Simply speaking - are you enjoying Big Sur?

[thadoggfather]

I havent messed with any of the betas, I'm incredibly careful when upgrading OS for my laptops. I kept my 2016 NTB on Sierra the whole time, and only have Catalina because my 2020 Air shipped with it. Though I was ready for some up to date ness since that one was becoming long in the tooth (though I appreciate 32-bit support still on my other machine, and there are certain things I just dont want to mess with, especially now that I have another machine).

--

anyways, my tendencies aside are you enjoying Big Sur?

 

[rcoden]

Have been using this as my daily driver. Very stable beta. Think it might be more stable than Catalina.

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac19,1
Processor Name: 8-Core Intel Core i9
Processor Speed: 3.6 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 8
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 16 MB
Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled
Memory: 40 GB
Boot ROM Version: 1037.140.50.0.0
SMC Version (system): 2.46f12

 

[MisterAndrew]

I've decided I don't care for the iOS-like design. I think Apple should have released a less buggy version of Catalina.

 

[McMack]

Yes, enjoying it very much, and unexpectedly so. My 2015 13" MBP likes it too, which counts for something.

My first Mac OS was Leopard in 2009. I loved it so much that I never quite gelled with Snow Leopard, and regretted upgrading (remember when we had to send off for a disc...).

I've only really liked Sierra and Mojave in the years since. Everything else was either bland and anonymous (Yosemite) or sluggish and hard work (High Sierra).

I wasn't expecting to like Big Sur at all. I've just spent a positive first full day with it. Everything works and I like the design. Catalina struck me as ungainly and I assumed Big Sur would be a continuation of that, but it's a new departure of course.

 

[MacGizmo]

Have it installed on a 2014 MBPro 15" w/16GB RAM. Runs BEAUTIFULLY! The only 3rd party apps I have installed is MS Office, so there's really nothing to cause conflicts. People who are saying it runs better than Catalina are right. It's noticeably faster for me (full disclosure, I had no real problems with Catalina either).

 

[theroaringbadger]

Anyway, on an 2019 iMac with i9. Blows Catalina out of the water. Love the new design.

 

[CLS7]

Overall I like the interface. But there is two things I don't like and that is the menu icons, there is too much space between them. The other is the rounded corner in windows. But I think I will be used to it.

 

[RednBlue]

Have it installed on a 2014 MBPro 15" w/16GB RAM. Runs BEAUTIFULLY! The only 3rd party apps I have installed is MS Office, so there's really nothing to cause conflicts. People who are saying it runs better than Catalina are right. It's noticeably faster for me (full disclosure, I had no real problems with Catalina either).

Same. In my case MUCH better than Catalina's first four betas where I had continuous overheating and fans running. Big Sur has been pretty much perfect from Beta 1.....(that's probably the kiss of death!)

 

[KibJ]

Overall I like the interface. But there is two things I don't like and that is the menu icons, there is too much space between them. The other is the rounded corner in windows. But I think I will be used to it.

Agreed, way too much spacing between menu bar icons! A way to shrink the spacing or allow dropdown like in windows, or something similar to bartender. The other option would be to allow dropdown menus for apps that have way too menu options in the menu bar, Microsoft Edge being one of them!

I quite like the rounded windows to be honest

Over all Big Sur already feels loads better than Catalina for me

 

[ArPe]

Yes, it’s cleaner overall and fixes some long standing bugs. I only wish some apps made better use of the GPU and eGPU.

 

[Mike-G]

I’m not liking most of the design changes. The new icons and rounded windows & drop down menus irritate me the most.

The control centre also feels pretty pointless on a Mac.

 

[fisherking]

half-a day into the public beta, and am adapting. am more concerned with the work i do on my mac than the spacing of icons in the menu, or how things look. the control center is a good touch.

having said that, some things could be 'better'; the stickies icon, always ugly, is uglier than ever. and i can't narrow the messages window; on a 12" macbook, it's wayyyy to wide. a few other things. but mostly things work (on my imac, i am going back to catalina, a good number of plugins do NOT work in logic, and one developer promises a fix... 'on or after the OS's final release'!).

but overall, the OS seems fine; just needs some getting used to... like all previous apple OSes...

 

[MHenr]

The control centre also feels pretty pointless on a Mac.

I love it!
Maybe on a desktop it's not very useful, but on a laptop it's pretty great.

 

[Arimathéia Otto]

I forgot my iPad. The Mac is back.

 

[mintbliss]

I'm into it..

I was looking forward to downloading the beta after installing the iOS beta for the first time this summer. Big Sur still does feel like a Mac but no doubt reminds me of iOS. I'm into the idea of all the Apple operating systems looking similar with their own little tweaks here and there. New sounds are nice, wonder when they will transition to iOS, etc..
The rounded corners of the windows are of course a hint to the idea of Mac screens eventually getting the same rounded corners as the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch.. love that as well! Anyone else looking forward to where Apple takes their design theme next??

🤓Phil

 

[minik]

I put the dev beta on the late 2015 iMac (non-retina and fusion drive). Since beta 3, it has been a lot better but beta 4 crashed on installation. Once I plugged in a keyboard and mouse, it boots back up normally. The Finder UI takes time to get used to.

 

[dantracht]

Decided to take the plunge on my late 2015 iMac, and I am enjoying it so far. Dare I say my iMac is running better than on Catalina?

 

[zorinlynx]

My main complaint is the interface in light mode is just, "too white", for lack of a better term.

Catalina has shades of grey and silver for various elements on the screen; Big Sur seems to push more things to pure 100% white. It looks too flat and boring that way.

I suppose this is very much a subjective issue, and I'd probably get used to it fairly quickly, but it's my number one complaint so far. I may end up using Dark Mode because of this change, though.

A second complaint is that UI elements (window title bars especially) seem to be a bit larger. I had to set my screen resolution to "more room" in Display Settings to get the same amount of room as I had in Catalina. I don't like this because there's a performance penalty for doing this, since the system is now rendering to a larger virtual screen and scaling it down.

Other than those two big issues, everything else looks great. I like the new APFS-based time machine especially; that's going to speed up the performance of TM backups big time.

 

[StrangeNoises]

Installed yesterday. Apart from some graphics glitches during install and on the first shutdown, I've had no problems with it at all. Also as usual trying out safari/apple-mail until they annoy me enough to go back to my normal firefox/postbox combo. not happened yet.

 

[jonnysods]

I'll see if I can run it in a VM on the weekend. I want to check it out, but I don't know how I feel about using it as my main computer just yet. I'm a little attached to the OSX UI.

 

[DreamyLucid]

Yes. I actually like the new UI. It brings some fresh designs to the table. Overall, the OS feels fast.

 

[Mr. Awesome]

It’s not perfect, but it’s MUCH better than Catalina. I like the design, and the icons grow on you after a while. Performance-wise, it’s been pretty good for a beta. The only thing annoying me is that some apps get confused because they’re running on a version of macOS that they don’t know about, but that’s not a macOS problem. I just need to wait for the apps to be updated later on. Big Dur itself had been a breath of fresh air to me, at least.

 

[MauiPa]

I’m not liking most of the design changes. The new icons and rounded windows & drop down menus irritate me the most.

The control centre also feels pretty pointless on a Mac.

I couldn't agree with you less. Each to their own

 

[MauiPa]

I've decided I don't care for the iOS-like design. I think Apple should have released a less buggy version of Catalina.

I had no bugs in Catalina, hard to beat that

 

[MauiPa]

I’m not liking most of the design changes. The new icons and rounded windows & drop down menus irritate me the most.

The control centre also feels pretty pointless on a Mac.

Control center is awesome, saves a lot of icons in the menu bar, one stop shopping for tweaks