If converting PDFs to JPEGs in Preview and using Tools>Resize is essential to your work I would wait and see if they get it fixed in the next upgrade. I can’t get better resolution than 72dpi now in a jpeg. Resolution is stuck at 72dpi regardless of what you request. The dimensions seem to be changed opposite the requested resolution change. i.e., higher resolution requested still gives 772dpi, but the dimensions of the photo increase proportionally to the higher resolution request. I have had to go to PhotoShop and bear the extra steps.
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If syncing your iPhone to the Finder (formerly to iTunes) is important to you, you might want to wait until that is fixed in Big Sur.
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Wow. . . I’m glad I read this thread today. I had decided that it might be time to upgrade my iPhone 6S from 12.4.1 to 14.4.1 based on what I’ve read on the MacRumors forum. It seemed like its battery problems were a thing of the past. Now I’m wondering whether my wife and I are stuck at iOS 12 forever. . .
I bought the 6S iPhones in January 2019 (only $200 each new Thank Gawd) even though our 5S models were still working fine. Having an actual headphone port was a big reason but perhaps not so logical looking back at it. More storage and a slightly larger display are nice too.
Now I’m not sure what the next step is. . . We are people who basically use our iPhones as phones, along with the usual basic functions: calendar/contacts, camera, etc. It sure doesn’t look like we will get 5 years out of the 6S as planned. Am I missing something?
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There was a nasty data lose bug in mail.app in 10.15. I have never found a definitive statement on is being fixed in either 10.15 or 11. This is what has kept me on 10.14. Does anyone know if this has been fixed?
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No, apparently the bug is still there (scroll down to see the latest update):
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/10/11/mail-data-loss-in-macos-10-15/
This is one of a handful of things holding me up from upgrading from 10.14 to 11. I’m in the middle of transitioning from Mail to MailMate, there’s no way I can risk upgrading and losing emails.
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This is unbelievable. Totally unbelievable.
Please, Apple QA advocates, explain why this bug is still here a year and a half later, and upper level support appears completely unawares.
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I am confused. This topic is about moving to OS 11 Big Sur but it seems people are now discussing Apple Mail problems from installing Catalina. Michael Tsai’s blog linked by Jolin Warren seems only to refer to Catalina (OS 10.15) issues.
Are there similar problems reported when installing Big Sur? I am running a test version of Big Sur installed from a Mojave system on an external SSD, and I haven’t seen any data loss problems, only a change in the way my Rules are applied.
I’m not aware of any specific Big Sur mail issues (apart from GUI changes). My understanding is lost email was primarily a Catalina issue and there was some hope that Big Sur would do away with all that. No idea how that worked out since so many reports appear contradictory—some claimed Catalina updates fixed it, some claim they didn’t. I never had trouble with Mail on Catalina and I don’t in Big Sur either. My assumption would be that if Mail worked fine for you in Mojave, you’ll be fine with Mail in Big Sur.
It’s a bug that originated in Catalina, but if you read down to the most recent updates you’ll see that it is still occurring in Big Sur.
Yes (see the more recent comments on the post)
That’s good, and this bug only ever affected some subset of users, and only with certain imap accounts, but there doesn’t seem to be a clear pattern. The problem is that you don’t know if it affects you until you’ve irretrievably lost messages 
That’s a dangerous assumption to make, and I certainly wouldn’t provide that as general advice. This data loss bug is still occurring for some people, read through the updates and recent comments on @mjtsai’s blog. If someone you advise will “be fine” then irretrievably loses messages, what should they do then? It might well be worth the risk for some people, but they need to go into it knowing it’s a risk, not being reassured nothing can go wrong when the evidence indicates otherwise.
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It also affects some Exchange accounts. The weird thing is that even with some super popular mail providers like iCloud and Gmail, some people are losing messages and (most) others aren’t. And the same account on two different Macs may work on one but not on the other.
Working properly on Mojave definitely doesn’t imply anything about Big Sur. I strongly suspect that if you had no problems on Catalina you would not have problems after updating that same system to Big Sur. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that happening. But no guarantees because we don’t understand exactly what the bug is.
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I like this article. Thank you.
I would like read more about Mac (eg. MacPro5.1) that works perfectly well with High Sierra, but can’t upgrade OS anymore… What a waste!
This really depends on the bug. If you are under the assumption that Apple did something bad in Catalina and that code migrated to Big Sur, of course, yes. But if you assume that Apple tried something in Catalina that turned out to be bad and then eventually backed it out in Big Sur (though some would argue that already happened in late Catalina updates), you could deduce that simply skipping Catalina should avoid trouble.
Revert to backup. Nobody IMHO should ever attempt to update macOS without a 100% solid golden backup ready to be re-deployed. A simple clone of the system does most of that, but…
Since the concern is email it’s important to remind people that IMAP needs to be archived offline to really back it up. As with all cloud syncing solutions, sync is not backup. If you (or a bad macOS bug) manage to delete your IMAP mail, that makes it to the IMAP server (which it usually will) and you have no offline backup, you are most likely screwed. IMAP is sync. Sync is not backup.
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Why would you assume that if people are still experiencing the bug in Big Sur?
Easy to say, not so easy to do if you only discover the bug affects you one or two weeks (or two months?) after upgrading. By then trying to merge your backup from before the upgrade with all the changes to your email since will be a massive headache in the best case scenario.
Unless there are data showing the bug has been fixed, I wouldn’t be so blasé about assuming that Mail “will probably be fine” if when upgrading from Mojave to Big Sur.
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The nasty issue with the email bug that cropped up initially in Catalina is that we don’t have a tight specification on when it is likely to occur. For example, I have several iMap email accounts (and gmail) and haven’t seen any issues in either Catalina or BigSur. The only annoyance I have with Apple Mail is that I use Smart Mailboxes extensively, and they don’t update automatically. My primary mailbox is a Smart Mailbox based on flag status and read status. In order to make sure it’s up to date after working in other applications, I need to force an update by either manually getting mail or switching to a primary mailbox and back. Irritating, but not injurious or fatal.
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In my last hurdle to move to Big Sur, I am currently using SnapScan for my S1500M and it is working well, other than the fact that I am still using the Adobe Acrobat pdf creator for pdf scanning (which is my main workflow). I tried the Abby one that was included with the recent update of SnapScan (thank goodness for the update) but was not impressed with the quality of the conversions.
Can I upgrade the Acrobat Pro to a 64 bit version (though I only see subscriptions on their site and the lower cost one is only for Windows) or does it update it’s components that are not compliant on Big Sur?
On a last note, I do have an external computer running Mojave and will keep that available, but was trying to install Aperture into it and could not figure out how to get it there as going to the App store and clicking on the cloud icon to download its has no effect.
PS - I was trying to create an external drive to test this all out on for a Big Sur test run, but having an external disk played havoc with Backblaze as well as my itunes library which is currently spanned across 2 disks. It is amazing how things change slowly and a big change like this can really change the workflow.
If you are on a notebook, I would say: NO.
My MacBook Air ‘18, with intermittent mobile use, apparently still never goes to deep sleep or hibernation. I can put it to sleep and tuck it away for a few days and will find it has lost 10-20% / day. Whatever Apple did with Big Sur has been a total cluster when it comes to power management for me. I keep updating and hoping they fix it. Weeks to months pass. Another self-drain incident. Another bug report ticket.
This MBA is pretty much bone stock, plus LibreOffice, Synology cloud and some insignificant apps. PowerNap off, wake for lan off, always sleep “ hard “ drive, … Nothing has fixed this issue since … whenever.
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I have been doing all my backups using SuperDuper, which apparently doesn’t work well with Big Sur, so I assume I have to use a different backup software to restore to Big Sur from a High Sierra backup. It seems that the recommended path is via a Time Machine backup, correct? Thanks!
Not at all. Clones created via SuperDuper! can be used to migrate to BigSur. Read the blog entry from the developer of SuperDuper! that is a great explanation in English of the changes required for BigSur.
Note that using a clone of a previous system for migrating to Big Sur works fine.
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Yes, in fact, I have read the blog post, but it doesn’t explicitly say that a High Sierra backup can be used to restore to Big Sur. My understanding was that you can do a backup ON Big Sur and then restore to Big Sur, but even that would require a downgrade to SD 3.2.5 (as opposed to the current 3.3.1) so it’s not entirely trivial. So, I just wanted to make sure … 