So I managed to get back to Catalina. Now I am missing Garageband, iMovie, Notes-Numbers-Pages (which I don't use), App store is saying I have to upgrade to BigSur. How can I get/where can I download GarageBand and iMovie in the Catalina versions???
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
First Impressions?
- Thread starter ZestyOne
- Start date
-
- Tags
- big sur
- Sort by reaction score
I think if you go to view in for instance the mail app you can darken the toolbar. That was one of the annoying pieces of the design for sure.
They changed it in Big Sur so the menu bar follows your desktop background picture's colors
Found it, this is how to darken the menu bar https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/05/dark-mode-wallpaper-tint-macos-big-sur/
So after using Big Sur for a few hours my main takeaways are:
- Adapted to overall U.I. change pretty quickly. I feel some toolbar padding is a bit excessive, but it's fine on a 27" iMac. I don't care for the iOS-style notification popups.
- I feel like the Menubar and Sidebar font size is smaller and I find it a bit harder to read. I wish they'd go up one font size or two (or give you the option to do so).
- Performance appears the same as Catalina with a slight edge to Big Sur on application launch.
- Notification banners are a step backward. I don't like how they removed the buttons on the left and now you have to click an "Options" dropdown. Used to be for, say, Reminders you'd have a "Complete" button and a "Later" button. Now I have to hover over, click "Options," and then select the option. I'm not sure why they want to hide info on macOS. iOS I understand for small screens, but I have a big display to show me content.
I had it on a 38 ultrawide and thought I was going to put a 9mm shell through the $1000 monitor. Spent all day going back to Catalina....still missing "iLife suite" and "Garageband". Now says I must upgrade to BS to get GarageBand again. Anyone know how I can get GB back to Catalina?
Exactly my thoughts. I said "if I wanted to use iOS at my desk I'd get an iPad"
It's probably your icloud documents/photos uploading/downloading consuming bandwidth
Yeah---they sucked months ago too. Now people can just see more of them on their own machine.
I can remove it but I like having my favorites there. It's the bit above it that I don't like.
Animations and UI has more lag than on Catalina, anyone else? rMBP 13" 2015 here
Remember when they changed animation system to Metal so we can have "buttery smooth" UI, Oh well....
Remember when they changed animation system to Metal so we can have "buttery smooth" UI, Oh well....
Ah, so you’re still using MacOS 9 and iOS 6 because you don’t like visual changes?
come on man, you also upgraded from OS 9 to OSX and from Mavericks to Yosemite. Apple didn’t try to turn our Macs into something that they are not (as opposed to Microsoft trying to turn all non-touch Windows computers into touch devices with Windows 8). They just repainted it while keeping it totally a Mac.
I have some mixed feelings about the UI - I think parts of it look quite good, I for one like the new Safari and Mail look, especially with floating smaller windows on a big screen. In full screen I think the rounded corners beneath the menu bar makes little sense. The spacing and look of the icons on the right side of the menu bar look a little windows vista or 2010 android to me. I especially don't like the blue to purple look of the menu bar with the Catalina wallpaper at afternoon/sunset. Preview icons in finder look very good to me. Overall it takes some getting used to I guess.
My biggest gripe is performance. Still after 4 days and reboot the system is quite sluggish (on my late 2014 mid-range rMBP). Scrolling in Safari, clicking on the address bar, moving through the icons in the dock, opening apps, everything stutters. Quicklook of PDFs is unusably slow. With just Mail and 3 or 4 tabs open in Safari, I get 6.5GB of Ram used and 50-80% CPU usage.
Also there are still some bugs. One for example is that clicking on a link in mails, WhatsApp, wherever just opens Safaris first tab instead of opening a new tab with the link I just clicked on. Another one is sound output, where I regularly get no sound regardless of media source and output device; after some time or after adding another device like an external monitor, sound output comes back.
My biggest gripe is performance. Still after 4 days and reboot the system is quite sluggish (on my late 2014 mid-range rMBP). Scrolling in Safari, clicking on the address bar, moving through the icons in the dock, opening apps, everything stutters. Quicklook of PDFs is unusably slow. With just Mail and 3 or 4 tabs open in Safari, I get 6.5GB of Ram used and 50-80% CPU usage.
Also there are still some bugs. One for example is that clicking on a link in mails, WhatsApp, wherever just opens Safaris first tab instead of opening a new tab with the link I just clicked on. Another one is sound output, where I regularly get no sound regardless of media source and output device; after some time or after adding another device like an external monitor, sound output comes back.
seems a weird comment. There are far more people who will complain about something being different, even if the change is an improvement, than there are people who will celebrate change for change’s sake.
At first I din't like the mail layout and widgets. After 24 hours using it I'm beginning to love it. It is a cleaner look once I got my MBP set up.
Reminds me of the Microsoft Windows 8 makeover - instead of huge window borders, though, Apple has increased the space between menu items, list boxes, &c. - to the point that (and as an example) "Activity Monitor" shows one half the information it did previously in the list boxes. Not a huge fan, yet.
It's nice but it's hogging out the battery on my late 2016 MBPro 13 inch. So thats a disappointment and making me want to trade it for an M1 for the batter life alone but alas I am going to wait until spring and dump this in trade for a pimped out 13 inch instead of this 16GB of ram crap they released. i get that the software is more efficient blah blah blah but cmon apple anyone spending this on a laptop deserves the peace of mind of future proofing.
Yes, it's ok for the most part on my 16" but there are a lot of weird hitches. I'm curious to see how well it runs on the new M1's. My fear is from here on out more time will be spent by their software engineers optimizing for ARM rather then Intel.
Textedit: hold or right-click on icon in dock to get list of documents takes a whopping 1.5 seconds.
Apple Programmers probably don't use Textedit. In fact, Apple programmers probably don't use MacOS at all, considering how extremely bug-ridden Big Sur is. What is the point of a UI overhaul, if it creates and recreates thousands of functionality bugs?
Apple Programmers probably don't use Textedit. In fact, Apple programmers probably don't use MacOS at all, considering how extremely bug-ridden Big Sur is. What is the point of a UI overhaul, if it creates and recreates thousands of functionality bugs?
Yea things seem more zippy on my iMac. I’m someone that didn’t know what the “people in the forums” were complaining about, I just updated and it felt like it was running better.
Visually, I’m indifferent. I like the rounded corners, so it’s not bad overall for my taste.
CLS7 said:
How many people here are thinking about buying a Windows PC now?
Not ME! I waited 25 years to get a Mac I'm not going back.
How many people here are thinking about buying a Windows PC now?
Not ME! I waited 25 years to get a Mac I'm not going back.