And, as is tradition, a new macOS release means a new Ars Technica macOS review. The one to read, as it is with every release, and as it will be forever. So say we all.
In a lot of ways, Big Sur is the kind of incrementalist macOS update that we’ve come to expect in the last few years. It’s a collection of tweaks and minor feature upgrades and under-the-hood enhancements that bumps the platform forward but doesn’t radically change it. It simply builds on the foundation laid by the last few releases of the operating system, something I talked about last year. Big Sur makes the Mac look and sound a lot different than it did before! But it’s still close enough to what you’re used to that you’ll use it for a few weeks or months and then it will just be what macOS looks like.
I’m obviously much more interested in Big Sur on the new ARM Macs, but for that, we’ll have to wait until next week.
Dude that opening paragraph gave me a headache. You should probably try that again.
I love the BSG reference.
I see the whitespace disease is continuing to spread, getting worse with every release. Now macOS looks like a compact Gnome theme. Let’s hope it never reaches the cockamamie levels of whitespace of the standard Gnome themes, though.
@Thom I guess the article label “Mac OS X” is no longer accurate
It’s still NextSTEP running on the Darwin kernel. Nothing remotely significant enough to require a major version change has really happened. So, it’s still Mac OS X underneath the glitz and glamour of a number 11
I guess the X+1 is for the new ARM machines, but from what I’ve seen, it’s just replacing more UI bits with stuff from iOS. Can’t upgrade yet as we’re waiting on some “enterprise” garbage to get updated…
They never did that on the PPC > Intel transition.
So what will Big Slug bring us now?
Too bad the article is ruined with a fake news insert in the lead-in. Mac OS X died in 2016, when Apple released “macOS 10.12”, retiring the “OS X” branding.
My MBP only has 128GiB of storage, so the fact that Big Sur takes up such a large chunk more space is kind of a deal breaker for me.
Maybe it will motivate me to finally upgrade.
Maybe.
Man this is scary and what a nightmare. To think you were not able to launch any applications because of server that needed to make sure you had proper/legal install. I am sure there were business who relied on certain application that were halted because they would launch what they need to run.
If anyone is interested, the performance on my older mac is amazing, and they fixed the crashing it was having sometimes due to old kernel extensions being straight up not allowed.
I’m impressed that they managed to reduce the memory usage, and it’s too bad that it breaks a lot of software, because otherwise I’d recommend it more. The software broken includes anti-malware and firewalls, as well as older versions of hypervisor software, so anyone that does security be very wary and wait it out, but you’ll still need to buy new software if you upgrade.
Poseidon,
These are claims that warrant side to side benchmarking, but I guess it could be too late to suggest trying that. What old kernel extensions were you running before that aren’t allowed?
A reddit post mentions that macos kernel breakages are a regular occurrence, is that true?
http://www.reddit.com/r/MacOSBeta/comments/hec61c/little_snitch_broken_on_big_sur/
This is stuff I only learn vicariously since I’ve never performed a macos update personally, haha.
The author of the little snitch admin tool mentions that the new API lacks the full functionality, although it’s disappointing that he doesn’t say what the specific limitations are…
https://blog.obdev.at/little-snitch-and-the-deprecation-of-kernel-extensions/
Elsewhere it was revealed that apple created a backdoor for itself to bypass administrative firewalls & routing.
https://appleterm.com/2020/10/20/macos-big-sur-firewalls-and-vpns/
I usually don’t follow macos updates so closely, but I’m paying more attention this time around because of the transition to ARM macs and I want to be more informed about where exactly apple stands on owner rights & control for next generation macs.