Apple todays seeded the first beta of an upcoming macOS Big Sur 11.1 update to public beta testers, with the beta coming a day after the developer release and two weeks after the launch of macOS Big Sur 11.0.1, the release version of the software.
Beta testers who signed up for Apple's beta testing program can download the macOS Big Sur beta through the Software Update mechanism in System Preferences after installing the proper profile.
Mac users who want to be a part of Apple's beta testing program can sign up to participate on the beta website, which gives users access to iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS betas.
There's no word yet on what's included in macOS Big Sur 11.1, but it likely includes performance improvements, security updates, and fixes for bugs that weren't able to be addressed in the release version of macOS Big Sur. No significant new feature changes were discovered in the first developer beta.
Thursday January 23, 2025 6:41 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 18.3 should be released to the public next week, following beta testing since mid-December. While the software update is a relatively minor one, it still includes a handful of new features, changes, and bug fixes for iPhones.
Below, we recap everything new in iOS 18.3.
Notification Summary Changes
Examples of inaccurate Apple Intelligence notification summaries
Apple Intelligence...
Friday January 24, 2025 1:55 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple is set to release iOS 18.3 next week, bringing further refinements to Apple Intelligence features, a couple of neat new capabilities to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 devices, and bug fixes.
While not quite as packed with new features as Apple's preceding iOS 18 point releases, iOS 18.3 still introduces capabilities that aim to make your iPhone smarter and more intuitive. Below, we've...
Friday January 24, 2025 8:16 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 18.3 is expected to be widely released next week, and that means the first iOS 18.4 beta for iPhones should be just around the corner.
Apple has previously implied that iOS 18.4 will be released in April, as that is when it promised to make Apple Intelligence available in even more languages.
Below, we outline what to expect from iOS 18.4 so far.
Apple Intelligence for Siri
Siri ...
Thursday January 23, 2025 7:32 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Walmart still does not accept Apple Pay or other NFC payments at its more than 4,600 stores across the U.S., and it stood firm on its reasoning for that today.
A spokesperson for Walmart today informed MacRumors that its position on contactless payments has not changed since we last reached out about the matter in 2022. The big-box retailer said it remains focused on its own convenient...
Wednesday January 22, 2025 6:01 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
A new Apple TV is expected to be released later this year. In this article, we recap rumored features and changes for the device.
The next Apple TV will be equipped with Apple's own combined Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. He said the chip supports Wi-Fi 6E, which would be an upgrade over the current Apple TV's standard Wi-Fi 6 support. Wi-Fi 6E extends the...
Tuesday January 21, 2025 4:31 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of iOS 18.3 today, and with it comes release notes confirming what's new. While we knew about several of the features that are in the update, there are some lesser known tweaks and bug fixes.
The update adds new Visual Intelligence features for iPhone 16 models, it tweaks Notification summaries on all...
Friday January 24, 2025 9:09 am PST by Juli Clover
The upcoming iPhone 17 models that Apple plans to release this year will not feature a smaller Dynamic Island, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said today.
On social media, he said that he is expecting the size of the Dynamic Island to remain "largely unchanged" across the iPhone 17 lineup. His statement is contrary to prior rumors that we've heard about planned changes for the iPhone 17 models.
...
Saturday January 25, 2025 5:07 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple's retail stores will be rolling out "merchandise/floor marketing updates" next week, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Gurman did not explicitly say if the store updates are related to any upcoming product announcements, but he did mention that next week is around the time that Apple rolls out its annual Black Unity watch band for the Apple Watch.
In each of the past four years, ...
Thursday January 23, 2025 2:48 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
It's also time for Apple's first product announcement of the year.
Last year, Apple said it would be launching Powerbeats Pro 2 in 2025, and the wireless earbuds are expected to launch very soon.
Powerbeats Pro 2 images found in iOS 18 code
In his Power On newsletter last weekend, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said the Powerbeats Pro 2 are "due imminently." In addition to Apple filing the...
Please tell me they brought back quick reply in messages notifications! It's so annoying to have to click 3 times to open the reply field. Not to be overly dramatic, but the loss of this feature spoils the entire OS for me
So wouldn’t the .1 release be equivalent to the yearly macOS releases of previous years? I would think all Big Sur-related fixes/features updates would be .0.x ...and that an 11.1 release would be analogous to a new California location release. Otherwise, going to 12.0 would imply drastic changes again only a year later. Thoughts?
It's a bummer that Apple still frequently does betas without explaining what to test.
So wouldn’t the .1 release be equivalent to the yearly macOS releases of previous years?
Probably not.
Mac OS X had this odd thing where major releases like 10.4 Tiger and 10.15 Catalina actually had the minor version bumped up.
This was different in the Mac OS Classic days, and has always been different on iOS.
This 11.1.0 release is presumably equivalent to an iOS 14.1: it will add some minor features and fix a lot of bugs.
We've also already had a 11.0.1 point release: whereas the Apple Silicon Macs shipped with 11.0.0, Intel Macs got 11.0.1 as the first final release.
I would think all Big Sur-related fixes/features updates would be .0.x
Bug fixes: .x.y
Features: .x.0
...and that an 11.1 release would be analogous to a new California location release. Otherwise, going to 12.0 would imply drastic changes again only a year later. Thoughts?
