Done with Apple

I know. I have many switches here. A dock is not a switch though. And everything else connected to this switch is working just fine. Just like the Belkin dock. As long as the Mac doesn’t go to sleep. :wink:

Happy with all the suggestions. But I’m pretty confident it’s not a hardware issue. The fact that the
macOS Big Sur 11.2 Release Megathread
on Reddit has already 254 (mostly negative) comments on this version of macOS, ranging from BT to display and ethernet problems, makes me think there might be an issue with the latest update(s). That, and the fact that we’re at beta 6 for 11.3 and there’s still no sign of Apple releasing this update. That’s really not because the Reminders sorting is still not working fine.

Wifi is taking over when the thunderbolt ethernet connection drops. And even though I have a solid Wifi connection, it’s still not as good as wired ethernet. Especially for video conferencing and stuff like that.

Yep, knew that. Just thought I’d suggest testing your theory. IMO that’s the only way to be sure. Good luck.

Oh my god, thank goodness somebody finally acknowledged this. It is so stupid that Apple hasn’t released a successor to that adapter yet…

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Don’t get me wrong, there’s more than enough complaining about Windows to. The input lag on an external monitor with a laptop that has a Nvidia GPU is too common which requires a quirky workaround. Overall I find Mac is still nicer for day-2-day work than Windows, but the gap is closing.

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Your experience sounds so familiar to mine. My MBP 16" has gone through all kinds of problems, from regularly crashing while sleeping under Catalina (I almost returned it at that time) to now randomly losing ethernet (via an Anker USB-C adapter) and then crashing about 1-2 minutes afterwards.

My initial problems only disappeared after several months, when Apple finally fixed the issue. The guys from the Apple Store had me completely reinstall macOS and then test it out for a few days/weeks before installing additinal software, though. Very funny when you use your MBP for work.

The latest versions of Catalina where quite stable for me, but for some reason I felt I should install to Big Sur. It had been out for such a long time, it sure is stable now. Let’s not dig into how they ruined notifications, but as described above, I was now introduced to a new crash pattern.

From what I found online, it seems that macOS (or the MBP 16" in particular) is still incompatible with a lot of USB-C displays, which sometimes causes those seemingly random problems. Which is great, because I bought a relatively expensive USB-C display specifically for my MBP at work…
Anecdotally, my MBP did not crash in that way - ethernet down, then crash - while at home, connected to a CalDigit TS3 Plus hub, which is my only cable connected to the machine.

Sometimes, I just wish I could go back to my good old PowerBook G4, which is still running great by the way, even without an SSD. :wink:

Let me tell you, though, that from my experience, Windows 10 can be a total pain, too.
I built a really nice desktop machine in 2018 for Adobe Lightroom (which had become unusable on my 2011 MBA 11"). The included backup solution has been totally unreliable, which I only found out by accident because Windows does not mind warning you about any problems. It’s easier for third party software to interfere with basic system functions, which could in theory be a great thing, but stops being great when your BitLocker encrypted drives suddenly all fail to mount.
Updates don’t take as long as on macOS? In theory, yes, but in practice, from time to time, there will be an update that just never ends. And the official recommendation is to wait for at least several hours before daring to reboot, which might completely f*** up your Windows installation. (Luckily, a reboot in safe mode somehow did the trick.)
And that’s just my experience with a high end machine with not a lot of software running, which is only used very occasionaly.

At work, I’m also taking care of IT a bit (we have an external IT consultant, but I try to quickly solve issues myself instead of having employees wait for remote service). There have been all kinds of weird problems introduced by minor and major Windows 10 updates, from random crashes (including the good old blue screen) to the search function being broken. And everytime such a thing occurs, you can start digging in the settings first (because obviously, when search stops working, it’s probably a user error), then you start Googling, and then you hopefully find that thread on the MS forums where other people are complaining about the same issues. And then you hope there’s a workaround, because otherwise you just wasted a few hours just to come up with “Well, that sucks, let’s hope the next patches will fix this.”

Last month, I bought a new PC (Lenovo M75q Gen 2) for an employee. Configured it, including migration of all the accounting software and data, started using it - and it randomly lost ethernet between every 5 and 120 minutes. Spent countless hours trying to fix it, no success. Mainboard was replaced, no success. Bought a second PC, thoroughly tested it, transfered data to it, tested it again, seemed to work, then stopped working. The “old” PC, reinstalled, still had the same problem, too. Then late in March, a new ethernet driver was released by Lenovo which fixed the problem.

Sorry for the rant, but trust me: Your experience might be better, but just as well your experience might be better if you had bought a different configuration for your MacBook, or if you just buy another MacBook, of if you just wait for another few months until finally Apple fixes your issues.

Oh, and don’t get me started on also the daily annoyances of actually working with Windows 10. No Preview which let’s you easily rearrange PDFs and quickly export PDFs/images to different sizes and formats, no quick look which let’s you run through tens of PDF files and rename them in a few seconds, no instant search on Synology NAS because Windows doesn’t use the remote search index, …

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I know a company that bought a bunch of Chromebooks for their employees. They were very easy to configure (all at once).

Windows 10 was released in 2015, that’s 6 years ago! I’m glad that Apple is continuing to invest in MacOS and releases a new version every year. They have great integrations with the iPhone and iPad so I can seamlessly move from mobile to my desktop. And of course last year they released Macs with their own chip designs. If none of that appeals to you, then please move to Windows and you’ll get a new version every 10 years or so.

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Have you tried setting the “service order” of your network connections? I wonder if your mac is thinking it has a connection on something other then your LAN.

In system preferences, select network, then the little drop down selector right under the list of connections. Select “ set service order…” and rearrange your connection from top to bottom in the priority order you want.

Also, what is your DNS set to or do you let your modem decide?

You don’t actually know Windows. Do you? Microsoft did a lot with Windows since 2015. They sort of integrated Linux into Windows, Power Automate (the Automator on Windows) offers a lot of nice automation stuff and Windows has a very useful clipboard manager. Don’t bash Windows because it’s Windows. Not everything is perfect, but the same goes for Mac.

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Ahhww, why are we going down the Mac vs Windows route in this thread? Doesn’t help the OP much and only leads to an ocean of talk without end.

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The topic of this thread is “Done with Apple”, It is safe to say that is a provocative title. How should we respond to something so clearly critical of Apple?

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Help OP by trying to figure out what else he might to do fix his system. Do you think he will switch to a non-Apple PC based on the messages above? Think anyone above is enriched by the discussion?

Sorry if I come of as preaching but I think we have all been part of X vs Y discussions and I don’t think anyone ever liked it or was helped by it.

If the OP is done with Apple, where else are they going to go? Chrome OS?

This entire topic could also just be heavily exaggerated with a dose of trolling.

I agree BS is buggy - I listed my own issues in another thread. More than once have I had the urge to put my fist through the monitor. Instead you cry a bit to your neighbor and on the forums and the next day you go back at it again, hopefully with some fresh ideas you picked up along the way from your friends.

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You may have come across this and tried it already, but I had this problem with my USB C dock as well and discovered that the dock’s Ethernet function was clashing with the Bluetooth radio somehow. Odd as it was, disabling Bluetooth led to the Ethernet jack giving me full throughput. I’ve read different theories on this but that was the way I’ve found to make it work.

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I don’t want to be that guy but, have you field feedbacks on these things. Even through mostly does not response to them they do aggregate them internally and use them to prioritise what to fix. If you have field feedbacks please always include the feedback numbers in your public posts (so that apple staff members can act upon them)

While you can mention all sorts of issues most apple staff members can’t just randomly drop what they are working on and fix your issues unless they have a feedback number to work on, all development work within apple as based on this ticketing system. They can go an try to make their own ticket in the system but they will only do this if they can reproduce your issues themselves, since most apple staff run the next os version (that is full of all sorts of bugs we luckily never need to see) putting in the work to reproduce your bugs might well require fully installing a an old OS etc. However if these things come through the feedback channel then the people doing the filtering of that system already have multiple machines ready to go to reproduce issues, collect them together then create a supper ticket that is then assigned to the person/people who own that part of the code base.

In summary always file feedbacks and ALWAYS include feedback numbers in rants

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Yes, I did. Both after the 11.2.1, 11.2.2 and 11.2.3 updates.

Thanks all for your suggestions.

But please note, this is not an issue that happens only on my configuration.

On this topic 1338 (!) people mention they have it too.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252026015

And this one has 6 pages full of issues with ethernet on Big Sur.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252189073

At least it looks like there is a pattern here. :wink:

And for all of you that tell me they don’t have any issues with Big Sur: I understand. It all depends on your usage of the machine and your configuration. As an example, I also have an iPad Air (2020). Nice tablet and everything works just fine. However, I only use it for light browsing and reading pdf documents. No keyboard, no usb peripherals, nada. So chances are little I encounter any issues with iPadOS.

Exactly.
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