MacOS Big Sur 11.0.1 Release Candidate Released
Apple has released macOS Big Sur 11.0.1 Release Candidate to users involved in the MacOS beta testing programs.
A release candidate potentially indicates that macOS Big Sur will be finalized and made available to the general public in the near future.
MacOS Big Sur 11 features a new visual look with revamped user interface elements including new icons, a brighter interface appearance with more white space, a redesigned Dock appearance, and other smaller visual overhauls.
MacOS Big Sur also includes Control Center for the Mac, a revamped Notification Center, new Safari features like the ability to instantly translate languages on web pages, new Messages features like the ability to pin messages and do in-line replies, along with a variety of other changes, features, and adjustments to the Mac operating system.
How to Download MacOS Big Sur 11.0.1 Release Candidate
Always be sure you backup all Mac data with Time Machine or your backup method of choice before installing any system software update, especially beta versions.
- Go to the Apple menu, then choose “System Preferences”
- Select “Software Update”
- Choose to update ‘macOS Big Sur 11.0.1 Release Candidate’
As always, installing system software updates requires the Mac to reboot.
A release candidate version suggests that the final public release of macOS Big Sur may be available to the public sooner than later.
Despite still being in beta, technically any user can install the macOS Big Sur public beta onto any macOS Big Sur compatible Mac if they feel like doing so. Beta system software is typically less stable than final versions, and thus is not necessarily recommended for most casual users.
There is some speculation that macOS Big Sur may be finalized and released to the general public on or near a November 10 planned Apple event, which Bloomberg recently reported will unveil a few ARM based Macs, which will certainly ship with Big Sur.
The latest final stable build of macOS is currently Catalina 10.15.7 Supplemental Update for users running Catalina, and Security Update 2020-005 for MacOS Mojave users.
And for the immediate future, it will not be possible to make a cloned backup with, say, Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! The Developers of both these widely used products have each issued full details what they can and cannot do until Apple sorts out asr and other problems. Time Machine will BU using APFS for the first time, but this will not be backwards compatible, meaning that you can’t restore back to a previous OS if you didn’t like macOS Big Sur 11. Wait till there are at least two updates before upgrading.
Restoring from an APFS formatted time machine backup is hit and miss. I can’t recommend using time machine at all with big sur in either format. Best to have an actual copy of any data or files that are important to you. (learned it the hard way)
Makes sense that Big Sur is about to be released to public given the impending release of new Mac’s with Apple silicon.
Its still so buggy – this is going to be another of those, “Ready or not, here it comes” releases