macOS 11.0 Big Sur

Big Sur. © Apple.

The day Apple delivered its final version of Big Sur, Andrew Cunningham released his traditional Ars Technica review (link below) which exhaustively details every aspect of the new system. At over 20,000 words long, the article should keep you amused for three hours at a normal reading pace. In his conclusion, Andrew notes that Big Sur is an incrementalist macOS update that builds on the foundation laid by the last few releases of the operating system. Aside from the visual aspect of the interface (which increasingly looks like an iPad), it’s a collection of tweaks and minor feature upgrades and under-the-hood enhancements that bumps the platform forward but doesn’t radically change it. Big Sur is essentially the version that transitions machines to ARM chips. It features Rosetta 2, which provides compatibility with Mac M1 for applications designed for Mac Intel, translating x86-64 instructions into ARM64 instructions. Finally, this version, numbered 11.0 and not 10.16, marks the end of the OS X saga (which became macOS in 2016 with version 10.12).

⇨ Ars Technica, Andrew Cunningham, “macOS 11.0 Big Sur: The Ars Technica review.”