macOS 11 Big Sur
- 12 November 2020
macOS Big Sur (version 11.0) is the seventeenth major release of macOS. The successor to macOS Catalina (version 10.15), it was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 22, 2020, and publicly released on November 12, 2020. It is named after the coastal region of Big Sur in the Central Coast of California. macOS Big Sur brings a major user interface redesign. It is also the first macOS version to support Macs with ARM-based processors. To mark the transition, the operating system's major version number has been incremented from 10 to 11, for the first time since the release of the Mac OS X Public Beta in 2000. macOS Big Sur refreshes the design of the user interface, described by Apple as the biggest change since the introduction of Mac OS X. Its changes include translucency in various places and a new color palette. All standard apps, as well as the Dock and the Menu Bar, are redesigned and streamlined, and their icons now have rounded-square shapes like iOS and iPadOS apps. Compared to iOS, Big Sur's icons include more shading and highlights to give a three-dimensional appearance. On Macs based on Apple Silicon, macOS Big Sur will run iOS and iPadOS applications natively and without any modifications needed from developers. Software updates can begin in the background before a restart, thus requiring less downtime to complete. Because system files are cryptographically signed, the update software can rely on them being in precise locations, thus permitting them to be effectively updated in place. macOS startup sound is enabled by default (it had been disabled by default in recent releases of macOS), and an option in System Preference was added to enable or disable this functionality.
HISTORY PROVIDED BY WIKIPEDIA
MacBook (Early 2015 or newer), MacBook Air (Mid 2013 or newer), MacBook Pro (Late 2013 or newer), Mac mini (Late 2014 or newer), iMac (Mid 2014 or newer), iMac Pro (2017), Mac Pro (Late 2013 or newer), 4 GB of memory, 35.5 - 44.5 GB of available storage, and OS X Mavericks 10.9 or later