Upgraded from Mojave to Big Sur (Macbook Air 2018). Here are my thoughts

[baas]

I've been using a 2018 macbook air (i5, dual core, 512/16) for two years which came with Mojave. I've held off updating to Catalina after the issues that were being reported after it came out. I decided to wait for Big Sur, but after reading about the issues that came with it, I decided to wait for Monterey initially. However, it seems that Mojave isn't receiving security updates anymore; 11.6 came out and I had a couple of days off so I decided to take the plunge and update to Big Sur. The upgrade process went fine, took about an hour or so. Saw a kernel panic message at some point but that wasn't a problem. Weird but ok. Here's what I think the day after:

Good:
- a long standing bug was fixed for me. Almost anytime a did a reboot under Mojave, I got an error message saying 'your mac restarted because of a problem'. It was always gone for a while after I did a reboot in safe mode, but I never found what caused it. Happy that it's gone.
- Disk utility often only worked directly after a reboot on Mojave, most of the time it would just hang on loading disks. In BS seems to be working fine.

Bad:
- my contacts were duplicated. Easily fixed be restoring contacts through iCloud.
- I really really dislike the placement of the 'new tab' icon in Safari, just doesn't make sense. I've held off Safari 15 for now.
- I really dislike the way finder looks (taste)
- I dislike the Mail app, I'm using icons+text and when I click the text under an icon, only the icon gets highlighted. Just doesn't make sense.
- Overall it doesn't feel as snappy as Mojave did, could be indexing so I'll give it a couple of days.

Ugly:
- I'm using an old Apple 24" Led cinema display through a satechi USB-C hub. Worked fine under Mojave but under BS it's flickering just one time once it comes out of sleep. Weird and annoying.
- Spotlight isn't finding anything so I'll make it rebuild. fixed now.


Overall I'm a bit disappointed that a .6 release feels so 'unpolished'. It's workable enough that I won't go through the hassle of downgrading back to Mojave, but I'm looking forward to Monterey when it comes out.

If anyone knows how to fix the display issue, please let me know!

 

[elvisimprsntr]

1. Sell or trade in your '18 MBA, which you might be able to get close to $500 USD
2. Put coins towards a new M1 machine
3. Enjoy life

 

[baas]

Lol yeah the future is silicon. Just hope to get a few years out of this macbook. Didn't mean to complain but give some perspective to people who are doubting whether they should update or not.

 

[svenmany]

- I really really dislike the placement of the 'new tab' icon in Safari, just doesn't make sense. I've held off Safari 15 for now.

There's a good change I'm misunderstanding you, so sorry in advance.

If you mean the icon with the "+", you can move it by customizing your toolbar; just right-click on the toolbar and select "Customize Toolbar...". Then you can drag the button anywhere. You probably mean something else by "new tab icon".

- I dislike the Mail app, I'm using icons+text and when I click the text under an icon, only the icon gets highlighted. Just doesn't make sense.

When you click the text switches to a bold font and the icons get highlighted in a different way. It is a bit hard to see the text switch so I can see there's room for improvement.

Hovering is worth complaining about. They only indicate the hover on the icons, not the text. Also, I'm finding it somewhat random whether the hovering indication works at all.

 

[baas]

There's a good change I'm misunderstanding you, so sorry in advance.

If you mean the icon with the "+", you can move it by customizing your toolbar; just right-click on the toolbar and select "Customize Toolbar...". Then you can drag the button anywhere. You probably mean something else by "new tab icon".


When you click the text switches to a bold font and the icons get highlighted in a different way. It is a bit hard to see the text switch so I can see there's room for improvement.

Hovering is worth complaining about. They only indicate the hover on the icons, not the text. Also, I'm finding it somewhat random whether the hovering indication works at all.

Thanks for your reply. I did indeed mean the the icon with "+", you can indeed drag it anywhere but within the toolbar.



In Safari on Mojave the + was next to the tabs, as it is in Firefox (see screenshot) and Chrome which I think is more intuitive.
I'm seeing the bold text now indeed, thx! Maybe it's just getting used to it.

 

[Isamilis]

I have been using Big Sur (11.5.2) in one of my Intel MacBook (MBA 2020) for a while. My other MacBooks (the old MBP 2015) are still using Mojave. Guess what.. they are more responsive (not much) than my more recent MBA 2020 with Big Sur. Lol.
MBA 2020 can only Catalina or newer. Catalina has problems on battery during sleep. Agree that Big Sur is slow (and ugly) but in my case it is more stable (good battery/sleep, AirPlay, Bluetooth, screen sharing, etc). Not much choices anyway.