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macOS Big Sur

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11–20 of 837 posts

Re: macOS Big Sur

#11
post #4

It shows up for me in the App Store but Software Update doesn’t find it for some reason.

Might depend on the OS version; in the past App Store had all the “big” updates and System Preferences only handled the minor ones. Now it handles all of them.

Re: macOS Big Sur

#12

The best thing about this is being able to run natively iOS apps (with new chips). I'll probably never open another Electron app on desktop again. Wonder how the file management works.

electron -> react native ;) javascript is eating the world.

Re: macOS Big Sur

#13
Will iTunes disappear in Big Sur - is the alternative equally good? I originally put off installing Catalina because I didn't want to lose iTunes.

Re: macOS Big Sur

#14
> “Big Sur has been engineered, down to its core, to take full advantage of all the power of the M1 chip”

Does that mean that all of the OS code has been recompiled for Apple Silicon / ARM? And if so, does that mean Big Sur has two binaries: 1 for ARM (new M1 Macs) and 1 for Intel (existing supported Mac devices) and there is a flag at boot-time to determine which mode it runs in?

Re: macOS Big Sur

#15
post #12

The best thing about this is being able to run natively iOS apps (with new chips). I'll probably never open another Electron app on desktop again. Wonder how the file management works.

electron -> react native ;) javascript is eating the world.

Yep! But you know what I mean here instead.

Re: macOS Big Sur

#17

> “Big Sur has been engineered, down to its core, to take full advantage of all the power of the M1 chip” Does that mean that all of the OS code has been recompiled for Apple Silicon / ARM? And if so, does that mean Big Sur has two binaries: 1 for ARM (new M1 Macs) and 1 for Intel (existing supported Mac devices) and there is a flag at boot-time to determine which mode it runs in?

Why would there be a runtime flag and not just the appropriate binary installed?

Re: macOS Big Sur

#18
Just want to put here that if you're using a Mac and haven't tried Safari recently, you're missing out. A few things:

- Battery life is fantastic compared to Chrome/FF

- Privacy seems to be top-notch

- The tab ordering situation is now chrome-like (my biggest gripe in older versions of safari)

- Experimental features are 1 click away, easily enable/disable WebGL2

- Support for the WebExtensions standard means addons are trickling back into the ecosystem - I'm happy with my AdBlocker and Nightmode extensions

- Actually decent dev tools (used to be terrible)

- Native support for keychain + fingerprint

I've been using it for the past year after being on Chrome, and it's really impressive how much work they've put into not only catching up, but in many regards, jumping ahead.

Re: macOS Big Sur

#19

> “Big Sur has been engineered, down to its core, to take full advantage of all the power of the M1 chip” Does that mean that all of the OS code has been recompiled for Apple Silicon / ARM? And if so, does that mean Big Sur has two binaries: 1 for ARM (new M1 Macs) and 1 for Intel (existing supported Mac devices) and there is a flag at boot-time to determine which mode it runs in?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but why would there be a boot time flag instead of just having two versions, seeing as a particular CPU could only run one version?

Re: macOS Big Sur

#20

> “Big Sur has been engineered, down to its core, to take full advantage of all the power of the M1 chip” Does that mean that all of the OS code has been recompiled for Apple Silicon / ARM? And if so, does that mean Big Sur has two binaries: 1 for ARM (new M1 Macs) and 1 for Intel (existing supported Mac devices) and there is a flag at boot-time to determine which mode it runs in?

Of course it's cross-compiled. As far as I know, they use Rosetta only for third-party software.
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