Ask Slashdot: Did You Upgrade To macOS Big Sur? (wccftech.com) 101
Yesterday, Apple released the latest version of macOS: macOS Big Sur (also known as macOS 11.0) and the rollout was anything but smooth. Many users have complained about Apple services such as iMessage, or even Apple Pay, not working for them. Personally, my 5K iMac (2013), which isn't even compatible with Big Sur, ground to a halt yesterday, as I was unable to open up Google Chrome or any of my Adobe Creative Cloud apps. Even navigating my system preferences was painfully slow.
According to developer Jeff Johnson, the reason apps were failing to launch was because a process called "trustd" failed to attempt to connect to Apple's Online Certificate Status Protocol website (oscp.apple.com). "[D]enying the connection between "trustd" and oscp.apple.com fixes the issue, as does disabling a Mac's connection to the internet," notes Apple Insider. Slashdot reader shanen shares their experience: The story is about different problems, so I'll just start with my own anecdote. The 12GB download was amazingly slow. I'm being charitable and willing to attribute that to high demand. Eventually it did finish. The installation process didn't seem to be too bad. Then I did something with the Mac and it immediately wanted another upgrade. Turned out to be a double upgrade of two slightly different versions of some tools, but another (slow) GB bites the dust. Meanwhile, it decided to do that double-upgrade again? One of those two must have succeeded, because the third attempt failed with the appropriate notice that it had succeeded.
Bottom line? Not reassuring, but it seems to be okay now. I should have made a note about what triggered the extra GB, but I don't think I did anything unusual that should have required an OS-level extension of the system. Ergo, whatever was going on, I think it belonged in the original 12 GB download... Disclaimer needed: I just had an extremely negative interaction with Apple about the battery swelling problem in the course of attempting to consider whether or not I should upgrade my old MacBook Pro. It started on the Apple website, which was amazingly unhelpful even after it dangled a trade-in offer of some kind. Then it continued with a long phone call to a very kind and friendly person who seemed to know not so much, though he eventually led me to the search that revealed "Optimized Battery Charging" as an option that my old Mac cannot use. By the way, new iPhones apparently have it, too. So right now I think Apple finally figured out how to stop the battery swelling, but I am still screwed. I regard the Mac as a sunk cost, and the second rule of sunk cost is to NOT throw good money after bad. The first rule is that no one wants to talk about their mistakes, eh?
So did your upgrade to Big Sur go better than mine? I really hope so. Why share the misery? We have plenty of that with "He whose name need not be mentioned" anymore.
According to developer Jeff Johnson, the reason apps were failing to launch was because a process called "trustd" failed to attempt to connect to Apple's Online Certificate Status Protocol website (oscp.apple.com). "[D]enying the connection between "trustd" and oscp.apple.com fixes the issue, as does disabling a Mac's connection to the internet," notes Apple Insider. Slashdot reader shanen shares their experience: The story is about different problems, so I'll just start with my own anecdote. The 12GB download was amazingly slow. I'm being charitable and willing to attribute that to high demand. Eventually it did finish. The installation process didn't seem to be too bad. Then I did something with the Mac and it immediately wanted another upgrade. Turned out to be a double upgrade of two slightly different versions of some tools, but another (slow) GB bites the dust. Meanwhile, it decided to do that double-upgrade again? One of those two must have succeeded, because the third attempt failed with the appropriate notice that it had succeeded.
Bottom line? Not reassuring, but it seems to be okay now. I should have made a note about what triggered the extra GB, but I don't think I did anything unusual that should have required an OS-level extension of the system. Ergo, whatever was going on, I think it belonged in the original 12 GB download... Disclaimer needed: I just had an extremely negative interaction with Apple about the battery swelling problem in the course of attempting to consider whether or not I should upgrade my old MacBook Pro. It started on the Apple website, which was amazingly unhelpful even after it dangled a trade-in offer of some kind. Then it continued with a long phone call to a very kind and friendly person who seemed to know not so much, though he eventually led me to the search that revealed "Optimized Battery Charging" as an option that my old Mac cannot use. By the way, new iPhones apparently have it, too. So right now I think Apple finally figured out how to stop the battery swelling, but I am still screwed. I regard the Mac as a sunk cost, and the second rule of sunk cost is to NOT throw good money after bad. The first rule is that no one wants to talk about their mistakes, eh?
So did your upgrade to Big Sur go better than mine? I really hope so. Why share the misery? We have plenty of that with "He whose name need not be mentioned" anymore.
No (Score:1, Funny)
It's a dumb OS name. That's why I'm stuck on Maverick.
Re:No (Score:4, Funny)
If names deterred me, I wouldn't be able to listen to Ogg Vorbis on my Focal Fossa box.
Re: (Score:2)
"...while eating frusen glädjé and driving my Farfegnugen."
Re: (Score:2)
So you're a Top Gun fan, eh?
Re: (Score:2)
Actually I upgraded to Catalina last week because I wanted to snag an Intel Mac while they still exist.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, because our software stops working after High Sierra. Too much crap on MacOS that breaks things. Catalina completely removes 32-bit support, even as an option, and there's too many legacy tools and code requiring this. A fake gcc that causes no end of problems (it's gcc command line arguments ony, but llvm behind the scenes). The Mac has been losing badly since it has decided that it only cares about iOS and MacOS. Even /usr/include will not exist unless you have an Apple developer ID. It's absurd
Re: (Score:1)
There's nothing stopping you from installing actual gcc and using it to compile things.
As for 32bit support, that's a fairly small window when macs supported 32bit x86, as really old stuff will be powerpc.
If you're running old binaries then it's stuff that hasn't been maintained in years. If it can't be recompiled for 64bit then either its closed source and the author has completely lost interest in it, or it's badly written in the first place. There have been 64bit cpus since the early 90s so it's far from
Re: (Score:2)
I use actual gcc. Trying to build it is a pain. Mac doesn't come with any normal unix tools. No make for example. You have to download xcode for one. In the past we used mac ports, and that does not install and build nicely anymore. Some have tried using brew, but that's a mess. I could just build a standalone set of tools not reliant on those platforms, probably simplest but takes time from other tasks.
64-bit is old, but using it in practice is new for most in the last decade I think. Writing portab
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah you have to install the xcode command line tools, i don't think you actually need the whole xcode suite.
I installed gcc through homebrew, although i did that pre catalina - it still works, although hasn't been updated. Perhaps if i tried installing it right now it would fail?
I installed it originally for a couple of things which required gcc to build correctly, clang was lacking openmp support at the time for instance.
Re: (Score:2)
True, in the past you could download xcode command line tools standalone. You can no longer do that very easily. Apple really really wants you to have the full xcode, and the latest version. There is a site where you can install older versions of xcode, thus getting around the problem that store tells you that you need to upgrade before you can use xcode.
The tools we use I have stored up in a usb drive for quick installs or download from a server. But we have not tried it on Mojave because no one has Mo
Big Sur? (Score:1)
Don't you mean Big Brother?
macOS Alcatraz ... (Score:1, Troll)
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you for your whining drivel, child.
Do you always lead with your chin?
Just upgraded my Ubuntu, too. That one took about two days of debugging. Still not sure if I actually fixed it or they caught and fixed the problem at their end. New security measure badly implemented in the best case scenario, which gives me even less confidence than Big Sur. You probably make a lot of money pushing your Linux drug, eh? How can you spare the time from raking in the cash to post on Slashdot 2020? (My excuse? I'm fair
Re: (Score:3)
> Just upgraded my Ubuntu, too
I updated a bunch of Debian installs - both virtual as well as bare metal - not that long ago. The updates took a few minutes for the download (around a gigabyte, that is for the OS and the installed application software) and maybe 10-15 minutes for the actual upgrade, depending on the platform and the number of installed packages. After that, things... just worked. Strange, this, how those ballyhooed commercial it-just-works Rube Goldberg devices need tens of gigabytes and
Re: No Sir to Big Sur (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not trying to start an OS war, but I have to admit that from a user's perspective Apple seems to be doing pretty well these days. Even the problem I encountered this time wasn't too bad and it fixed itself without my having to really do anything. Just looked a bit funny as it happened. In my experience Microsoft is always the worst. This Windows 10 machine was needing a forced reboot every day for a while, though it seems to have stabilized for now. (I have the newer version of Windows 10 on another mac
Re: No Sir to Big Sur (Score:2)
no (Score:2)
My late 2013 iMac is just too old right now.
But with an external SSD, I still use it to edit 4K videos in FCPX and right now is bad time to buy a new one with the architecture changes coming etc. I looked at the DaVinci Resolve Presentation, maybe I should switch to that and ditch the Apple platform. But FCPX has been running and performing much better on my 2013 mac than fx. Premier pro does on a 2017 PC that has better specs.
Oh well, I'll make that decision when the iMac dies since I just do videos for f
Re: (Score:3)
My 2014 MBPro will take it but I can't take it after seeing early adopters wind up losing their hair.
I'll just wait until the new MBPro's hit the Apple Stores and by then 90+% of the bugs will be gone.
No, I can't (Score:2)
I'm rocking a 2012 Mac Mini (mostly just used for porting work), so Catalina is where my updates stop.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
H*** no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Like a decent percentage of users, I haven't even moved to Catalina. I'm stuck on Mojave because of incompatible apps. I don't know which sucks more — Apple dropping 32-bit app support or the realization that if they had just waited just a few more months and never shipped that one first-generation MacBook Pro with the crappy Core Duo, they could have skipped 32-bit x86 support entirely, and nobody would be swearing at them for dropping 32-bit support more than a decade later.
Re: (Score:2)
Pretty much. I'm planning to skip straight from Mojave to new ARM-based hardware after it gets a little more polished, and simultaneously dump all my Adobe apps (no, I will not rent software) plus a few others. It's going to hurt like h***, but it's better than the alternative.
Re: H*** no. (Score:1)
Dumped all Adobe for Affinity. Except for Lightroom for which I had to dump Aperture.
I donâ(TM)t mind paying for upgrades but I just hate subscriptions.
Re: (Score:1)
In the meantime, I type these words on a 2011 black box PC (Phenom2 6x) running current Debian Unstable (my 64-core box is at the other home), and tomorrow morning will turn on a 2004 64-bit Pentium4 machine for a monthly off-site backup job. Another 2004 Pentium4 (32-bit) is physically lying on the other one.
All running newest versions of the OS (bleeding edge and most recent release, respectively), with no planned obsolescence.
I prefer a set of big monitors, but got multiple ARM laptops sitting around, a
Re: (Score:3)
32-bit support is needed for a lot of things. Sure, they could have said "nope, won't do it" but it might not have attracted the same number of customers. There is, not unsurprisingly, a lot of of software code that is not readily portable between 32 and 64 bit systems. When the first x86 Macs came out, 64-bit was still not common and most open source software was not all that portable.
The hardware supports 32-bit, so it's really not that much software that they need to support to keep 32-bit running. M
Re: (Score:2)
The hardware supports 32-bit, so it's really not that much software that they need to support to keep 32-bit running. Microsoft does it and they're certainly not known for being nice to customers.
They do have to do more testing, although I would hope that would be automated anyway. But as for Microsoft, they are known for backwards compatibility. I think that reputation is somewhat overrated, but they certainly always seem to try to provide it.
Re: (Score:2)
As someone who used an Alpha in the 90s i can say open source software has been very portable for a long time.
The Alpha was a 64bit cpu from the ground up, not a 64bit extension to a 32bit architecture.
I also had 64bit Sparc, POWER and MIPS systems, although these typically used a 32bit userland it was possible to compile code in 64bit mode too.
All of the major open source projects would compile and run fine on 64bit systems, problems were very rare. I remember encountering a tiny handful of niche open sour
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, I used an Alpha in the 90s. And I have run across unportable open source software that won't run there. I have run across third party expensive libraries that come with source code that aren't portable. The Unix stuff is generally better since you really can't write Unix code that's unportable without knowing about it very soon (but even then I see conflicts between bsd and linux APIs).
There's also a lot of naivete. As in either not expecting the code to last more than a couple of years, or assuming
Re: (Score:2)
the stuff that wouldn't comply to 64 bits existed, all right.
As a grad student with a 9600 line to my student apartment, there was a Mac program that would let me run 7 simultaneous terminals (whee!). I could only go in through the older, non-alpha, workstations.
It's been a while (as if the 9600 ISN line didn't tell you that . . .), but it seems to me that the code compiled but segfaulted on execution on the alphas.
And then, for some reason, after some months I could only make the first 3 or 4 terminals w
Re: (Score:2)
Not portable? Just tell the compiler that int is 32 bits and it will generate the right 64 bit code for you. That's the default. It's completely transparent to 99.999% of developers.
Remember they were switching over from PPC anyway so all x86 software was new at the time. The far, far bigger issue was switching from big endian to little endian. They were on big from back in the 68000 days.
Re: (Score:2)
No, there are alignment issues if you have a 64-bit int in structs. Ie, code for 32-bit Intel will lay out structs differently than on a 32-bit Arm (raspberry pi). And then going to 64-bit Intel and Arm had some other issues that popped up though not as directly related to struct layouts.
Re: H*** no. (Score:2)
I wonder if itâ(TM)s conceivable to do a Rosetta-style code translator that auto-converts a 32-bit app to 64-bit?
Re: (Score:2)
32-bit support is needed for a lot of things. Sure, they could have said "nope, won't do it" but it might not have attracted the same number of customers. There is, not unsurprisingly, a lot of of software code that is not readily portable between 32 and 64 bit systems. When the first x86 Macs came out, 64-bit was still not common and most open source software was not all that portable.
That's the thing, any Mac apps had to be significantly modified to move from big-endian to little-endian during the transition anyway. Instead of doing everything in one transition, Apple made everybody do the endianness transition and then *immediately* turn around and do a second transition for 64-bit, which is why a sizable number of apps never made that second leap. I think everybody would have been better off if they had waited one more year and skipped 32-bit Intel entirely.
Besides, most open source
Re: (Score:2)
Ditto. 32-bit apps like old Office 2011 that still works. We still have another year of Mojave v10.14.6 support. I might upgrade to Catalina next year, but I will lose its iTunes, 32-bit app support, etc. :(
Nope (Score:2)
Dear Valued [company] Customer,
This is an important notice concerning Appleâ(TM)s latest desktop operating system macOS Big Sur and [product]
[company] highly recommends that macOS devices running [product] not be upgraded to macOS Big Sur.
yada yada yada big Sur dropping support for kext in favor of sysext
update scheduled for release early 2021
Of course... (Score:2)
macOS: Bug, Sir? (Score:5, Funny)
'nuff said.
Waiting for .1 (Score:2, Insightful)
Tempting as it is for the features, I always like to let an OS release marinate for a while before I upgrade... for various reasons I didn't even upgrade to Catalina until June this year. Some Big Sur features are compelling enough to me to update a bit sooner though, so probably will update in December.
Interesting that the very verification system that keeps applications relatively secure on the Mac, has come to bite some people - I didn't see any issues today personally.
Aaaw it's sad to watch (Score:1)
Apple fans realizing their favorite computer company is just as bad as all the others.
No. (Score:2)
Heck, I'm still on Mojave. (Score:4, Insightful)
Catalina didn't offer anything that felt worth the hassle of losing a couple 32-bit things that will never be updated, and of discovering if the new separate Music app is as much of a pain in the ass about hassling me to subscribe to their streaming service as iOS Music is.
At this point I think it is pretty clear that the only thing that's gonna get me onto a new version of MacOS is buying a new computer, and that's not gonna be until like 2022 or 2023. Which feels kinda weird given that I've been on the current OS once a .1 release came out since like Tiger.
I havenâ(TM)t even upgraded to Catalina (Score:2)
My 2012 Mac Mini isnâ(TM)t supported by Big Sur, but I heard about too many problems with Catalina to bother, so Iâ(TM)m sticking with El Capitan until I get one of the new M-series macs.
I don't have your problems (Score:1)
Not yet (Score:2)
I'm personally watching Homebrew's compatibility tracking issue (https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/7857). Last I checked, Java, Go, Bash, and a lot of other stuff wasn't working, so there's no way I'm upgrading yet.
Re:Not yet (Score:4, Interesting)
I updated to big sur, and i'm running several java apps right now. I even still have my default shell set to bash, which catalina and now big sur are telling me to change.
Perhaps the above apps haven't been ported to ARM yet? But they're working just fine on my x64 macbook which was upgraded from catalina.
Waiting for 11.03 or 11.0.4 (Score:4, Insightful)
Waiting to hear what the early adopters said is something that I do will new OSes on every platform. I will eventually upgrade to 11.0 but right now all the programs that I use are running properly on 10.x.
I do update iOS as soon as I can because our security advisors recommend to for keeping our security updates at the highest level.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, every MacOS update in the last few years is always described on their page as being about their built-in applications. The OS itself (ie, kernel, libraries, filesystems, etc) are either not mentioned or only briefly alluded to in highly untechnical terms. And few people I know use the built in MacOS applications (or the built in Windows ones for that matter).
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm... Actually the only significant use I ever found for the MacBook Pro was mostly using two of their built-in applications. Does dictation count as a full application? Anyway, I was doing some of my writing by dictating first drafts into Apple's mail app and sending them to another machine that was better for final polishing.
Then an upgrade broke the way that the dictation worked. I struggled with it for a few months and finally gave up. Apple broke it right proper.
Switched to Android for first-draft dic
Worked fine here by yesterday evening. (Score:2)
Initial attempts to start the upgrade process on my 2014 MacBook Pro yesterday afternoon ran into the problem where the download wouldn't even begin, just giving an error, but by 1900 PT I was able to successfully start the download, which took about 10 minutes, after which it installed, restarted, asked about analytics, and it was done.
Apple seems to have botched their online delivery early on, but otherwise the install and upgrade process here was smooth and easy here.
Yaz
works well so far (Score:3)
Hell no (Score:5, Informative)
https://sneak.berlin/20201112/... [sneak.berlin]
Answer: LOL. (Score:1)
Stands for Linux i^HOS Love. :)
It doesn't mean "hoes" ya stupid luddite modders! (Score:2)
Sad, that kids today don't get what ^H means anymore. (Hint: It means "backspace".)
It was meant to be funny. Clearly I triggered some pathetic failed generation loser.
Nope. Still on Mojave. (Score:2)
I wonâ(TM)t pay another penny to Microsoft for Mac Office and the 32 bit Excel runs just fine.
Yes, I did (Score:1)
Mojave here (Score:3)
On Mojave, no plans to upgrade. This is their last OS that supports 32 bit applications and hence - non-subscription Photoshop.
Add to that silly "security" decisions in Catalina and Big Sur, and there really isn't any reason to "upgrade" (not until this one becomes completely unusable)
Re: (Score:3)
Works fine so-far. (Score:2)
I upgraded my 5K iMac (2019) this morning: left it chugging away and went for a bike ride. Brightly-coloured login screen waiting for me on my return. Seems to be less disruptive than Catalina, so far, although there's a good deal more visual redesign than the last several changes. All of my usual apps re-opened. Network drives in the dock re-mounted. Nothing adverse to report, so far. Quite boring, really. Oh, there's one (?) extra slice on the root partition and root is now mounted "sealed". Good.
Mine went smooth. (Score:4, Interesting)
My install went smooth. I started it, took a walk, it was done. I like the useful new stuff, and the new look.
And the price.
I have read the complaints, I am reserving judgement. Actually trying the product.
Only reason I'm on Catalina... (Score:2)
The only reason I'm running Catalina on my primary computer is it's a 16" MacBook Pro. IE, the ones that came out after Catalina was released. If I could reasonably download, I would've. I have 0 desire whatsoever for my desktop to look like an iOS device. It's likely I'll never "upgrade" to Big Sur.
Re: (Score:2)
Last I checked, Mac was still the only brand of computer that legally runs macOS, and macOS was still the only OS through which an iOS developer can upload an app to the App Store.
Obligatory reply (Score:3)
I'm still using a 2010 Mac mini, you insensitive clod!
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, no thanks on that one (Score:2)
Considering that the primary point of Big Sur was to add support for Apple's new ARM processors, I wouldn't expect that installing it would improve the performance of my Intel based Macs at all. Quite the opposite, I'd imagine.
Went fine, seems fine (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Same here -- I couldn't even attempt the installation for the better half of the day here due to the overloaded servers. I kept getting an odd message like "An error occurred installing the selected updates" and I did experience some very weird system pauses and hangs before I was able to actually download and install the update (turns out these were due to Apple's "gatekeeper" web services being online but very slow to respond).
The actual download only took about 15-20min for me at 450mbps, and after abo
Ancient technology fail (Score:2)
The 12GB download was amazingly slow. I'm being charitable and willing to attribute that to high demand.
High demand caused a slow download? How very 1990s. Haven't Apple heard of BitTorrent?
Re: (Score:2)
On the next release they will add a new INNOVATIVE feature called iBit (a new UI/interface for BitTorrent) and all iFans will call it the best things since sliced bread.
Re: (Score:1)
For work sure, for fun no way (Score:2)
The point of operating system is to run stuff. Windows 10 runs boatloads of new and old games and LTSC edition is free of nagware. ChromeOS has a bloat free browser and Android/Linux support. But Big Sur? No 32 bit games, no touchscreen/mobile apps. Why would I want to upgrade from Catalina and give up real functionality for a couple of UI gimmicks?
Yes and it was the usual hellish experience (Score:2)
Upgrade to macOS 11, took approx 6.5 hours
Reboot could not log in while optimization ran, took approx 12.75 hours.
Update XCode to 12.2, took approx 8.25 hours
All total 27.5 hours, and the downloads went really well for an Apple Update.
But the Install, Optimization, XCode Install was ungodly long.
Re: (Score:2)
Can not create new ones using my dev user account to try because it is 0501 hours and the Client(Enterprise Account Owner) has not logged in and accepted the new Terms and Conditions
Nope, waiting for your issues to be fixed (Score:2)
Big nope, thanks for beta testing for me! ;)
Seriously Catalina made enough changes though luckily I seems to have avoided them all. Biggest change I saw so far was that you need to move things out of the jail when installing with xattr.
This is my work machine so I am not going to attempt an upgrade until much later.
Mojave on the trashcan (Score:1)
Snow Leopard on the Xeon.
OS X is dead to me.
No. I upgraded to ... (Score:2)
... Manjaro XFCE on a 14" Tuxedo Laptop with 1tb of storage and 24gb of memory for a third of the price an apple equivalent would cost. My last macOS was Yosemite. My last spoke Apple service was a 2011 macbook air.
Doesn't look like I'll be going back, for a bunch of reasons.
Bricked (Score:1)
Why are you complaining? (Score:2)
Apple finally outdid Microsoft & Google (Score:2)
Apple finally outdid Microsoft & Google and people are not up in arms about it. Remember how much stink there was all over the interwebs about Microsofts telemetry, which can be disabled? Apparently, on Big Sur, Apple's even more extensive telemetry (hash on every app you run), has not option to be disabled. In fact, nobody really knew about it until Apple, being classically incompetent in setting up servers as they have in the last few years, could not server the requests which did not allow for users
2017 iMac - Big Sur Just fine (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Installed it on Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014 iMac from the App Store, took ~ a hour from kicking of the download to a Big Sur desktop.
Only thing I've found broke so far was the version of Thunderbird I was on. Just upgraded it to the latest Beta,
Still got updating my MacPort installed stuff to try though.
Python 2 GUI crash (Score:1)
I love to taste the salty tears... (Score:1)
Yes (Score:2)
On a 2020 16" mbp.
The update was slow and buggy, restarting the download several times and presenting a progress bar that would make windows 95 proud.
Now the icons have changed. I haven't seen anything else new.
For those who did, why does apple get to tell yo.. (Score:1)
Yes, and it went well. (Score:1)