Apple’s latest and greatest desktop OS has launched publicly today. macOS Big Sur (aka macOS 11.0) is now available for compatible Macs via the App Store.
The new OS will serve as the brains for both Apple’s recent Intel powered Macs and their new Apple Silicon M1 Macs announced earlier in the week. Most Macs that are able to run Catalina are safe with the ones loser out largely coming from 2012.
The full list of Macs that can run Big Sur are:
- MacBook (2015 and later)
- MacBook Air (2013 and later)
- MacBook Pro (late 2013 and later)
- Mac mini (2014 and later)
- iMac (2014 and later)
- iMac Pro (2017 and later — i.e., all models)
- Mac Pro (2013 and later)
In addition to support for their own CPU, Big Sur is one of the largest cosmetic updates we’ve seen to macOS in a while. Safari, Messages, Maps and more have all had design refreshes with features like pinned messages in iOS 14 making their way over to the desktop too.
Under the hood privacy seems to be a huge area of focus for Apple. Safari has undergone its largest overhaul ever and now includes a new Privacy Report feature, which displays an overview of trackers it prevents from profiling your activity.