macOS 11.3 for Intel and M1 Macs is available for installation.
I made this a wiki post, so feel free to add links to other sites that explain macOS 11.3
Some early commentary on why an update is advisable:
I’m really hoping this update fixes the USB drive not reliably mounting issue that I have since installing BS. Also, way to many app crashes.
interesting fix in this and related iOS/iPadOS releases are fix of Safari iCloud tab sync. The sync had been awful ever since Big Sur’s first release, making me move to Firefox.
Handoff and continuity clipboard also much more reliable now. Pasting text copied on nearby device is instant, previously there was up to 5 seconds delay with blocking popup.
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Can anyone with an M1 Mac launch any “sideloaded” iOS apps?
I cannot. I get a message about not having permission to open the app.
I just installed one and it worked fine.
To be clear, I don’t mean from the Mac App Store, I mean using something like iMazing to install from an .ipa file.
For example, this is what I get when I try to install the eero app:
And if I try to open a previously installed “side-loaded” app, nothing happens.
I used iMazing to install a .ipa file. Double clicked and installed the app onto my Mac. All worked fine for me.
My i9 16” MacBook finished more that 10 mins before my M1, which I was not expecting. Both started at exactly the same time.
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I hope it finally remembers widget settings.
I can’t check myself yet because the installation status is “About 10 minutes remaining” for at least 1 hour now…
Yes, it did that on my two current Macs. Obligatory XKCD reference:
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Text Expander (6.8.4) keeps crashing after updating to 11.3 on my Mac Mini.
From the crash log:
Failed to execute 'transaction' on 'IDBDatabase':
The database connection is closing.
It might be a coincidence… So, what to do? Smile, I guess? 
Logs have been sent to Smile.
EDIT: No conincidence according to Twitter. Oh well…
TextExpander is also failing on my M1. LanguageTool also crashes.
Regarding TextExpander: Smile was so kind to send me an email with instructions.
Open a Finder window.
Hit Shift-Command-G.
Paste in the following: ~/Library/WebKit/
Delete the folder with name com.smileonmymac.textexpander.
Launch TextExpander.
That resolved my issue. (Knock on wood, but no crashes during the last 30 minutes after deleting the mentioned folder.)
Seems to work, thanks. I followed a similar approach for LanguageTool (/Users/larseberhart/Library/Containers/org.languagetool.safari/Data/Library and others)
Curious. I’ll have to try it with other apps and see if I can get any of them to work.
Thanks for the info.
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Interesting! I had repeated crashing of Text Expander last week, before 11.3. Smile never responded to my reports so I finally gave up and uninstalled it.
Maybe after I update to 11.3 I’ll try this and reinstall Text Expander.
I’m starting to think that Big Sur is Apple’s way of saying that, “Catalina wasn’t all that bad” (but is certainly was)
A step back from Catalina? I guess that’s a giant step back from Mojave, and I wasn’t that fond of Mojave.
I hope next year’s release is named “Snow Big Sur.”
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Huge Sur…
To be fair, I had no issues with Big Sur so far. I loved Mojave and El Capitan in their time. Those seemed super solid to me (and Mojave introduced a nice screenshot interface as well).
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No problems either. I’m actually very happy with Big Sur which works way better on my venerable 2015 iMac than Mojave did (I skipped Catalina), even with my 15 peripherals hooked to it 