Macos Big Sur

[Dave2002]

I'm getting messages that some of my Apple programs have updates available, but when I try to update them if that doesn't work one of two messages appear. One is that I need to have 10.15.6 or later installed, while the other is that 10.11 should be installed. For a couple of machines I could probably do 10.15.6 (Catalina version) - this Macbook has 10.15.5 - so it just hasn't been updated to the very latest version.

Going to Big Sur - MacOS 11 does restrict the possible hardware variants more - so we may only have one machine which can do that.

So - what does Big Sur offer which Catalina doesn't?

Also, I know that updating to Catalina can be painful, and give rise to significant issues re software for earlier versions of the hardware - though a lot would depend on what each user wants to do.

However, I'll reiterate- what does Big Sur offer which Catalina doesn't?

[Anastasius]

If they have changed Photos back to iPhoto......and changed Mail back to how it worked...none of this stupid mousing and email titles sliding left/right as you accidentally stroke the Magic mouse then I'll upgrade yesterday.

[Dave2002]

If they have changed Photos back to iPhoto......and changed Mail back to how it worked...none of this stupid mousing and email titles sliding left/right as you accidentally stroke the Magic mouse then I'll upgrade yesterday.

The email titles thing is an abomination. What on earth were they thinking?

[Globaltruth]

Problems with recent Big Sur update moving from 11.2.2 to 11.2.3 (released Mar. 8)
Definitely applies to iMac 2017 but many reports on other hardware too including older iMacs, Macbook Air.

Symptoms: Applications hanging and crashing, the spinning beachball of doom. Machine virtually unusable.

diagnostics tried: CCleaner, Disk utility, CleanmyMac - nothing useful.
Etrecheck - reported extensive and continual kernel panics casued by a variety of different processes.
Ran Activity monitor - common factor culprit was a process known as 'bird' which pops up to see if there is any iCloud syncing required. This was regularly consuming extensive CPU and causing processor overheats, staying resident.

Did a bit of googling - yes, lots of others with this. Numbers of solutions seemed to work, most consistent straight forward recommendation was:

1 sign out of iCloud (keeping data on local machine)
2 orderly shut down (if possible), power off
3 power up
4 sign back into iCloud

this solved it for me. Took about a day to sort it, so posting here in case anyone suffers.
I don't think this will be an issue that will be 'fixed' in a later update, more likely a problem with syncing due a combination of x iCloud data across different machines, where x is an unknown.

etrecheck proved to be a great tool for sensible diagnostics and is highly recommended. Costs £18. Its licencing is done on a usage basis I think rather than a sub.
anyway big to them

[french frank]

Thanks for that, GT. Still think I'll stay with Mojave until I get (a) new machine(s), iMac now 7 years old and MacBook 6. I did think the iMac HD had given up the other day when the screen suddenly went black and resisted all blandishments. In the end I removed it from the 4-way socket and plugged it into the wall and all was fine. Don't quite understand this as everything in the adjacent sockets was still working - including the printer which I unplugged from the wall to make room for the iMac and plugged into the extension socket.

Problems with recent Big Sur update moving from 11.2.2 to 11.2.3 (released Mar. 8)
Definitely applies to iMac 2017 but many reports on other hardware too including older iMacs, Macbook Air.

Symptoms: Applications hanging and crashing, the spinning beachball of doom. Machine virtually unusable.

diagnostics tried: CCleaner, Disk utility, CleanmyMac - nothing useful.
Etrecheck - reported extensive and continual kernel panics casued by a variety of different processes.
Ran Activity monitor - common factor culprit was a process known as 'bird' which pops up to see if there is any iCloud syncing required. This was regularly consuming extensive CPU and causing processor overheats, staying resident.

Did a bit of googling - yes, lots of others with this. Numbers of solutions seemed to work, most consistent straight forward recommendation was:

1 sign out of iCloud (keeping data on local machine)
2 orderly shut down (if possible), power off
3 power up
4 sign back into iCloud

this solved it for me. Took about a day to sort it, so posting here in case anyone suffers.
I don't think this will be an issue that will be 'fixed' in a later update, more likely a problem with syncing due a combination of x iCloud data across different machines, where x is an unknown.

etrecheck proced to be a great tool for sensible diagnostics and is highly recommended. Costs £18. Its licencing is done on a usage basis I think rather than a sub.
anyway big to them

[Anastasius]

Thanks for that, GT. Still think I'll stay with Mojave until I get (a) new machine(s), iMac now 7 years old and MacBook 6. I did think the iMac HD had given up the other day when the screen suddenly went black and resisted all blandishments. In the end I removed it from the 4-way socket and plugged it into the wall and all was fine. Don't quite understand this as everything in the adjacent sockets was still working - including the printer which I unplugged from the wall to make room for the iMac and plugged into the extension socket.

Most extension lead/sockets fall under the C-cubed category. Cheap Chinese ****. They eventually fail or become intermittent. Throwaway society, I'm afraid.

[Dave2002]

Thanks for that, GT. Still think I'll stay with Mojave until I get (a) new machine(s), iMac now 7 years old and MacBook 6.

Very wise I think, though it will depend on what software you are hoping to run. You might get away with Catalina, but you will have seen that I was rather sorry that I "upgraded" to that. If you wanted to do that - your hardware is probably still OK for that - but whether it could go to Big Sur I don't know. I've still got a few machines running on even earlier systems, though compared with the latest kit those are really slow. However, a lot does depend on what you want to do.

For many application programs I use the older slower machines are fine, once they have been started and up and running - but that does take a while. If there are problems it sometimes takes a long time to go through the "kickstart" procedure - switch off - reboot. I've only had to do that once on the new iMac (about 5 months old) - last week when I managed to overload the poor thing with a fairly massive image processing job, and the kickstart on that machine is pretty fast.