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Is Big Sur worthy of being 11.0?
- Thread starter the8thark
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Oh yeah it's not a good idea to test that way. But it's common and last I checked, Java actually has no way of checking which OS you're on that isn't string comparison.
These kind of assumptions are one of the main reasons why we get hard to find bugs. A great article on how Apple “codes around” programmers stupidity:
Why Big Sur won’t stumble over version numbers
How does Big Sur convince older software that it’s macOS 10.16, but to newly-built app it’s macOS 11.0?
eclecticlight.co
P.S. I say “great article” but the “advice“ they give at the bottom of the page makes me want to scream.
I was about to shake my fist at the sky and complain "STEVE SAID MAC OS X WOULD CARRY APPLE FOR 20 YEARS" before realizing it's been 20 years.
Well, there y'go.
Well, there y'go.
These kind of assumptions are one of the main reasons why we get hard to find bugs. A great article on how Apple “codes around” programmers stupidity:
Why Big Sur won’t stumble over version numbers
How does Big Sur convince older software that it’s macOS 10.16, but to newly-built app it’s macOS 11.0?
P.S. I say “great article” but the “advice“ they give at the bottom of the page makes me want to scream.
Interesting article, but the information is slightly outdated with the latest betas, where Intel Macs do report version 11
But yeah, the point behind the article still holds.
The most relevant part is that Apple reports the version differently depending on which SDK your application what build for. They report "10.16" for old software but "11.0" for software built with new Xcode.
And by the way, Apple does this kind of trickery all time. They routinely "patch" the API to anticipate the common bugs depending on which version of Mac SDK the app was built with.
Oh yeah. Also if you watch the WW talks on Metal on Apple Silicon, they do a damn lot when built against older SDKs to accommodate for the differences between a tile based and an immediate mode renderer.
Though the different reporting thing was definitely broken in one of the betas, but works again now. I think it was 2 betas ago.
It's also ready to run on ASi right out of the box. This alone would warrant a major revision change. Does it require one? No, but I see it as a perfectly valid reason to bump the number as an obvious reminder to everyone that huge changes are about to happen to Mac.
Similarly, lack of obvious external differences doesn't exclude a valid major revision change.
This is also a good point. I think the change-creep that's happened over the last 19 years coupled with the fact that 11.0 has significant visual differences, UI modifications, under-the-hood changes, and, most importantly, is ready to run on ASi ... I think all of that is more than enough to justify a major revision bump.
Version numbering is always a philosophical debate, you could also argue that the cumulative changes from 10.0 reckons a "major version" or already has been long overdue. I think the idea of officially jumping to ARM is the main reason, even tough the PPC->Intel did not, if I remember correctly it was during the 10.4 cycle. I am however curious if Apple will release 11.1.x next year, or they are going to align with iOS and the others, and start to do full "major numbers" per cycle, meaning macOS 12.0.
So basically like the classic MacOS (Called SystemX.X before 7.6) but annually instead of just just whenever it was ready. But will they be annually still?
A lack of obvious external differences doesn't force a major revision number change either. OS10.5 and OS10.6 are good examples. 10.5 had a huge number of feature additions and 10.6 had a huge humber of under the hood improvements. Neither became OS11.
I believe this is exactly the reason. A purely marketing one. Moving to ASi is indeed a guhe change and getting the marketing correct on this is imprptant.
I'm 99.9% certain it will be 12 next time. And the PPC->Intel transition did not change anything about OS X, but it did rename all the Macs. Power Mac -> Mac Pro, PowerBook -> MacBook Pro, iBook -> MacBook (Wonder if iBook will be back now) - the only one that didn't get a new name was the iMac
1. A lot of cornerstone Mac apps have been rewritten from the ground up as Catalyst apps, allowing for a substantially greater parity between iOS/iPadOS apps and their macOS counter-parts so that you don't have, as an example, iMessage features coming a year late to macOS.
2. To mark the new processor architecture that they're switching to and all of the things that the OS will be able to do on that architecture (Running iOS and iPadOS apps natively unmodified on macOS). (Not saying that they need to mark it as such; it's not like Tiger on Intel or Leopard needed to be macOS 11 to mark the shift to Intel.)
3. The second major visual redesign of the operating system since 2001 (the first being Yosemite; and no, I don't count changes in Panther, Leopard, or Lion as being as "major"), which is also symbolically adding parity to the other Apple Silicon-based platforms that Apple has.
4. The redesigned menu bar, including Control Center.
I mean, I'm in the same boat in thinking that this isn't worthy of being 11.0. But if they've done much more of an extensive re-write of things under-the-hood beyond Catalyst ports of common apps (a la Snow Leopard) in addition to what I've mentioned above, then maybe it's worthy of the title. But it more seems like an easy way of tracking when the Apple Silicon Mac era began than anything (i.e. There will be no Apple Silicon Macs running any form of macOS 10). But if we're looking at this as a similar jump to the one that went from Mac OS 8 to Mac OS 9, then this is totally worthy of 11, especially if 10.15 is the end of the line for 10. I just wish 10.15 wasn't such a lame note to end on.
Merely a PR change, so yes, still annual releases. Apple has made it very clear that this is the way they roll now, unfortunately, as buggy software is now their thing.
When I said it didn't do anything about OS X I was talking entirely about the name of OS X
I'm not sure how adding ARM/Apple Silicon support is less of an under the hood change than we saw with Catalina. I'd recommend watching Apple's State of the Union address from WWDC for a deeper dive into the changes coming in Big Sur, because the keynote just hit the highlights.
As I said, I'm leaving that part out. "OS X has switched architectures before, and it didn't warrant a version change back then... "
I was going to say the same thing. Call it whatever number you want, it's still the same OS you're installing (it is what it is).
I know Apple did not change 'X' on the last transition from PPC to Intel, but I see 11 as signifying the start of the transition to Apple Silicon.
My only hold up with that is if macOS was going to increase incrementally each year, why not consolidated? I admit that macOS X to 11 makes more sense on it's own, but when you look at the big picture:
- macOS 11
- iOS 14 released along side new iPhone's running on the iPhone 12 with the A14 chip
- iPadOS 14
Eventually all numbering systems fail and I wonder if Apple will really go into iOS 20 of if soon they'll just transition to names and the version number will only be used for developers or tech support.
Definitely 11.0.0.1 Or maybe 12, but most likely 11.0.0.1. Because then it technically works as an IPv4 address
Apple’s last statements give me the impression that the switch to version 11 is epochal. They justified it by saying that Big Sur specifically “changes so much of the general architecture” and because “it is a new operating system all around”. The number 11 would therefore be a constant.
Then again, this is Apple. What comes after Big Sur might as well be – in their speak – the next breakthrough or leap that warrants number 12.
I worked for a software company where the marketing department made us change a .0 release to .1 because they felt customers were apprehensive about upgrading to a .0 release.