Finally upgraded to Big Sur - some observations

Software
#1

After some of the early warnings I waited awhile on Big Sur. Finally installed it yesterday, some observations.

First, generally, overall, I am pleased. I probably should have read up on things some more before I did it, so that maybe the UI changes wouldn’t have been so surprising, but I like the look and feel of it so far.

Some things that were different

My menu bar utility (Dozer) I had been using to hide less-used items is not working well. Everything is spaced out farther than before, including the two dots that Dozer uses. I hope I can find a fix for this…

Some things, mostly utilities, that were previously set to always start didn’t start - Skitch, ToothFairy, all seem to work after a manual start.

Oddly, the desktop wallpaper was still Catalina - managed to find the Big Sur wallpaper and switch it out manually.

Things that just work

Alfred, Keyboard Maestro - no problems - same for Notion, FastMail, Firefox, Safari

Sorry, nothing more profound than that. It’s just working, so that’s good.

MacBook Air, 13-inch (2017)

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#2

The Bartender 4 Beta is really helpful for making the menu bar usable in Big Sur

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#3

A couple of weeks ago I rolled back my 2019 15-inch MacBook Pro from Big Sur to Catalina. I miss the UI, but my machine seems to be running drastically better. The fans were running a lot more than normal – for example, Logitech G-Hub would kick the fans on. Safari was buggy. Paste loaded inconsistently. Cloudflare Warp would choke. Lightroom and Photoshop would also freeze.

“Downgrading” to Catalina fixed my problems.

#4

Yes! Without Bartender 4 the Big Sur menu bar is annoying.

#5

Interesting.

I only upgraded to Catalina just before Christmas. I thought it was one of the the worst OSs I had ever used. Both personal machines spontaneously restarted, very sluggish and on my work laptop it Kernal panics every time I stick anything into a usb /c port. Last week I upgraded my personal machines to Big Sur. So far so good.

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#6

Interesting. I haven’t had a kernel panic on Catalina. As far as Big Sur performance, I wonder if it’s something specific with my setup.

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