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For the last few days I have checked two or three times a day to see if the Big Sur (MacOS 11) public beta was available for download. About 1:30 CDT the answer was YES! Okay 8 minutes to clone my existing Catalina system, as a if it doesn’t work fallback, the hit the Install button. So far, so good,
  • Downloading 12.3 GB — about 45 minutes remaining
  • 12.3 GB — about 2 hours remaining
  • Downloading 12.3 GB — about 3.4 hours remaining
  • Downloading 12.3 GB — about 4 hours remaining
  • Downloading 12.3 GB — about 5 hours remaining
  • Downloading 12.3 GB — about 6 hours remaining
  • Downloading 12.3 GB — about 5 hours remaining
  • etc.

I guess I wasn’t the only one waiting with bated breath for it to be available!

Site is back up but the download time is estimated at two days!

This just in download site has apparently crashed — at least it has disappeared from the internet
Have you got an estimate of how many people are running the betas?
There are a few thousand running the Developer beta which has been through three or four releases so far. There is nothing available as far as I know about how many are signed up for the public beta.

I would like to know how many developers are running on Intel and how many on Apple SoC?

I am hopeful this will be as good an initial beta as iOS 14 has been
After two-plus hours of download and installation, Big Sur is up and running. Very initial impressions...
  1. APPEARANCE
    1. Desktop
    2. Safari 14
    3. System Preferences icons
    4. Comment: surprisingly different and will take getting used to, but I think I am going to like the graphic changes. It "feels" a lot cleaner and lighter
  2. BROKEN ON BOOT UP
    1. Medianalysisd - no idea what this belongs to, it will take some research
    2. Containermanager - ditto
    3. Rogue Amoeba Sound Source - This relies on a kernel extension and may explain A and B preceding? (Rogue Amoeba says an update to Audio Capture is in the works.) No Rogue Amoeba apps are Big Sur certified.
    4. Carbon Copy Cloner - when you select the Big Sur boot volume as the source, CCC reports it is a DATA ONLY clone and will not be bootable! This is independent of the type of clone selected. Hopefully Mike will be able to sort this out -- soon. I will try when booted from another drive later.
    5. SoftRaid - dead on arrival
  3. Apple is going Brit - Trash is now the Bin 😀
More to come as I discover.
Nice desktop (Gilligan's Island next?); gratuitous changes to System Prefs icons; I'm at a loss as to what's different about Safari.

(I love Imgur's users' politics.)

More: Apple's changing "Trash" to "Bin" is almost a tip of the hat to Microsoft's "Recycling Bin," but since, in reality, you trash the item but recycle the space, I think the original "Trash" is the more appropriate term.
Originally Posted By: artie505
Prefs icons; I'm at a loss as to what's different about Safari.

On the screen it LOOKS very different, functionally there are changes as well but nothing you can't see in Safari Technology Preview

Originally Posted By: artie505
More: Apple's changing "Trash" to "Bin" is almost a tip of the hat to Microsoft's "Recycling Bin," but since, in reality, you trash the item but recycle the space, I think the original "Trash" is the more appropriate term.

No matter what it is called it works the same way and space is not recycled until you empty the Bin/Trash

NEW DISCOVERY: there is an additional volume on my boot drive named "Update." ????
😱 YIPE 😱

Big Sur has carried some of the structural reorganizations in Catalina to yet another level of hiding and protection. If you look at the Big Sur boot disk in Disk Utility this is all you see. Notice that ONLY the data volume is mounted and although I have tried, the system volume cannot be mounted. Thanks to Marcel Bresink's TinkerTool System I found the boot disk structure is this. The inability to mount the System volume would account for Carbon Copy Cloner's inability to create a bootable Big Sur clone. (Mike Bombich is going to have fun(❓) working around that "gotcha'.")

I wanted to clone Big Sur so I booted from a Catalina backup and launched CCC only to discover
  1. I could only "see" the Big Sur data volume, even when booted from Catalina. (I'm still working on that)
  2. when I tried to boot back to Big Sur I couldn't see the Big Sur disk as a bootable volume in System Preferences > Startup Disk‼️😫
  3. After some thought 🤔 I had a bright idea 💡and tried an option boot. Still no Big Sur volume but something called "EFI Boot" - which turned out to be Big Sur
I still haven't conjured a way of cloning Big Sur, but at least I am back up and running.

For the sake of clarity I renamed the Big Sur drive "Big Sur" and now the full volume structure of the drive looks like this. Not the name change attached to the Volume Group and the unmountable System volume, but not the Data volume. Damfino what all is going on - yet.

NOTE: Of all changes the only one I am having a problem adapting to is moving files to "the Bin".
Originally Posted By: joemikeb
Of all changes the only one I am having a problem adapting to is moving files to "the Bin".

"Having," or "NOT having?"
Originally Posted By: artie505
"Having," or "NOT having?"

Having
Originally Posted By: joemikeb
Originally Posted By: artie505
"Having," or "NOT having?"

Having

OK, I"ll bite. What's the problem? Has the methodology changed with the name? Or did you just forget the tongue ?
After so many years of glancing at system menus, not to mention a multitude of application menus, for the word "trash" My mind an eye don't even register on the word "bin" and I have to look multiple times to pick it up. Old habits take seven times longer to unlearn than they took to learn in the first place. 😜
That never would have occurred to me.

I've got "Move To Trash" and "Empty Trash" hot keyed and haven't looked at a menu for the functionality in 15 years.
WHAT ABOUT THE KERNEL EXTENSIONS THAT MAY NOT WORK?

There have been periodic warnings from Catalina about kernel extensions that may not work in a future release of MacOS. I have six of them, ranging from a Dymo label printer driver to a SoftRAID driver. According to Etrecheck Pro 6.3.1 not one of the six is loading. But, the Dymo label printer is working normally, as is the SoftRAID array. On the other hand, the SoftRAID app returns this when launched. I have attempted reinstalling one or the kernel extensions which appears to go normally, but it doesn't work and still shows up as not loading. Whether this is a function out-of-date API calls or Apple has changed the rules on how and where extensions can be installed, your guess is as good as mine. I am inclined to think both are in play.
Originally Posted By: artie505
I've got "Move To Trash" and "Empty Trash" hot keyed and haven't looked at a menu for the functionality in 15 years.

I can never remember the assigned hot keys so it is quicker for me to use the menu. 😄
Originally Posted By: joemikeb
WHAT ABOUT THE KERNEL EXTENSIONS THAT MAY NOT WORK?

Mu only 3rd party extension is placed by NoSleep, which keeps my MBP awake while the lid is closed, and I would REALLY!!! hate to lose its functionality.

But, unhappily, Apple never asked me. tongue
Originally Posted By: artie505
Originally Posted By: joemikeb
WHAT ABOUT THE KERNEL EXTENSIONS THAT MAY NOT WORK?

Mu only 3rd party extension is placed by NoSleep, which keeps my MBP awake while the lid is closed, and I would REALLY!!! hate to lose its functionality.

Is NoSleep a kernel extension (.kext)?
Originally Posted By: joemikeb
Originally Posted By: artie505
Originally Posted By: joemikeb
WHAT ABOUT THE KERNEL EXTENSIONS THAT MAY NOT WORK?

Mu only 3rd party extension is placed by NoSleep, which keeps my MBP awake while the lid is closed, and I would REALLY!!! hate to lose its functionality.

Is NoSleep a kernel extension (.kext)?

Yep! frown
Originally Posted By: artie505
Mu only 3rd party extension is placed by NoSleep, which keeps my MBP awake while the lid is closed, and I would REALLY!!! hate to lose its functionality.

I don't know why you need to keep you MBP awake when the lid is closed, but since many MBP models will run with the lid closed, if there is an external monitor attached, I wonder if OWC's Headless 4K video emulator could be used in place of the NoSleep kernel extension?
I play music/white noise virtually 100% of the time, and I guess it's really just an idiosyncrasy rather than a necessity, but I like having my MBP's lid shut if I"m sleeping or out of the house. (On the practical side, it minimizes the amount of dust my Mac collects in my very dusty house.)

I'll miss it, but it's certainly nothing I can't live without or work around.

Thanks for suggesting the HDMI Headless 4K Display Emulator/$13.99, but this kinda blows it out of the water. (Thanks, Apple. tongue )
Would this bring the cost closer to your comfort range?
Originally Posted By: joemikeb
Would this bring the cost closer to your comfort range?

Nice going. As a person who has bought a couple of Anker products, I can certainly attest to the quality of both their products and their customer service.
Time Machine now runs on APFS volumes

I have been waiting for this because it would appear Time Machine could take full advantage of APFS Snapshots for their hourly backups, etc. My first backup set is in process at the moment but by tomorrow, I should have a better picture of who TM works when it is on APFS volumes and is it any different that on HFS+.

I don't expect the results to be different, but the "how" could be very different.
Originally Posted By: ryck
Nice going. As a person who has bought a couple of Anker products, I can certainly attest to the quality of both their products and their customer service.

I wish it had been available when I bought an adapter for my iPhone/iPad so I could use the TV set in my camper for a display? I ended up buying the Apple adapter because it was the only one that would handle all streaming media sources. This one from Anker would be much more convenient and more than $35 cheaper. frown
Time Machine now runs on APFS volumes - Continued

Time Machine Backup Observations
  • NOTE:Only the data volume is backed up in Time Machine. The option to exclude system files and applications has been removed and is now the only TM backup type.
  • Target Drive: 5 TB 4,200 RPM Toshiba in OWC USB 3.1 Gen 1 enclosure formatted APFS
  • Backup Data Set Size: 285.11 GB
  • Initial Backup Time: 31 minutes ±
  • I don't have hard data to compare the time to, but the last time I did a full TM backup in Catalina to another, faster drive, took over two hours and the option to exclude System files and applications was selected. The mechanism used to accomplish the speedup is unknown, but if memory serves and I am right, there has been a significant speed improvement in Time Machine; at least when using APFS formatted drives. 😎
  • On The Other Hand: It appears apple is making it exceedingly difficult to create a bootable system image backup. 🤓
Originally Posted By: joemikeb
Would this bring the cost closer to your comfort range?

Thanks, but naah. Even with the Anker rather than the Belkin it's still $30 for the privilege of having my MBP look like it's got a giant hemorrhoid.

For the moment, I'll wait on Apple, the developer, and my own ingenuity.

I actually bought my first Anker product just last week (on your and David's recommendations of the brand in another thread), but the brand hasn't taken hold in my head yet, and it never occurred to me to look.
Originally Posted By: joemikeb
On The Other Hand: It appears apple is making it exceedingly difficult to create a bootable system image backup. 🤓

Whatever happened to "user friendly" and "it just works?"

Even before this I've run into problems with DaisyDisk, GrandPerspective, and Find Any File being unable to fully access APFS volumes.
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