Why is Big Sur showing as macOS 10.16.0?

MarttiNuudi

PSB Portal is showing the operating system for mac's that have Big Sur installed as macOS 10.16.0. There is no 10.16.0 and Big Sur version number is 11.0 or the latest 11.01

Please fix it and reconfigure your version number generator 😉

MonikaL

Hi MarttiNuudi,

Apple has confirmed that the major release of macOS, Big Sur, will identify itself as both version 10.16 and 11.0 according to context. For apps built with Xcode, the version returned depends on which version of its SDK they were built with. SDK 10.15 and earlier will consistently respond that Big Sur is major version 10 and minor version 16. 

Shell and other scripts don’t have the benefit of an SDK to take care of such matters for them. If the calling environment sets the variable SYSTEM_VERSION_COMPAT=1 then Big Sur will return 10.16 as its version number; with that absent or set to 0, the version returned will be 11.0

This ensures that all existing apps should see Big Sur as simply an incremented minor version. Build an app with a new release of Xcode which features the macOS 11 SDK, and the major version will be 11 and the minor version 0.

MonikaL

Hi MarttiNuudi,

Products "see" Big Sur either as 10.16 or 11.0 based on what SDK they were built with. Client version 17.8.35217 was still built with SDK 10.15 and will keep reporting Big Sur as 10.16. Next release will be already built with SDK 11.0 and will "see" Big Sur as 11.0 or the latest 11.01 and will report it.

MarttiNuudi

Thank you for clarification. I would still give my vote to use 11.0 in the portal.