24 replies to this topic

[Sneaky Snake]

With Big Sur's release imminent I figured it is time to get a thread going.

Full apple product page: https://www.apple.co...ig-sur-preview/

The main features seem to be:

• Visual re-design bringing macOS and iOS into a much more similar visual look
  
• Better support for iOS/iPadOS apps
  
• Updates to Apple's built in apps (Messages, Photos, Safari, Maps, etc.)
  
• Support for Apple Silicon

Personally, I was running the public beta on my work laptop the moment it was available. I gave it a few releases (I think I made it to public beta 3) but eventually had to uninstall it and re-install 10.15. I had too many issues with my main work apps (remoting into clients via VNC, weird Firefox issues, weird scaling issues with text when using my MBP's retina screen beside a 1440p monitor).

Has anyone been running the public beta on its latest release?

[galad]

I am using it on both my MacBook Pro and my <Under-NDA> Mac, it's mostly ok, there are some little bugs but hopefully it will be release in mid November so there is still time to improve it.

[Janichsan]

galad, on 22 October 2020 - 01:12 AM, said:

I am using it on both my MacBook Pro and my <Under-NDA> Mac, it's mostly ok, there are some little bugs but hopefully it will be release in mid November so there is still time to improve it.

Why do you have a National Dance Alliance Mac? That's weird...

[Cougar]

Going to wait it out. Don't really like the look (those square modal dialogs ) and the only feature I really want is Messages feature parity with iOS.

[Thain Esh Kelch]

I thought El Capitan was the most stupid sounding codename Apple could give a macOS release, yet here we are.

I am considering upgrading my '16 Macbook. I think I like the new look, and I skipped the 32bit apocalypse in Catalina due to my game library, so it might be time. Civ VI is 64 bit, so is Baldurs Gate, so I think I will manage.

[jos]

Thain Esh Kelch, on 22 October 2020 - 12:58 PM, said:

I thought El Capitan was the most stupid sounding codename Apple could give a macOS release, yet here we are.

During the last few announcements they always said a few ridiculous names first, before giving us the real name. This year I was watching the live-stream and the guy said they were not going to do it this year. Instead, they'd just immediately tell us the name. Then he said "Big Sur" and I actually thought: "There we go again. You've used this joke too many times. Telling us you're not going to use the same joke this year and then still giving us some stupid name before giving us the real name isn't funny. Just give us the real na... What? Are you guys being serious? This is the actual name? WTF?"

The way they pronounce it, to me it sounds exactly like "Big Sir". It sounds just like a girl taking a guy home after a night out. Then they arrive at her house, they go to the bedroom, she sits down on the bed, he's standing in front of her, she pulls down his pants and a massive cobra jumps out of his pants ready for action right in front of her face. Then she says: "Well, you're a big sir!" This is the image I see in front of me every time I hear someone say "Big Sur".

Apparently, those Californians don't even know how to pronounce it correctly. For as far as I know "sur" is a Spanish word, which is pronounced "soor" (not with the "oor" from "door", but with the "oo" from "look"). Now, I think "Big Soor" sounds better than "Big Sir", as "Big Sir" always reminds me of a massive cock, but it's still a stupid name.

Well, as long as it's just the name they mess up, I don't really care. It's better to mess up the name than to mess up the operating system itself (like the competition always does).

[the Battle Cat]

I guess it could be worse, I could have Jos's mind .  Though you are correct in your Spanish pronunciation, in California it is known as sounding more like "sur"  as opposed to "sir".  Pronounced with the "u" having a short vowel sound and "i" having it's short vowel sound.  A bit difficult to grasp for a non native English speaker who is not Californian because the difference is subtle.  But yeah, dumb name.  They should have stuck with the cat theme.  There are 40  types of big cat felidae alone, many more with Felis catus or house cats.

[macdude22]

[Matt Diamond]

What, so we aren't allowed to criticize anything Apple does?

As we saw with the iPad, we go very quickly from "dumb name!" to getting used to it. I do miss the cats though.

[Sneaky Snake]

macdude22, on 25 October 2020 - 01:30 PM, said:

Both are bollocks. Didn't you hear? Next year will be the year of the Linux desktop!

[Janichsan]

Sneaky Snake, on 27 October 2020 - 01:10 PM, said:

Both are bollocks. Didn't you hear? Next year will be the year of the Linux desktop!

Finally!

[Ichigo27]

Putting sarcasm aside, seems to me the linux of today is not the linux of 10 or 15 years ago.

[macdude22]

Janichsan, on 27 October 2020 - 03:52 PM, said:

Finally!

Attached Files

•  Image from iOS (7).jpg   56.84K   30 downloads

[the Battle Cat]

macdude22, on 03 November 2020 - 09:44 AM, said:

[Janichsan]

the Battle Cat, on 03 November 2020 - 01:00 PM, said:

I can hear that gif.

Also, I can taste the word "despicable". Should I be worried?

[the Battle Cat]

Janichsan, on 03 November 2020 - 02:23 PM, said:

I can hear that gif.

Also, I can taste the word "despicable". Should I be worried?

[Thain Esh Kelch]

I like the UI. Its definitely slower than Mojave on my '16 Macbook. New sounds are bad. There's a severe lack of contrast in some places - Grey text on grey background is just a big NO!

Otherwise happy.

[RGoulder]

Big Problem with Big Sur

Tried installing Big Sur yesterday on an Other World Computing Envoy Express, I used a 2 TB SSD specifically a Adata XPG SX8200 Pro 2TB.

I first formatted it as a APFS format (mistake number one I think). Downloaded Big Sur, started in the afternoon and was finished downloading by the time I woke up. At which point I selected my External hard drive as the destination to install. The instillation seemed to be working, it restarted a few times made some progress but then got stuck on less than a minute remaining. I though alright I’ll give it some time and from about 8am to about 4pm I let it do its thing.

It didn’t move…. [font=Helvetica Neue", Arial, Verdana, sans-serif"span style="font-size: 14px] [/font]

[mindnoise]

sorry to hear that.

All I can say I am running Big Sur from an external Samsung X5 TB3 SSD (M2-TB3) - installation worked smooth as butter in 30 mins or something.

APFS is the RIGHT choice for SSDs. HDDs should not be formatted with that. But be sure to use GUID-Partition Map - no encrypted or case sensitive options.

I  never had such a problem with an external System-SSDs  - before LaCie Rugged-TB2-Case+TB3-Adapter with High Sierra and Mojave. Installations all took less than an hour.

Have you tried booting your system into Recovery Mode and try repairs from there?

Have you any cooling pads on the M2? Maybe the SSD got too hot during installaion and then transfer rates go down drastically.

Maybe if aynting else fails, try a differnt enclose (M2-USB, M2-SATA)  and - or on a real Windows-PC, since Bootcamp relies on the same MacOS lowlevel drivers IIRC.

Of course it can always happen that the SSD or enclose was faulty already. If you have warranty on it you can try that, also.

[RGoulder]

Yeah I tried to use recovery mode but as its a fresh and unsuccessful Big Sur boot drive I can’t select it as bootable volume and as far as MacOS is concerned, it does not exist. So when launching recovery mode all I’m doing is using my internal Mac OS 10.14.6 and if disk utility both on the recovery volume and on my normal system can’t see the SSD I can’t reformat it, erase it, or retry install Big Sur I’m kind of stuck. So yeah….

But I gave it another shot just to be thorough. First I tried holding option while starting my Mac up with the envoy express plugged in. After about 5-10 minutes it finally gave me the startup options, but the envoy pro was not one of them just my Macintosh HD and my Bootcamp partition. Only when I unplugged it and re plugged it in did a “MacOS Installer” appear as a third option, but it will fail to launch and default to one of the other choices given enough time.

Same sort of thing happens when holding Command R (MacOS Recovery) 5-10 minute wait time before finally getting to that screen. And no SSD in sight when using disk utility.

It’s like it knows it’s supposed to do something with the SSD but gets confused, forgets what its doing for a while then decides 2 out of 3 volumes is good enough.

I unfortunately don’t have any other computers or external drive enclosures to test the SSD on. This was my first SSD bought 2 weeks ago along with the enclosed that arrived a few days ago. All my other externals are spinning disk hard drive unfortunately.

There is a cooling pad included on the inside of the cover of the Envoy Express that makes contact with the SSD by the way, and I can't say the outside metal got much hotter than my iPad.

I also don’t think its the enclosure that’s gone bad. I at least get it to register that it is plugged in both in my Windows Bootcamp partition and on my system profile in MacOS.

But Windows 10 is the only place where it kind of sees that there is an Adata SX8200PNP SSD installed in that Envoy Express. It just can’t read, write, and attempts to clear it (wipe the disk) results in an error “Incorrect Function” in Disk Management.

As for a warranty yeah maybe, it has a 5 year warranty. I'll give it a shot. The question will I be how much bouncing around will I have to do between Apple, Adata, OWC, and whether the conclusion will be user error and we don’t cover that.

I suppose I can take some solace in that this was the reason why I didn’t want to replace my current system on the off chance that things went very wrong. I risked an external SSD instead of my main system. So the process worked, my external SSD took the bullet. But boy I didn't expect to not be able to recover the SSD or be unable to retry the installation of Big Sur. $200+ SSD isn't really that disposable whether I ultimately recover some of that money spent or get a replacement. (edit: while looking for the serial number to register and seek help from the manufacturer of the SSD I discovered in the fine print on the sticker that I removed, removing it voids the 5yr warranty, so yeah I think I am the proud owner of a finely crafted paper weight. always read the fine print...) I do I not like wasting as much time and money on something that wasn’t really going to be anything more than wanting to try out Path of Exiles or maybe Baldur’s Gate 3. What I have to do to play games on my Mac....