Simply speaking - are you enjoying Big Sur?

[tkermit]

At this point, I find it aggravating to use mainly due to a lack of contrast in way too many places. Unnecessary hover states that make you mouse around to reveal things are also pretty annoying. Not to mention many windows lack a full-width title bar, so there's barely any space left to grab and move a window. Long window titles also get cut off. On the plus side, it's kind of pretty – nice to look at. Usability doesn't seem to have been a priority though.

 

[fisherking]

i just find myself using my mac as i always do; emailing, working, surfing... am not missing anything (or hating any of it). still some buggy moments, but it is a beta. otherwise, it seems fine.

 

[nickdalzell1]

Not sure if Big Sur related or not but Firefox Quantum has started doing that super-annoying 'Gah! your tab just crashed!' full-screen error on sites I visit often on it. I had to disable Javascript to fix that. (Gee, figured after Chrome got over its 'aw snap!' tab resets it was over for keeps!)

There's no way to disable the crash reporter that causes it either (from my experience, Firefox assumes something's crashed if it uses too much RAM, CPU % or some other arbritary figure and 'crashes' the affected service/tab and notifies the user. I used to turn that crap off and it'd carry on no issue at all, unfortunately Firefox 'updates' on its own and I didn't disable it in time. So now it's half-baked. I wouldn't use it if Youtube didn't suddenly stop working on Safari back in Catalina)

I wonder if there's a 2010-era version of Firefox in 64-bit I can replace it with just for the sake of random searches, browsing Reddit, and forums. I hate how dumbed down Firefox has become...it's trying too hard to protect me from myself lately. Lately it assumes Reddit is unsafe and shows the 'did not connect potential security issue' which also cannot be bypassed.

EDIT: downgraded to the older version the 'update' replaced (was still on my Mac) and disabled updates and it's working fine. Apparently the older version 72 is more compatible with Big Sur Beta than version 80. Go figure.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

The amount of white space / lack of contrast is very distracting and definitely a step backwards.

 

[Monotremata]

i just find myself using my mac as i always do; emailing, working, surfing... am not missing anything (or hating any of it). still some buggy moments, but it is a beta. otherwise, it seems fine.

Same exact experience here. It just kept running as it was, Im getting what I need done just the same. Pretty sure the plugin issues we have will be fixed once the GM is out (the audio devs always like to wait). Logic is rock solid as usual, my MOTU 828x drivers work perfect, only missing 2 plugins that need to be updated. Some of it is a little more IOS'ed then I like but I have an iPhone so Im getting used to it. I actually dig the spacing with the fonts and whatnot on it. Makes things a little easier to read on a 4k display. The one thing I was really concerned about was my Akai MPC. I use it standalone, but I rely on its driver to mount on a Mac so I can back up the SSD with all my projects and samples on it with CCC. Akai is not exactly on top of the game when it comes to programming nowadays, but shockingly, the MPC mounted right up (and CCC is still working to do backups). Bring on the GM!

The one piece of hardware I haven't tried yet is my old Emagic AMT8 MIDI interface. Apple's quietly kept it working since buying Emagic, so hopefully it still does.

 

[nickdalzell1]

I don't see any additional whitespace. In fact, it's more colorful and more retina-display beautiful to me. It's even better if you use the realistic dynamic wallpaper. The colors seem to shift depending on the time of day. It's actually quite nice to look at, and unlike Catalina, not getting tons of CPU usage, 3-4 hours battery, fans running full hilt, or broken dark mode anymore. Just some random bugs with Firefox that I recently fixed is all.

 

[ArPe]

I was enthusiastic for the first couple of betas but there are some very bad issues with regards to eGPU reduced performance/video decoding and crackling external display audio. These issues didn’t exist in Catalina.

There’s only a month or so to go for release and if these issues remain then Big Sur will be a no go area for me.

 

[fisherking]

I was enthusiastic for the first couple of betas but there are some very bad issues with regards to eGPU reduced performance/video decoding and crackling external display audio. These issues didn’t exist in Catalina.

There’s only a month or so to go for release and if these issues remain then Big Sur will be a no go area for me.

don't think that's a universal issue (or are others experiencing this??) but here (with FCPX), all is working well.

 

[ArPe]

don't think that's a universal issue (or are others experiencing this??) but here (with FCPX), all is working well.

Obviously people have different set ups but when these things work fine in Catalina then they should work in Big Sur (release version). There’s nothing complicated or using third party drivers here. Catalina, Windows and Ubuntu no issues.

Testers please try this, connect an eGPU (580, Vega, 5700XT) to a 4K display (test both DP and HDMI) with built in audio and compare video playback, audio quality and 3D performance to Catalina. If there are issues please send reports.

 

[Monotremata]

Obviously people have different set ups but when these things work fine in Catalina then they should work in Big Sur (release version). There’s nothing complicated or using third party drivers here. Catalina, Windows and Ubuntu no issues.

Testers please try this, connect an eGPU (580, Vega, 5700XT) to a 4K display (test both DP and HDMI) with built in audio and compare video playback, audio quality and 3D performance to Catalina. If there are issues please send reports.

Theres already plenty of reports from users in a few threads here using them just fine..

 

[ArPe]

Theres already plenty of reports from users in a few threads here using them just fine..

There isn’t much and you just have to see the YouTube 4K video thread as an example of how so many threads are a few people discussing. I’m reading every thread on here and eGPU.io. I’m one of less than a handful of people who has ran comparative 3D benchmarks between Catalina and Big Sur.

If you’re not providing solutions, if you’re not testing similar set ups, please don’t reply with a contentless message. It doesn’t help anyone. Leave people alone to post their experience.

 

[Tuba]

Beta 5 has the messages app crashing consistently for me, everything else is perfectly fine here. I have reported the bug, so we'll see if the next beta fixes it for me.

 

[Feyl]

My experience on MacBook Air 2019:

1. Performance - Slower than Catalina, stuttery UI.

2. Can't use it yet as a daily driver because my Mac won't wake up from sleep everytime I come back to the machine.

3. Design - Absolutely a step backwards in basically everything. Terrible lack of contrast, tons of wasted space, etc.. In terms of looks it's basically what iOS 7 was.

4. Battery life - OK, very similar to Catalina.

5. Features - Nothing really new there that I'd notice or use regularly, except for the new Control Center.

 

[nickdalzell1]

Funny, as that's exactly my opinion of Catalina ^^^

Big Sur is NOTHING like iOS 7 was. I was there. I got rid of both my iPhone 4 (my first one, not the one I found in a junkyard later on) and iPad 3 over it. I despise flat design, iOS 7 converted me to Samsung for a long time given they were the only ones doing skeuo after 2013. Big Sur is starting to transition back towards Skeuomorphism. Catalina is flatter, slower, laggier waking from sleep, and has a completely broken auto dark mode.

 

[Feyl]

Funny, as that's exactly my opinion of Catalina ^^^

Big Sur is NOTHING like iOS 7 was. I was there. I got rid of both my iPhone 4 (my first one, not the one I found in a junkyard later on) and iPad 3 over it. I despise flat design, iOS 7 converted me to Samsung for a long time given they were the only ones doing skeuo after 2013. Big Sur is starting to transition back towards Skeuomorphism. Catalina is flatter, slower, laggier waking from sleep, and has a completely broken auto dark mode.

I'm really glad that you have a different experience with Big Sur, but that's unfourtunately my experience with it right now. I hope things will change in a month or two but I'm not optimistic.

And where do you get the idea that it's starting to transition back towards "skeuomorphism"? They literally got rid off many button cues, lower contrast everywhere and removed even a slight hint of any 3D elements. The system is not skeuomorphic just because they brutally overdone like 4 icons.

 

[minifridge1138]

Skeuomorphism is the design concept of making items represented resemble their real-world counterparts.

There was a time when the Calendar App looked like a physical calendar. When Game Center had a background that looked like the green felt you'd see on a card table. When the podcast app looked like a reel-to-reel tape player. When the iBooks app displayed the book covers on wooden book shelves. When the voice memo app looked like a microphone.

iOS 7 was actually when they switched away from skeuomorphism and went to the flatter design. I don't miss the wood grain textures or green felt backgrounds, but I did like iOS better when it was obvious what objects were buttons. iOS 7 also moved away from UI buttons that cast shadows and had artificial "glare" as if they were glossy, physical buttons. And technically, you could have a flat skeuomorphic design without the drop shadows and glare.

So I agree that Big Sur has a lot of UI changes, but I don't think transitioning back to skeuomorphism is the correct description.

 

[nickdalzell1]

It's starting the transition and you can see it on the new system preferences menu

Look at the icons for Battery, Notifications, and others:

Definitely not as flat as Catalina (Or Yosemite). Also look at the battery icon under the Battery status menu, a hallmark right out of iOS 6's charging screen:

The icons in the dock have taken on a far more skeuo look, such as Messages, App Store, System Prefs, Stickies, Chess, Mail, Maps, and Safari to name a few.

It might not be entirely skeuo but it's transitioning there. Assuming the naysayers don't force Apple to stick to flat for another decade plus (please tell me flat ain't forever!) the next OS version could take us even deeper to skeuomorphism, or, as it's known today, 'Neumorphism'. Windows 10 has been doing something similar as of version 1903.

I still love and adore skeuomorphism personally. It was fun to use, made me actually want to touch the touchscreen. My life in 2009 was that of still clinging to a Nokia 5185i on Page Plus, which had the flattest UI ever imagined (it was a literal LCD display, no color, no more than a calculator display.) and at that time I was dead-set against smartphones in general for being overly complicated (as was the case with Palm Treos, Nokia N95s, and the T-Mobile Sidekick) as well as in my view, a solution to a problem that didn't exist. When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, I regarded it as nothing more than the second coming of the Newton, destined to fail. When batteries for my Nokia no longer held sufficient charge and no one made new ones, I was given an iPhone 3GS (new in 2009) from my boss who tired of my Nokia dying when he needed to reach me. That was my literal first connection to not only smartphones, but iPhone. I ended up adoring that thing. The interface made perfect sense. It was fun to use. It had a radio app that used multi-touch to 'rotate' the volume and tuning 'knob' (some third-party app from long ago) that just made me love it more. More apps kept coming that made it well, to coin a phrase, 'the funnest iPhone ever'. Made me want an iPad (the mentioned iPad 3, which got Siri in iOS 6) and an even newer iPhone (iPhone 4).

When iOS 7 came out, at first I thought my devices were in safe mode as it was stark white and looked nothing like it should. Both my iPhone 4 and iPad 3 self-installed it overnight while they were plugged in (I guess auto updates were on, which, until iOS 7, never really bothered me as they improved and made it even better, well, until iOS 7 came out)

I got rid of them and looked in a cellular store and the only phones doing skeuo at that time in 2013 (well into 2014 too) were the Galaxy S3, and Galaxy S4. I started with an S3, ended up loving Samsung's interface even more, dubbed Touchwiz Nature UX, and being an avid nature/deer lover myself, I really thought it was perfect, from its water drop touch sound to the alarm music, to that iconic 'over the horizon' ringtone. It took longer for Samsung to retire skeuo but they finally did when the S5 came out, and it only got worse from there when they ditched the nature influence completely for One UI. So for now I stick to older Galaxy phones (I got an S5, running a older theme that resembles TouchWiz Nature UX, and a Galaxy S4 I recently got new from Amazon (unopened sealed box) that still has Jelly Bean and with that the skeuo UI that my S3 and older S4 had. I also got an HTC Thunderbolt which works 100%. My only exception is the Samsung Galaxy A01 I'm using as my daily for now, since my girlfriend hated not being able to send emojis to the older phones. It's running a theme (thanks to Samsung Theme Store) that brings back the skeuo icons from older TouchWiz, and another theme on top of that one that restores a lot of the skeuo UI so it looks more like a 'what would TouchWix Nature UX look like if it were being developed in 2020' UI. While I cannot restore the touch sounds or alarm music, I was able to sideload the ringtone from the early times. Not a bad phone but I keep my others just in case I end up hating it later on.

So I am aware of flat design and I'm dead set against it. So far, I'm hoping MacOS is at least starting to trend back. I still got a PowerBook G4 that works as well.