MacBook Air - Big Sur upgrade?

Questions on how we spend our money and our time - consumer goods and services, home and vehicle, leisure and recreational activities
Post Reply
Topic Author
TresBelle65
Posts: 304
Joined: Sun Apr 12, 2015 2:44 pm

MacBook Air - Big Sur upgrade?

Post by TresBelle65 »

I've been getting notices to make the upgrade to Big Sur, meanwhile my MBA is old and I need to figure out how to free up the space for this new upgrade.

How compelling of an upgrade is this that it should be done right away? what do you know about this one? Thanks
noretirement4me
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Jul 02, 2019 6:56 pm

Re: MacBook Air - Big Sur upgrade?

Post by noretirement4me »

My recommendation is to wait a while longer. I can't think of anything particular compelling about Big Sur that'd make you rush to upgrade from Catalina, so as long as Apple is still releasing updates for Catalina you'll be OK to stay on the older OS.

Performance-wise, it runs fine on older Macbooks. For reference I'm currently running it on an early 2014 MBA and a 2015 MBP - both run fine, no significant performance changes compared to Catalina.

At issue is that Big Sur included some big changes under the hood (legacy extension support, etc.) which required a lot of app developers to update their code. So after you upgrade to Big Sur you may find that you also have to update a lot of your existing apps, with varying results. I had some corporate software that needed updating and that was a bit of a pain, but right now I am still dealing with an issue with VMWare Fusion that has existed for months but still has not been fixed. So while I largely survived the Big Sur upgrade, in retrospect it was not worth the effort.
EnjoyIt
Posts: 8272
Joined: Sun Dec 29, 2013 7:06 pm

Re: MacBook Air - Big Sur upgrade?

Post by EnjoyIt »

noretirement4me wrote: Thu Jan 21, 2021 10:16 am . . .
So after you upgrade to Big Sur you may find that you also have to update a lot of your existing apps, with varying results. I had some corporate software that needed updating and that was a bit of a pain. . .
The above snippet was my experience as well.
A time to EVALUATE your jitters: | viewtopic.php?p=1139732#p1139732
User avatar
climber2020
Posts: 2709
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 8:06 pm

Re: MacBook Air - Big Sur upgrade?

Post by climber2020 »

I have a 2014 MacBook Air with 4GB RAM and upgraded from High Sierra to Big Sur when it was first released.

Tried it for about a month and then downgraded back to High Sierra because of atrocious battery life. The OS was fine otherwise, but there wasn't any feature in particular that stood out compared to what I'd been using. I only use my computer for internet, storing and viewing my photos, and an occasional text document, so I wasn't doing anything ridiculous that would otherwise explain the battery draining so quickly.
Exchme
Posts: 1335
Joined: Sun Sep 06, 2020 3:00 pm

Re: MacBook Air - Big Sur upgrade?

Post by Exchme »

I did the update to Big Sur, but now can't get it to do the update to 11.1. I didn't notice any difference in Big Sur and don't see anything important in the 11.1 upgrade.
chuckb84
Posts: 628
Joined: Wed Oct 21, 2015 10:41 am
Location: New Mexico

Re: MacBook Air - Big Sur upgrade?

Post by chuckb84 »

Big Sur is a visual change---not an "upgrade" in my view---, a few feature changes that make very little difference to me, and some really annoying tightening of security.

The visual issue is the washed out, low contrast of so much of the OS, with really annoying and serving-no-purpose bleed through of colors behind the menu bar and active window. It's one of those things that may look cool in a demo, but is distracting/annoying to actually use.

I was probably happiest with Mojave, and would stick to it except that is dropping off software updates from some developers.
Chaconne
Posts: 239
Joined: Sat Dec 15, 2007 3:18 pm

Re: MacBook Air - Big Sur upgrade?

Post by Chaconne »

The OP doesn't say what macOS he/she is currently using. I believe Big Sur, Catalina and Mojave are the only ones still supported by Apple with security updates. If so, that means High Sierra and previous versions are no longer supported. If the OP is using one of those, it would probably be best to upgrade to a newer OS, possibly Big Sur itself.
Pandemic Bangs
Posts: 375
Joined: Sat Dec 26, 2020 2:49 pm

Re: MacBook Air - Big Sur upgrade?

Post by Pandemic Bangs »

I just went from Yosemite (I think; late 2015 Mac) to Big Sur and I wish I could have done a less drastic upgrade but that's all there is. I even toyed with buying a third-party-sold version of Catalina but even that was unavailable.

Like others, I did this at home because I could no longer access one of my work servers.

The interface is very similar and has not affected my workflow within the OS. I read nothing about Big Sur -- I had to make the change and I had to leapfrog six OS incarnations.

I expected it to hobble my standalone Adobe Lightroom but that seems to be intact. It killed my $9.99 "Home Use Program" versions of all the MS workhorse software -- and now the HUP no longer exists in that very cheap form so I guess it's MS 365 for me (sigh).
Wait 'til I get my money right | Then you can't tell me nothing, right?
CascadiaSoonish
Posts: 530
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 10:44 am

Re: MacBook Air - Big Sur upgrade?

Post by CascadiaSoonish »

I'll note that the Big Sur upgrade didn't go well on my 2017 machine; ended up with some severe storage management issues during the upgrade that I wasn't able to recover from. Ended up needing to do a clean install and subsequent restore from Time Machine. Two days of productivity lost. There are some nice features in Big Sur but if you're not in a hurry I don't see that anyone should rush to upgrade -- and when people do upgrade, make sure you've got plenty of fresh backups (and backups to your backups like cloud doc storage) before pulling the trigger.
BedHead2020
Posts: 79
Joined: Fri Oct 30, 2020 12:04 pm

Re: MacBook Air - Big Sur upgrade?

Post by BedHead2020 »

Folks on the macrumors forum are calling it “Bug Sur,” so I think I’m going to wait a while before I upgrade.
chuckb84
Posts: 628
Joined: Wed Oct 21, 2015 10:41 am
Location: New Mexico

Re: MacBook Air - Big Sur upgrade?

Post by chuckb84 »

BedHead2020 wrote: Sun Jan 24, 2021 3:24 pm Folks on the macrumors forum are calling it “Bug Sur,” so I think I’m going to wait a while before I upgrade.
Did you mean "Big Blur"? I've seen that and there is some truth in it.
User avatar
Gort
Posts: 963
Joined: Sat Mar 17, 2007 5:07 pm
Location: Texas

Re: MacBook Air - Big Sur upgrade?

Post by Gort »

Updated on MacBook Air and desktop Mac. No problems.
Chaconne
Posts: 239
Joined: Sat Dec 15, 2007 3:18 pm

Re: MacBook Air - Big Sur upgrade?

Post by Chaconne »

Pandemic Bangs wrote: Sun Jan 24, 2021 1:42 pm I just went from Yosemite (I think; late 2015 Mac) to Big Sur and I wish I could have done a less drastic upgrade but that's all there is. I even toyed with buying a third-party-sold version of Catalina but even that was unavailable.
I'm sorry you didn't know that older versions of OS (Catalina, Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra, El Capitan and Yosemite) are indeed still available through Apple. For others in a similar situation, the link below gives details. No need to go all the way to Big Sur if you don't want to. I just went from High Sierra to Mojave on my 2018 MacBook Air, and it went very smoothly. (Note: be sure to download the OS files through Safari.)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683
User avatar
nisiprius
Advisory Board
Posts: 52216
Joined: Thu Jul 26, 2007 9:33 am
Location: The terrestrial, globular, planetary hunk of matter, flattened at the poles, is my abode.--O. Henry

Re: MacBook Air - Big Sur upgrade?

Post by nisiprius »

I have a Mac mini, "Late 2014." The upgrade was not perfect, but not bad. "Nuisance" level. Unfortunately, in terms of helping you, I have plenty of disk space and a 1.0 gigabyte SSD system drive so I can't speak to resource footprint issues.

I waited for 11.1 to install the upgrade. I had been looking for and installing updates to every important app I could think of. (Most of my apps posted notifications that updates were available, and I just became punctilious about installing every one of them as I learned about them).

The upgrade itself went smoothly.

I have not yet experienced any functional issues. Obviously my hardware is still Intel and all of my apps are running Intel code (even if some of them might have updated to "universal" versions). Code involving peripherals, USB, webcam, external drives, printing over WiFi, etc. all continue to work smoothly.

A few applications, such as Backblaze (automated backup over the Internet), that relied on extensions coached me through a slightly involved update process involving setting some permissions manually in System Preferences.

Every single detail of screen appearance is slightly degraded in annoying ways. Size relationships between text and other UI elements are subtly wrong. Nothing is awful, everything is a little worse, it felt almost as if I'd installed some clumsy pseudo-clone like Ubuntu, designed by some techy instead of a Susan Kare type. There's no doubt at all that every compromise between MacOS and iPadOS was decided in favor of iPadOS. There are all kinds of little weirdnesses like ridiculously narrow file selection dialogs, and an inconsistent mix of dialog layouts for simple "yes/no" confirmation dialogs. Some still use the horizontal layout that has been stable literally since 1984, others us a vertical layout obviously designed for smartphone screens in portrait orientation.

There was only one cosmetic issue, but it had me sweating for a week because it suggested some weird kind of system or preference file corruption. After some experiments I decided on using the "increased contrast" and "reduced transparency" options in the Accessibility settings. It turns out that when both of these options are engaged, folders in the Safari favorites bar appear to vanish (become transparent or something) after an item in their dropdown menu is selected. The diagnostic clue was discovering that the problem does not occur in "dark mode." The cure was simply to turn off "increase contrast." If that's the worst thing I encounter, I will be grudgingly happy.

Because of Apple's obvious intention to transition to Apple silicon (M1) hardware, I feel that the useful lifetime of my existing system is now limited, probably to two or three years, and that it's now fairly important to keep up with updates and upgrades to smooth the inevitable migration to Apple silicon. I don't want to be upgrading a major system version and processor hardware at the same time.

The idea of "I'm happy with the current OS, I'll just stick with it forever..." been there, done that. Once you get a couple of years behind the current OS version you begin sinking into version skew quicksand. It shouldn't be that way, but it is.
Last edited by nisiprius on Sun Jan 24, 2021 6:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness; Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.
Pandemic Bangs
Posts: 375
Joined: Sat Dec 26, 2020 2:49 pm

Re: MacBook Air - Big Sur upgrade?

Post by Pandemic Bangs »

Chaconne wrote: Sun Jan 24, 2021 6:00 pm
Pandemic Bangs wrote: Sun Jan 24, 2021 1:42 pm I just went from Yosemite (I think; late 2015 Mac) to Big Sur and I wish I could have done a less drastic upgrade but that's all there is. I even toyed with buying a third-party-sold version of Catalina but even that was unavailable.
I'm sorry you didn't know that older versions of OS (Catalina, Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra, El Capitan and Yosemite) are indeed still available through Apple. For others in a similar situation, the link below gives details. No need to go all the way to Big Sur if you don't want to. I just went from High Sierra to Mojave on my 2018 MacBook Air, and it went very smoothly. (Note: be sure to download the OS files through Safari.)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683
Oh this is great! Please send me this two months ago! :D
Wait 'til I get my money right | Then you can't tell me nothing, right?
Post Reply