Is it safe to download ios 11 now

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Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news:. And something I've learned over the years -- just because an app works during the first beta, that doesn't mean that beta 3 won't break them. If there are apps you rely on daily, it's better to wait until closer to the official release before joining the beta.

Even if you're fortunate enough to not have any apps that won't run on the beta or missed out on a show-stopping error like the iOS One of the last things Apple does during beta programs is optimize the apps, features and services for battery efficiency.

Or at least that's how it feels. In previous beta programs, I've often found myself looking for a charger halfway through the day, even with minimal use. And the same has been true with the first couple of iOS 15 betas. I've had to leave my phone on a charger whenever I'm at my desk in order to get through the evening. Battery life always suffers. In the past Apple has released a battery case for its current-generation iPhones that have helped.

More From Forbes. Dec 15, , pm EST. Dec 15, , am EST. Dec 14, , pm EST. Edit Story. Nov 18, , pm EST. Safari provides a customizable start page and translation capabilities. In Messages, you can pin favorite conversations to the top, reply directly to messages in group conversations, and search more effectively. Maps gains city guides, cycling routes in a few major cities, and indoor maps of major airports and shopping centers.

Honestly, though, the main reason to upgrade eventually is to stay current. The security threats that Apple addresses with updates are real, and developers continually enhance their apps to take advantage of new core capabilities that Apple builds into macOS.

I will say that I think Big Sur has proven itself more solid than I never officially recommended an upgrade to Catalina because it never felt entirely baked, even after Apple announced Big Sur.

By this point last year, Catalina was on its sixth update, with a seventh supplemental update coming soon. In contrast, Big Sur has so far received only five updates, with only 11 non-security bugs explicitly addressed. A sixth update is due soon. They include:. The conspiracy-minded might say that Apple could be fixing vast numbers of bugs without acknowledging them in its release notes. However, based on my experience with the Big Sur public beta, with running it on my M1-based MacBook Air, and now having upgraded my primary Mac—a inch iMac—I can say that Big Sur feels stable and predictable.

Informally, that sentiment seems to be echoed by many professionals and consultants in the Apple world. However, if my Web analytics are anything to go by, many users are waiting on the sidelines. I compared the first days after the release of each of the last three versions of macOS, focusing on how many people had upgraded to the latest versus staying on the previous release.

However, when Tonya and I discussed these numbers, she rightly pointed out that the pandemic is likely the prime factor in upgrade hesitancy. As a broad outline, I recommend that you make at least one backup right before you upgrade, ensure you have a bare minimum of 36 GB free, and plan for your Mac to be inaccessible for at least half a day. The quick summary of my upgrade is that, after a short time of fiddling with things that needed resetting, I returned to work with no significant interruption or productivity hit.

One slight exception is the site-specific browser Epichrome , which says it was not developed or fully tested with Big Sur and whose helper app crashed on first launch, although my site-specific browsers work fine in daily usage. The fiddling required in the wake of the upgrade was driven mostly by the massive state changes inherent in upgrading macOS. But things like switching to a new Mac, changing to a different boot drive, and upgrading macOS bring the foundational state of the Mac into question, causing macOS components and apps to distrust their authentication credentials, access permissions, document storage locations, and the like.

For instance:. I had no problem getting back to work after upgrading to Big Sur because the vast majority of what I do is in third-party apps, which work as they always have. My general take is that ChronoSync is significantly more powerful than SuperDuper and probably than Carbon Copy Cloner, with which I have little experience , and with that power comes added complexity. Upgrading to Big Sur had one immediate benefit. I must have tried to install macOS Restarting the Macs, trying different user accounts, switching from Wi-Fi to Ethernet—nothing made any difference.

While my iMac finally succeeded in updating, subsequent attempts on the MacBook Air continue to fail repeatedly. Just now, updating from During much of that time, my iMac showed a black screen with a progress dialog and a dubious estimate of time remaining. Finally, although folks in TidBITS Talk have assembled a long list of minor annoyances in Big Sur , mainly relating to its interface changes, the only one that has hampered my everyday usage is the hidden close button in notifications.

Upgrading is a when question, not an if question. After enough time, a previously useful Mac will functionally degrade due to losing compatibility with updated apps, current Web browsers, security certificates, and online services.

Lastly, I just want to note that I find major upgrades like Big Sur exciting. Normally, I would update a mac mini in the office here and watch, but thinking about this, I can turn that around. Run the incompatible apps on the spare mac mini and then update my main mac. Hmmm…weekend after next I have a lot of down time. Decisions, decisions…. Yes, I probably could do that.

With a bit of luck, the techs that manage that network will do the work at their end to complete that. My impression of Big Sur thus far has been that it is less laggy than its predecessors, and has a generally pleasing interface with some notable improvements. On the concerning side, it seems harder to run older programs through virtualization, which makes me a little nervous.

Hopefully, this will improve in time. Big Sur is, of course, the only option on the new M1 Macs. But Rosetta 2 is impressively fast, albeit a tad heavy on the battery. From showing icons in toolbars, to message dialogs, to the clipboard, to Messages, to AppleScript in Rosetta. If they still have one. This screenshot is from last week. You need to zoom in to see the d and the e next to the scrollbar:. Apple does still have people doing QA; I unsuccessfully tried to recruit some of my former colleagues working for my ex-boss; getting someone to move to New York who has a place to live in Silicon Valley is a hard sell.

And in my experience a lot of Apple testers do a very conscientious job in reporting bugs in the areas they have time and a mandate to test. The biggest problem was that Migration Assistant created some evil access-control lists ACL , which broke nearly everything, and which only Keyboard Maestro had good enough error reporting to report, rather than silently failing.

I need a sacrificial machine running a reasonably recent MacOS for Xcode e. Or did you do something more complex that might have bumped into edge cases? All running smoothly, the random and daily crashing that Catalina introduced I had to revert back which switching to late version Catalina re-introduced… that was painful.

Not an issue with Big Sur, none of that. Where the fault lies I do not know. So I cloned my Problems with search in Mail. It comes back eventually but not in a couple of days. Anyway, a little OT, sorry! It got somewhat less disastrous after a few days of turning off everything that should have been relevant, starting with Covid contact tracing about which there had been complaints, though it may have been using energy quite legitimately. There is an imperative to test for, find, and promptly fix new bugs in new OS code on new hardware, at least the kind of bug that will get into the news.

New bugs on old hardware, newly-introduced bugs in old code, or losses of functionality in replacements for old apps, sadly less so. The cult of novelty makes this worse; I wish Apple would admit that its testing methodology and the increasing complexity of its codebase mean that it should only be making changes that are truly necessary. I tried to install the latest Big Sur update, and despite my gigabit internet and testing that it was working properly , the update at night a few days after its initial release was running at something like 10 Mbps.

Once downloaded, you'll have access to Apple's new FaceTime features that, for the first time, let Android and PC users participate, as well as iMessage improvements that make it easier to track links and photos your friends have sent. The iPad is getting a complete home screen makeover and multitasking is finally receiving the boost it's needed for years.

All are available for preorder now. Apple also announced the new Apple Watch Series 7 to go with them. But do make sure to follow our checklist before downloading the software -- we'll tell you how to do that.

And here's why some people may want to hold off a week. Before you install the latest update, take a few minutes to do some routine maintenance on your iPhone or iPad.