- When was Big Sur released?
The first version of Big Sur was released on the 12th of November 2020
• Total design refresh
• App enhancements to Safari, Messages, Maps
• Compatible with new M1 apple silicon
Latest Version of Mac OS – Big Sur 11.0.1
Big Sur brings BIG changes to the MacOS, from a new OS interface to new architecture compatible with the all new M1 chip. It offers the ability for Apple to use their new silicon processors based on arm64 architecture, which brings massive improvements in speed and power efficiency.
Note: The headings on this list indicate the Macintosh System bundle names; the bullet points indicate the version of the System File included in that bundle. This is to make it clearer for people searching for specific bundle versions as opposed to System File versions. Finder File versions are not indicated. 1 Classic Mac OS 1.1 Macintosh System Software (0 - 0.3) 1.1.1 System File 1 1.1.2. Easily check which versions of mac OS, iOS, iPadOS, or watchOS are compatible with your Mac model or iDevice. Guide includes OS X 10.8.x to macOS 11.0.x. Explore the world of Mac. Check out MacBook Pro, iMac Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, and more. Visit the Apple site to learn, buy, and get support.
Big Sur comes with a ton of new updates and here is a highlight of what you will get with the latest 11.0.1 version:
Big Sur Safari Updates
- Privacy Updates
- Password monitoring
- Speed optimization
- New design elements
- Customizable start Page
- Expanded extensions support
- New dedicated category for finding new extensions in the App Store
- New tab design and website preview when you hover over a tab.
- Translation (beta) for English, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, French, German, Russian, or Brazilian Portuguese [US-English and Canadian-English only]
- Privacy Report with an overview of trackers blocked by Intelligent Tracking Prevention
- Safari privacy prompts for extensions
Big Sur Control Center Updates
- Puts favorite menus and Mac controls in one place
- Additional controls for Control Center menus
- Support for pinning favorite menus from Control Center to the menu bar
Big Sur Notification Center Updates
- New data-rich native widgets
- Support for third party widgets
- Notifications and widgets come together in one view in the Notification Center
- Interactive notifications display additional information and actions when expanded.
- Edit view allows for adding widgets and customizing them.
Big Sur Messages Updates
- Pinned conversations – up to 9
- Mentions let you direct a message to an individual in a group conversation
- Inline replies let you reply to a specific message earlier in the conversation
- New emojis and stickers
- #images – find trending gifs to message
- Message effects – laser, balloon, confetti, etc.
Big Sur Messages Maps
- Updated cities with 3d map experience
- Guides for curated recommendations
- indoor maps for airports and malls
- Better cycling directions
- Electric vehicle routing
Last Mac Os
Currently, there is a public beta version for Big Sur11.2 and here you can find the latest news about it.
macOS Catalina 10.15.7
macOS Catalina 10.15.7 comes with important security updates and fixes for known bugs on your Mac. Here is what you will get with the latest version:
- Fixes an issue with macOS not automatically connecting to Wi-Fi networks
- Resolves an issue that prevents files from syncing through iCloud Drive
- Addresses a graphic issue on iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2020) that may occur with Radeon Pro 5700 XT
Catalina Mac OS 10.15. is the successor to macOS Mojave. The new features that this update brought to Mac include a battery health feature that is supposed to reduce the rate at which the device's battery ages. This feature can analyze the charging patterns of the battery and the current state of its health and then control the extent to which it would get charged so as to slow-down chemical aging. This feature can be turned on and off from System Preferences >Energy Saver.
Newest Features
Catalina's OS name is inspired by Santa Catalina Island, an island located in California's Channel.
Notable changes made with macOS Catalina are the removal of iTunes, the addition of the Sidecar feature, the expansion of the iPhone and iPad Screen Time featureto Mac computers, and others. Additionally, significant changes have also been made to the macOS security. Below, we will have a quick look at each of these improvements:
Battery Life Improvement
The CPU and TurboBoost function have been both optimized for increased battery life. It works by shutting off CPU cores but allowing for a higher frequency rate on working cores to sustain performance.
iTunes removal
iTunes has been a part of Mac computers ever since 2001 but with Catalina, it has officially been terminated. Now, instead of iTunes, users will have access to three separate apps that together take over the functions of iTunes. Those apps are Music, TV, and Podcasts.
As for managing your devices, with Catalina, this is done via Finder and not via an app.
Sidecar
This feature allows Mac users who also own an iPad to turn their iPads into second screens for their Mac computers. The Mac screen could be extended to the iPad or they could both show the same content (mirror screen). Sidecar also works with Apple pen, enabling users to use their iPads as drawing tablets.
Screen Time
This is an iPhone and iPad feature that, with Catalina, has been carried over to Mac computers. Screen Time allows you to track the usage of all your Apple devices, providing useful information on how your time is being spent across them.
Find My
The Find My app implements the Find My Mac and Find my Friends technology to provide users with the ability to potentially find their lost/stolen device. This technology does this by employing Bluetooth and the help of other devices that are near the lost/stolen one.
Security Improvements
One of the biggest changes made that came with Catalina is related to the security of the macOS.
The first improvement is the Read-Only system volume – a dedicated system volume that allows Catalina to run separately from other data, thereby preventing any potential attempts at tampering with system files done by malware and hackers.
Newest Macbook Air Os
Next, the Gatekeeper feature, which previously only used to check the sources of new apps, now also checks the apps themselves and prevents them from running if it deems them potentially unsafe.
Thirdly, unlike earlier macOS releases, Catalina requires explicit user approval if an app wants to access data stored in the Desktop, Downloads, and Documents folder. Only after the user gives their permission would the app be able to gain access to such data.
Other changes
One other notable change is that 32-bit apps can no longer be run on Mac computers if the latter have been updated to Catalina, making macOS Mojave the last macOS release that supports 32-bit apps.
Older versions
In this section of the article, we will briefly go over the older macOS releases and the most notable changes they've introduced, starting with the leaser recent one:
Yosemite (10.10) – released on the 16th of October, 2014
Yosemite overhauled macOS's user interface and introduced the Continuity and Handoff features which improved and expanded pairing between iOS and macOS devices. Receiving phone calls and text messages was now possible on either device and so was editing same documents across devices.
Later on, a Yosemite update replaced Aperture and iPhoto with Photos.
El Capitan (10.11) – released on the 30th of September, 2015
This macOS release was focused on system performance improvements and changes to already existing features. Public transport information was made available in the Mapsapp, the Notesapp received interface improvements, and the Metal API performance-enhancing app was officially introduced to macOS.
Sierra (10.12) – released on the 20th of September, 2016
Sierra brought Siri to Mac computers and added several Mac-exclusive features for the app. Improvements were also made to the iCloudapp, which could now store user data from the Desktopand Documentsfolders, allowing syncing of those folders with other Macs that share an Apple ID. Additionally, Sierra website support for Apple Pay through the use of a nearby Touch ID or iOS device for authentication.
High Sierra (10.13) – released on the 25th of September, 2017
Most improvements here were 'under-the-hood' – High Sierra brought improvements to VR support, as well as to apps such as Safari, Spotlight, Notes, and Photos. High Sierra was the first to start using Apple File Systemand it also introduced the successor to the Metal API performance-enhancement application – Metal 2.
Mojave (10.14) – released on the 24 of September, 2018
New features introduced by Mojavewere the Dynamic Desktop, Desktop Stack, and Dark Mode. Several iOS-exclusive apps such as Home, Apple News, and Voice Memoswere also carried over to macOS.
How to check the current version on your Mac
In order to find out what your current macOS version is, click on the Apple menu located in the top-left corner of your screen and then select the option labeled About this Mac. The current version of your macOS will be shown at the top of the Overview tab. If you see an older version written there, you may want to update your Mac to the latest version (see below).
How to update to the latest macOS version
To get the latest macOS version, you must open the Mac App Store and search for macOS Big Sur. Once you find the Big Sur update, click on the download (Get) button and wait for the download to complete. Downloading may take a while, so just be patient. Once the update has been downloaded, the installer will be launched automatically. To install the update, simply follow the steps from the installer.
How to downgrade macOS version (using Time Machine)
Note that in order to perform this downgrade with the help of Time Machine, you will need to have first created a Time Machine backup disk from when you still had the earlier macOS version. If you have such a backup, here's how to use it in order to downgrade your OS.
Warning: It is highly advisable that you back up any important data you've created or downloaded since your Mac got updated to the latest OS version. Otherwise, such data would be lost after the downgrade!
Time Needed :30 minutes
How to downgrade macOS version (using Time Machine)
- Time Machine
Enter the Time Machine backup disk into your Mac.
- Restart
Click on the apple icon and press Restart
- Settings
Toggle through the snapshots with the arrows until you find an appropriate date before updating to the latest OS version. Then click RESTORE
- Snapshots
From the options that appear, select the one labeled Restore From Time Machine Backup and then select Continue.
- Continue
5. The next screen will ask you to once again click on the Continue button- do it.
- Restore
Now, select the backup drive as your Restore Source.
- Upload
On the next screen, you will see all available backups – select the latest one that's been made prior to updating your Mac. What to do when you first get your macbook pro.
- Complete
Confirm the restoration and wait for the process to complete.
Materials
- Mac OS X
Learn about the key technologies and capabilities available in the macOS SDK, the toolkit you use to build apps for Mac. For detailed information on API changes in the latest released versions, including each beta release, see the macOS Release Notes.
macOS 11
With the macOS 11 SDK, your app can take advantage of a redesigned user interface, widgets in Notification Center, and new SwiftUI layouts. Machine learning adds style transfer and action classification to models that are ready to be trained, and offers a CloudKit-based deployment solution. Vision API additions help your app analyze image and video more thoroughly. You can include markups in your emails and websites that help Siri Event Suggestions surface your events. And Safari adds web extensions to further customize the browsing experience, while other browsers can now contribute Screen Time web-usage data.
New User Interface
macOS 11 introduces a redesigned user interface that enhances usability and approachability, and provides greater consistency with iPadOS. Most existing macOS apps that use system-provided controls automatically adopt the new appearance. If your app has a custom appearance, visit the macOS Human Interface Guidelines to learn how to update your app so it continues looking great for users.
AppKit introduces a variety of changes to interface elements, including alerts, browsers, buttons, menus, search fields, segmented controls, and toolbars. For details, see AppKit Release Notes.
App Store Privacy Information
Privacy is at the core of the entire macOS experience, and new privacy information in the Mac App Store gives users even more transparency and control over their personal information. Later this year, the Mac App Store will help users understand apps' privacy practices, and you'll need to enter your privacy practice details into App Store Connect for display on your Mac App Store product page.
Widgets
Widgets give users quick access to timely, at-a-glance information from your app in the macOS Notification Center. macOS 11 offers a redesigned widget experience. Your app can present widgets in multiple sizes, allow user customization, include interactive features, and update content at appropriate times. To learn about designing widgets, see the Human Interface Guidelines. To learn how to support widgets in your app, see the WidgetKit framework.
Mac Catalyst
Apps built with Mac Catalyst automatically adopt the new look of macOS 11 and make full use of the native screen resolution of Mac. macOS 11 has new and improved APIs for keyboards, menus, toolbars, color panels, and more, giving you greater control over the look and behavior of your app. To learn how to get full control of every pixel of the interface and Mac-specific controls, such as pull-down menus and checkboxes, see Choosing a User Interface Idiom for Your Mac App. To learn more about building Mac versions of your iPad apps, see the Mac Catalyst documentation.
Machine Learning
Your machine learning apps gain new functionality, flexibility, and security with the updates in macOS 11.Core ML adds model deployment with a dashboard for hosting and deploying models using CloudKit, so you can easily make updates to your models without updating your app or hosting the models yourself. Core ML model encryption adds another layer of security for your models, handling the encryption process and key management for you. The Core ML converter supports direct conversion of PyTorch models to Core ML.
The Create ML app's new Style Transfer template stylizes photos and videos in real time, and the new Action Classification template classifies a single person's actions in a video clip. The Object Detection and Word Tagger templates have new transfer learning options to approve model accuracy when training data is limited. Training control helps you explore models and interact with them during model training. And ML Compute takes advantage of GPUs to accelerate training on the Mac. For more information, see the Core ML,Create ML, and ML Compute developer documentation.
Vision
With macOS 11, the Vision framework has added APIs for trajectory detection in video, hand and body pose estimation for images and video, contour detection to trace the edges of objects and features in image and video, and optical flow to define the pattern of motion between consecutive video frames. To learn more about these features, see the Vision framework documentation. In particular, read Building a Feature-Rich App for Sports Analysis to find out how these features come together in a sample app.
Natural Language
The Natural Language framework has new API to provide sentence embedding that creates a vector representation of any string; word tagging to train models that classify natural language, customized for your specific domain; and confidence scores that rank the framework's predictions. For more information, see the Natural Language framework documentation.
SwiftUI
SwiftUI provides a selection of new built-in views, including a progress indicator and a text editor. It also supports new view layouts, like grids and outlines. Grids and the new lazy version of stacks load items only as needed.
Starting in Xcode 12, you can now use SwiftUI to define the structure and behavior of an entire app. Compose your app from scenes containing the view hierarchies that define an app's user interface. Add menu commands, handle life-cycle events, invoke system actions, and manage storage across all of your apps. By incorporating WidgetKit into your app, you can also create widgets that provide quick access to important content right on the iOS Home screen or the macOS Notification Center. For more information, see App Structure and Behavior.
Safari Web Extensions
Users can customize Safari with new functionality and features by adding your extensions. You can now leverage Safari Web Extensions inside Safari and access migration tools that make it easy to convert popular extensions for other browsers to Safari. Safari extensions also give users privacy control — they can decide which sites an extension can work with and give it access just once, all day, or all the time. The new Extensions category on the Mac App Store showcases Safari extensions, with editorial spotlights and top charts.
Family Sharing for In-App Purchases
Family Sharing is a simple way for users to share subscriptions, purchases, and more with everyone in their household. And with macOS 11, you can choose to offer Family Sharing for your users' in-app purchases and subscriptions so their whole family can enjoy the added benefits. See the SKProduct and SKPaymentTransactionObserver for the new APIs.
Uniform Type Identifiers
Use the new Uniform Type Identifiers framework to describe file formats and in-memory data for transfer, such as the pasteboard; and to identify resources, such as directories, volumes, and packages.
Accessibility
Mac Ios Systems
A new Accessibility framework lets your app dynamically deliver a subset of accessible content to a user based on context. Apple mac updates download.
Newest Macbook Os
File Compression
Use the new Apple Archive framework to perform fast, multithreaded, lossless compression of directories, files, and data in macOS. Macbook screenshot command not working.
Newest Macbook Generation
Screen Time
macOS 11 includes Screen Time APIs for sharing and managing web-usage data and observing changes a parent or guardian makes. For more details, see the Screen Time framework documentation.
