macOS Big Sur Released - 20+ Best New Features!

**Mac iOS 11 Big Sur: A Game-Changer**

The latest version of Mac iOS 11, codenamed Big Sur, has finally arrived, and it's a game-changer. I've had the chance to spend some quality time with this new operating system, and I'm excited to share my thoughts on its features and user experience.

**Enhanced Messages App**

One of the most significant improvements in Mac iOS 11 is the revamped Messages app. Gone are the days of cluttered conversations; instead, you now have a clean and intuitive interface that makes it easy to communicate with friends and family. With just one click, you can reply to messages directly from within the conversation window. This new feature has made me feel like I'm finally using messages on my Mac, which was never really an option for me before.

**Maps Application: A New Level of Precision**

Another exciting feature in Mac iOS 11 is the improved maps application. With Big Sur, you can zoom in on specific locations and click on the 3D button to get a bird's-eye view of your surroundings. This added layer of depth makes it easier to navigate unfamiliar areas and gives you a better sense of scale. You also have access to a route planner, which is perfect for biking enthusiasts like myself. Additionally, if you click on a location like Fisherman's Wharf, you'll see various guides pop up with recommendations for things to do in the area.

**New Design Language**

One of the most significant design changes in Mac iOS 11 is the new uniformity across all default applications. The sidebar on Finder looks exactly the same as the one on iPadOS at West 14. This consistency makes everything feel more cohesive and professional. I also love the new design of Big Sur, which includes a translucent top bar and a modernized menu bar with Siri integration. The colors are also well-chosen, adding to the overall aesthetic.

**Faster Time Machine Backups**

Another exciting feature in Mac iOS 11 is that time machine backups now use HPFS instead of HFS by default. This switch will result in faster and more reliable backups, which is a welcome change for users who rely on time machine to back up their data. With this improvement, you can expect your backups to be much quicker than before.

**Running iOS Apps on Mac**

Finally, the new Apple Silicon M1 chip inside of the latest MacBook Airs and Mac minis can run both iOS and iPadOS applications, thanks to Big Sur. This is a game-changer for users who want to enjoy their favorite iOS apps on their Mac. I'll be putting this feature to the test soon when I get my hands on those new MacBooks and Mac minis, but it's definitely an exciting prospect.

**Conclusion**

Mac iOS 11 Big Sur is a significant update that brings many improvements to the table. From the revamped Messages app to the enhanced maps application, the new design language, and faster time machine backups, there are many reasons to get excited about this latest version of Mac OS. Whether you're a seasoned user or just starting out, Big Sur has something for everyone. So, if you enjoyed this video, be sure to give it a thumbs up and subscribe for more content coming soon on the new Apple Silicon Macs and other exciting topics.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enWhat's up guys.My name is Brandon and today Applefinally released maca West 11,big Sur after almost five monthsof beta testing. So in this video,I wanted to share my top favorite featuresin this all new redesigned version ofmaca Wes. And if you take a look at thesize of this update, you could see here,it came in around 12gigabytes on my 2017 5k iMac,which came from maca West Catalina.So the size will vary depending on yourMac and the version you are coming from.Also a quick note, if youwere on the beta program,our C2 is differentfrom the final release.So if you were on the RC to therelease candidate to a big Sur,you will have to update again to getto the final version here of big Sur.So anyways,let's go ahead and get into my personalfavorite features here in macro S 11,big Sur. And the first one is goingto be air pods, auto switching.So this finally works with the Mac.Now this was a feature in iOS andiPad at 14 that I really loved,and now it works flawlesslyon the Mac. Thanks to big Sur.So what this does is basically it justswitches between all of your differentApple devices,depending on which one is actuallyplaying media or music at the time.So if I stick my AirPods in my ears,you will also see that we get alittle icon up here in the status bar.You can see we have a newAirPods pro icon up there,and the AirPods will actually switchedto, you know, my iPhone, my iPad, my Mac,or my Mac book,depending on which one is playingthe music or the video at the time.So it's really nice to havethe auto switching feature.Now come to macro S big Sur. Now,speaking of sounds and music,you can also see a new icon here in thestatus bar. That's a little play icon.And if you tap on that,you can see this is where it showsthe media that is currently playing.So it shows that I'm playing thissong right now in Apple music,but it can also show like if I'mplaying audio from a certain tabs,like if I go ahead and open up Safariand go to YouTube and you can see I'mplaying this video right here.And then if we go up to the menu barand tap on that little plus right there,you could see that we have two differentsources right here, so we can choose,you know,which source we want to play on ourMac or in our air pods or press play onthis. It'll start playing the music.Or if I press play on the video,it will start playing the video.So really cool new toggle,new little feature thereup in the menu bar,another great new featurein maca West big Sur,it's going to be batteryoptimization for the Mac book.So if we go into our system preferencesand then go to battery right here,and then go to battery overon the side right here,you will see that we haveoptimized battery charging.And it says to reduce battery aging,your Mac learns from yourdaily charging routine.So it can wait to finish charging past80% until you need to use it on battery.So that's a great new feature that willprolong the battery life of the Macbooks. And actually, if we tap on thebattery icon up here in the menu bar,it will actually show, you know, thatit's waiting to fully charge as well.Once it gets to 80%. So right now I'mon 50%, but it will show after 80%,you know, when it's goingto fully charge to 100%.So this is great to havefor all Mac books. Now,going back to system preferences,if we go into our desktopand screensaver right here,you'll see that we have a lot of newwallpapers in big server. So you can see,we have these dynamic ones which dochange throughout the day. So you can see,this is just a big Sur right there,and you can have this set to dynamic.So it will change onceagain, throughout the day,depending on how lightor dark it is outside.We also have the wallpapers fromlike iOS and iPad, Wes 14.2.So we have like these kind of animatedlooking wallpapers here as well.We have the dark mode version as well.Then we just have a lotof different wallpapers.This is probably my favorite right here.It's called the big surf shore rocks.This is probably my favoritewallpaper looks really good,but we just have a lot ofdifferent wallpapers from big Sur,which look excellent on these displays.So really loved the wallpapers this year.So you can expect to find a lotof new wallpapers here in big Sur.Now we also have a lot of new soundeffects here in maca, West big service.Like if we take a screenshot,we'll get a new sound here inthis latest Mac iOS version.If we do things like empty thetrash or move things to the trash,we'll have new sounds for that. Just alot of new sounds throughout the OOS.We also get these startup time back.So if you go into your settings here,and then if we go to sound, you will seeright here underneath the volume bar.It says, play sound onstart-ups. So there you go.You do also have the toggle foreplayuser interface sound effects,which I would recommend because that'spretty much what I just talked about.The new sound effects here in big Sur.So some nice new sounds addedin this latest updates. Now,if we go all the way up tothe top into the menu bar,you will see these twolittle icons right here,and that's going to befor the control center.So for the first time in maca West,we have a control center just likewe do with the iPhone and the iPad.And it looks very similar. A lot ofthese elements look very similar as well,and you can see, you can change, you know,a lot of things from here, your wifi,Bluetooth, your airdrop, you haveyour keyboard, brightness screaming,mirroring do not disturb.You have all these differentthings you could change from here.You also have a littleairplay icon right here,so you can airplay the sound reallyeasily from the control center.And the best part about this is that youcan actually drag this control centericons to the menu bar itself.So like if you wanted to have quick andeasy access to the keyboard brightnesswithout having to go into the controlcenter and then clicking on keyboardbrightness, we can actually drag this upto the menu bar right here and let go.And you can see now we have that quicklittle toggle there to change thekeyboard brightness, which isvery, very useful for the Mac book.And of course we can do that withanything. So like the wifi, the Bluetooth,we can drag all of these up there,screen mirroring. We can do that as well.All of these can be up there in themenu bar for quick and easy access.So I really, really lovethe new control center.And it really makes youfeel like, you know,you're just kind of using the iPhone orthe iPad, but just on a bigger screen,of course, on a computer,but everything just seems a lot morefamiliar now with maca West big Sur.And I think the control centerhas a lot to do with that.And another element thathas Mecca West big serve,feeling a lot like iOS and iPad, Wesis going to be the notification center.So if we go ahead and tap right here,if we go in and click on thedate over here on the right,you will see that we have thenotification center right here.Then we also have thewidgets down below that.So this also looks very similar tolike iPad of West. So you can see,first of all, we have thenotification center here.I have two messages and youcan see they are grouped.So we now get group notificationshere in America, West big Sur.And actually if you, you know,right clicker double clickright here on the notification,you can get different options hereas well. So you can deliver quietly.You can turn off. Then you alsohave a notification preferences,which will take you into your preferencesright here. And you could change,you know, whatever you want to writethere, but the notification center,it looks a lot better,a lot more clean and the notificationbubbles themselves also look a lot betterhere in big Sur. Then again, wedo have the widgets down here,which you can move around asyou please, again, very similar,a lot more similar to iPad Wes versus iOS,but you can also tap on the editwidgets down here at the bottom.And this we'll go ahead and show you allof the different widgets you can add.And you can just drag these over if youwant to and place them where you want,which is nice.And I do also hope that we seesome third-party widgets very soon.I'm assuming we will, but that'llbe nice to have over here as well.And of course you do have the differentsizes as well. So you can see small,medium, you have a large versionfor the notes right there,and you have these differentsizes. Again, very similar,just a slightly different layoutcompared to iOS and iPad iOS.Now my next favorite feature in big Sur,it's going to be the abilityto play 4k videos in Safari.So before you would notbe able to play 4k videos,you could only play up to10 80 P for some reason,but now you can play full 4k videos andeven eight K videos when it's supportedin Safari. So before I would just haveto use Google Chrome to watch 4k videos,that was one of the main reasons I didn'teven use Safari is because I could notwatch YouTube videos in 4k, butnow you can. So that is good news.If you watch YouTube videos, whichI'm assuming most of you do now,we also get some major improvementsto the spotlight search.So if we command space and pullup these spotlights or cheer,you will notice that we get muchbetter results for everything.So no matter what we search,whether it's like an application orsomething where we have files on here,or if it's somethinglike, I don't know, bread,just type something randomly like that,you will notice that you geta lot more from this search.So you can see a lot more in here.And it also carries over to thefinder as well. So if we search, like,I'll just say a final cut, but to searchfor final cut like that, you can see,we just get a lot morein the search results.There's not a ton there just becauseI don't edit too much on this,but even if we don't press enter, if wejust type in final cuts, you can see,we get a lot more resultsreturned than we did in Catalina.So really nice there,the improvements to the universalsearch or the spotlight search.And then also in funder. Now we alsoget a lot of new features in Safari,in maca, West big Sur. So rightaway, right when I opened up Safari,you could probably tella pretty big difference.So we have our favorites righthere. We have our privacy report,which once again is just like iOS andiPad iOS, which shows us, you know,how many things Safari hasblocked coming to trackers.Safari has blocked from websites.I'll talk about that in a moment,we have our reading list and then wehave the handoff section right here.And if you go and click on theselittle arrows, you can see,you could choose a handoff fromdifferent devices. So you could see,this is what I have on myiPhone 12 pro right now,then this is what I have going on my iMacin terms of webpages that I have open.So that's really nice to have thereand be able to go in between those now,also, like I said, the privacy report,if you go ahead and click on this,it will show you, you know,where Safari has blocked trackers fromlike the different websites and thespecific tracker. So this is alot of things like, uh, you know,like Google ads and just, you know,advertisements and things like that.It will show how manyhave blocked right here.And it gives you some nice stats forthe last 30 days and things like that.Very similar to what we'veseen on iOS and iPad iOS.I don't need to go too deep into that,but also here in Safari on the bottom,right? You'll see this little controltoggle here on the bottom, right?And you can go ahead and take somethings off of this starting page,if you want to just like,if you don't want your favorites to bethere to simply unclick it, like, so,and of course it could change all theseas well to your liking. Then down here,you also have the ability toadd a custom background image.So you can see when I deleteit, when I uncheck it,it deletes the backgroundimage. If I re select it,you can see it goes right there. Sowe have some preset ones in here,or you can add your own background imageto Safari and you can see you get somepretty cool ones. They'rekind of mix Sofar.I just look a little bit more livelyif it's up on the plus right here,this is where we can addour own if we want to.So I went ahead and opened up a few tabsand you could see that we hover overone of these tabs. It willnow show us a preview.So we now get a preview of every taband it pulls up pretty much instantly,which is really nice. So thatis a cool new feature. Also,if we go to a site witha different language,we have translation built in nowjust like iOS and iPad, iOS, Mac iOS,big Sur, and the new Safari willnow translate things in real time.If you were on a website in a differentlanguage, so you can see here.If I go to the Spanish version of ESPN,we now get a new little iconhere in the address bar,it looks like a translation. And so ifyou go in and click on that, you can see,it says translate to Englishor preferred languages.You could change that right there. Soif I go ahead and translate to English,it'll take a second to reload.Then it will show everythingas you could see in English.And if you want to go back again,click on it and view original.So that's really nice nowto have built in to Safari.And then also Safari is just overallmuch faster here in a big Sur than it waspreviously.And the fact that we have all these newfeatures makes me actually want to useSafari now, especially the 4k in YouTube.It actually makes me want to use Safarinow over something like Google Chrome,not to mention, we do also get someSafari extensions in the app store.So if we go ahead and open up the appsource and they go ahead and do that realquick inside of the app. So we havea new section for these right here.So if we go to our categoriesover here on the left,you can see we have Safari extensionsright here. If you click on that,it will show you these differentextensions you can add to Safari,which is pretty nice. Now,two of the applications that I reallynever used on maca West before that I usenow in big Sur are both the messagesapp and also the maps application.Both of those I actually use now becausemaca West big Sur brought so many greatnew updates to those applications.So let's start off withthe messages right here.So you'll be able to tell right awaythat this looks a lot more similar to theiOS and iPad West version ofmessages than it did previously.So also when we go totype something right here,you can see we have the aright here. So the app icon,right there you go and tap on that.You can see, we can add photos.We have emojis stickers. You canadd gifts here from the computer,which you never could do that before.You also have message effects.You can never do that before. So youcan send all these different things.Then you also have the emoji buttonright here on the right to easily sendemojis as well.So just a lot of great new features herewith messages that actually makes itworth using now on the Mac. And thenalso if you go into a group chat,you could change things in thegroup chat as well. So like,if you wanted to change the picture,if you want to change the name of thegroup, you can now do all of that here.Thanks to maca West big Sur, again,just like you could with iOS and iPad,iOS 14, and you also get features likereplying to individual people and addingreactions and things like that. Soif you right click, you can see,you have reply rightthere. You have tap back.Then you have all these differentoptions here inside of messages.So once again, it's finally worthusing messages now on a Mac.Whereas it really never was for me before.And it's the same dealwith the maps application.I now finally feel like there's areason to use it on Mac iOS big, sir.So number one,it could zoom in on something andclick on the 3d button right here.You can kind of get a 3dlook, which is pretty cool.You also have things like the routeplanner. You could do that for biking.You have, you know, Evie tripping.So if you have like aTesla or an electric car,you can plan out your route here insideof the maps application on big Sur now,and you have guides as well. So ifwe click on something like this,fisherman's Wharf right here, you willsee different guides pop up right here,basically just things to do aroundSan Francisco and fisherman's Wharf,different things like that.So you can also create your own guideby clicking on the plus right here andcreate new guide. And you can also addnew place to, uh, right there as well.So some nice new features here in a bigSur. And then if you zoom in enough,you will unlock the new look roundfeature, which is right here.If you click on that and you will see,we get a little window up in the top left,and this actually shows youwhat it looks like in real life.So you can see here really, really cool.It uses Google maps or actually usesApple maps. And it shows, you know,it'll show you like where things are andyou can go up a little bit if you wantto. So if you click on it, itworks just like Google maps does.And this is really cool to see,you know, what it looks like,what it actually looks like thereinstead of just looking at it on the map.So really cool new features here onat MCCA West big Sur with the mapsapplication.Another one of my favorite features inbig Sur is just the fact that everythingis so uniformed. So just like infinder, we have this sidebar right here.It looks the same throughoutall of the default applications,just like a does an iPad at West 14. SoI think that looks really good. Also.I love the new design of big server.So you've probably noticedit all throughout this video,but we have all new iconsdown here in the doc.The doc itself is slightly differentas well. It's kind of floating now.So you can see the bottom ofthe doc instead of it justkind of being stuck downto the bottom. So that looks really well.And we also have the translucenttop bar here as well.The menu bar looks a lot different. Youknow, we have a lot of differences here.Siri has a little bit of adifferent look. The control center,everything just looks so much better.This design looks so much moremodern than it did on Catalina.We have the little, you know,colors right here next to recentdesktop and all that, just everything.I love the design of big Sur.And it's really hard togo back to Catalina afterusing this for a while. Now,another nice new feature in macro S bigSur is that time machine backups now useHPFS instead of HFS by default.And this is going to lead to muchfaster and more reliable backups,which is nice because if you'veever used time machine, you know,how long those backups cantake, but now if you use HPFS,it will be a lot faster than it waspreviously by default when it used HFS.And then finally,the last feature I wanted to talk aboutin this video is that the new AppleSilicon in one max canrun iOS and iPad iOSapplications, thanks tobig Sur. And of course,thanks to the M one chipinside of those new max.So I will be testing that here on thechannel when I get those new Mac books andthe Mac mini in the studio, butthat is a great new feature.You can now run IUs and iPad iOSapps. So that's going to be really,really cool to see, but anyways,guys, there, you have it.Those are some of my favorite newfeatures here in Mac iOS, 11, big serve.So if you guys enjoyed this video,I would appreciate it if you gaveit a thumbs up and of course,make sure you guys subscribe for a lotmore content coming very soon on the newApple, Silicon Macs and thingslike that. So, anyways, guys,thanks again for watching..\n"