MacOS Big Sur Unstable

Because the applications were incompatible with Big Sur and their authors did not release new, compatible versions.

ExpressVPN is excellent- but still contributes to huge Big Sur stability issues. Brings the entire kernel down during reconnection with regularity for me.....

Do not loose time and money to go back to PC, go back to Mojave and be a happy Mac user.

This solved every problem for me ! (Waiting for a possible solution by Apple).

I honestly do appreciate that mileage may vary, but when mine locks up it's usually Mail, Safari or Pages. I rarely use third party apps. And it's 2-3 times a day.

I am still getting crashes. Launchd and chrome helper look like pointers to the issue.

Chris Puyear wrote:

I know they are working on Big Sur 11.1 and I really hope it fixes some of these problems because this has been the WORST upgrade I've ever done on a Mac and I've been through them all starting back at 10.3.

That's your personal experience.

For myself and many others, Big Sur has been 100% rock solid with no issues whatsoever - and I go back to before macOS X existed.

I'm sorry you are having issues and hope they are resolved soon, but it is not a sign that Big Sur is unstable in general.

Generally, my Mac mini (2018) is working perfectly smooth with Big Sur. But cases happen, so I may agree with everybody in the thread in some way.

For some non-regular freeze-ups, I'd used some steps I found on the internet - hope some of them help you as well. Cheers!

jakarhill wrote:

I have found Bug Sur not table at all. My MS work,Excel, powerpoint, etc crash often when opening.

Sounds like Microsoft is lagging in compatibility, as tends to happen with each new release of macOS.

You can't blame the operating system when third party application vendors haven't bothered to take the six months of beta releases to make their applications work painlessly on day one.

Adobe is another vendor that tends to do that.

I have the same issue. Mail and or Safari (as only open applications) stop working after 5-10 minutes every few days. The system becomes totally unresponsive.

Apple support guided me through safe boot and clearing caches. A few days the system was working and now the problem is back. I use Mac OS X since 2007 on a daily basis. It seems the system is getting more and more complex and instabilities are more frequent than many years ago.

So far BIG SUR is the worst upgrade in my view. An OS should not crash completely (totally unresponsive, no killing of Apps possible) - we are no longer in the MS DOS era...

You must be that lucky one!

Same problem as Chris Puyear and many many many others and it is disgraceful that Apple have allowed this buggy release out without thoroughly testing.

Few years back, I moved to Apple for stability after getting frustrated with Microsoft Windows. Looks like that stability is a thing of the past. Standards are dropping at Apple and Steve Jobs would be turning in his grave.

Very disappointing!!!!

William, I agree with Chris Puyear.

When I first read your post it implied the same although you 'never said it'.

I know of couple of Apple fans who are in denial. Everything Apple is great, any issues must be down to anything else other than Apple. You have to admit that Apple are not that angelic as they make out and face reality. Big Sur has been rushed out with bugs!!

Thanks for the “more experienced” input. Clean My Mac is awesome though. And Sophos and VPN are required. By the actual professionals running the security in my company if I want to connect to our network. Just in case I would want to do something stupid like clicking and downloading software someone posted in a forum and give it full disk access.

As I said ClamX is less intrusive than most so see if the IT gods will let you us it instead of Sophos. As an argument remove both CMM and Sophos and test performance as an argument for IT. CMM certainly isn't needed.