Is It Safe to Upgrade to macOS 11 Big Sur?

Article Comments
21

That’s quite something.

FB et al. learned that you need to appeal to people’s lowest emotions and get them all riled up against one another to get them to keep coming back to your site. That’s how you drive revenue.

Apple would never do that. They would never lock you in, they’ll win you over with their superior products. Your best user experience is all they strive for.

But they also want you to be secure. And you can only be secure if you update all your gadgets. Constantly. Of course only the latest gadgets can be updated and only the latest gadgets on the latest software will continue to talk to each other. And hey, no complaining: Apple’s cut-off is less severe than Android or Windows so it’s obviously all good. So again: no complaining.

Result: at some point your gadgets are either a) unsafe or b) incapable of talking to your other gadgets or c) all of the above. The only way out of that: upgrade everything constantly and that means hardware too obviously, because otherwise no more security. It keeps people coming back for more. And you really have no alternative, since:

remember that the longer you delay upgrading, the harder it’s going to be and the more likely you are to run into problems. Upgrading is a when question, not an if question.

People constantly need to update and buy new gadgets just to keep doing what they wanted to initially do. But with every update they get a little something new and that then adds to the long list of things you need to be able to do but only work with the latest updates, which then require the latest hardware, repeat iteratively from here.

Every crack dealer’s dream come true.

We are becoming slaves to our gadgets. What used to be a tool to get a means done, has now become a means to itself. Buy, update, patch, upgrade, buy again. And iterate. It’s no longer buy and use till it’s actually broken. It’s buy and use until you are told it’s unsafe.

But hey, no complaining. You’re still totally free to do what you want. It’s your responsibility if you choose to run an unsafe system or if you want to keep using a feature you started liking around 2016. That’s all your choice. It’s all on you. Nobody said you needed a computer or a phone. And nobody says you need to be connected to the internet anyway. And Google and MS are worse anyway. /innocent twinkle ;)

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22

Adam, I don’t mind change. I just don’t want to around when it happens. I understand that new operating systems require adjustments, but using the word safe in your headline is daunting. For those of us who subscribe to Tidbits but aren’t geeks, every new macOS is intimidating, bone-chilling, and time-consuming. The long-term solution is to spend tons of money on a new Mac (Apple loves this) and be forced to use a new macOS. The short-term fix is Prozac and sedatives.

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23

I upgraded my iMac 2017 to BS and postponed the upgrade on my 2018 MBP.
Ever since the iMac is taking ages to wake from sleep. Actually even longer than restarting which is sometimes the only workable solution. It irritates me to the point that I have considered thrashing BS and go back to Catalina.

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24

You hit the nail on the head with “time consuming”. I guess part of this comes from all the extra devices that didn’t exist 20 years ago, but even then my original iPod ran for years on my G4 with no issues, through many updates. Even my phones synced to a G4 running Tiger for a long time before an iOS update broke that (I can’t remember if it was the 4s or SE that got kicked off).

Simon also hit the nail on the head. The problem arises when someone really just wants a phone to be a phone and maybe take a few pix, GPS and check the weather. On your computers you do some letter typing, email and web surfing.

I think part of my problem is I came up through the ecosystem when everything was connected. You had to sync your iPod/iPhone to your computer to manage apps, photos and music. And that worked great. But then non-Apple computer users started buying phones and iPods and they needed a way to manage things and that wish was granted. Except by doing so, Apple assumed everyone would enjoy those new features and as evidenced here, we all don’t.

I’m getting way OT but I do like to check out these threads as I am very intrigued by the new chips, and my laptop isn’t going to last forever. Even so, I’m kind of dreading the change that will bring too.

Diane

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25

Downgrading is quite hard unless you can just restore from a previous backup, so I’d recommend troubleshooting what’s wrong with your particular Mac. Slow waking from sleep is not a general problem with Big Sur.

You might start by creating and logging into a second user account. Or try booting in Safe Mode. Resetting NVRAM and SMC would also be worth doing. Worst case, try reinstalling Big Sur itself.

26

I’ll amplify that: Don’t even contemplating ever downgrading; I doubt that scenario is supported or tested. (Be very afraid of non-backward-compatible data format changes, for instance.) Consequently, make sure you have at least one full (e.g. Carbon Copy Cloner bootable) backup in addition to your regular multiple TimeMachine backups.

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27

I wish that were true; more discussion at Hiding Apple’s Big Sur Upgrade Badges - #25 by FlaSheridn. I also wish I had a good rule of thumb; I used to upgrade to the last minor version of the previous major OS release, but Goto Fail meant that all of iOS 6, and 7.x before 7.0.6, were presumably radically less safe than iOS 5. (Similarly MacOS 10.9 and 10.9.1.) Balancing new security knowledge by Apple against decreasing code and testing quality, not to mention new security knowledge by evildoers, is a hard problem.

28

I did reset NVRAM and SLC and it liked like it was better for a short while. I haven’t tried booting in Safe mode yet.
Reinstalling Big Sur seems drastic but I might try (after making a Time Machine backup). The problem is I’m in the middle of a portfolio project in my last year of photography. I cannot afford my iMac giving up on me.

Kind regards

Jo Van Rafelghem

29

I waited several months on High Sierra before ugrading my 2015 iMac to Catalina. Immediately after upgrading and all the way to now (as I type this) I wish I had never done the Catalina upgrade. I lived through MacOS 7.6.1 and MacOS 9.2.2 and all their crashiness, but the slowness and constant SBODs and failures to respond of this system make it unequivocally the worst Mac operating system I have ever used. I check the Activity Monitor constantly and can never find the culprit. The OS is just plain slow. “Lagginess” does not reach the magnitude of slow and unresponsive of this operating system. Catalina is the $EVILPLANET of operating systems from Apple.

So, thanks Adam for the encouragement to upgrade to Bug Sir. I installed it on one of my MBPs and was put off by the Fisher-Price-ness of the UI, and also didn’t like the lagginess on that machine (also a 2015), but at least it moves forward.

I have already spent some time clearing out the apps that did not make the transition. Actually I was surprised at the number of IT, InfoSec, and especially network info apps that were old and fossilized, and have not been updated in many years and point back to websites that also have not been updated in years*. But I cannot roll this back to High Sierra - Catalina is dead in the water - and so I will take this article’s advice and move up to (over to?) Bug Sir.

*Though not on IT/InfoSec apps have fossilized. I will miss several of the writing apps that Mariner Software has not updated since long before the California place names of Mac operating systems came about.

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30

What’s the issue with AppleScript in Rosetta? Does it not run?

31

Yes, Mariner had a really promising scriptwriting program for a while, Montage, but it never fully matured. It was the first real contender against the omnipresent Final Draft. A lot of what it brought has emerged in other software but it’s gone now.

Big Sur will settle on you. A few new things to learn but quickly got. I value the stability it has brought.

32

I have a very sweet but old 27" iMac. I was sad that I just missed the cutoff to upgrade to Big Sur, but after reading the comments here, feel lucky. The comments about the fit and finish are especially telling and disappointing, since they indicate to me that something in the QA pipeline is broken, or at least sluggish.

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33

I have a 2019 Mac mini which I upgraded to 11.2.3, although the last upgrade was this morning so it may have solved the issue, and I keep finding my Mac has restarted when I’ve left it on. This is happening more than any other OS I’ve used except Windows 98, and certainly more than any Mac OS I’ve ever used.

34

General comment is - are there advantages to updating to Big Sur on one mac if you have another mac that cannot be updated, leaving macs running with two different environments?

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35

Good question. Some might actually see it as an advantage since you can forge ahead while still having an older system to fall back on if need arises (eg. 32 bit apps). In general getting the two Macs to talk to each other (be it file sharing or screen sharing) shouldn’t be an issue. I imagine problems could arise if you plan to work on the same documents on multiple systems. If on the newer system you upgrade say Keynote to a version that changes the document format, while the other Mac is left with an older macOS that won’t allow you to upgrade to the newer Keynote, you’ll have shot yourself in the foot. Those are the kinds of things I’d be considering.

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36

Question should have included the fact that I’m not the only user of these two machines. My wife also uses them and really does not like it when things change on the computers. I’d be more comfortable if I was able to change both rather than having two different environments.

Scott Stricker - iPhone

37

I have three Macs all running three different systems - Big Sur on the Air that I use most of the time; Mojave on the iMac that I use occasionally and which my wife - like yours, she hates change - uses whenever she uses a computer, and Sierra on a Mac Mini that is a media and backup server (but I do think I’ll eventually upgrade that one to Big Sur, I just haven’t had time.)

I really don’t have issues at all moving between any of the three systems. The biggest issue might be that the Reminders app changed formats with Catalina and iOS 13 so the Mojave and Sierra machines can’t sync Reminders, but the truth is that I only use Reminders on my iOS devices anyway, so I don’t really miss it on the older machines.

My plan is to upgrade the iMac when Apple stops offering security patches to Mojave, which I believe will probably be after the release of this year’s presumed MacOS 12. Then I’ll walk my wife through the changes and bear her occasional grumbles when something isn’t working quite the same way. (It is getting to the point, though, when all of her computing is done with her iPad, so maybe it won’t be that much of an issue.)

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38

I update iOS immediately, it occurs overnight and I don’t really worry about data loss (as I backup every night). But a MacOS upgrade scares me, and yet I have not had a disaster, but I fear one is lurking. As you noted they take a really long time, thus leading me to fear whatever they are doing could fail as there is lots of activity. I do backup my Mac with Backblaze and with external drives every 10 days or so. Still scared of a failure and the need to start over, and possibly mess that up. If they could make them bullet proof like iOS, then I would upgrade. Thanks for the article.

39

Has anybody upgraded from High Sierra straight to Big Sur? How did that go?

40

I, too, have seen update issues with my 2020 iMac (iMac20,2): it’s the only device in the house that connects via Ethernet (other than the AirPort Express), so I thought that might be the source of the repeated “Download failed” messages after the download appeared to have finished. After several attempts to download and install 11.1, I wondered if the swanky 10 Gb Ethernet I’d opted for was the issue (maybe not negotiating correctly with my 1 Gb switch), so I tried using WiFi instead — and it worked fine… for a couple of updates. Then I started getting the same errors on WiFi.

For the 11.2.3 upgrade, I went to the last resort: WiFi not through the AirPort Express, but using my iPad Pro as a hotspot (thankfully, my family had an extra ~ 11 Gbyte data allowance for the month, though the rollover provisions of our cell carrier’s plan). That worked fine, but now I’m wondering what will happen with the next update…

The funny thing is, my previous machine, a 2017 iMac (iMac18,3), connected to our LAN via WiFi, has never had an issue downloading and installing a macOS 11 update. Right now, the only difference between the two other than the hardware is the System Preferences → Software Update “Automatically keep my Mac up to date” setting: the older machine has it on, and the newer one has it off.

Anyone else seen behavior like this, other than Adam and me?