Pretty OK actually... Not BS after all...

[Killerbob]

I upgraded my Mac Pro Trashcan a week ago; it was a fairly complex Catalina installation, with lots of software, graphics utilities (I am a photographer), office applications, and utilities. I have a lot of hardware constantly connected via TB and USB. My NAS is a NAD/DAS via TB2, and I have an external PCIe expansion unit filled to the brim with SSD storage and graphics hardware. I also run Win10 via bootcamp and Parallels as well. All-in-all a system that has been challenging at the best of times.

Following the upgrade to Big Sur, which was such a slow process that once it started up successfully, I was pleasantly surprised. Most things kind of seemed to work... The few things that did not work immediately were all utilities like Onyx, CCC, Little Snitch, DaisyDisk, LiteIcons, and Cyberduck (a week later and some of these have already had upgrades and work now.) Everything BIG just works, and I have yet to experience a decent crash of the OS. I have pushed it to the limit with multitasking and maxing out RAM (I have 64GB), but Big Sur just takes what I throw at it.

Summing this up, this is possibly the best Beta testing I have seen thus far with macOS. Remember the issues with moving from MobileMe to iCloud in Lion? The keychain sync in Alpha-Mavericks, the Finder issues. In Yosemite we tested the Photos app (what a freaking disaster that was), as well as underlying "upgrades" resulting in possibly the worst beta macOS ever. El Cap was finally everything that Yosemite was not, but then in Sierra we tested Siri and iCloud (once again). High Sierra sorted a lot of these problems, but then introduced APFS... Everyone had issues with Mojave, and then came the unmitigated disaster that was Catalina (lol).

I know we all have our own battle scars, but basically for me, Big Sur is pretty OK...

 

[KoolAid-Drink]

I upgraded my Mac Pro Trashcan a week ago; it was a fairly complex Catalina installation, with lots of software, graphics utilities (I am a photographer), office applications, and utilities. I have a lot of hardware constantly connected via TB and USB. My NAS is a NAD/DAS via TB2, and I have an external PCIe expansion unit filled to the brim with SSD storage and graphics hardware. I also run Win10 via bootcamp and Parallels as well. All-in-all a system that has been challenging at the best of times.

Following the upgrade to Big Sur, which was such a slow process that once it started up successfully, I was pleasantly surprised. Most things kind of seemed to work... The few things that did not work immediately were all utilities like Onyx, CCC, Little Snitch, DaisyDisk, LiteIcons, and Cyberduck (a week later and some of these have already had upgrades and work now.) Everything BIG just works, and I have yet to experience a decent crash of the OS. I have pushed it to the limit with multitasking and maxing out RAM (I have 64GB), but Big Sur just takes what I throw at it.

Summing this up, this is possibly the best Beta testing I have seen thus far with macOS. Remember the issues with moving from MobileMe to iCloud in Lion? The keychain sync in Alpha-Mavericks, the Finder issues. In Yosemite we tested the Photos app (what a freaking disaster that was), as well as underlying "upgrades" resulting in possibly the worst beta macOS ever. El Cap was finally everything that Yosemite was not, but then in Sierra we tested Siri and iCloud (once again). High Sierra sorted a lot of these problems, but then introduced APFS... Everyone had issues with Mojave, and then came the unmitigated disaster that was Catalina (lol).

I know we all have our own battle scars, but basically for me, Big Sur is pretty OK...

Gotta agree to disagree on Yosemite and Mojave. Both of those OSes were flawless for me overall. But, yes, Catalina was/is a unmitigated disaster, no question!

 

[Killerbob]

Like I said, we all have different experiences with the betas - because it all depends on your specific setup, if you upgrade an existing system, what hardware you have, what peripherals, what software. The more complex, the more issues I reckon.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

So far, all signs are pointing to this being one of the most stable macOS releases yet. I find this very surprising given the major changes throughout, so Apple clearly has been working a lot under the hood.

Though Catalina was an unmitigated disappointment in terms of reliability, I can definitely see now how that was the last OS to be preparing for Big Sur.

 

[TiggrToo]

Have to wonder how much of the stability is due to Apple removing support for a whole heap of kexts...?

 

[Tubamajuba]

Against my better judgment, I did an in-place upgrade from Catalina to Big Sur instead of a fresh install. Everything "just works"... I know that could change seeing as we're still in the early beta stages, but I have to agree- so far so good!

 

[displaced]

There seems to have been a few fixes to the ‘fit and finish’ too.

For example, Catalina would behave a bit ‘crunchy’ when logging in. I’d use TouchID at the login screen, the desktop would start to appear, then another login screen would appear that would, after a second or two, disappear on its own and I’d finally be at the desktop.

No such problems with Big Sur. My only hope is that the icons and overall layout consistency gets tightened up over the coming betas.

 

[Killerbob]

Against my better judgment, I did an in-place upgrade from Catalina to Big Sur instead of a fresh install. Everything "just works"... I know that could change seeing as we're still in the early beta stages, but I have to agree- so far so good!

It’s interesting that we are actually seeing a decent amount of problems with having done a fresh install and installing applications from scratch.

 

[darthaddie]

I upgraded my Mac Pro Trashcan a week ago; it was a fairly complex Catalina installation, with lots of software, graphics utilities (I am a photographer), office applications, and utilities. I have a lot of hardware constantly connected via TB and USB. My NAS is a NAD/DAS via TB2, and I have an external PCIe expansion unit filled to the brim with SSD storage and graphics hardware. I also run Win10 via bootcamp and Parallels as well. All-in-all a system that has been challenging at the best of times.

Following the upgrade to Big Sur, which was such a slow process that once it started up successfully, I was pleasantly surprised. Most things kind of seemed to work... The few things that did not work immediately were all utilities like Onyx, CCC, Little Snitch, DaisyDisk, LiteIcons, and Cyberduck (a week later and some of these have already had upgrades and work now.) Everything BIG just works, and I have yet to experience a decent crash of the OS. I have pushed it to the limit with multitasking and maxing out RAM (I have 64GB), but Big Sur just takes what I throw at it.

Summing this up, this is possibly the best Beta testing I have seen thus far with macOS. Remember the issues with moving from MobileMe to iCloud in Lion? The keychain sync in Alpha-Mavericks, the Finder issues. In Yosemite we tested the Photos app (what a freaking disaster that was), as well as underlying "upgrades" resulting in possibly the worst beta macOS ever. El Cap was finally everything that Yosemite was not, but then in Sierra we tested Siri and iCloud (once again). High Sierra sorted a lot of these problems, but then introduced APFS... Everyone had issues with Mojave, and then came the unmitigated disaster that was Catalina (lol).

I know we all have our own battle scars, but basically for me, Big Sur is pretty OK...

Photographer here myself. Do you use Lightroom? It works for me but its really really slow at times. Like simple brushes would take ages. Have you experienced the same?

I am on a Mac Pro with a fresh Big Sur install on a secondary drive.

 

[Killerbob]

Photographer here myself. Do you use Lightroom? It works for me but its really really slow at times. Like simple brushes would take ages. Have you experienced the same?

I am on a Mac Pro with a fresh Big Sur install on a secondary drive.

I use Lightroom Classic, and have seen it a bit slow for a few seconds, when scrolling through hundreds of photos, just when opening up LR. That may just be my imagination though, I am not sure it is any slower than in Catalina. My CS applications, as well as my libraries are on the internal SSD, but my photo files are on my NAS, connected via TB.

One thing though I have noticed is that thumbnails are completely screwed up in Bridge 2020. I don't know if that is Big Sur, or Bridge though...

 

[RumorConsumer]

So far, all signs are pointing to this being one of the most stable macOS releases yet. I find this very surprising given the major changes throughout, so Apple clearly has been working a lot under the hood.

Though Catalina was an unmitigated disappointment in terms of reliability, I can definitely see now how that was the last OS to be preparing for Big Sur.

Modern day Mac OS 7.6