MacOS Big Sur review: A 2020 rebirth to match new hardware

MacOS eleven Big Sur, has arrived. He's got a few very geeky features for long time Mac users. But it also teams up with Apples M1 Chip aka Apple Silicon. To turn the page on a new chapter for the Mac. So let's break it down. [MUSIC] If you're a traditional Mac user, you gonna like the sound of that, it's the classic Mac startup sound. Made even more famous in the movie Wally. And now it's back in Big Sur. [MUSIC] It's a nice touch, because there are changes in Big Sur they're gonna make some Mac Veterans a little uncomfortable. That's because Big Sur imports a bunch of stuff from iOS. From design elements, to popular features. In most cases that's a good thing, because it brings consistency across iPhone, iPad and Mac, and that makes a user friendly experience for most people. Will talk about the most interesting new stuff in Big Sur in a minute, but first I wanted to talk about the most annoying thing in Big Sur to get it out of the way. There's one that picky thing I noticed right away, and plenty of you will notice when you first try Big Sur, and that's the new icons. Remember going all the way back to 1984, icons have been one of the things that made the Mac, the Mac. And Big Sur does some weird stuff with the icons. It brings them much more in line with iOS, which I don't have a problem with. For example, the icons for messages in mail, which used to look completely different between Mac on the one hand and iPhone and iPad on the other. Now use the same colors and shapes in their icons, great. The problem, is that Big Sur, Apple went backward with these icons by adding 3D shadows, especially apparent in the new icons for messages and FaceTime on Mac. While the iOS versions use a clean simple flat design, the Mac versions look like a throwback to the pre 2013 iPhone days when Apple used heavy handed 3D icons that leaned into skeuomorphism. Lately, Apple along with Google and Microsoft, has adopted more modern flat design, and that's generally easier on the eyes. So these new 3D icons in Big Sur, stand out like a sore thumb because of these data design elements. Especially when the rest of the new UI in Big Sur is so clean and crisp as we'll talk about more in a second. The effect is like having the beautiful minimalist interior, of the new Tesla Model Y, and then throwing in floor mats that use green shed carpet. It's an eyesore, and every time you look at these icons it takes away from what's otherwise a pleasant UI experience. Apple Software Chief Craig Federighi, has called Big Sur the biggest leap forward and design since Mac OS 10 was launched almost twenty years ago. That's one of the main reasons why Apple finally decided to call this Mac OS 11. And overall there's a lot to like about the new look and feel. The doc, is now more translucent and floats like the doc on the iPhone and iPad. The finder is redesigned, and is also more translucent with new simpler and flatter icons. The menu bar is more translucent too, and it's easier than ever to make it auto hide using the new doc in menu bar section in settings. In fact, if you auto hide the doc and the menu bar, you can have a super clean desktop. My only problem when I do this, is that I keep looking for the clock in the upper right hand corner even when I'm wearing a watch. Big Sur also brings over two features from iOS that will make a lot of users happy. One is the Control Center. This is a favorite in iOS where you can swipe down from the upper right corner, and it gives easy access to airplane mode, volume, brightness, wi-fi, the flashlight, and a bunch of other buttons that you can customize. The version of Big Sur, is also in the upper right hand corner with an icon that sits next to date and time, and you can click it to open the Control Center. The Mac version of Control Center doesn't have nearly as many options as the iOS version yet. But it's a start, one nice feature is the ability to drag settings from the Control Center up to the menu bar. Although removing them isn't as easy, you have to act like you're dragging it to the menu bar, but then drag it back and drop it in the Control Center. Another big feature, imported from iOS is widgets, which you have access to by clicking on the date and time in the upper right corner of the screen. Widgets have already made a splash in iOS 14 by being able to be placed on the iPhone home screen for the first time. Something Android phones have been doing for over a decade of course. Sadly, you can't place the Big Sur versions of widgets on the desktop on Mac. Which is a huge bummer, cuz you've got a ton of real estate where you can do interesting things with them. But I'll bet will see that in a future release. Another drawback to widgets is that they are mostly just visual bits of information. If you click them, they simply open the app they're associated with. Ideally they will eventually be much more functional. For example, I'd love to see an Apple Music or Spotify widget, where you could play, pause, skip forward and back. Even flip between playlists or pin two or three of your favorite stations. Again, I'd expect this kind of widget expansion is on Apple's roadmap. There aren't even many of the static widgets to try at the start. Both Apple and third party app makers will need to make a lot more widgets for this to be really interesting, but you can see the potential. So that's the look and feel of the features being imported from iOS. And the stuff that's likely to make future Macs even more powerful and friendly to use. But let's talk about the one new thing you're likely to use the most right now. Fortunately, in Big Sur, it's also the one that brings the biggest and best improvements for everyday use. Of course, we're talking about Safari, since so much of what all of us do today happens through the Web. I've been a long time Chrome user, until the last few years when Chrome really started getting slow and hogging a lot of power and memory. I also had natural privacy concerns, since Google's whole business is built around farming our data. There are a number of web browsers like Firefox and Brave that are much more privacy friendly for consumers. But I'd like the speed of Safari in recent macOS releases. However, it is lag behind in features like tab management and user interface. Well, the Apple Web browser makes a huge leap forward in Big Sur. If anything, the speeds of loading pages is even faster. But the real improvements are in usability and privacy. Apple has included a brand new start page that is highly customizable. You can select or add a background image. You can choose the elements you want on your start page. Including bookmarks, saved articles to read later, and open tabs from Safari on your iPhone or iPad. The way Safari handles tabs in Big Sur is the biggest improvement of all. And the one thing that's likely to make me use this browser a lot more. It now shows the favicon logo for the website by default, which makes it easier to identify your open tabs. If you have a lot of tabs open, like me, it no longer squishes the tabs to the right and the left side, making you mouse over them to expand them. That used to drive me insane. Big Sur also adds a great new tab preview feature, where you can mouse over a tab and see a thumbnail to help you find the tab you're looking for. Safari now has a built-in privacy report as well. So you can click the Privacy Report button on any web page and see the number of trackers that Safari blocked from trying to digitally fingerprint and track you. You can also see which sites they were trying to send your data. Safari is the cream of the crop for Big Sur, but there are other useful upgrades and new features. Including the Messages app, which, despite its ugly icon, is now functionally almost identical to iMessage on iPhone. Same for the Maps app, which now includes electric vehicle routing and cycling directions. That makes it better than ever for planning your route on your Mac and then sending the directions to your phone. And with the new Macs announced in November, running Apple's own M1 processor, Big Sur will also be able to run iPhone and iPad apps on those Mac systems. The bottom line is that Apple is devoted a ton of attention to the Mac in 2020. The new Macs running Apple Silicon are gonna allow even tighter integration between hardware and software to make Macs run everything faster and have more efficient battery life. But it's also gonna allow even better integration between the Mac and other Apple devices. That's where features like Universal Clipboard come in, where you can copy text or a web address from your iPhone and immediately paste it directly on your Mac. The combo of Apple Silicon based Macs plus macOS Big Sur will also allow Apple to take some of the advancements it's made on the iPhone and bring them more directly to the Mac. For example, the new MacBook Air running Apple's M1 chip in Big Sur brings the image signal processor ISP from the iPhone to the Mac's webcam to improve sharpness, white balance, noise reduction and facial recognition. The end game here is making video calls better. And this software-hardware integration is what allows Apple to bring what it's developed on the iPhone To the Mac Big Sur is a free upgrade so there's no buying decision to make here only a download decision. When upgrading to a new operating system. The biggest questions are always will all of my stuff work or will it break anything important that's why it's always wise to hold off a couple months before upgrading your primary machine you use to get work done? That said, after using Big Sur on a Mac book Air all summer, I didn't encounter any major bugs or crashes. So I don't think it will be long before big series reliable and any known compatibilities or made public. At that point, it should be a pretty easy upgrade decision for most people with a compatible Mac to learn if your map can run Big Sur, check out scene, its rundown of which machines made the list. Remember that nothing can make your own computer feel new again, like upgrading the operating system and Big Sur is one of those kinds of upgrades. Thanks for tuning in you all be well. See you next time.