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Apple's Monterey 12.1.

Get It Try It

CUPERTINO (Radsoft/Rixstep) — Release early and often, said Eric Raymond, a luminary godfather of open source.

It seems Apple took Eric Raymond's advice to heart. Only a few days (mere hours) after the release of their OS Monterey 12.0, Apple have announced version 12.1 and even have a 'beta' available.

AppleInsider have no further details and, as Apple, warn against installs on 'mission-critical' machines.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/10/28/apple-issues-first-developer-beta-of-macos-monterey-121

9to5Mac will of course cheer for any and all upgrades.

https://9to5mac.com/2021/10/27/macos-monterey-now-available-heres-why-you-should-update/

TechZone360 takes a more sober albeit lame approach. The piece is actually little more than an exercise in page-fills.

https://www.techzone360.com/topics/techzone/articles/2021/10/28/450473-what-go-wrong-during-macos-monterey-upgrade.htm

Gotta Be Mobile focuses on the 12.1 update, claiming it will have new features and not just bug fixes.

https://www.gottabemobile.com/5-things-to-know-about-the-macos-monterey-12-1-update/

But there are issues already with the first release 12.0 on 25 October. Giz China reports on funky stuff with USB hubs.

https://www.gizchina.com/2021/10/29/macos-monterey-users-facing-issues-with-usb-hub-connectivity/

AppleInsider found that too.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/10/29/apples-macos-monterey-causes-problems-with-some-usb-devices-hubs



'It's not possible to estimate yet whether this is a widespread issue, but there are multiple user reports that say macOS Monterey is specifically causing issues with USB 3.0 devices. For some people, their USB hub is no longer working at all, while for others their hub's HDMI and USB-C ports continue to function.

'Users have been reporting the issue on Apple's own Developer forums date from as far back as July, when macOS Monterey was in beta. Now that it is publicly available, it appears that more users are discovering it.'

There are several other sites reporting on the USB SNAFU as well. They're mentioned here.

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/29/monterey-usb-hub-issues-reported/

People have evidently been reporting the issue since July.

'Welcome to the future, where you are forced to use expensive adapters and ridiculously expensive hubs to do just about anything and a software update can just break them without warning... At which point you are of course told to just buy a new, even more expensive one. Just to do things that used to be built into the computer.'

ZD, aka 'Doofus.Net', really likes Monterey.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-macos-monterey-12-0-1-review-productivity-firmly-back-on-the-menu/

Perhaps the most useful reads will be at this site.

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/28/apple-seeds-macos-monterey-12-1-beta-1/

Recommendation

Seriously: don't. This isn't Xmas Eve. Father Xmas is legend, not reality. Do yourself a favour and look into an open source solution such as Linux Mint.

Linux Mint builds on Ubuntu. We have no further information to offer right now, but we do recommend looking into it. There is no privacy intrusion as with Apple. Your Linux Mint won't be phoning home - where would that home be? If you're running a network, then you should already be running Linux anyway. Apple have nothing to offer you. (You certainly can't use Windows.)

Take the time to find out what FOSS systems have to offer as regards the software you need for your shop. Write and tell us what you find.

Linux is kinder on your hardware. Once you run Linux, you'll have an exit strategy at both ends.