Big Sur....Yea or nay?

TidBITS Talk
29

(Replying to myself). It’s been two weeks and Big Sur has been much more stable for me than Catalina ever was.

(MBP 13, 2017)

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30

Amen to that!!!

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31

Your experience matches that of the majority of users I’ve heard from. Catalina never felt finished to most of us.

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32

I think it’s been quite a while since there was consensus that a macOS version felt finished when it was released. Not few would probably suggest Snow Leopard.

33

That’s not really the discussion here. Catalina never felt finished even after a number of updates. Big Sur feels in my case to be much closer to that semi-mythical state.

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34

Maybe:

Team A worked on Apple Silicon

Team B worked on Big Sur

Team C worked on Catalina

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35

in past times in various macOS versions, I have had the cursor disappear. I can make it appear again using “cmd-tab” and selecting the Finder.

36

I experienced that only on Catalina, never before IIRC. So far haven’t had it happen to me on Big Sur.

37

In general I have to say so far Big Sur appears to be less quirky for me that Catalina ever was. No more Spotlight maxing out the CPU or rogue CalendarAgent activity. I’m not sure the looks have won me over yet, but in my limited experience so far I’d say it feels like the more stable macOS. I’ll feel even better when SuperDuper can create bootable clones. CCC already does AFAIK.

38

I completely agree!!! Far, far few problems than I ever imagined there would be. As far as the new look goes, I truly dislike the new icons… but I can live with them. I am hoping that the TechTool folks and others catch up soon!

39

Well, I upgraded to Big Sur yesterday and - so far at least - I haven’t found any problems. The installation went quickly and easily with no problems. So far, so good.

Sam

40

Maybe Mail has to take some time to develop an index before the search function will work as mine is working now without any app update.

41

I can’t stand the Music app either, but have you tried Retroactive?

I’m not on Big Sur yet, but iTunes 10.7 is running well on my Catalina install, and this version along with versions 11.4, 12.6.5 & 12.9.5 can apparently be installed on Big Sur.

42

Update to my comment about Music - the two big issues I had they’ve fixed! I wasn’t expecting that. Columns jump to the right letter when a letter is typed (if sorted by that column), and for the first time since iTunes was retired in favor of Music, artwork can be displayed in the leftmost column. Music still has its issues - for example, it processes purchased music very bizarrely - when it downloads the music, it displays every song twice, once as Purchased and once as Waiting.

43

Thanks for that makes sense and enhances my knowledge.

44

Agree completely but at 82 I could sure use a bigger font size in the menu bar!!

45

If you have a Retina display, it could help to visit Sys Prefs > Displays, choose Scaled, and select a larger text display.

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46

Thanks Simon much better thanks.

47

You can do that even without a retina display. Instead of getting a the set of five scale factors to choose from, you get a list of your display’s supported resolutions (opton-click the scaled button to get the complete list of available resolutions if you don’t see the one you’d like).

Of course, these options scale everything, not just the menu bar text, which may or may not be what you really want.

48

There’s an option in the Display submenu of the Accessibility preference to enlarge the fonts in the menu bar (to their former size?).