I have now completed updating all my freeware apps and command tools for compatibility with macOS 11 Big Sur, and so that they will run native on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.

My new freeware menu looks like:

and is available here as a PDF, which features live clickable links to each of their product pages: AppSelectionChart

There’s only one significant app which hasn’t made it to Big Sur: 32-bitCheck. This remains available for macOS 10.11 to 10.15, but has outlived its usefulness on Big Sur.

Compatibility with Big Sur is based on testing against the current beta-release. If subsequent betas, or the final release, make significant changes which cause problems, please report them to me so that I can fix them. Although some changes in Big Sur do bring limitations in the features of some apps, such as Scrub, those are newly imposed and I’m not aware of any way to work around them.

If you’re intending to remain on Intel Macs, or previous versions of macOS, I encourage you to update to these latest versions. If you’re concerned that they are larger than Intel-only versions, that’s correct but you will barely notice the difference. In most cases, these Universal Apps are only 100-300 KB larger than their Intel-only versions.

I don’t intend producing any further Intel-only versions, as they can only confuse. It’s far better to build one Universal version which all Macs can run optimally, whatever their processors.

My coming targets for development are:

• Adding features from my old app DispatchView to Mints.
• Adding KeychainCheck features to Mints.
• Modifying Mints to support custom log extracts.
• Adding ARM signing tests to Signet.
• Adding custom colours to Nalaprop.

I’m aware that T2M2 and possibly my other log tools including Ulbow and Consolation may need further minor modifications to get the most from the release version of Big Sur, which I will try to complete as soon after its release as I can.

If you have any other features you’d like me to add to any of these existing apps, please let me know. Similarly, if you have any requests for further utilities, just ask and I’ll be happy to look at them.

I hope that you find these useful.

Over to you now, Apple.