The download seems to be working again and it isn't erratic as previously. Has anyone actually been able to install and use it? That could be the next mess.
The download seems to be working again and it isn't erratic as previously. Has anyone actually been able to install and use it? That could be the next mess.
My Software Update has for about 45 minutes been showing "12.18 GB of 12.18 GB" as being downloaded but nothing is happening. The progress bar shows about 85% complete. It looks frozen and/or stalled.
No point losing sleep over it, so I'll have another look in the morning.
All the caterwauling aside from system crashes from the mad rush to download, I am still struggling to understand what is so new or different or compelling or will-change-my-computing life about Big Sur.
It can't even really be about parallelism in design or aesthetics, since iOS is vastly different from MacOS in more fundamental ways than elements like the dock or the control center. For example, does System Preferences (if it's called that?) still work differently than Settings? Will the same code for iOS apps make it possible for those apps to be ported over to the Mac? Are keyboard features similar? Are there elements of touch (e.g. pinch-to-zoom) that can can be almost as faithfully replicated? I could go on...
Don't get me wrong, I think it looks nice, but some grand design convergence, it ain't.
In the last couple of hours I have been able to successfully download and install on three different machines: An iMac 2015, Mac mini 2018, and a MacBook Pro 16 in laptop.
First impressions are pretty positive. The "More space" UI scale on my 16" MacBook is more usable now. Previously the text was a bit too small. Icons are ok I guess. I had to move the Messages and FaceTime icons apart on the Dock because they look almost indistinguishable at first glance. Not good to have them next to one another.
It's hard to comment too much more than that. But no major issues.
anantksundaram said: Don't get me wrong, I think it looks nice, but some grand design convergence, it ain't.
Nor should it. I think they did a good job. It's still very much macOS, but it just feels fresh. The most fresh it's felt since the very first OS X that Jobs described as "lickable". It also feels very responsive. It's been inspired by some of the design language in iOS, but apart from that it's still functionally mostly the same as macOS has been since the beginning. Control Centre and Widgets are the most iOS-looking things. There's been widgets in the previous few releases but this new one takes away the background and gives them a rounded edge like the new iOS.
Sadly, they opted not to tone down drop shadows at all!
It took using a VPN and changing my country to be first Australia and then figuring out that Germany was faster (the US was impossible) but the installer finally downloaded and I now have a copy on my server where I keep every version of Mac OS since System 8.
Most of my Macs in the house are too old to run Big Sur except for two, both MacBook Airs. My wife's 2013 MacBook Air (i7, 8 GB) and my teenaged daughter's 2020 MacBook Air (i7, 16 GB) purchased this summer for her schoolwork. So the oldest MBa and newest MBa (Intel) supported by Big Sur were my targets. The 2013 machine was installed first and I was not prepared for the sheer number of reboots (probably 5 or 6) during the install process.....honestly for a bit I thought something might be wrong. But the install took better part of an hour but ended up completing successfully. I ended up going to bed on the 2020 MBa's install although it was taking a while too before I dozed off. It was a successful install when I looked at it this morning.
My wife is up this morning and using her machine. She uses the machine mainly for browsing, Mail, Word/Excel and of course lately, Zoom. Her initial complaint is that she doesn't like the new Mail app layout. Also, no apps were flagged as not useable by the installer although I made sure that MS Office 2019, Zoom and other apps were at their latest levels before I started. This morning, both machines wanted to complete updates for Apple's iWork suite and Garageband, which completed without incident.
All of the other Macs (two 2008 Mac Pros, 2010 Mac Mini, 2008 iMac, 2008 MacBook) are all hacked to run Catalina and most likely will never run Big Sur. The only other Mac in the house that can run Big Sur is my corporate 2017 13" MacBook Pro and I don't control the timetable on when that will happen.....probably not for a few months considering how long it took for Catalina to be certified.
Well I finally managed to download and install it ...but seems Messages is broken, just bounces forever in the dock, Spotlight just shows a blank window no matter what I search and Python is *still* broken when using modules that are installed with PIP - a bug I reported in beta 1 (and Apple marked as "duplicate"). That's all in the first 10 minutes of using it, hopefully there won't be anything else. What do we pay the Apple Tax for again? 🙄
Can't edit above post as the forum can't deal with emojis, the page HTML appears in my post, but anyway... Can't unlock with Apple Watch either. Switching it off and back on results in a message that unlocking with AW couldn't be enabled because an error occurred. Sigh.
Also discovered that Apple themselves has submitted fixes for Python to the Python source, which have been merged, but then they've included an old, non-fixed version of Python with Big Sur... Smart.
Best part of Big Sur my mail doesn't pop open all by itself any more, the worst part of Big Sur is you can't move the date and time icon like before but I'll get use to it where it is...
My Software Update has for about 45 minutes been showing "12.18 GB of 12.18 GB" as being downloaded but nothing is happening. The progress bar shows about 85% complete. It looks frozen and/or stalled.
No point losing sleep over it, so I'll have another look in the morning.
I had the same problem last night and tried exiting and restarting Update and finally got it to finish up by powering down and then back on and downloading the update again. Finished up around midnight.
As others have noted it looks nice and seems to perform faster (late 2018 MBP, loaded). Little Snitch doesn't work at all and my Mallvad VPN apparently needs to be reinstalled - it just disappeared. Copied not working. Microsoft Office works well, as do all of the Apple updates so far (including Messages - although it has a Green icon instead of old Blue one). iPulse needs to be updated, and GraphicConverter 11 has a new update out today to make it play nice with Big Sur.
I always hated Catalina (first upgrade in a long time that degraded my workflow), but so far Big Sur is snappier and smoother.
The download seems to be working again and it isn't erratic as previously. Has anyone actually been able to install and use it? That could be the next mess.
Yep, I have five different Macs all running Big Sur fine, ranging from an MBA, MBP, iMac 5K 27", iMac 4K 23", to a Mac Pro. No software issues but I had updated everything I could first.
Comments
My Software Update has for about 45 minutes been showing "12.18 GB of 12.18 GB" as being downloaded but nothing is happening. The progress bar shows about 85% complete. It looks frozen and/or stalled.
No point losing sleep over it, so I'll have another look in the morning.
(yep all the same things everyone said)
So smooth, so many extraneous graphics gone!
Not getting a PS5 after 4 different time allocations, from Walmart today was WAY more upsetting!!
Enjoy...
Don't get me wrong, I think it looks nice, but some grand design convergence, it ain't.
It is a beautiful OS.
It's hard to comment too much more than that. But no major issues.
Nor should it. I think they did a good job. It's still very much macOS, but it just feels fresh. The most fresh it's felt since the very first OS X that Jobs described as "lickable". It also feels very responsive. It's been inspired by some of the design language in iOS, but apart from that it's still functionally mostly the same as macOS has been since the beginning. Control Centre and Widgets are the most iOS-looking things. There's been widgets in the previous few releases but this new one takes away the background and gives them a rounded edge like the new iOS.
Sadly, they opted not to tone down drop shadows at all!
took 15 minutes to download, see you on the flip side....
Most of my Macs in the house are too old to run Big Sur except for two, both MacBook Airs. My wife's 2013 MacBook Air (i7, 8 GB) and my teenaged daughter's 2020 MacBook Air (i7, 16 GB) purchased this summer for her schoolwork. So the oldest MBa and newest MBa (Intel) supported by Big Sur were my targets. The 2013 machine was installed first and I was not prepared for the sheer number of reboots (probably 5 or 6) during the install process.....honestly for a bit I thought something might be wrong. But the install took better part of an hour but ended up completing successfully. I ended up going to bed on the 2020 MBa's install although it was taking a while too before I dozed off. It was a successful install when I looked at it this morning.
My wife is up this morning and using her machine. She uses the machine mainly for browsing, Mail, Word/Excel and of course lately, Zoom. Her initial complaint is that she doesn't like the new Mail app layout. Also, no apps were flagged as not useable by the installer although I made sure that MS Office 2019, Zoom and other apps were at their latest levels before I started. This morning, both machines wanted to complete updates for Apple's iWork suite and Garageband, which completed without incident.
All of the other Macs (two 2008 Mac Pros, 2010 Mac Mini, 2008 iMac, 2008 MacBook) are all hacked to run Catalina and most likely will never run Big Sur. The only other Mac in the house that can run Big Sur is my corporate 2017 13" MacBook Pro and I don't control the timetable on when that will happen.....probably not for a few months considering how long it took for Catalina to be certified.
Haven't notice any performance difference (2020 MacBook Pro i7).
Also discovered that Apple themselves has submitted fixes for Python to the Python source, which have been merged, but then they've included an old, non-fixed version of Python with Big Sur... Smart.
As others have noted it looks nice and seems to perform faster (late 2018 MBP, loaded). Little Snitch doesn't work at all and my Mallvad VPN apparently needs to be reinstalled - it just disappeared. Copied not working. Microsoft Office works well, as do all of the Apple updates so far (including Messages - although it has a Green icon instead of old Blue one). iPulse needs to be updated, and GraphicConverter 11 has a new update out today to make it play nice with Big Sur.
I always hated Catalina (first upgrade in a long time that degraded my workflow), but so far Big Sur is snappier and smoother.