

The one promised feature in Monterey which could prove a decider for some is Apple’s proposed anti-CSAM measures.
CSAM 2016 APP FOR MAC INSTALL
At least with Monterey’s updates you’ll get better value for the investment of download and install time, as you’ll continue to get bug fixes, as well as benefitting from new features such as Live Text, which should become widely accessible in third-party apps as well as Apple’s. Don’t expect Apple to offer any standalone delta updates.įor Big Sur, receiving security updates only is likely to prove a poor compromise.
CSAM 2016 APP FOR MAC UPDATE
Not only that, there will only be two options to obtain them: as a 2.2+ GB update through Software Update, or by downloading the full 13 GB Big Sur installer. For an Intel Mac, that means that each Security Update will be at least 2.2 GB in size, require 15 minutes or more to ‘prepare’, and then take another 20 minutes or so to install. At the same time, the Security Updates it receives will be very large compared to earlier versions of macOS, because of the changes Apple has made to system software updates from macOS 11 onwards.

Its many annoyances and issues will thus remain fixed in stone. If Apple remains true to form, now it has released Big Sur 11.5.2 that version will not receive any further fixes or improvements other than Security Updates. Instead, Monterey aims to consolidate on all those years of turbulence, allowing Apple’s engineers to fix more of the bugs which remain. This is quite unlike High Sierra or Mojave with their rapidly evolving APFS, Catalina with its loss of 32-bit and split system volumes, or Big Sur with its Sealed System Volume. Monterey is the first major release of macOS for some years which doesn’t bring deep structural changes. I don’t think that’s the prospect in store for those using Big Sur over the coming year. Usually, running the last release of the last major version of macOS provides a relatively stable platform, disturbed only by the series of Security Updates, and spares you from wrestling with all the new bugs which come bundled with the new major version. It’s a matter of balancing the costs and benefits. If you do, I think you’re making a serious mistake: anyone ready to go beyond Mojave should now be preparing for Monterey, not Catalina or Big Sur.

As Apple prepares to release macOS 12 Monterey, if you’re still running Catalina, you might be tempted to remain one major release behind, and take this as the time to upgrade to Big Sur. A lot of Mac users like to live well away from the leading edge, and with good reason.
