.1.0, was released. That's certainly not good.

The other issue, of course, is third party software compatibility. No matter how many times I have mentioned that both here and on a couple of other Mac discussion sites I visit, folks still take the initial leap with the very first version. Myself, I have 5 critical applications which will need to be updated for Big Sur compatibility before I make the move (will be via a clean, fresh installation of Big Sur, followed by a migration/copying of needed items from a SuperDuper! backup). And given that Tech Tool is always the last one, I am anticipating not moving to Big Sur until January. By the time, I suspect V11.3.0 will be out.
 
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Colstan

macrumors 6502
Jul 30, 2020
330
711
Yes, accurate statement about Mojave.

Have you thought about doing a clean, fresh installation of Bog Sur "at the appropriate time"? By that I mean maybe wait for another version to be released, ie, V11.2.? Even though V11.1 will be released soon, based on prior history, a new Mac OS typically does not become real "stable" (in terms of bugs, issues, etc.) until a .2 version appears.

Also, given that you skipping over Catalina, a clean installation might be better.
Thank you, I appreciate the feedback, but I plan to stay with Mojave until the security patches for that version come to an end. That should be around the time the the successor to Big Sur is released. Historically, after a major revision to the macOS such as Big Sur, the followup version often tweaks the issues found in the prior version. Unless I find software that requires something newer than Mojave, I'll probably stick to my current plan with Mojave. However, whenever I actually do upgrade, as you suggested it will be a clean install given how many versions I will have skipped.
 
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dcmaccam

macrumors 6502
Sep 14, 2017
272
47
West Coast of Scotland
On my iMac mid-2019 with a Fusion Drive, it has slooooow boot (1:30 minutes BigSur vs 17 seconds on Catalina) and I could hear the hard disk, working hardly. This night I have re-installed Catalina, and all runs flawlessly. Perhaps the future Update to 11.1 solves these kind of problems, and I will try again.
How easy was it to go back to Catalina? Did you restore from a Time Machine backup. If not what route did you take.
 

Weez1000

macrumors newbie
Nov 23, 2020
5
1
I regret it, an app I absolutely need for work is Bluebeam Revu and the developer discontinued Mac support earlier this year but issued a patch for Catalina. It's broken again (with the upgrade) and the developer has said don't expect an update.
 

Dc2006ster

macrumors 6502
Jun 9, 2011
334
162
Alberta, Canada
Well things changed today. I had been quite happy with Big Sur but suddenly it would not accept mouse clicks or keyboard Returns to open files, close windows, open menus etc.. I went back to a Catalina backup and all was well which I though meant it was a Big Sur problem .Then tried a clean install and ran into the same issue . After a couple of attempts getting me nowhere other than having a bunch of Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD - Data volumes on my boot drive I wipes that drive and did a clean install of Catalina.

So, yes, I do regret using Big Sur. One interesting side note. Even after all this, I still have the BS startup chime even using Catalina.
 
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