macOS 11.2
According to Apple’s release notes, macOS Big Sur 11.2 addresses several bugs, such as an issue that could cause external external displays to show a black screen when connected to an M1 Mac mini using an HDMI to DVI converter and a problem that caused iCloud Drive to disable when turning off the iCloud Drive Desktop & Documents Folders option.
There are no new release notes for this software update.
I’ve seen first-hand that the Mail bug where messages “moved” by rules bounce back to the inbox has not been fixed. I’ve not yet heard the status of these other serious Mail bugs that were present on macOS 10.15.0 through 11.1:
- When an automatically applied rule moves a message (usually from Gmail) to a mailbox in another account, a copy is left in the inbox.
- Moving a message from one server mailbox to another instead deletes it.
In the absence of release notes or responses to bug reports, I’m assuming that they are not fixed.
Details of security fixes included in this and the concomitant Security Updates are here. They include a fix to a bug in APFS in Big Sur found by Thomas Tempelmann, 2-3 bugs in Crash Reporter, nine bugs in ImageIO and still more in Model I/O, and three in the Big Sur kernel. However, there’s no mention that I can see of the old bug which might still be lurking in
sudo.
It does look like the ImageIO crashing bug that I filed is fixed.
Starting with macOS Big Sur, Combo and Delta update pkg’s aka packages are not available as standalone downloads.
[…]
Installing this package will put the full “Install macOS Big Sur.app” in your applications folder.
See also: the IPSW files and open source release.
Previously:
- Heap-based Buffer Overflow in Sudo
- ContentFilterExclusionList Gone in macOS 11.2 Beta 2
- No More Downloadable macOS Updates
- macOS 11.1
- Mail Data Loss in macOS 10.15
Update (2021-02-08): I’ve now received multiple reports of Mail data loss on macOS 11.2.
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Is it worth it to upgrade to Big Sur for general improvements and fixes compared to Catalina? (i.e. I don't care about most of the actual new marquee features of Big Sur, per se)
Like Ben G, I'd like to know about upgrading, but from a different angle: I also don't care about any marquee features and am unlikely to buy an M1 anytime soon. My sole reason to upgrade would be for Xcode 12.5 compatibility. So how much will I hate Big Sur over Catalina? (I mean, aside from the dialogs and notifications that everyone has been criticizing.) Any major gotchas still out there? (2020 Intel Mac mini with LG Ultrafine 4k.)
how much will I hate Big Sur over Catalina? (I mean, aside from the dialogs and notifications that everyone has been criticizing.)
All of this is very subjective, of course, but:
the UI changes bother me far less than I expected them to (but far from zero; the new title bars aren’t great, front-most windows still look disabled rather than front-most to me, the dark menu bar styling is hard to read, etc.)
I actually appreciate some changes, such as the new Dock & Menu Bar system preference pane
reliability-wise, it’s been better for me than Catalina, from day one. Far from perfect, but better.
Subjective is right. I didn't bother with Catalina until it came installed on my Mac mini last June and I didn't have a choice. The only problems I've had with it have to do with sound. It doesn't retain my prefs between boots, and the Music app doesn't play well with my AirPods. Oh, and it puts my external drives to sleep even though I've said not to.
But overall I haven't seen a lot of the problems many others have seen with it. I usually figure it's half my fault for dragging around the same data from Mac to Mac since at least 2003. One of these days I'll have to try a clean install.
I am heartened by the various comments I've seen from people about Big Sur's stability.
Right now wouldn't install Big Sur on any Mac. I tried it on two Mac's a early 2020 MacBook Air and a 2018 Mac mini. Couldn't stand the performance hit and battery life hit. Returned back to Catalina and plan to remain on it as long as possible. Big Sur probably more stable on Intel Mac's than the M1 Mac's. I read plenty on unhappy M1 Mac owners losing external monitor connections, or bluetooth and even touchpad freezing. Along with terrible performance with some non native apps running in Rosetta 2. So glad I did not bite on this M1 hype. Apple of course only focuses on the pluses not the negatives. Some probably don't remember the switch from Power PC to Intel. Definitely a dumpster fire release for Apple with the M1 Mac's. Amazing how many Apple fans defend this as not being a problem. One said "well they are great 95% of the time". Who buys an expensive Windows PC and defends that it works 95% of the time? All I can say is Apple better get their shit together on this changeover.
The HDMI -> DVI conversion bug was one that I found last summer on the DTK, and which unfortunately still existed on my M1 mini. I'm glad it got fixed this way, because I was out of other explanations for why it wasn't working.