MacOS Big Sur 11.0.1 Beta 1 Is Out, Despite Big Sur 11.0 Not Being Out

Mr. Macintosh:

MacOS Big Sur 11.0.1 Beta 1 was released on October 28th, 2020. The release comes about 2 weeks after Beta 10. We were expecting Beta 11 or a GM seed, so it’s strange that we are getting 11.0.1 Beta. It’s possible that Apple Silicon Macs (currently in active production) will have 11.0 installed on them. When they arrive they will see 11.0.1 as an available update.

The only explanation that makes any sense is that 11.0 was “shipped” as the factory OS for some new hardware, which may well be the first Apple Silicon Mac(s), queuing up for a pre-Thanksgiving announcement. There could be new Intel Macs in the pipeline too — there almost certainly are — but you would think those might not require Big Sur.

Apple’s secrecy around hardware announcements makes their OS releases seem nutty. (Last month we had betas of iOS 14.2 without ever seeing betas of 14.1 because 14.1 was the build that shipped as the GM for iPhones 12.)

★ Wednesday, 28 October 2020