MacOS Big Sur Unstable

I'm also having issues with my MacBook Pro 15" (late-2013) stalling at shutdown/restart/force shutdown. If I do a standard shutdown/restart, it'll log out of my user account perfectly fine and the screen would go black (as it's been powered off). However, I know that it hasn't powered off yet for maybe 30-60 seconds or so?

I know it's still on, because if I try to power on my MacBook it won't register my keyboard 'power on' press because it's still trying to power off/shutdown. Similarly if I let it reboot itself it takes around 30-60 seconds between logging out/screen appearing off and then having the Apple Logo/Sound boot up. Even force reboot has the same issue, always 30-60 seconds from the moment the screen goes off until when the Apple Logo/Sound boot up.

Going through Console log, I can't see any power/shutdown logs with any information, so does anyone know what other logs I should look at, or is there a reverse Verbose mode for shutdowns (like when it boots up but for shutdown instead)?

I've also read something that this shutdown/reboot stall might be because of non-APFS disks (both internal or external disks plugged in at the time of shutdown). However, the only non-APFS disk I have is my Windows Bootcamp (NTFS) partition on my MacBook, so I wonder if this is somehow stalling it? If this is the culprit, can I reformat it to APFS (or is this only available on macOS)? If someone with more technical experience around the disk/file system structures could see if this fixes/replicates the issue, that would be highly appreciated!

Otherwise, I've found the operating system far FAR more stable than previous systems from the initial release, other than a small lag when clicking in MATLAB and lag when typing in Microsoft Outlook (rarely). Remember also, I am typing this from the oldest supported MacBook Pro for Big Sur, which is performing far smoother than my previous operating system (Mojave).

So from a stability-standpoint, your experience of Big Sur is very much isolated to you and your device, and isn't affecting every user running Big Sur.

same problem here, MacBook Pro 16 inch 2020. Constant app crashes, laptop freezes / hard crashes every 2-3 days, weird glitches (external webcam and mic stopped working). Horrid battery life (2.5 hours). None of it ever happens under Win10 in Bootcamp (including battery life being about 6-7 hours), so not hardware issue. Please fix, at the moment I have resolved the issue by using my MacBook in Win10 were it is much more stable and feels even faster.

Thank you, I already thought about that, we did always take for granted with OSX that we can install the next version of an OS on top of the old one without problems. That would be unheard of in the Windows world. That being said, spending more time in Win10, as MacOS has gotten worse, the guys at MS did not sit on their hands idle. Win10 is quite good, so I think I'll keep using that side of my computer until Apple fixes it. As disappointed as I was with my initial purchase, the MacBook Pro turns out to be an amazing Windows machine ;)

Chris Puyear wrote:

William, you are not helping. There is clearly an issue as there are many people on this thread reporting the same issues. But, every time your response is basically “well, I don’t have any problems and none of the hundreds of people I know are having problems, therefore you all are wrong.” Not everyone is going to have a “hardware issue”.

I never, ever said "all of you are wrong."

Instead, if hundreds of people are having zero issues with the exact same hardware that others are having issues with, it's far less likely to be software and more likely to be something in particular about the machines having issues. It's basic debugging technique.

You have to eliminate possibilities to drill down on a cause, not just make an assumption as to what you think the cause is.

In particular RAM issues are the most frequent cause of issues seen after an upgrade that weren't issues before the upgrade. If a memory location is having issues and it used to hold something of little importance but now suddenly holds a kernel jump table, the system will instantly fall over.

The same is true if there is an intermittent block on an SSD which used to hold something of little importance but now contains say the graphics driver.

Hi William,

Sorry I don't mean to come over heavy on you.

I personally know 31 mac users of different flavours of hardware. ALL of them have had issues which makes me think that this is not random. This leads me to question the quality of testing. Apple has not tested thoroughly and if they have released it in the current state then in my book it is 'rushed out' to meet hardware release deadlines maybe?

Regardless the quality control is questionable.

What issues did they have? Many issues people blame macOS for end up being the fault of third party software or are hardware issues the new OS has uncovered.

Of course there are issues, it's software after all, but most of the bugs reported during the testing phase were found and fixed.

Anyone that works in engineering knows that as soon as it is released new issues show up, but overall Big Sur has been impressively solid.

The key now is to fix issues that remain, but that can only be done by reporting those issues to Apple and allowing engineering time to work the issue.

Yeah, sorry demand is the wrong word. My point is more that I have to use Sophos for work, which is the what I need the laptop for. And Windows gets me there, so that’s where I am at the moment. I do have to point out though that those where the things that made me switch to MacOS 15 years ago, funny that they now make think about switching back (more permanently). We’ll see how good the M1 successors will be, but SQ1 derivatives might also be great. In general the Windows world does have the advantage of choice; If I don’t want a touch bar, I don’t have to choose low power there. Also, after coming from butterfly keyboards I am feeling absolutely delighted using a nice keyboard again on the MacBook. In the Windows world I would have that choice all along. High level complaint her but if you spend £3000 on a laptop you should really end up with something functional that has very little annoyances.