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for those that have used Big Sur -- what's the verdict?
- Thread starter ghanwani
- Start date
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I'm having a not-so-good experience and it's not because of pirated software (I don't have any), out of date apps (I check for updates for all my apps once a week), I just cleaned my cache for a measly 1.88GB, and I have no software to be "embarrassed" about. Get the **** off the high horse you're riding for whatever reason and see that a good portion of users are not satisfied with Big Sur.
Do I need to reset NVRAM and PRAM myself? Is it really necessary to do a clean install once a year? Whatever happened to "It just works”?
I have an early 2015 13" MBP, stock model. Big Sur feels sluggish a lot of the time. YouTube videos didn't work until I found a fix for a related but separate issue elsewhere that also happened to fix my issue. I can see the spacing design working on bigger monitors, but it takes too much space on my 13" monitor - using Bartender with the extra spacing makes the left menu disappear with the same number of apps that Catalina and earlier handled just fine. I have an early 2020 MBA that I use for work and I'm keeping that one on Catalina for the foreseeable future, and I’m probably going to downgrade back to Catalino on my personal MBP - willing to give Apple some time to release updates to fix current issues, but the fact that they haven’t yet is worrying.
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At work, we frequently poll users on the software when we make a significant design change. Typically falls into 3 areas:
~30% Love it
~30% Hate it
~30% don't care
So, this unofficial poll isn't bad.
I like it. I wouldn't have made some of the design changes, but we are all different. One thing is clear, no sense in getting worked up over it, because in a few years it will change and you'll wish you were able to go back to Big Sur.
~30% Love it
~30% Hate it
~30% don't care
So, this unofficial poll isn't bad.
I like it. I wouldn't have made some of the design changes, but we are all different. One thing is clear, no sense in getting worked up over it, because in a few years it will change and you'll wish you were able to go back to Big Sur.
Why include a widget when you can make 15-30% off every purchase of one bought from the App Store?
I'm running BS on an unsupported mid 2012 rMBP and it flies 
So much so that I don't use Catalina at all (it's on another partition).
I know some have had serious problems with it but I have seen none of them so far.
So much so that I don't use Catalina at all (it's on another partition).
I know some have had serious problems with it but I have seen none of them so far.
So I've been pleasantly surprised by Big Sur. I like (most) of the U.I. changes, but I am using it on a large 27" display. I feel like it would be a bit annoying on a 13" display.
Performance has been more or less the same as Catalina - perhaps a bit faster on Big Sur. Built in applications are fine - Music app is still meh and Safari 14.0.1 has a few bugs to be worked out, but nothing major.
I think the light mode is too stark white and the menu bar is too translucent. I also think the system font size is a bit too small, but that will vary person to person.
Performance has been more or less the same as Catalina - perhaps a bit faster on Big Sur. Built in applications are fine - Music app is still meh and Safari 14.0.1 has a few bugs to be worked out, but nothing major.
I think the light mode is too stark white and the menu bar is too translucent. I also think the system font size is a bit too small, but that will vary person to person.
After a few weeks I still think the icons are unforgivable. I just don't get them, feels like we've gone back 10 years.
I also think the rounding on the corners of the windows against a flat menu is pretty amateur. It doesn't look right to me.
Top this off with laggy / chopping UI and animations, this isn't a good release for me... and I don't complain normally, I'm quite passive.
I also think the rounding on the corners of the windows against a flat menu is pretty amateur. It doesn't look right to me.
Top this off with laggy / chopping UI and animations, this isn't a good release for me... and I don't complain normally, I'm quite passive.
The icons do have an 'old' look to them. And, despite the Apple apps are consistent, I have the Zoom Icon with a flat design and my Atom text editor with a round icon. Reminds me of icons in Windows 3.51.
I hate everything about it. Nothing works now. Everything I do I get the pinwheel or 'loading' and nothing happens. I can't use Android transfer, Samsung Switch, or operate my external hard drive. It literally takes over 5 minutes to open a file on my external drive. I wish I never updated. My Samsung phone is maxed out because I can't transfer the files onto my external drive or my laptop.
No problems here at all. The look and feel: sure it's changed, and while every such change takes a bit of getting used to, it's important to remember that if Apple never changed it: it would all still look like on the original Macintosh ... So change in smaller steps in not a bad thing: just embrace it and it's "normal" after a few days.
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I have used in the past onyx, but its not yet updated for BS.
Titanium Software | Operating System Utilities for Mac - OnyX
OnyX is a multifunction utility that you can use to verify the startup disk and the structure of its system files, perform cleaning and computer maintenance tasks, configure some hidden parameters of many Apple applications, and more.
www.titanium-software.fr
I love the look of Big Sur, which seems like I am in a minority. I've used Mac OS X since 2003 and loved seeing it evolve over that time and this is just another evolution.
Yes it looks a bit like iOS but iOS isn't bad looking in my opinion and it is quite nice to have a bit of familiarity between my iPad, iPhone and Mac to be honest.
Also, Big Sur is good but it is full of bugs I am finding, such as the ability (or lack of) to mirror to AirPlay on my Apple TV HD amongst others.
Yes it looks a bit like iOS but iOS isn't bad looking in my opinion and it is quite nice to have a bit of familiarity between my iPad, iPhone and Mac to be honest.
Also, Big Sur is good but it is full of bugs I am finding, such as the ability (or lack of) to mirror to AirPlay on my Apple TV HD amongst others.
Big yay for me.
I'm on a 27-inch 2020 iMac (with 32GB of RAM) and Big Sur flies on this thing. While there are definitely still some minor rough edges, it honestly seems less buggy than the latest version of macOS Catalina (10.15.7) in my experience over the last couple of weeks. Luckily, most of the software I use has already been updated to play nice with BS. I dig the look and it's running super smooth and snappy.
I did, of course, do a complete erase of my hard drive and a clean install -- which itself was kind of an ordeal because I've never had a Mac with a T2 security chip. So I had to update via Software Update first, then do a hard drive erase and clean install via macOS Recovery. It's a lot of work with reinstalling apps fresh and moving files back over from my backup, but I always do a clean install with upgrades like this. I make a day of it. It might've worked just fine with Software Update, but I get more peace of mind this way.
And after a rough start, I'm really liking the Music app on Big Sur as well. I have a large, 60K+ song local library with embedded artwork and metadata and I don't like iTunes/Music futzing with with my tags. I also disable iTunes Store and Apple Music streaming service in the preferences because I'm only interested in my local library and don't want to create any potential conflicts. After a disastrous first try at moving my library back over, it's been pretty great and less buggy than I experienced with Music on Catalina. But that first attempt...
The first time, I moved over my entire Music folder from my backup, Music Library file included, as well as my Music preferences files (to their places in my Library/Preferences folder). That was a disaster. Music wasn't showing my embedded artwork for everything and there were a lot of other littles things that weren't right. So I deleted every iTunes/Music-related file (from Music/Music, Library/Preferences, and even Library/Caches) and started completely fresh. I moved all my music back over by dropping everything into the Automatically Add to Music folder and letting Music handle Music Media folder organization (on by default). Yes, now I had to manually recreate all my playlists and redo all my app preferences, but at least now I had a smooth-running library with no problems or strange behavior -- and all my artwork was showing up, for every album and every track!
So, yeah, there have been some frustrations getting everything set up properly (mainly just the act of doing a clean install with a new Mac with a T2 chip and getting things right with Music), but once I worked that stuff out, I've really been loving Big Sur and it has been running beautifully. It might be my favorite major Mac OS release in years.
I'm on a 27-inch 2020 iMac (with 32GB of RAM) and Big Sur flies on this thing. While there are definitely still some minor rough edges, it honestly seems less buggy than the latest version of macOS Catalina (10.15.7) in my experience over the last couple of weeks. Luckily, most of the software I use has already been updated to play nice with BS. I dig the look and it's running super smooth and snappy.
I did, of course, do a complete erase of my hard drive and a clean install -- which itself was kind of an ordeal because I've never had a Mac with a T2 security chip. So I had to update via Software Update first, then do a hard drive erase and clean install via macOS Recovery. It's a lot of work with reinstalling apps fresh and moving files back over from my backup, but I always do a clean install with upgrades like this. I make a day of it. It might've worked just fine with Software Update, but I get more peace of mind this way.
And after a rough start, I'm really liking the Music app on Big Sur as well. I have a large, 60K+ song local library with embedded artwork and metadata and I don't like iTunes/Music futzing with with my tags. I also disable iTunes Store and Apple Music streaming service in the preferences because I'm only interested in my local library and don't want to create any potential conflicts. After a disastrous first try at moving my library back over, it's been pretty great and less buggy than I experienced with Music on Catalina. But that first attempt...
The first time, I moved over my entire Music folder from my backup, Music Library file included, as well as my Music preferences files (to their places in my Library/Preferences folder). That was a disaster. Music wasn't showing my embedded artwork for everything and there were a lot of other littles things that weren't right. So I deleted every iTunes/Music-related file (from Music/Music, Library/Preferences, and even Library/Caches) and started completely fresh. I moved all my music back over by dropping everything into the Automatically Add to Music folder and letting Music handle Music Media folder organization (on by default). Yes, now I had to manually recreate all my playlists and redo all my app preferences, but at least now I had a smooth-running library with no problems or strange behavior -- and all my artwork was showing up, for every album and every track!
So, yeah, there have been some frustrations getting everything set up properly (mainly just the act of doing a clean install with a new Mac with a T2 chip and getting things right with Music), but once I worked that stuff out, I've really been loving Big Sur and it has been running beautifully. It might be my favorite major Mac OS release in years.
I downloaded the second day. Only unresolved issue I have is that deleted mail from my primary account (not iCloud) does not go to Trash before being deleted unless I specifically move it there. A simple delete removes it totally.
I enlarged the size of the mailbox headers and am not wild about the toolbar or translucent look, but there are millions of Apple users and they do not design specific looks for each individual. I think it is less buggy then Catalina overall.
As for the interface I was used to it in a few days. I have a late 2015 27" and everything runs fine.
Its all fine, only thing i don't really like is Image Capture now automatically transfers photos off my iPhone as soon as i select them (i prefer to put them elsewhere not dump them in the default folder - though i can select the folder beforehand if i remember!) Having said that the app seems to work better with my scanner.
Animations are buggy, a lot of settings like DND and Night shift are buried behind menus (and that's after pinning it to the top). The worst is moving between desktops, with the swipe gesture there is a noticeable lag. I've also had issues with photos getting messed up and hangups and stutters. This is on a 16" too