advertisement


macOS Big Sur

Tony Lockhart said:
I’m afraid you’ve lost me. I bought what I needed, plus a bit in reserve, and I’ve had no cause to complain. It still whizzes along, even faster with BS, and I’ve no regrets.
It’s all that upgrading stuff (where have we heard that before?) that frustrated me. It’s a tool, I’m not a super-user, and it does what I ask.
When it dies, I’ll see what’s around.
Click to expand...

Not being a superuser is what Apple relies on in its customers. I like that about the iPhone/iPad: very simple delineated choices. Basically we're paying the going rate for a high end laptop but in desktops what we lose in terms of not being able to upgrade goes up in cost by a factor of 300% I don't mind non-upgradeable Macs at all, as long as they can be recycled responsibly I'm ok with that, but 200%-400% markup for fixed RAM & storage and laptop-grade parts in a desktop machine was criminal.
 
This seems like a standard Apple Mark up. Several years ago we had an iPhone that cost about £500 new perhaps a little less that went deaded that was covered by Applecare and was replaced by a 'genius' in an Apple store. The paper work showed that the insurance company was charged £108 and the store is not making a loss even at that price! I always wondered how Apple could afford such large stores with staff milling about.

Remember when Apple tried to make it difficult to upgrade the hard drives so that they could overcharge. We soon figured that one out but the none techie average user is held to ransom. I'm all for making a profit for a living but just ripping unwary people off smells.

Cheers,

DV
 
Apple are a hardware company - they work hard to project a cool image, and stylish products for the urban rich. I'd put them in the same category as countless high street clothing brands in their emphasis on style, and discussions about value don't translate when the trademark on the product counts for so much.

As for hackintoshes, yeah, that's a good route to go if you need OSX, but i'd suggest that Windows 10 is actually a pretty good alternative these days, especially with the linux subsystem support for those times when a bash shell is required.
 
Cesare said:
Apple are a hardware company - they work hard to project a cool image, and stylish products for the urban rich. I'd put them in the same category as countless high street clothing brands in their emphasis on style, and discussions about value don't translate when the trademark on the product counts for so much.

As for hackintoshes, yeah, that's a good route to go if you need OSX, but i'd suggest that Windows 10 is actually a pretty good alternative these days, especially with the linux subsystem support for those times when a bash shell is required.
Click to expand...

Yep. A lot of these companies are pivoting to services. I'm watching how services like AppleTV, Apple Music, iCloud storage and so on are all creeping up in income/revenue importance. Apple health and all under a banner of Apple One. All the hardware is geared towards buying into those services.

Windows is fine I use Win 10 in multi boot for Reaper, Protools (when needed) and selling drugs and munitions and fragging asteroid miners in Elite Dangerous. Its a nice OS I wish W10 would not arbitrarily alter my carefully tweaked BIOS after each minor update though. Bad OS, no donut!

Derek Wright said:
I use HandyPrint to print from iPhones and ipads to the Lexmark laser printer - works a treat
see
https://appletoolbox.com/airprint-to-any-printer/
Click to expand...

Thanks! Wow I must have forgotten about that. $5 is worth anyone's time to avoid Rpi CUPS servers.

EDIT... and my v5 licence from 2014 still works! Gotta tip them...
 
Just tried to do this on a 13 inch retina MacBook pro mid 2014. It says 23.4 GB storage remaining but the message says 'not enough free space and 11.35 GB required'. Is there an easy way to sort this? Tried dumping a load of stuff and created about 10GB but still no luck.
 
MVV said:
Just tried to do this on a 13 inch retina MacBook pro mid 2014. It says 23.4 GB storage remaining but the message says 'not enough free space and 11.35 GB required'. Is there an easy way to sort this? Tried dumping a load of stuff and created about 10GB but still no luck.
Click to expand...
What version of macOS are you currently on? Use Disk utility to see how your space is allocated as it can be over several volumes in APFS.

Cheers,

DV
 
Darth Vader said:
What version of macOS are you currently on? Use Disk utility to see how your space is allocated as it can be over several volumes in APFS.

Cheers,

DV
Click to expand...
Thanks DV Catalina. I had a look and it is over 5 volumes not that I know what that means.
 
Look at how much free space there is for Device: disk 1 (second entry of the 5 shown in Disk utility)

Then we can check if defragmentation is enabled. To do this launch terminal and enter diskutil APFS defragment disk1 status. You can also do this for the other volumes mine are disk1s1 and disk1s5 but check these in Disk utility. You'll need to tick Show all devices

To turn defragmentation on for a volume its diskutil APFS defragment disk1 enable and so on for the other volumes as above. To turn off defragmentation use disable in the previous command.

This should only be necessary for a hard drive.

Have fun,

DV
 
Have a look in 'About This Mac' > Storage > Manage to see if there are some large files or IOS backups etc. that can be deleted.
Time machine snapshots can take up a lot of (hidden) space too.
 
Rack Kit said:
macOS Big Sur
11.0.1

Is It safe to upgrade now? ;)
Click to expand...
No its not safe. However if you take precautions then you can recover if the worse happens.

First have a Time Machine backup and if you have a spare USB disk/SSD use Super Duper (free) to clone your internal storage to it and test that you can boot from it. Next download Big Sur from the Apple store so that you get the full version. When you have the installation image create a recovery USB on a 16GB memory stick (I can show you how to do this). Then boot from the USB stick and use Disk Utility to format your internal storage using the defaults and then install Big Sur ( this gets rid of Crapalina). Use the Time Machine backup to update the installation with your stuff.

If at the end of the day you don't like it or worse your system screws up you can boot from the cloned copy and clone it back to internal storage. It takes less time than you think as you don't have to sit and watch whilst things are happening.

Have fun,

DV
 
Contacted my computer man today and had scheduled a meeting on Friday to set up online access to my machine (he is shielding) He called tonight to say he has had several similar enquiries and suggested we wait a week cos it looks like there is a problem at the Apple end.
 
Agreed, it is a known problem. That initial 12GB figure enables you to download BS, but not to install it, you'll need at least that again.
Note that BS will install on any drive it thinks is bootable, but at least it asks first.

More worryingly (and I missed it, behind schedule and on 6th cup of coffee) is that it asks about your time machine backups, which implies it may want to update them. Fine, but that also implies you 'may need to boot BS to run time machine.
 
As for the Apple bashers, I agree to an extent, but the comparison is more with Mercedes and BMW, not fashion per se.That's for the traditional computer users, of course.The future is the tablet, and here you see Apple at its creative best, forget the fashion bit.
 
Oh well, I haven't got to worry about Big Sur bugs and hassle, my 2013 desktop iMac's too old to take it. I'm still running Mojave on my 2013 Macbook Pro - got a program that won't run on anything more modern. Both work just fine so I'll have to sit back until one of them expires.
 
Darth Vader said:
No its not safe. However if you take precautions then you can recover if the worse happens.

First have a Time Machine backup and if you have a spare USB disk/SSD use Super Duper (free) to clone your internal storage to it and test that you can boot from it. Next download Big Sur from the Apple store so that you get the full version. When you have the installation image create a recovery USB on a 16GB memory stick (I can show you how to do this). Then boot from the USB stick and use Disk Utility to format your internal storage using the defaults and then install Big Sur ( this gets rid of Crapalina). Use the Time Machine backup to update the installation with your stuff.

If at the end of the day you don't like it or worse your system screws up you can boot from the cloned copy and clone it back to internal storage. It takes less time than you think as you don't have to sit and watch whilst things are happening.

Have fun,

DV
Click to expand...

I backed up my files to an external HD (mainly, photographs, videos, music), deleted them off this 15" 2017 MBP to create as much space as possible, then ran the update through the basic update app. Update seems fine so far and a quick test of the apps I need (Photoshop, Photomechanic, Fetch) all seem to be working fine at the moment.
 
Suffolk Tony said:
Oh well, I haven't got to worry about Big Sur bugs and hassle, my 2013 desktop iMac's too old to take it. I'm still running Mojave on my 2013 Macbook Pro - got a program that won't run on anything more modern. Both work just fine so I'll have to sit back until one of them expires.
Click to expand...

Yes my mid 2012 MacBook Pro has spared me the angst by being too old. I will not be upgrading my 2014 music server Mini either until this one expires I like to keep them mirrored as an additional back up.
 
MVV said:
Contacted my computer man today and had scheduled a meeting on Friday to set up online access to my machine (he is shielding) He called tonight to say he has had several similar enquiries and suggested we wait a week cos it looks like there is a problem at the Apple end.
Click to expand...
Have you managed to download BS? If so do you have a 16GB or larger USB stick or disk drive? If you do I can tell you how to build a restore USB and then you can delete BS off your internal storage and install from the USB drive.

Cheers,

DV
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top