Big Sur

At our online meeting on Friday 27th November we discussed the newly released macOS 11 Big Sur. Members also had lots of questions and suggestions.

App Development Update

DaveK gave us his regular update on the app he’s developing. The Zenopolis website has information about Dave’s current apps.

Robert talked about some of the new features in the recently released macOS 11 Big Sur including:

Control Centre is now available on Mac with the option to add controls to the menu bar.
Battery usage history is available in System Preferences.
There’s now the option to override battery health management on laptops with the “Charge to Full Now” option.
Up to 9 conversations can be pinned in Messages and you can reply in-line to conversations.
System accent and highlight colours can be changed with a wide range of options. One of these is Accent colour which uses an app-specific colour defined by the developer.
It’s now possible to edit videos in the Photos app including cropping, rotation and filters.

Apple have a page detailing the new features of Big Sur.

Both Mac Rumors and iPhone Hacks have lists of tips and tricks for Big Sur covering many of the smaller new features and improvements.

Sue asked about a white button appearing on the screen of her iPhone. The cause was identified as the option Settings/Accessibility/Touch/Assistive Touch being enabled.
Elliott mentioned the useful Back Tap feature added to certain iPhones in iOS 14. This allows you to assign various actions to two or three taps on the back of your phone.
John had an issue with lyrics not showing up in the Music app in iOS 14. He tracked this down to having the Increase Contrast mode on in Settings/Accessibility/Display & Text Size. This is likely a bug that Apple will fix, it’s been mentioned on Apple Discussions.

Paul mentioned some products with discounts during the Black Friday sales (running at the time of writing):