Comment by cytzol | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cytzol | Hacker News Reader

I commented this on the Big Sur thread last week:

> I was really hoping they'd take some time to address Catalina's glaring issues — its slowness, bugginess, just general sloppiness — and instead they did the opposite.

I didn't include "security exploits" in that list because of course they're going to fix security exploits, right? Especially one that they're already aware of, and can reproduce — they wouldn't just sit on it in favour of making the UI glossier, right?

Apple have just been getting so much wrong lately. This pretty much dashes any hopes I had of ever upgrading, because even if this particular flaw gets fixed by the time Big Sur comes out, there are almost certainly others that they've ignored. I expected to eventually have to grit my teeth and upgrade so I wasn't behind on security updates, but I guess that's not the case. Ugh, now I have to figure out how to mute that annoying (1) in System Preferences. I've heard they keep making it come back now.

I shared your concerns prior to trying Big Sur, but in practice I'm somewhat shocked by how much I like it. Big Sur is very snappy on my aging 2015 Macbook Air, and I've encountered far fewer bugs than I'd expect in an initial developer preview, which bodes well for the final release.

I like the visuals too, at least compared to Yosemite-era; Leopard-era still wins out overall. Using the OS has made me feel much better about the Mac as a platform, although I'm certainly still nervous.

Out of curiosity, would you say it's an improvement coming from Catalina? My confidence in the Mac was really shaken by Catalina but I'm genuinely ready to be impressed by Big Sur.

> My confidence in the Mac was really shaken by Catalina.

Same! However, I've never actually used Catalina for a significant period of time, so I can't compare them directly. I downgraded back to High Sierra after just using Mojave for a few weeks, partly because I was frustrated with TCC breaking my scripts, but also because I'd noticed Mojave was slower and buggier than High Sierra. When Catalina came out and the problem reports started rolling in, I resolved not to touch it with a ten-foot pole.

I only installed Big Sur because I wanted to try out the new design. I was fully expecting a dumpster-fire, and I wouldn't have even blamed Apple for it, given that Big Sur is currently an early developer preview (I was only able to download it by hacking Apple's catalog URLs). I did not expect to actually like the Big Sur.

There are a couple of odd bugs that I expect to get ironed out by the fall—for example, the menu bar sometimes shows a wifi-disconnected icon even when the internet is working fine. On the whole though, I think the current build of Big Sur would make for a fine daily driver. (Although it would probably still be a bad idea if you're working on something important!)

More than anything else—and I know this will be very hardware-specific—I just can't overstate how fast Big Sur feels. It's really as if I got a new computer. I will note that I did a clean install, but I do those regularly anyway, and they don't help all that much.

Thanks for writing this! Honestly, it does make me feel better about the whole situation.

It's getting even worse - with the most recent security update for Mojave I can no longer block Catalina from the available updates using `sudo softwareupdate --ignore "macOS Catalina"`. It always shows up now in System Preferences -> Software Update. Anyone nows how to block it effectively?

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