Giving up on Catalina for Big Sur Public Beta

I have been dual-booting my 16" MacBook Pro for awhile now, but I’m ready to delete the Catalina partition and move to Big Sur.

Now, I should mention that there’s a huge asterisk here: I have a Mac mini in my office (and connected to my monitor) which runs Mojave, so it’s not as if I am going 100% to Big Sur.

Mostly I just want to get away from Catalina A.S.A.P. If I could put Mojave on my MBPro, I would, but I can’t, so Big Sur it is.

Since April when I purchased it, my MBPro has been plagued by random reboots, where the whole system locks up, keychain goes crazy, I can’t even use the keyboard and mouse, and eventually it reboots itself.

I’ve tried everything, including reinstalling, and installing having Apple replace the logic board. It’s not hardware. It’s Catalina.

Why isn’t everyone seeing this? I have no idea. Dan Moren mentioned on The Rebound that he had seen it… once. I’ve seen it at least once a week.

So far there are 3 big things missing:

  1. All Rogue Amoeba apps (I use SoundSource, Audio Hijack, Fission, and Loopback daily)

  2. Karabiner (no hyperkey :-1:)

  3. Bartender, but there are alternatives (which aren’t as good, but will suffice for the time being).

Pretty sad that the public beta of macOS 11 is more reliable than 10.15.6. And obviously that may not be true for everyone, but it’s definitely true for me.

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My iMac is 7 years old now so I get the age thing but Catalina just hasn’t been my favorite OS. Even after my hard drive went up in smoke and was replaced 18 months ago I get frequent Spotlight rebuilds and just an overall buggy behavior.

Sadly this old friend will not make the Big Sur transition so it’s time for a replacement sometimes next year. Not sure if I’m going to buy a discounted Intel iMac as the ARM based iMacs show up on the horizon or not.

I’m currently using Hammerspoon with this YouTuber’s config. It’s working alright so far. :blush:

Hammerspoon is, of course, the one macOS automation tool that I know absolutely nothing about well, there’s also ruby and python and AppleScript and JavaScript

…hrm, ok that went off the rails, but how about:

Hammerspoon is, of course, the one macOS automation tool app that I know absolutely nothing about…

OTOH, if I can use a tool like Hammerspoon and not need Karabiner, that might be a win-win.

I have a mbpro 16 running catalina - mostly without issues (bluetooth connectivity sucks). What sort of hardware do you have connected to it?

Are you in full control of your Mac?

I also had a lot of crashes on my brand new 16” MacBook Pro and initially thought the hardware was faulty

However, this was the first time I received a MacBook that was pre-configured by IT and it turned out that one of the utilities I normally use (AdGuard) was incompatible with the antivirus software (Sophos) that they installed…

I can’t remove their crappy software choices, so I’m now using the AdGuard Safari extension instead of the full App. No more crashes…

I’m in a similar boat with a late 2013 iMac. Great computer which is still going strong and I’ll probably keep as a spare, but I don’t know whether to get the new intel iMac or wait for the ARM based Macs.

I have a few Windows apps I have to run in Parallels which sort of makes the decision a bit easier, but I’m confused about the iPhone compatibility. Its only going to be the Apple Silicon Macs that get the iPhone / iPad native apps?

If you need Windows, I think I’d stick with Intel. Neither MS or Apple have confirmed that an Arm version of Windows will be available for VMs in the future.

Only Apple Silicon Macs will be able to run iOS apps as-is. Intel Macs will continue to require a developer to adopt Mac Catalyst for this.

Yea, you can. :blush:

It’s a bit more configuration for the HYPER key though as you have to explicitly define uses for it on a per app basis. So I don’t think it’s ideal. There is also, at times, lag when entering what Hammerspoon calls, “HYPER mode”, so your keystrokes can miss fire. What I’ve tried to do is just be a bit more mindful with my keystrokes and try not to go too fast, and that has helped.

So while it “works”, I’m definitely still waiting for Karabiner to release their DriverKit version. But if you want to install Big Sur today, it is a viable option. :+1:t2:

Now there’s an understatement!

Not yet, beta should be coming soon

I had those random reboots on my Mac Pro after installing Catalina. It happened as much as once a day. In the logs after reboot, it often hung on Intego apps.

I did a re-install from scratch and it disappeared completely even with the Intego suite installed. The Pro has now replaced my Mac Mini at MacStadium and has been rock solid since re-install. This was a first new installation since 2011 as I had always used migration asst or OS installer over the exisiting installation ;-))

App? Seems to me more like a coding platform than an app. Probably extraordinarily powerful but only applicable to a small percent even of MPU readers.

I’ve had these problems even with nothing attached.

Yup.

Karabiner has, in the past, been late with updates, so I have no idea when this update will be coming, but I suspect it won’t be out until Big Sur is officially released.

I think Hammerspoon is way beyond my mental capabilities at this particular juncture.

Ooooh. Well, yeah, having to define a hyper key for each app would definitely defeat the purpose.

I guess I’m waiting for Karabiner.

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Too many choices!

I think it’ll be the Intel iMac then

So with you, been using Big Sur at work since the first public beta and find it very stable! Some of the apps acting funny is a minor annoyance compared to Catalinas mixed record.

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I delayed Catalina until Karabiner updated. That’s how much the Hyper Key means to me.

Looks like Karabiner on Big Sur is close! :grin:

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I too am having fun with the Big Sur beta. Sadly, all PDF apps that I have tried except Preview crash at different points

  1. Bluebeam Revu for Mac crashes at launch.
  2. PDFPenPro crashes when I try to move a custom imprint after placing it.
  3. PDF Expert crashed when I was annotating a PDF

I have not yet tried Acrobat Reader or Pro because I do not like them much. So far, Preview has been up to the task of commenting and signing PDFs.

I will miss Bluebeam Revu. Bluebeam no longer supports it for Mac.