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> They never cared about backwards compatibility before

This is not true. While they may not have the slavish devotion to backwards compatibility that Microsoft has, even Apple implements app-specific hacks to keep non-compliant software compatible with newer versions of macOS https://worthdoingbadly.com/appkitcompat/

Wouldn't "10.16 and higher" work for both 10.16 and 11?

Yes it would. But there is no guarantee that every package vendor does it that way. And this is only one example I can think of. It will mess up reports as well. Data from Macs is used outside of the Mac itself as well. I'll add that to my post, I'm only just now thinking of the implications. So far I hadn't thought of this as I assumed it would be fixed before release.

In fact most Enterprise software for Mac (think Palo Alto GlobalProtect, Zscaler, antivirus packages) are horribly badly packaged and I expect many issues here.

PS: Good point from tobr below too.. These things are not as simple as they seem.

Well, they'll anyway need to "do" something about the new arm macs, so it'll probably not be an issue to fix version checks at the same time if broken...

Existing Intel software (with potentially broken version checks) will work on ARM Macs under emulation. Once they rebuild with the new SDK they'll get the receive the correct version.

What if next year is 12.0 and 10.17?

Your comment made my day :-D

I don’t think this is a plausible scenario. You might also ask, “What if next year Apple releases Mac OS 9.3?”

They should. And they should release a new version of Rhapsody. The Rhapsody community (and it is a community) would love that.

Don't get me excited now...

The more plausible scenario would be 11.1 and 10.17

The trick of checking version >= 10.16 to cover both 10.16 and 11.0 would not work then, as version >= 10.17 would cover 11.0 (10.16) too.

Then what..?

What MDM specifically? It would be up to the MDM version to be consistent with how they display and handle the SW version. Stuff like AutoPKG and Munki should be able to handle it just fine.

AutoPKG and Munki aren't MDMs.

I use both AirWatch (now VMWare Workspace ONE) and MS Intune (now Microsoft Endpoint Manager) right now.

The problem is that they incorporate different technologies. For example, Workspace ONE includes Munki for its app distribution but MS does a different thing. Also many run scripts in the background to check things, which may or may not do things differently.

I haven't really tested Big Sur much with the MDMs because there isn't much point until all our antivirus software etc is updated to support it. But I'm pretty sure this will cause additional issues, and Macs in enterprise are already very difficult. Mainly because of Apple's consumer focus, enterprise manageability is always second place unfortunately.

FYI it's still microsoft intune. Endpoint manager is the just portal for unifying sccm and intune.

Source: Microsoft Employee

I'm aware those aren't MDMs, however they still will have to deal with this. I was also under the impression that Intune didn't really support software management for macOS. I think Jamf and WS1 will be just fine. I think the Kernel extensions are going to be a much bigger problem for those of us managing Macs at scale with things such as Antivirus software like you said.

This is exactly how Windows has done it since 8.1, back in 2013. Apple’s strategy isn’t new or unusual.

If others do a bad thing too, doesn't make it right :)

The reason why both Microsoft and Apple are doing this is because there is too much software in the wild which will break if it detects a major version bump. So, that is why both are doing it, and that is why it is the right decision.

The right decision may still be a complex mess.

Exactly, and what I'm trying to point out is, is this really worth it when the only advantage of having the "11.0" is just marketing?

Yes. The alternative is how we have legacy things with no meaning 30 years down the line...

Marketable version numbers are quite useful. If somebody says they are running 10.12.3, the first thing I do is check which version I am running to see how that compares. On the other hand, if somebody says they are running iOS 12.1.2, I immediately know that is a patch of the preceding year's major version.

The reason is that Apple actually applies marketing to their iOS version numbers, but doesn't do the same for macOS, because incrementing the minor version isn't marketable. Their crack marketing team does come up with funny names for macOS releases, but few people remember the mapping between those and the actual version numbers.

Saying it's bad doesn't make it bad.

And it surely doesn't make it worse than the alternatives...